American Woman in Angst

New Year

2005-12-26T17:08:00.000-05:00

I've been away for a while. Things were incredibly hectic and the thoughts could not, would not, convey themselves to my blog. But I am in the mood to blog again.

Something amiss

2005-06-25T17:12:00.000-04:00

I sit and ponder why I have such a restless feeling. Things are going as smoothly as they can, at the moment. Everyone is relatively happy and healthy as am I, but I have the feelings of things not accomplished. My routine is the same every day. Work 12 hours with a 2.5 hour round trip commute just to be able to pay bills and put away a little something. The end of the fiscal year for the job is coming up June 30th and everyone is waiting to exhale as to whether they will be employed come the first of July. Many think of the severance package: 2 weeks base pay for every year of service. For me that would be a nice package, and following behind that will be, if needed because I haven't found work, applying for unemployment. Per the move to Jersey, the unemployment rate is much higher than the rate for New York, so that will a offer a little solace. But what of the pounding the pavement trying to find a new gig. The thought of it is draining. Every year during this time comes the awareness of fiscal uncertainty for the company for which I work. The trickle down effect of firing/laying-off-to-never-be re-hired workers who are deemed expendable by the powers-that-be so that they may get their six figure bonuses is disturbing. And to think this corporate greed can turn my life upside down has me at an imbalance. I trudge ahead, but am always aware of the possibilities of that dreaded spiel, "We think you are a wonderful employee and am sorry to inform you that because of ...."

I forge ahead knowing I can survive whatever comes my way. I think?

Class Trip to Criminal Court

2005-06-15T23:06:00.000-04:00

There are many headlines in the news today in The New York City papers involving the criminality of young people. Young girl, 9 years old kills 11 year old friend. 12 year old Long Island girl strangles mother to death. 17 Year old Long Island, NY boy choke holds his father to death at the family barbecue. I see these headlines and am numbed at the impossibilities and the possibilities. Why is it not impossible for a child to strike and kill the one that gave them life? And to do such a vicious act at an age that should be full of innocence? How is this possible that children are killing at the age of 9?

My daughter is 13 years old and her 8th grade class took a tour of the criminal court of New York City. I was asked to come along as a chaperon. I was happy to do something for the class and for my daughter. When I arrived at my daughter's school and was introduced to her classmates, I felt good about the excursion and the adventure it would bring us. I did not expect the trip to be as deeply emotional as it was.

The trip came about because the children had a mock court in their class and were learning of court procedures and rules. The teacher decided at the end of the two week mock court to actually have them visit the several courts in downtown Manhattan. We were to visit the many courts that are featured in Law and Order, the television franchised tv programs. We were treated very respectfully by the court officers who were cheery and smiling when ushering us through the process of being screened for weapons. They made the experience as good as possible, but though pleasant could not mask the seriousness included in having your body scanned for weapons. That was the first step in the children being aware of the possibilities of violence and crime and the real life in which it happens.

We were met by an Assistant District Attorney of which there are over 500 in Manhattan Criminal Court. He was very sweet and didn't take any mess from mostly East Harlem Children he would be escorting through halls in which he prosecuted hardened criminals. I worried previous to meeting him that he would be overwhelmed by the children, many of whom were much taller and bigger, and, some seemed, more street wise than even me. He was old hat with the children, not hesitating to tell them to be quiet when it was needed, telling them to act right, and doing so without looking at me or the teacher for the go ahead. There were seventeen children in all and it was just me and their teacher escorting them to and from the school, and during the court proceedings he was with us. We meet him initially in a conference room and we all were sizing each other up, doing the usually thing people do when meeting others for the first time. He was explaining what his position was and what was the difference between a felony and a misdemeanors, and because the children knew a lot of the answers he asked from where did they got their knowledge of the court system and its proceedings. Many said from watching show such as Law and Order and The Wire, which happens to be a cable show. He said incredulously, "Oh some of you guys have cable?" And the air just sucked out of the room. The kids and I looked at him, "Like, what we can't have cable? What, just 'cause we're from the inner city, we don't have money to afford cable?" No one said it, but we were all thinking those words. It was like, "Oh, this is a bleeding heart liberal trying to give back to inner city people, meanwhile we didn't ask him for jack." Everyone kind of held their breath, and just paused. I said to myself, "Uh oh, this guy just messed up real bad." But he felt the tension really quick and understood from where it came, and said "No, no, that's cool you have it. You're lucky 'cause I am way too poor to afford cable." Everyone exhaled because his statement was from the heart and seemed beyond truthful and not judgmental of the children's' financial situation, but simply, just sorrowful about his. Everyone laughed. He, at the point, was alright with the children because he passed a major test: that he did not fake the funk about his financial situation. Often times that is a ice breaker for many people in social situations, and more specifically, in this one involving children from the inner city.

We continued with the lesson of what happens in court and then he laid down the law as to how the children were to act when going to the various court rooms. We would be going to the arraingment courtroom first, and that involved people who were arrested the night before who would then, by law, have to be seen within 36 hours by a judge and told why they were arrested, and what was to happen to them to address the charge. Would they be given a desk appearance ticket to come back and answer to the charge? Would they be released on their own recognizance or have to put up bail to guarantee they return to court? Or would the crime be so serious there would be no bail and they would be put away in the jail until a trial? There were other circumstances a person could find themselves under in the arraingnment court. What was stressed the most was the importance of having the uptmost reverence for the proceedings as this was a life and death situation for some people. At minimum, family members were present in the courtroom and were likely to be upset that their loved one was locked up for the night in prison, and per that we were to be respectful which entailed no talking, chewing gum, cell phones, no movement, just complete and utter attention to the proceedings.

What rattled many of us were that out of 10 defendants 3 were 16 years of age. That was a shock and many thought they should have been in Family Court. Upon leaving the courtroom we conferred in a common area outside of it, and were told by The ADA that what those teenagers were charged with obligated the courts to have their proceedings in Criminal Court. One of the cases involved a 16 year old who got caught up because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police got a report of a young Hispanic man in a particular school with a gun in Spanish Harlem. Spanish Harlem is called just that because it is an enclave of Spanish, or rather Latino people, in Harlem. For the police to look for a Latino man in a school located within a Latino enclave that would presumably turn up the majority of the male population of the school as Latino, and do so without extreme care because of the great possibility of getting the wrong guy, is beyond me. This young man attended the school being investigated and was cutting class and was therefore the only one in the halls when the police pounced on him as he fit the general description of "Hispanic Male with a gun" He unfortunately did not react correctly as he fought the two plain clothes police men who undoubtedly were in fear of their life as they were doing their job and accosted him. They had probably cause as this young man fit the very general description of an armed man. Instead what they found was an unarmed man child, who was rightfully in the school he attended, albeit, he was out of class wondering the hall. Cutting class is an infraction of school rules but not a crime in the penal system. What is a crime is resisting being searched for a weapon when there is probable cause, and then fighting with and swinging on the police officers who are trying to frisk you, and doing the frisking within the letter of the law. This was explained to us by The ADA who noticed the looks on the children's, and I am sure, on my face, as to the ridiculousness of the situation that landed the boy, so young, in a prison, with grown men, for 36 hours, who will now, undoubtedly have a police record, because no matter that he was not the man the report indicated, but that he fought with the police in the course of their duty. And as such, these actions are punishable under the law.

We then went to another courthouse which had the trial phase of the criminal court process. After a person is charged with a crime should s/he not plead guilty to the crime and accept the punishment offered by a judge, the case goes to trial. We were witness to a murder trail and The ADA took the time to again stress the need for reverence and told of the two times he mistakenly thought his own cell phone was off and was reprimanded by the judge who took the cell phone away from him to only be returned after The ADA asked for it at the end of the work day. It was stressed that a man was on trial for murdering a man in the streets of Manhattan, and that should he lose the case he would be in jail for the rest of his life. We happened upon the day when the most riveting testimony happened, and it was the day the testimony was about how the murder took place. An eye witness came on the stand and told the gory details and we in the audience were riveted. It was an eye opening experience where the defense, trying to discredit the witness, got into the life of the witness and made it known that he was uneducated and a convicted felon, and the prosecution tried to paint a prettier picture of the eye witness by telling of his struggle of being born into poverty and struggling to survive. It was very interesting, and we happened on the day when the testimony was crucial.

The class trip was extraordinary in that I was able to spend time with my daughter in an environment that was hers exclusively. I saw her interact with her classmates and was struck by the respect they had for each other. Many of the students were from Spanish Harlem and were rough and tumble and were beautiful specimens of our youth. They were street wise, book smart, and respectful, and that is a wonderful combination. The trip was also extraordinary because of all the defendants in those Manhattan courtrooms, not one was white. All of the defendants were persons of color, and made me ask myself, "What, no White people committed any crimes on The Island of Manhattan." And all of the defendants are men. The Kings of people of color were locked up, and sure, maybe some of them were guilty, but why such a statistical lop-sidedness, a disparity, to the racial make-up of those being arraingned and tried. The young man who was arrested for resisting and was essentially in the wrong place at the wrong time, when released on his own recognizance, after spending the night in the infamous Tombs jail cells in the bowels of the city of NY only because he fit such a broad description in a neighborhood were the majority of the men fit it, was upsetting to see. When he turned from the judge and was released, an older woman, possibly his mother, met him in the aisle, with tears streaming down her face, and when he saw her, his face almost dissolved into tears but it was evident he choked them back and slung his arm around her neck and they walked out, him with defiance, and possibly with a hate for the penal system and its caretakers because of a situation that was all so avoidable. Will he be able to put this incidentsin a box within him so that it does not contaminate the goodness that is in him, or will he let it release into his soul, to darken it and darken his spirit? It was frustrating to see the many aspects of this court system and its incongruity and its exaggerated representation of the criminality we all know does not statistically occur in a metropolis like NYC.

It was a great class trip.

In The Box

2005-05-30T23:37:00.000-04:00

Recently I attended an event that required me to wait in a waiting area with several women. Upon entering he area as directed I went to a seat that was unoccupied and proceeded to take off my sweater and exhale knowing I had arrived on time and the event would soon start. I was happy to be there and to have done so without incident. Then came a woman who stood over me, in the proverbial box that I set up around myself to determine if someone is just too close, and proceeded to tell me I was in her seat. I, still doing the tasks of setting myself up to sit for a moment, stopped my movements and looked up at her in a slow manner, all the while looking at the vast amount of unoccupied seats all about us, and said to the woman slowly while looking in her eyes, for her to go find another seat and to do so because my sitting in "her" seat should not be a big deal. I further glanced around me to re-assert that there was no way for me or the best detective in the world to decipher if I was sitting in "her" chair as there were no items of clothing nor bags in its vicinity. I was amazed that she was "up on me" in such close poximity and surmised she must not be a native New Yorker as anyone who is would never have been that close without there not being a good reason such as a crowded subway or restaurant.

This chick was trying to intimidate me, why I don't know, to move out of a seat that upon view no one would have surmised had ever been occupied by her, and per these facts it can only be surmised that this chick was just power playing. The tables were turned on her quickly when the normally low base that is my voice got even lower when I told her to find another seat. She may have very well been in the seat before I entered the room and vacated it when she got up to partake of the wonderful refreshments that were laid out for all the attendants which is probably when I entered the room thus not knowing she had been sitting there. But for her to then think that any new arrivals could discern who was formerly sitting in the many seats available and to then intimidate someone into moving from a seat she once occupied by standing over said person, closely, with a hot cup of coffee, was mind boggling.

I practiced restraint on this occasion, and thought I handled it well. I talked to her like she was one of my children when I tell them to go sit down somewhere when they get on my nerves. She replied like a child when she heard the tone of my voice with a very perky voice, "Oh that's OK. I'll just move to another seat even though my stuff is there." I looked around AGAIN to ascertain what stuff she was talking about and saw AGAIN that there was none, and just thought to myself she was just trying to save face because she was put in the awkward position, and more specifically, she had the awkward position she tried to put on me thrown back on her.

I was offended by someone standing over me while I was sitting, and doing so with hot cup of coffee that could have easily spilled on me, and per that, I felt she was very threatening. I have not felt that feeling in a while from anyone, and it was shocking. It came from a person that I felt was used to getting her way, and I was not letting that happen because she was rude, there were plenty of other seats available, and I don't threaten easily. If looks could kill this chick would have been dead a hundred times over.

The moment was a very NY moment and I have not encountered one of late as I think I project a certain, "Do not mess with me" as soon as I step foot outside my apartment door, as do most NY'ers, and we all get along famously. Everyone knows where the lines are drawn and everyone has that box made up of those lines in which you are in the center, and no one is to intrude. For this chick to step in that box so aggressively is shocking to me, and reinforces my notion that it can come from anywhere a situation that can drive you to smack the living day lights out of someone who steps to you so aggressively. I handled the moment I think as gracefully as anyone could have, and didn't hesitate in understanding the situation. Years ago I think I would have been confused and possibly have moved as she sounded so confident that I made such a harsh mistake and she was pointing it out by embarrassing me in front of 20 people, loudly. I think I have grown in sniffing out the drama queens of the world, who don't take the high road, but take the low and try to drag many of us down there with them.

Only in NY.

Consumer Addict

2005-05-23T09:35:00.000-04:00

A guy from work invited me to the release party for a CD he performed in with his choir. It was to be held in Hell's Kitchen of NYC with free eats and drinks. I was happy for him and his success and wished to party with him and his friends. I took the subway to Delancy Street in NYC and emerged at dusk to see the sun shimmering off the East River just beyond The FDR Drive and it many homeward bound cars and their occupants. It was a beautiful sight and a beautiful night. I walked west towards Houston towards a church and entered into its sanctuary to a sensory overload. The music was blasting and there was a continuous stream of film of my friend and his group on many of the walls of the church. The Church had no pews which allowed for the crowd and the hot dog stands and the pop corn machines and the open bars from which people partook the tasty treats. The crowd was load and excited and the vibe was very New York. I looked around at the standing room only crowd and saw a man with a shawl fur and a advant guard skirt with combat boots on who looked very interesting. Most were upwardly mobile looking, if not upper middle class, and that, in my opinion, is not a bad thing.

The theme of the night was consumerism and the specific aspect of everyone's purchasing all items consumed responsibly. It was a night that spoke of everyone being aware of many of the things consumed by us everyday have a heavier price paid than that we put in the cash register. While we sip on lattes purchased from S.t.a.r.b.u.c.k. it was said during this event I attended that this multi-million dollar conglomerate uses underpaid and therefore exploited labor in third-world countries. I paused during the festivities that were presented to all as a choir in a church and done so in a comedy skit fashion I suppose to soften the blow of the essential lecture being put forth that we are all slaves to consumerism. Many of us want the latest fashions, cell phones, food, visit the latest restaurant, etc. and do not think of how the products being consumed were derived and produced and delivered for our consumption. It is a phenomenon that those conglomerates that produce such products certainly don't want the consumers to thinks about as many of us would give pause when and perhaps would not purchase said items.

The Rev.erend Bill.y and The Sto.p Sh.opping Choir is the official name of the choir my friend belongs to and have, upon my investigation into their website, a history televangelical satire to put forth the message of responsible consumerism. The are often at major political and consumer related events such as the recent Repub.lican Natio.nal Convention and The Wor.ld Tra.de Organization gatherings that happened recently in NYC. It is admirable that such a group exists and made me think about who I am as a consumer. It just struck me as sad as most of those present in the audience seemed not to need much prodding to believe the message being put forth, and that those who most needed to hear the message of that evening are the young people with the still forming view points about consumerism who clamor for those items pitched continuously by commercials and The M.T.V. culture we live in today.

The night was fantastic and I appreciated being invited as it makes me aware of my need to be ever vigilant in understanding what I consume litterally affects the world around me.

Casual Racism

2005-05-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

Casual racism effects society in countless ways and chips away at the very soul of those who encounter it on a daily basis.

"Oh, you're from Harlem! You don't act like someone from Harlem."

"Oh, you go to (an Ivy League) University?! How did YOU get in?! You're on scholarship, right? Oh, you're in the degree program and not some certificate program!?"

Getting on an elevator a Caucasian woman when she sees you, an African-American woman entering the elevator alone, shifts her pocketbook to the other side of her body, and looks fearful, as the doors of the elevator closes.

A problem comes up on the job and someone is asked to get a specific supervisor who is sitting on the other side of the department. She is training. The person is given the name of said supervisor and when sent to summon the supervisor, sees an African-American woman who is training two Caucasian women employees who are subordinate. He excuses himself to the African-American woman and speaks to the two Caucasian women and asks which of them is the supervisor. They point to the African-American woman who he has just ignored as possibly being the supervisor he was sent to summon.

A well known Georgia State Congress Woman, an African-American Woman, and two of her clerks try to enter The House of Representatives for a meeting of Congress, and the two Caucasian women are allowed to enter without being asked for ID to prove their identity and the reason for their being there, but The Congress Woman is stopped and detained and questioned when she does not provide ID nor is she believed when she states that she is a Congress Woman. A similar incident happens again months later. Members of Congress are traditionally not requested to show ID, but the civilians who work for them are, when trying to enter The Floor of The House of Representatives. Congress Woman Cynthia McKinney lodged a formal complaint as to her treatment at the hands of security.

A woman decides to run away from her home days before her wedding, a wedding that included 14 brides maids. It is unclear why she ran, but it is certainly clear that she lied when she called to state the reason for her disappearance. She stated that she had been kidnapped by a Latino Man and his Caucasian female companion. She then recanted a few days later. Sometimes during such weird cases of disappearances and other extreme matters, a person will lie to cover the fact that they are the reason for the extreme matter occurring by saying someone, usually a person of color, created the problem. This stems from the fact that it is so easy to believe a person of color committed a crime.

The feasibility of stating a lie - that a disappearance occurred because of an act of criminality by a Latino - is that which is the very base of what society thinks of people of color. And all other thoughts about people of color by persons spring from this very base and foundation, thus tinting the thought process of what and who people of color are, as a group, with casual racism. The woman did not care that she risked The Latino men of her community being snatched from their homes, cars, and jobs, to be questioned by police authority as to her whereabouts. The casualness of some racism and its acceptability in it being spoken and used as a weapon to thwart the truth, and its acceptability allowing those who use it to think of people of color as beneath them and inferior, and hoping that others do same so that lies will be believed, is angering.

Casual racism, the small incidences, and not the outlandishly racist occurrences we read about, are sometimes more effecting in spreading ugliness than the not so casual racism, as it is a process that ferments and festers in the brain to be forever remembered as a slight that was unjustified, undeserved, unwarranted, and came about just because of the color of one's skin and the inherent racism that exists in the society to which we all belong.

PTO Days

2005-05-02T19:05:00.000-04:00

There are many who are familiar with the expression PTO. Paid Time Off is magic to many working people's ears as it allows them to escape their jobs and take a vacation. Or if one is sick, one can call in to the job and tell of whatever illness they are suffering with knowing they will be paid while they languish and recuperate from what ails them. My job moved my department from the Wall Street area of NYC to Jersey City, NJ and many of my department were none to happy. This has manifested in many not showing up for work for numerous days. We have been at the new location for about eight weeks and about 60% of my department's workers have not completed a full week of work. Many of the absences are unscheduled, and the amount per my group is massive and exemplifies the dissatisfaction with the move from NYC to NJ. Before we left New York it was obvious many of my department had used most of their PTO, as it is a normally weird practice to abuse the system of PTO days, and many had done so before it actually accrued. The company for which we worked has always forwarded the time to the workers as a sign of good faith, and of course doing so knowing it would be easy to recoup whatever money was extended via PTO when the person left the employ of our job from the last check of said employee.

What is shocking is the rate that days are being used via PTO in our new facility. It is as if people do not want to be here, and are therefore risking being looked upon like irresponsible employees. And this is happening from the managerial level all the way down to temporary employees. But what is baffling is that they all need their jobs. No one is independently rich (to my knowledge) and works to appease some work demon they have inside themselves. So it is astounding that the manifestation of not wanting to be someplace acts out in taking unscheduled days that may not be paid for because of over extension of the usage of PTO.

It is certain that the vibe is different when going to work. When working on Wall Street one knew that though the job was not creative nor paid well, when one stepped out of the office one could find a vibrancy from the neighborhood in which the job was located. There may be a concert of major stars just blocks away in Battery Park. We have all seen, with our office views of the Statue of Liberty, concerts directly across the street with such performances from Janet Jackson, James Brown, Black Eyed Peas, Wyclef Jean, Nora Jones, Mos Def, Robert DeNiro, to name a few. And now, what do we get? Jersey. So, people are not happy as the neighborhood in which the job is located, while it is a neighborhood consisting of skyscapers on par with the ones left on Wall Street, does not have even a percentage of the vibrancy that was in the neighborhood of Wall Street. The place becomes deserted come five o'clock and literally tumbleweeds could roll down the avenue without bumping into anything. It is so desolate, but with the monstrosity that is the skyscrapers in the area, it looks like a vacant set of a very big budgeted blockbuster movie in a metropolis.

Having said the above, it is understood why people would be disillusioned about the job and what it once offered in terms of outside entertainment, but one thing is certain, bills still have to be paid. So, yes it is understood that there is an adjustment period, but for 60% of the staff to have had an unscheduled absence at least once a week for all the weeks we have been in New Jersey, and many to do so when their PTO has already been exhausted and therefore will not get paid for the days absent, is beyond incomprehensible.

But then, those are the types of people I work with. They are inexplicable in their actions.

Disparity

2005-05-01T16:20:00.000-04:00

My oldest son and I went shopping on 34th Street today. We went directly to Macy's as I had an all day pass acquired from a friend of a friend whose wife works there and who had a 20% coupon on every purchase all day. We had a great time shopping and he was very happy with his purchases. I paid for all the purchases with my debit card and really put a hurting on it. Everyone was personable and pleasant.

On the trek home to The Bronx, my oldest wanted to purchase a few more items from a sports store and we proceeded to chose items and go to the check out counter. When the debit card was presented I was asked for ID. I asked the young lady why I would need ID for a debit card. She gave some lame excuse, and I then proceeded to ask does she ask everyone who presented a debit card for ID, and she stated yes. I asked for what reason and she said for security reasons. I was well aware what her answer would be but was feeling mischievous.

It is so funny the difference between Manhattan and The Bronx and the way in which their respective merchants treat their patrons. One's institutions treats its customers with the respect they are due, and the other, like they are common thieves. And if I had purchased said items with cash in The Bronx, no questions would have been asked, instead all that would have happened is the snatching of the 20 dollar bill out of my hand and the chi-chinging of the register's resounding ring in my ear, and not the question, "ID, please" for the purchase of items worth less than 20 dollars.

I love The Bronx but some of its hang-ups and the manifestation of such really irritate me.

People of Need

2005-04-27T22:18:00.000-04:00

Sitting on the train on my way home from a long night of working overtime, I and everyone else on the train of my car was besieged by a homeless man begging for food and money to subsides until his Social Security check came through this Thursday. It was officially Wednesday morning, 12:30 AM and I look at him, I am sure like many of the passengers, like he is absolutely crazy. We did this because on the first instance of him telling of not having funds until his next check, there seemed to be a consensus on the train of, "Join the club." For others on the car who are better with budgeting their money, I am sure the thought process was why in the world did he not budget the money from his last check to last until the one he is currently awaiting arrives. With the looks of incredulousness gazed upon him, he tried another method of begging and that was to tell of his need to wear adult diapers, one of which he was wearing at the moment, because he had The AIDS Virus which contributed to him being unable to control his bowels. Of course, he made this statement when he was standing in front of me. Many were thoroughly grossed out on the train, and threw money at him to get him out of the car before an involuntary bowel movement happened. Before he moved through the car, collecting his bounty the whole while, a fellow entered the train on the other side of the car and proceeded to give his spiel on why he is begging and why we should give him money. The guy who had just begged for money looked back with a look of contempt as if he were offend by the guy coming upon his territory before he vacated. Meanwhile many of us on the train car just shook our heads at the ridiculousness of the situation. Times are hard, and many on the train are coming from low paying jobs that we work long grueling hours at and these beggars come on the trains and treat them as a playground that rewards them with money for playing at life.

I have sympathy for all who hit hard times, but have none for those who do not take appropriate routes in which they can get back on their feet. Social Service Agencies, unemployment benefits, and the budgeting of such are that which allows for some dignity in paying bills and living life in a upstanding way when times are down financially. The transit system is not the way for one to rebound financially.

The Season of My Discontent

2005-04-24T15:23:00.000-04:00

Spring is in the air and I am excited at the possibilities it brings. On the first warm, clear day in NY I was ready to embark on an excursion to Manhattan and got dressed and was thankful for the day. It was bright and shiny outside, and I felt limitless. I have always appreciated the changing of the seasons and thought of them as progression in my life. The winter winds, the April showers, the brightly colored leaves of fall, the steamy air of summer are the things that represent that I am moving forward in my pursuit of being an adult. I appreciate the changes as they represent little milestones and I am happy when they manifest in glorious days. Spring is the season I look most forward to in its brighter days and signs of things about to bloom. Hope is eternal, but with spring there seems to be a fruition of that hope. A new beginning awaits.

I recently walked down Fifth Avenue and walked by The Plaza Hotel on a 86 degree day and it felt so good. Hope springs eternal for me when weather is like that. I feel anew and refreshed. Ever since I can remember, the changing of the seasons gets me excited, and of the last few years, it magnifies my feelings of life, as a whole. I don't walk in fear of things not going right, knowing that if they do I can rebound. The confidence of being an adult and seeing things and knowing that whatever the end results will be I will be able to handle them has allowed me peace, but has also added an element of cynicism.

When I was younger and growing up in a highly dysfunctional household, I imagined that when I got away from my parents I would be out and about in the world among people who were nothing like my family. I never imagined the possibilities that people, every day people, people that I see in the periphery of my life - delivery people, people on the subway, and people I spend more time with than family, the people on my job - would be as dysfunctional as my family, as that would mean the world is a potentially cruel place, as cruel a place as the home I grew up in. I felt, when I left home at 16, people could not be as dysfunctional as those I was leaving behind as they were an aberration who were victimized themselves as children and visited their pain on me. All that I saw on TV and read about in the thousands of books I perused to take me away from the drudgery of my home life told me life was beautiful on the outside of my parents' home, and that once I ventured forth, I would bask in the goodness that was society and the life I could provide for myself. On this day I know I have worked hard to provide for me what I know is a good life. I have fulfilled what I set forth to do all those years ago when I left home, but what I did not find was the society I thought was outside that door.

When I was sixteen and on my own I always had a smile on my face and looked at people as potentially good people as I was hopeful at the odds those I encountered would not be dysfunctional as the people I left behind. Some 20 odd years later when I walk from my home and enter society, I know that many are as dysfunctional if not more than my parents and the rest of my family could have ever been. I get on the train and see faces, many faces ravaged by what I know are the effects of drugs, whether they are now on the straight and narrow after drug rehab, I have always clung to the adage, "Once a drug addict, always a drug addict". Though someone may have gone through "program" they will always have the sensibilities of a dope fiend. I try not to be judgmental, but only knowing that dysfunction brought them to that edge of drug addiction. I have a financial service job that the workers of which advice shareholders of various companies how to handle their stock, but meanwhile these same workers, I hear on the phone, make drug deals with codes they think those of us within listening range can't decipher as such, and those same people have bill collectors calling about late rent payments. I work with mean and disrespectful people. I take the train with people who I sometimes inquire if I am invisible to them because they push into me as if I am not there, thus the need for them to answer my question and put forth an apology. There are so many incidences I have experienced in my life since I have embarked on being an adult that have darkened my thoughts on the luminous society I thought I would find.

As I get ready to go to work everyday and walk to the subway, happy to smell the air of Spring, and I look around at the various people I encounter, and I know I was right to believe that there were better things outside of my parents doorway. I still know that there are good people in society, but I have an edge to my thoughts that makes that thought process delayed. I am cynical upon seeing and meeting people. I don't approach them as if they potentially are good people. I approach them as if they will be dysfunctional. I have become jaded. I read people like I do a book, and don't doubt that I am wrong. From the first meeting or viewing I believe in the possibility of bad, and should I have met and been introduced to them, I wait for incidences that may prove me wrong, but certainly don't hold my breath. I believe in decent people and know they exist, but also know they are few and far between.

Essentially, I am disappointed in people. I had hoped all those years ago to meet and be around confident, well adjusted people, who may or may not be friends, but who were people who viewed me the same way and therefore had respect for themselves and for others. But everyday I see stupid actions from people who are not self-loving which then manifests in them being rude to those around them, be they strangers or people they know. And I am now detached, and no longer have a ready smile for people, as I did those many years ago.

I love the changing of the seasons as they represent newness. The seasons have always represented newness to me, but during these most recent years there is an edge to the thought process of newness as I am jaded toward people upon first glance, but have the hope they will prove me wrong. I love life and people, but have a certain solumnness about and during that process of loving. Because I am older I am more aware of the dysfunction of people in society at large. This is the season of my discontent as it brings forth a newness of knowing life is good for me and it must be shared with many around me who do not know it nor appreciate it, and sometimes have the manifestation of that non-appreciation imposed on those around them.

Move to New Jersey

2005-04-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

The department I work in has been deemed transient and as such my job transferred its operation to New Jersey. Mind you the distance via train takes workers about 5 to 10 more minutes out of the way of their usual way of arriving to the old location, and of course there is the extra expense for the New Jersey leg of the trip. We can view the old office from the windows of our new location. We are across The Hudson River from each other. The new excursion is not any more strenuous than the old except for the added trips to the pocketbook for the transportation. But from the reaction of the workers you would have thought we were being sent to Alaska.

It amazed me the lies people came up with to say they could not go to New Jersey and thus had to stay in The Wall Street office. One woman, an almost 6 feet loud mouth, who once said loudly on the floor that she knew Geraldo Rivera in the biblical sense and laughed heartily about it while some looked on in horror, that her husband would "not allow" her to go to New Jersey to work because it was not "worth it" financially for the family budget to go. Meanwhile, for all of the years we worked the job, she exclaimed often the various episodes in her household that told every one in listening distance who had no choice but to hear her boring stories, that she ran it. She finagled a way to stay in New York, and bragged that she wasn't going to Jersey. She manipulated the situation which she has a history of doing and the director of the department was given an earfull about the inappropriateness of her staying in The New York Office. He was told if her husband has her best interest at heart than she should act upon those interests and start looking for a new job. The director has stated that as soon as the floor in NY that we occupied is eliminated, so would she. He was reminded that should that not happen and she was snuck into a position in The New York office, there would be a mutiny among the troops of NJ who made the move, and did so in a dignified manner. If she was able to maneuver a position in NY because of her loud mouth, he would have several formerly quiet workers loud mouthing him and all others as to the unfairness of the situation and then demanding her getting on board and coming to Jersey or getting out of NY and going home to her husband who thinks the move is not financially solvent. One guy said his mother was deathly ill and could not take the chance of being in NJ should she take a turn for the worse. He said he therefore needed to stay in the New York office. He was immediately told he could take a medical leave of absence to get things straightened out and would have a job waiting for him whenever he was ready no matter how long it took. He was informed that to make it official and in adherence to "The Family Leave Act" paperwork regarding his mother's illness would have to be submitted. He quit the same day. The train to Jersey, The Path, cost $1.50 each way and if 20 rides are purchased at the same time there is a discount to $1.20. The job offered everyone who didn't live in Jersey a $75 dollar travel expense, that would be taxed, for three months to offset the extra expense for those who decided to come to NJ. Everyone grumbled, but most got on board with the move. What was one to do with the job market the way it is in the financial services industry, and why give up the longevity of a position one has had for at least 5 years, as is the case of most of the employees of my department.

What was most evident in the move was the attachment to New York many of the workers had. This attachment was derived from the elitism of working in The Wall Street area and having the address of the job change to a New Jersey address had many in an uproar. Even those who lived in New Jersey and made the trek to the job on Wall Street did not want to work in New Jersey though their commute may have been easier. It is simply the supposed prestige that a Wall Street address provides to those who can quote the such, and having it eliminated and replaced with a New Jersey address seems to have non-plussed many a person. Some of my co-workers were outraged at the suggestion of the job moving to New Jersey when first told, but many have gotten with the program after a month of being there.

What other reasonable choice do they have?

The Times

2005-04-08T22:02:00.000-04:00

NYTimes.com

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Black, Dead and Invisible
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 8, 2005

I once had a young black girl, whose brother had been murdered, tell me she was too old to dream. She was 12.

I remember a teenager in South-Central Los Angeles a few years ago saying, in a discussion about his peers, "Some of us don't last too long."

Don't bother cueing the violins. This is an old story. There's no shock value and hardly any news value in yet another black or brown kid going down for the count. Burying the young has long since become routine in poor black and Latino neighborhoods. Nobody gets real excited about it. I find that peculiar, but there's a lot about the world that I find peculiar.

Tafare Berryman was born on Feb. 16, 1983, in Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. He debuted at 9 pounds 7 ounces. His mother said he was perfect, and she was still saying it this week as she prepared for his funeral. Tafare grew, as they say, prodigiously. When he was murdered early last Sunday morning, just five weeks short of his college graduation, he was six feet seven inches tall and weighed 240 pounds.

His massive size was no defense against the bullet that came out of the predawn darkness. It was like an instant replay of all the bullets over all the years that have ended so many young lives for no good reason whatsoever.

The fact that he had stayed out of trouble, and that his parents were strict, and that he'd graduated from high school in three years and was serious about his college work - none of that afforded him any protection, either. The fact that he was a popular basketball player at the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University, and that his classmates, teachers and coaches all swear he was a lovely person, counted for nothing. There are a lot of good kids who don't last too long.

The shooting happened on a street in Nassau County on Long Island. There had been a fight at a club, and a friend of Tafare's suffered a knife wound to the head. The two young men left the club in a car, with the friend driving.

After a couple of miles, they had to stop because the friend was bleeding profusely. As they were switching seats, with Tafare climbing into the driver's seat, a car approached. A shot was fired, maybe two shots, and Tafare's life was over. His friend was not hit. The police said they did not think that Tafare had been involved in the fight and that the gunman might have mistaken him for his friend, or someone else.

Tafare's mother, Dawn Thompson, who lives in Brooklyn, got a call about 6 o'clock in the morning. All she was told was that her son had been shot. She and three carloads of relatives rushed to Long Island. In the town of Long Beach, the family was given directions to the morgue.

"He was laid down with his eyes open and his mouth open, like he was saying, 'Oh, God!' " said Ms. Thompson. She began to sob. "He was just tall and stretched out. He's very tall, you know. And his eyes were open like he was looking for somebody. And I started crying. And I said: 'Yes, that's my son. That's my son. He's dead.' "

When I was growing up, I didn't worry about getting shot or getting stabbed, and, frankly, I thought I would live forever. But there have been many cultural changes since then. I've talked to hundreds of youngsters over the years who have either witnessed homicides or been very close emotionally to young people who had died violently.

Entertainers sing ecstatically of rape and homicide, and rappers like 50 Cent and The Game brag about the number of bullets their bodies have absorbed (at least 14 between them). Street gangs have spread from the cities to the suburbs and beyond, moving into those places in the hearts of young people that have been vacated by parents, especially fathers. Guns in some neighborhoods are easier to get than schoolbooks.

None of this is new. Two days before Tafare Berryman was killed, a 17-year-old freshman named Sequoia Thomas was shot to death outside Jamaica High School in Queens, apparently by an acquaintance. Her last words were: "Help me. Help me."

The big shots have other things on their minds. In New York there's a football stadium that the power brokers want to build. In Washington, the focus of presidents of the United States, past and present, has been on who would get to go to the pope's funeral. In Los Angeles the other day, the black celebrity elite turned out en masse to profile at Johnnie Cochran's funeral.

Youngsters dead and dying? Nobody of importance is much interested in that.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Dreaded N.Y.C. Transit

2005-04-02T11:59:00.000-05:00

Thursday night I took the train home from work as I always do, and as always, asked that I be delivered safely to my family. Well, the going that night was such that I thought some of the peril I witnessed on the train may have impeded that wish. Upon the car that I normally take pulling in front of me in the station, I noticed three people in the usual seats that I sit acting rather haphazardly, leaning and gesturing aggressively. When entering the train I made haste to the opposite direction of the acrimonious noise they propelled for all to hear. After listening to what anyone with any sense could decipher was the babble of drunk people, I settled in for the ride with the knowledge that though drunk persons were on board my car it would not effect me.

Others on my car, however, were intrigued by the spectacle of drunk people on their train and wanted to take in all their antics, and trust, their were quite a few. I have seen much on The NYC Transit so what was going on was nothing new, but I guess to the guy sitting a seat from me it was. He stared at them so much that they asked him why he was staring. He then averted his gaze, but when one of the woman of the group kept loudly insisting that she had to relieve herself and took measures to do so between the two cars of our moving train with an assist from the other woman who stood steadfastly in front of the windows of the door of the car to block anyone's view of her friend, he started to stare again. Why, oh why did he do that? The friend acting as a shield to the disgusting act her friend was performing asked the guy, again, what he was staring at and why. When the woman performing the lewd act finished and came into the car pulling up her pants, she was told by her friends that the same man who stared before was staring at her again while she was performing the act, and so she ran up to him, and after being egged on by the members of her party, slapped the total stranger for doing something he has every right to do considering the spectacle presented to him, and did so four times in the face, hard. Her companions, screaming support, laughed hysterically. The occupants of te car including myself, were horrified as we did not know what to do. The man, a Latino, kept saying he did not speak English which seemed to infuriated said vile group of persons to a frenzy. He finally stopped talking which in turn seemed to satiate the group into leaving him alone. Finally, thankfully, their stop came and they proceeded off the train.

Upon their departure many on the train exhaled. Some laughed, and questioned the man as to why he didn't fight. One guy actually said, "Poppi, why you let that girl do that to you. I would a choked that B, yo!!! Word!" The ride was surreal, to say the least. The man, now amazingly able to speak English, said he didn't want trouble. From this I assumed that the man perhaps was here in The States illegally and as such did not want to do something or have something done to him that would ultimately involve police and they then finding out his dilemma.

I was sitting one seat away from this man and felt the impassioned yearning that was his to have this terrible episode in his life stop. I wanted to do something to help him make that happen, but also wanted to go home to my family. To confront or not confront three drunk persons about their abuse of a small man who himself took no measures to stop the abuse was a dilemma. It has always been a question of mine of what I would do in similar situations, and seeing that no one else reacted, even the person being abused, I continue to ponder about my decision though, ultimately, I know I did the right thing that Thursday night. I did not becoming involved in a fight that wasn't mine to fight.

I need to look into purchasing a car.

A felon can't vote, but he can serve in Iraq

2005-03-27T18:43:00.000-05:00

The Army is so wanting to replenish its ranks that it has lowered its' standards in seeking and enlisting those who have committed and been convicted of crimes and those who have a General Equivalency Diploma instead of a High School Diploma. This very telling maneuver by The Army speaks volumes about the military's efforts being waged in Iraq and them not being popular ones within the US community. This method of recruitment tells of how many soldiers have done several tours of duty and are refusing to re-up for another thus forcing The Army to find a body, any body, to replace the ones that are refusing to return to fight in a war that has been declared over. With these several tours of duty done, sometimes unwillingly as The Army sometimes extended a soldiers enlistment period without any recourse for the soldier to thwart that effort, these soldiers return with tales of what has gone on in the communities of Iraq and do not have a clear understanding as to why they were there as long as they were. The communities of The United States are being flooded with soldiers returning home with stories of the non-war that is being fought, and The Army is unable to woo them back for more tours of duties, so they now must make moves to get those who are willing to go.

The Army is now hedging that those who will be most willing to go are those who are the disenfranchised. For many the make-up of the disenfranchised is a person to whom opportunities do not present themselves willingly. The disenfranchised are thought of as persons who live in poor communities that have inept schools that these persons ultimately drop out of before completion of their scholastic programs, and because these were unable to finish school, often because of the hopelessness of the school, they then have a greater possibility of a life of crime because they are less employable without a high school diploma than someone who attended and graduated from high school.

Those same recruits that The Army is seeking are the same persons that society does not want to deal with. They are the same individuals who do not have the same funding pumped into their schools that those living in the suburbs have. They are the same people who do not get their fare share of tax dollars to fund the paving of their streets, the upkeep of their transportation, and the better super markets that their suburban and down town neighbors may have. These are the same persons that if convicted of a felony cannot vote to change these things but can be recruited by The Army to replenish the ranks for a war that was declared over months ago. Is there not blatant irony in this situation? One wonders.

D.A.F.U.R and the rest of Africa

2005-03-20T20:52:00.000-05:00

How astounding are the stories that are coming out of the country of Dafur? As they are being read one imagines the mayhem and the genocide and destruction that is going on in real time while the very words that are painting the pictures of destruction are being uttered. And what is one to do? Recently a letter campaign was waged to the local and national politicians of the US of all who were concerned with the goings on in Dafur and who wished to voice their opposition and to do so via someone who could possibly change what is going on in this ravished country. Some believe that the answer to effect change ultimately lies in the hands of politicians. And so recently a musician, Bob Geldof, made an expletive ridden speech on a stage in front of Tony Blair, The British PM, to do something about the general poverty on not only Dafar but in all of the continent of Africa. Bob wants poverty to be ended in this beautiful continent and can not think of a worthier cause, and reminded those in attendance of the gathering that much money has been thrown about haphazardly for far less worthy causes by some of the richest countries. So why not the same be done for a continent, which when in receipt of anything similar in funding, can be turned into a continent that can rival Asia in its economic resources?

The United Nations has started The Millennium Development Project that pledges to have those countries who sign on to the project to donate 0.7 percent of their Gross Domestic Product towards the reduction of the current number of the world's people living in poverty - 1.1 billion - in half by the year 2015. Of course there are other matters that occur that go hand in hand with poverty, allowing it to subsists and grow, and therefore need to be addressed, that cannot be alleviated by money. It is certain that dictatorships, autocrats, corruption, the such that is going on for example in Dafur, are some of the things that allow poverty to happen. But certainly to give funding to those same people who are affected by such conditions and they then have the means to buy and make food which can allow them to fight such negative influences, and then perhaps, with the strength of heart, mind, and body that food in their bellies provides, they would then have a better chance at ridding themselves of those very things that allow poverty to flourish.

If the industrialized countries of this world, especially The United States, join in the fight against poverty, perhaps the dream of it ending can come true. Bob Geldof exclaimed the need for Tony Blair to get the President of The United States to do the right thing in joining a commission formed by Blair to fight poverty in Africa, and did so in very base language. Any and all other commissions whose purpose is it to wipe out poverty in Africa and any and all other places that experiences it may lie the answer to the very base problem that is poverty.

B.I.G.G.I.E.

2005-03-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

March 9 was the 8th Anniversary of the death of Christ.opher Wal.lace aka Bi.ggie Smal.ls. He is reputed to be one the greatest rappers that ever lived and he was mourned all over again recently because many are missing him. Mr. Wallace, aka Frank White, was the type of rapper that talked of the dreams many from his part of town, Brooklyn, NY's Bed-Stuy, had. His part of town can be found all over the world, and these town's various dwellers's common denominator, no matter what part of the world they are found, is the lack of money with which to live decently. Chris rapped about the dreams of making it out of these towns and becoming somebody. One of his most famous raps, "Juicy" states his teachers told him he would become nothing, and told him so, blaringly, as a child. They said this because the only saw the bad and not the greatness that he and every other person that has ever had someone say those despicable words. The dreams that all persons have, the dreams of every ordinary person who can and will do extraordinary things, if allowed, were trying to be deferred in the body that was C. Wallace by the very beings that had the job of trying to develop those dreams.

He told the story of those dreams and of the many times they were almost deferred, and with the telling of those stories, he has fans that will always exult him. These fans will always remember and recognize his words as personal experiences he verbalized that they can recognize as their own. Biggie was an ordinary man who did extraordinary things.

March 12th, 2005, The FBI ended the investigation of his death and many are perplexed. This is another unsolved murder of a Black Man. It is disputed amongst many that the clues are clearly available to solve the crime that snuffed the life of this lyricist. Those same proponents of the theory that this murder can be solved further theorizes that the killers are part of a conspiracy. The conspiracy that the life of a Black person is not valued, and therefore does not warrant much effort into finding the killers, and for the case of a celebrity such as Christopher, only the appearance of such should be put forth. And now is the time to end such perfunctory appearances, and to do so nearest the 8th anniversary of his death is chilling.

Biggie, Brooklyn's Finest, RIP.

Adult Child-Parent Relationships

2005-03-10T20:00:00.000-05:00

I have tried to be a good person and daughter to my mother, and it has been to no avail, as she has not reciprocated. It started getting to the point of my not wanting to speak to her about 4 years ago when I discovered that, when composing a message on her newly purchased and first answering machine, she stated that she had 3 mail boxes. One of the mailboxes was for her, the second for her family, and the third was for "the children". I am an only child and my mother lives alone, so upon calling her and hearing the message on the answering machine when she didn't pick up, I remembered during a conversation I had with her later that day to ask why would she put such a message on her machine when no one lived with her. She kind of blew me off. Later that year we attended a family reunion and things were nice, but I picked up a vibe that I was thought of as an errant child, a burden to my mother, and not deemed an adult. I had some questions asked of me that I thought somewhat inappropriate, such as how old was I and the age of my oldest child, as if the family member was trying to decipher if I had my oldest when I was a child. I answered the question, as it was a family member and I therefore thought the question an innocuous curiosity at the time, but when this family member looked at me with the wheels turning in his head as if he was trying to figure me out, I was a little perplexed. I also caught looks from distant family members who attended the family reunion who made certain to speak to me with incredulous tones and had looks of concentration on their faces. I was further perplexed when these distant family members seemed to be surprised by me and my children in our appearance and demeanor. It seemed as if they expected my children and myself to be downtrodden. My mother seemed uncomfortable when I was in a situation with her when we were talking to other family members in a happenstance way. I couldn't figure out why she seemed so uncomfortable.

Directly before this trip there were other incidents with my mother that had proven to equally perplexing as the aforementioned. I work at night and sometimes my mother would call bright and early (9:00 AM) during the week and bark out things on the phone to me as soon as I picked up the receiver, and did so without identifying herself nor saying the obligatory, "Hello". I often didn't recognize her because she would sound so angry and gruff. On one occasion I had spoken to her on the weekend and stated that I would be keeping my youngest home as he had a cold. The conversation that night was pleasant. She called the next day, from her job, 9:00 AM in the morning to my home and was yelling into the phone as soon as I picked it up the question, "Did you take the kids to school today!?" I first asked who it was as I did not recognize her voice because it was filled with self-righteousness and anger, and she identified herself by her nickname which I find juvenile. I stated to her that she must have forgotten that I was keeping my youngest home today as I had told her about it the night before. She replied in a gruff voice, "Well, that's not good, not good!" I was confused by her statements and asked her what she meant by that, and she said something unintelligible and said she would call me later. There were other phone calls like that until I got an understanding of what she was doing. And what she was doing was playing to the audience that was/is her co-workers. It became obvious to me that she wanted them to hear her end of the conversations and in doing so, wanted them to think she had to call me to wake me up to make certain that I took my children to school. To act like she didn't know one child was sick, and thus, act surprised he was home, sounded like she was scolding a child of hers who was acting irresponsibly towards her grandchildren specifically, and towards her also, as she was supporting them financially and otherwise. Meanwhile, I am on the other line confused as to why she is making statements that don't correlate to what I am saying and what was told to her the previous night. Only after hearing from a relative after the family reunion did I further understand that the way she would speak to me during phone calls from her job to my home shows that she told the same lie she told to my family members to persons on her job. The lie that I lived with her, and she had to support my children and I. And to validate this lie she made calls to me that were charades that made it seem she was trying to make me take my children to school.

When we arrived home from the family reunion, I put the thoughts of apprehension behind me and forgot about them. I, some months later, then discovered that family members had been told by my mother that my children and I lived with her in her apartment, and she was supporting me and my children as I did not have a job. She also alluded to them that I had a drug habit, thus the reason why I lived with her, thus the answering machine message. To say the least I was floored by this. I had put up with a lot of nonsense from my mother since I started speaking to her at the age of 21 after 6 years of silence in order to let bygones be bygones, and had hoped her alcoholism and drug abuse had ceased or at least decreased in such a way that she would not pull many of the means stunts that propelled me out of her house and life at the age of 16. But alas, here comes a blow that was almost unforgivable. I detest drugs and what they do to a person and the family members that will always ultimately be affected. I have been on my own since I was 16 years old, and am proud to say I have traveled the world, gotten an Ivy League education, and brought a home at the age of 19 years old in preparation of starting a family and began that family at 21 with a man that I am still with to this day. We have three children and do our best to support them and ourselves in a dignified manner, and have done so with no regrets. So for my mother to say this about me when I have accomplished so much in my life despite all that she did to me as a child that could have hindered me in doing so, is mind boggling. And to make such lies that are further from the truth and parade me around other family members, some of whom looked at me with incredulous eyes, some with pity in their eyes, and some with nasty glares, makes me know that something is definitely wrong with my mother on a mental level.

I don't allow her in my home and I often don't pick up the phone when she calls. I finally got Caller ID because of my wanting to avoid my mother. What is strange about the situation is that she is loved by my youngest children. She has shown them love that I have personally witnessed, and they have reciprocated to her. My oldest has never vibed with her from a young age and has called her out on some of her rude behavior towards me, and does not go out of his way to deal with her. The youngest two often seem to have not been aware of some of her nasty antics towards others and/or are just persons who let bygones be bygones. My daughter, my middle child, is old enough that should anything happen while my mother takes them on local excursions, like to the mall or to movies, she can walk away with her brother in tow, and that her parents are a cell phone call away. So I will try not to deny them what my mother seems incapable of giving me.

I wonder often what will happen when my mother is older. Will I want to deal with her should she become incapacitated because of age? Will I want to deal with the issue of hospital or funeral arrangements when she gets ill and/or dies? But then I think she is only 14 years older than me, and with the luck of people like her, she will probably out live me. I know that I must do for me when it comes to the issue of my mother. She has done something that is inconceivable and does not deserve a moments thought as it is too sick to contemplate, and as such, I must protect myself, and the way to do so is to have minimal exposure to her. This pathway I have taken to deal with my mother has worked well as she has become aware that I will not put up with her nonsense. I told her that I knew of her lies to family members and virtual strangers about me, and of course, she denied it. When I mentioned the things that made it clear to me that she told these lies, such as the answering machine, she just brushed them aside. I didn't argue further. I just effectively distanced myself from her, and did so much so that when receiving nasty phone calls from her, I have hung up in her ear. This has happened so much so that she is very respectful and careful when she is on the phone with me from the beginning of the conversation to the end as she knows she will hear a thunderous click in her ear if she acts otherwise.

I can't change my mother, but I can change how I allow her to treat me. The process is well underway, and I am pleased with its results. But it doesn't soften the knowing that the person who gave birth to me told such lies and did so to make herself look like a martyr. I have to accept that she is and will never be able to accept the greatness that is me and will try to mitigate it at every turn.

Sex to die for

2005-03-06T17:06:00.000-05:00

Sex may be the one thing that many agree is the most pleasurable sensation a person can experience. It is usually free, usually easily attainable, usually can be done anywhere, and when done the appropriate precaution, can be done with no consequence other than lost time. So why is sex then the thing that can bring about the most horrendous death that one can experience to those who partake, and is doing so in record numbers to the point that some country's median age for life expectancy has dropped to 40 years of age?

Everyone knows that sex is the embodiment of what makes the world go. Without it there would not be the birth of our future generations. Those future generations, who will pick up where the older ones have left, helping to sustain life as we know it, and possibly, improving on what past generations have done. Sex is a good thing, some would say, as it allows a closeness to all involved, if that is what they seek. Some would say it allows people to be as base as animals, partaking only to relieve themselves of an animalistic desire. These same proponents would state that sex should only happen for the sole purpose of procreation. But no matter what the view of what sex should be or is, it is, in this society we live in, a facet of life that, when done irresponsibly, can be a weapon that kills people. This weapon is HIV, that ultimately turns into AIDS. Many reports have come out telling of the horrendous statistics regarding this dreaded disease, and the statistics are abysmal. To think that life expectancy has dropped to below 40 years of age in some countries, and to know that this fact impacts greatly, economically, spiritually, medically, on the society in which it is happening is frightening.

So why is this dreaded disease still subsisting, if not growing, exponentially? Is there so much despair in the world that people just want to feel the momentary pleasure that is sex so much that they forsake the knowledge that doing so might kill them? Is it that people want to feel that high that is sex and put aside the notion that they may too become a victim of this disease? Perhaps a point has been hit upon in stating the phrase "feel high"? Isn't that what we all seek? The "feeling high", the euphoria of getting a project done at work that receives praise from the boss, scoring the winning basket in a pick-up game, cleaning the house and going out to return to the wonderful smell of a clean house. These types of euphoria one must work at attaining, and are therefore, that much more meaningful.

But what of the easily attainable euphoria? Sex is one of the easiest to attain. There are always willing partners, there is always a place, it doesn't have to take up a lot of time, and you don't even have to take off your clothes, or do a lot of changing of your bodily positioning. But now a days there is a new element to having sex that requires work, and often times, more than a nominal bit of money, and that is the purchasing and the using of condoms. Sex is no longer an easily attainable euphoria. One has to work at feeling this high if one is to do it responsibly. And therein lies the problem. In doing so, being a responsible sexual person, a partner may be deemed by the other as sending a message to that accusing partner of being disease ridden, or of being "fast" as they were prepared and thus "hot in the pants" for sex. In some country if a woman even speaks of her partner using a condom she may beaten. Sometimes condoms may be cost prohibitive. Just the use of condoms cuts down on the euphoria of sex as it reminds participants that they are taking a chance, albeit, they have minimized that chance of contracting HIV by using a condom.

Sex as wonderful as it can be, has changed in its ability to be the sensual high that we know. The high is no longer so easily attainable, and in fact, may be less euphoric as this disease is ever present in all aspects of life. One always has to look at a potential sexual partner as a possible carrier. Whether or not people accept this change is where the problems lay. Ignorance, or perceived ignorance, is bliss as many are aware of how and why people get this disease, but do not want to think that the very thing can happen to them.

Abysmal Stats

2005-03-04T20:26:00.000-05:00

Blacks are contracting HIV at twice the rate they were in the late 1980s and early '90s, which researchers and AIDS prevention advocates attribute to drug addiction, poverty and poor access to health care, according to government statistics.

Link

So goes the beginning lines of the troubling story of HIV infection. One wonders how in this day and age are rates like this a possibility? Have we not come further than this? Drug addiction and poverty are elements, that unfortunately, are too heavy a burden to eliminate effectively when dealing with HIV rates. How often, though the persons are trying to be diligent, do persons relapse into drug addiction? How difficult is it for those who are poor to rise above the doldrums of the despair that is poverty? It takes sometimes years for a family to rise above the poverty line and is often not possible unless those persons have acquired schooling. Drug abuse and poverty often go hand in hand as a person caught up in the ugliness of poverty may try to deadened the pain of such with drugs, and vice versa, a person who becomes involved with drugs will inevitably spiral into a poverty they may have never experienced nor recover from easily. To try to concentrate efforts against this one-two punch combination of poverty and drug abuse is not the way in which to advance against the scourge of HIV as they may be insurmountable. These two elements of those lives who are a part of the statistics mentioned are such that they may be everlasting, and as such, the concentration in how to prevent HIV should lie in the hands of health care providers and the institutions in which they work.

Health care providers are at the fore front of the war against HIV and AIDS. They are the people that see, first hand, the effects this virus directly has on afflicted individuals physically and psychologically. These effects are devastating to say the least, and who better to identify the new trends in the effect of HIV and also be the first line to identify what may be new trends in how it, the disease, is acquired. Health care workers also see, secondarily, how it effects the afflicted persons personal relationships within their communities and families, and as such, may then be able to disseminate information to social workers who can than address whatever social anomaly (drug addiction, poverty, etc.) that has resulted or pre-existed.

What is more probable in bringing about change concerning this new urgency for the elimination, or at least, the suppression of HIV rates, is access to health care. This access to health care is the front line defense to all elements of this dreaded disease. It will take much too much time and money to eliminate or decrease poverty and drug abuse, so why not concentrate on the one thing is this fight against HIV/AIDS that is achievable. Health care access, though it can prove to be as costly as the other two, is the first thing all who are willing to fight must concentrate their endeavors toward to realistically have a chance at victory against one of the most dreaded disease of modern time.

Racial Divide

2005-02-22T18:46:00.000-05:00

Dean and Bush have made statements that conceivably can be deemed racially inappropriate.

Dean's statement:

During a meeting Friday with the Democratic black caucus, Dean praised black Democrats for their work for the party, then questioned Republicans' ability to rally support from minorities.

"You think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room?," Dean asked to laughter. "Only if they had the hotel staff in here."

Bush's comment:

At a White House conference on Social Security in January, Bush said, "African-American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. That needs to be fixed."

These same statements though rooted in truth are not, when dissected and looked at with an objective eye, factual. The Republican Party is notorious for not having many Black members since The Reconstruction as many Blacks since that era have chosen to be members of The Democratic Party thinking the party is more suitable to their needs. The Mayor of New York City, when giving his State of The City address, talked of tax breaks given to corporations who build hotels in NYC and justified the institution of such breaks as it provided "marginal" jobs to "marginal" workers. Bloomberg is a Democratic turned Republican and speaks the language of someone of priviledge who sees those in the service industry as marginal. Marginal often translates into menial and often translates further into minorities - people of color. This is the same type of language Dean was spouting in trying to make a joke. Hotel workers, in the language that he spoke, are minority and could not be a part of the Republican Party. The joke did and has not gone over well.

Then we have Bush who stated that Black men because they die sooner than other males will benefit from the privatization of Social Security. Bush and his people crunched the numbers incorrectly on Blacks to bolster this argument. Black men who reach the age of 65 have a death rate similar to other male groups between the ages of 65 to 90 years of age. In addition the only disparity that happens with Black males in death rates to other male groups happens at the time of birth and in adolescence. These specific death rates can be attributed to 80 percent of the difference in life expectancy between Black males and other groups of males. These black males are babies and teenagers, not old timers. So Bush's theory that Blacks will benefit from the privatization of Social Security per high death rates when these men are of an age to receive these benefits is blatantly incorrect and has no relevance. The 20 percent of the negative disparity in rates for deaths of Black men to other groups of men that is factual and thus, concerning, may leave behind family members who will benefit from Social Security funds to which they are entitled as a result of these deaths. For family members of Black men who die in adulthood to benefit from the accrual of these men's Social Security also discredits Bush's theory on why Social Security should be privatized. The benefits can still be utilized after the death of Black men who are of retirement age by family members.

The statements of Bush and Dean have caused many to re-examine the racial divide these two have flaunted to bolster their incorrect arguments.

Brother Malcolm

2005-02-21T16:15:00.000-05:00

Today is the 40th Anniversary of your passing and many still miss you. The presence of such a man is still needed and the essence of your message of self love and the understanding of why one has self hate and hates those who look similar, is still being studied so many years later after the messenger has turned to dust.

Such is the legendary Malcolm X. The hero to many, a man who shortly before his passing came to an understanding that any one can be equal and open no matter what their color. The understanding that one can have enemies the same color as they, and friends who are not of the same color. The messenger, Malcolm, put forth the words that we must be open to all who are for right.

RIP Brother Malcom, and and his dearly departed wife, Sister Betty. Your message lives on.

Man on train

2005-02-18T16:42:00.000-05:00

Of late there are quite a few homeless people riding the trains of NY and some are more aggressive than usual. One night when coming home from work, seeing the same people I have seen night after night who inevitably were also drudging home from a long day at work, we encountered a homeless man who stormed onto the crowded train and said expletively that if anyone of us got in his way he would kill all of us on the car. He literally jumped on the train as soon as the doors opened and screamed at the top of his lungs this threat and the mood of exhaustion shifted into one of righteous indignation and pugilism among its riders. Suffice to say this guy picked the wrong train in which to act crazy and murderous because most of us on the train started putting away whatever reading material we had to get our hands free, looked at each other, and with that eye contact between us, the message was communicated that this guy would get jumped and stomped on at the first hint of him acting out the aggressive moves he proclaimed he would make. The mood on the train became especially electric, especially silent.

The homeless guy, while certifiable crazy when he initially got on the train in his declaring and ranting of his murderous intent, suddenly became aware he was about to get hurt for such declarations upon gauging the swift changing of the mood of the train that read clearly to all who felt it. Everyone else on the car of that train was also made aware that this homeless guy would not make it a step further were he to act in any way aggressive. Suddenly this homeless guy acted appropriately, and in moving through the crowded train to get to the next car of the train to undoubtedly escape the glares of his fellow riders, he repeatedly said, "excuse me, excuse me," to all who were standing per the seats all being occupied, all of whom turned to face him as he passed, daring him with eyes full of the same aggressiveness he had when he entered screaming his intent to hurt people.

I have never been a part of a mob before that day, but that fateful day on that train, I appreciated the fact that I was, as it, my mob, quelled the ability of one person to scare people into a state of hopelessness on a train ride home. Life is perilous enough without a strange someone adding to that element.

The Journey

2005-02-12T15:22:00.000-05:00

A documentary, The Origins of AIDS, appeared recently on The Sundance Channel. This documentary theorized about the the origin of the AIDS Virus. The telling of this story, based on the book The River that theorizes how this deadly disease could have started, is complex. In the 1950's polio vaccinations that were made from Chimp cultures instead of the standardized practice of utilizing Rhesus monkey cultures were given to people living in The Congo. This was a mass inoculation utilizing an experimental vaccine. The straying from standard practice in the composition of these vaccinations and the administrating of such to the people of The Congo is theorized to have been the origin of HIV and AIDS as the population of this area of Africa is where persons who had the first cases of AIDS resided. The intentions of administrating polio vaccines was upstanding, but it is further theorized that there has been, for quite sometime, the simian type of AIDS present in some chimpanzees and that this disease, if the chimpanzees' kidneys were used in the composing of the polio vaccines, facilitated the leap from Simian AIDS to Human AIDS when administered to humans.

We know have news that a man become ill with HIV and in less than two months from the time of his initial infection he has now developed AIDS. It is believed his strain of HIV was able to flourish into AIDS abnormally quickly because of susceptibility to the disease, which is a phenomenon in and of itself, and because he has a resistant strain that is not diminished by the usual cocktail of HIV treatment drugs. These two phenomenon may cause a new era of HIV/AIDS.

The beginning of HIV/AIDS cannot be determined concretely. Many theories abound as to how and where and why this dreaded disease came about. What is certain is that it is here, the journey through this maze we call HIV/AIDS has been treacherous, and this new strain that is the toughest we have seen, has presented itself. Theories aside, whether this was an act of inoculation that went wrong, or some other sort of conspiracy to wipe out the groups most affected - Africans and other people of color - this disease is not yet on its last legs, and as such all efforts should be put into getting rid of the dreaded disease.

Good Reverend Doctor

2005-02-09T15:50:00.000-05:00

A great soldier has passed and left behind a legacy that will be difficult for any to replicate in its purity and righteousness. He was a friend to many icons, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., with whom he shared the conviction that much was not right with the world and went about doing the work, often along side these friends, of change. I speak of the great Ossie.Davis, an actor and an activist. His passing makes many re-visit his many accomplishments. He was the man who, along with his equally impressive wife Ruby.Dee, continuously put out screen works that spoke of the needs of common people and often marched in civil disobedience protests to tell all who would listen of the subsisting and current civil injustices. He was also an actor who shined in his roles on stage, and was a family man who set up a stable life that was not brought any negative attention.

Ossie Davis has left us and will be sent home soon in rousing ceremonies at Abyssinian Baptist Church and Riverside Church located in New York City. The services are open to the public, and undoubtedly are so per the wishes of Davis as he is a man of the people. He is a man that fought the good fight for people, common people. He and his family have seen fit to share with the public the last moments of his essence on this earth.

RIP, Good Reverend Doctor. You will be missed.

Burden

2005-02-05T09:54:00.000-05:00

Is it right for anyone to judge another of the choices they have made in their lives? I often have had people comment on my life in the most intrusive and rude ways, and have had to step back and assess the inappropriateness of their comments. Often I let the comments go as I know they come from a projection on to me of the negativity the person is feeling about themselves.

Recently at my job I was in an area of the office that is cut off from others doing a task alone and a colleague stepped into the area and commented that I looked tired. I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders and said that I wasn't, all the while thinking the comment was a little forward. He then started a spiel on his knowledge of my having three children and the burden that he was sure was unwanted by me because of them, and his assuredness that I would become pregnant soon again as "girls" that he knows personally who "are like you, who have kids, keep popping them out." Needless to say he was pulled into an office with myself, and my manager who was there for the sole purpose to witness what I would say to him. I thought it paramount to state the obvious that my children bring me purpose for being, and for someone to state the opposite and for that statement to come from someone who doesn't even know their names is totally inappropriate to be said in any setting, let alone an office. This person is someone that I am not close with nor rarely initiate a conversation about anything, let alone anything personal. He is known as socially inept office wide. One woman in the office has told him not to speak to her per rude comments he made about her body. Others have literally told him to shut up because he talked to much. He then has stopped talking to them altogether to which they cheer with gratitude.

I was told during this meeting that I am quiet. He said, "You're always so quiet." I was stunned by the comment and stated that had nothing to do with the conversation but since he mentioned it I could only think that there was a hidden meaning behind the statement, and that was that he was surprised I was voicing my opposition to the rudeness he displayed, and doing so in such a verbally aggressive manner. He was surprised that I stated I knew he would never say rude things to me outside of the office because he knew verbal fusillade would come his way possibly followed by a chair directed at his head. And in knowing this he uses the safety of an office to spew nasty comments knowing people will be professional and not react inappropriately. Such is the case with myself, and so he was warned that should such comments every happen again he is being given fair warning that he will be in human resources and will be reported officially for harassment. I then asked him did he still think I was quiet.

I am tired of being judged in a negative manner on the one thing that brings consistent light to my life. That anyone would think children are a burden to me dramatically tells that they do not know me and are judging me from stereotypical fallacies.

Suicide

2005-01-27T17:54:00.000-05:00

In news reports today:

On Wednesday, Alvarez parked his Jeep Cherokee on railroad tracks in Glendale as a commuter train approached shortly after 6 a.m., police said. Initially, Alvarez intended to commit suicide, police said, but he changed his mind. He exited his sport utility vehicle and watched as the Metrolink train hit it, derailed, ran into a northbound Metrolink commuter train and crashed into a parked Union Pacific train, police said.

What makes a person feel so low that the person not only wants to kill themselves, but take others with them? Have not all of us, at times in our lives, felt so blue that we thought the feelings would never end? It is known that some take the precarious steps, the precipitous steps, of ending the blue by killing themselves; ending the period of their lives that they deem unbearable by choosing what some would say is the easy way out: death by one's own hand. It is understandable that one would want to end the pain that they deem unbearable but all would hope other measures besides suicide would be utilized. Tomorrow always offers new opportunities. The morning always brings forth a new perspective. So why not wait it out? The pain can be surmounted and the journey in doing so can be dreadful, but the alternative to that journey, taking one's life, seems selfish. The work of life is not always joyful, but sometimes measured in pain. This triumph of dealing with life issues effects us all. and does so at the most inopportune time, but these and all triumphs are worth the effort. And we get through these times, hopefully, with grace. These ways of dealing with issues are easier said than done, but are do-able. And those days will pass, but can only happen with the patience of knowing that life's moments of abyss will dissolve into a new day and perhaps a brighter day.

What must the pain have been like to to propel someone to park an SUV on busy train tracks knowing of the ensuing tragedy that would befall the occupant and those of the undoubtedly coming trains? It is frightening to think about. Or perhaps that pain was not frightening, but the sufferer, not having or wanting to have the ability to deal with pain, thought it unbearable to live with, and took the measure of suicide and taking innocent victims with him? One can never mitigate another's pain as it is not their reality, but only the reality of the sufferer. But everyone has had days of despair and can find methods of coping and honing of abilities to help get through them. These methods and abilities come with practice and are not easily developed. One can only wonder if what happened recently is a sign of a person who didn't have, and most disturbingly, did not work at having and developing mechanisims to get him through the dark days? Peace and serenity are within us all inherently and the stresses of the outside world sometimes overcome what we are as individuals. The stresses make us on edge and irritable and we must fight to re-gain that composure that is within us. To let it, stress, implode within is unacceptable to society as a whole who inevitably, either indirectly or directly, become victimized by the implosion within an individual that results in/attempts suicide.

This recent tragedy exemplifies a person's inability to deal with the stresses of life adequately and the implosion of such. The ungracefullness with which this young man handled his problems has effected so many who were on a commute of their daily lives, and thus were in the midst of doing their work of life for that day. They got up in the morning and were at peace with whatever issues they may have had only to have someone else's issues impinge upon and change their lives. And now, another journey unfolds before them as the stress of dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy will weigh on them. Hopefully they will handle this stress it with grace.

Happy but not satisfied

2005-01-18T19:22:00.000-05:00

Life is good for me right now. There is no drama. There are nor pressing financial matters nor anything that lies in my subconscious that is upsetting as I have made peace with many of the issues that have presented themselves in my life. So there is no stress. There is no fuss. Children are happy and healthy. My relationship with my significant other is as healthy as it will ever be. And that is good. Things over all are good. But I am restless. Though I am happy with my life as it stands, now, I want so much more than life is giving me, now. So I am planning and strategizing my pursuits of things that will make me happy. Voice-over lessons are crucial for me to get that feeling of being satiated. I must get the creative part of me moving and doing things that feel like progress. Planning my summer vacation must get underway to satisfy my wanderlust. I want to do the things that make the "me" that is separate from my family and my employment and what people expect me to be.

I am not only a mother, a wife, a worker. These are the things everyone expects me to be, and I am comfortable with those roles. But I am much more than what I am deemed by some who know me and others who think they know me. I define myself and though others' definition of me don't correlate with my definition of what and who I am, I must not settle into the patterns of definition people try to establish for me, but acquiesce for moments into the roles they wish for me to play. I will be the worker because I need to earn money. I will be the mother, a role I embrace the most, lovingly, as it is a role that reciprocates and feeds me love, and I will be a significant other as this role is one I want and seek. These roles are roles that have the input of others who draw the lines, along with me, that define these roles. But it is important that I have one role that only I define. I must not forget to define the "me" that is soley my responsibility. This role is outside of all the roles society and family expect of me. It is a role, a definition of "me", that only I can bring forth. Only I can do the things that I know will make me happy and bring to fruition all that makes me "me". No one else can do that because no one else can truly know all that I want. I seek things that express my creativity and thus help me to be "me", and am frustrated when my other roles (though I am accepting of them) sometimes get in the way of that happening. I must take time to establish a process that allows me to be "me".

I love the process of getting "me" together though it can be scary at times. I feel as though there is a purpose for the struggle that is life: I feel alive and that life is worth living. The defining of "me" is hard and I must get to work. I have much to do.

Opined

2005-01-11T21:28:00.000-05:00

At my place of employment lurks many dregs of society and it pains me to be among them. A worker from another department came in at the beginning of a shift and announced loudly after hanging his coat how he was going to go about getting "rid" of a co-worker, his superior, because that person was getting on his nerves. This person who blurted this statement has bumped heads with me when I was his direct supervisor. I always thought he was getting the "boys" together to come at me in attack mode under the premise I was unable to supervise he and his co-hurts because of lack of intelligence. I undoubtedly, in their minds, got the position as a fluke and he prodded those who thought the same to gang up on me and prove me incapable publicly. Often when supervising and needing to correct the many things he did wrong he would become loud and argue that I was wrong. I twice had to tell him to lower his voice as it was disrespectful and unacceptable. I would then continue with the explicit explanation of why he was wrong. His face often turned red during these types of encounters.

And so to hear him so boldly say to his co-workers that he was putting together a witch hunt and was essentially asking for participants, I was saddened to the core because it brought back memories of what he did to me. Also the statement helped me to know my thoughts were not paranoid internal rantings of mine but of an instinctual knowing and trusting that this guy, back in the day, was coming for me and had people he lined up via his vitriolic diatribes of hate to try to get me on the unemployment line. It was a chilling moment in that he stated it plainly and shamelessly and three others ran to him to strategize about the measures they would need to take to eliminate the presence of this targeted person from their existence.

The moment exemplified all that I fear about people, that individually they often can not act out hateful thoughts but simply think them, but when a leader of hate comes forth and utilizes leadership skills, s/he can whip the momentum of hate into swirls that solidify the hateful thinking individuals into a group comfortable only when in numbers to form a posse of evil seeking to destroy. It is a frightening sight to see grown people plotting evil. I shook my head and hoped the target of their evil will have the instinctual ability to know people are coming for him.

I believe a challenge such as this is only undone with grace. Every element of evil in the work place can be undone with the putting out of good work, documented work. I was able to do so when this posse came for me as everything I did was done thoroughly and precisely, and I documented my efforts so that no lie or falsehood could trump those efforts. Every transgression was visited with my proof of work done and sometimes presented in a closed door office meeting (always with a witness) with said transgressor(s) with my implicit statements that they were wrong and should they be wrong again in their accusations of my inability to supervise they would be pulled in front of human resources as being insubordinate and I would seek their immediate termination. They were forewarned that fire would be met with fire. I was able to beat them back and they moved onto another target. I know I lost five years off of my life in fighting such people as stress changes me physically and the evil I witnessed that was/is directed at me depletes my faith in the kindness of people. I have become cynical as I have witnessed extremely hateful things.

As they move on to other targets I sigh with relief. No longer for that moment in time is it me that is being set upon. And I hope whomever is next can meet the challenge. I now hope the guy they are presently targeting can withstand what I know is coming for him.

Commitment

2005-01-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

When you make a commitment to a significant other there is so often the feeling of the beginning of an endlessness. There are thoughts of growing old together. Loving each other through the good and the bad, through sickness and health. And, yes, there may be years of bliss and love filled moments, when things are easily achievable in the relationships as the newness of the relationship conquers any stresses. And then the issues become such that they seem they cannot be surmounted. There sometimes comes issues that love can't conquer. And with these issues comes the reality of a realtionship. Can it move forward through the times when there are problems not specific to the realtionship, but are specific to life? Sometimes the problems are of a fiduciary matter. How can a couple pay the bills when money is short because one of the partners doesn't make as much as the other? Problems at the job may have an ill effect on the relationship. Bringing work home by stressing about what has happened in the office may weigh on a relationship. Many things that happen in life can cause a shifting in a relationship that is healthy. The relationship is the same as when it began as the love is still there, but elements outside of the relationship, seep into its confines, shifting and influencing the relationship. This time, then, is the true test of the relationship.

Can the realtionship sustain rocky times? Many times relationships are fine and true and that can be forever, but when something, a life issue, happens, it is in that moment when the inevitable change can effect the relationship. It is then that more work has to be put into the relationship than expected. A job change means the other person has to decide to relocate with the other. A parent becomes sick and the significant other has to help with the caring of their in-law. All the changes happening outside of the relationship, that happen to the individuals that are in a relationship, ulitmately affect it. The other person has to decide to do the work that is involved with supporting their mate when that mate is dealing with issues outside of the realtionship. The persons in the relationships must then work harder at sustaining the love and respect of the relationship that is always there but ultimately shifts when life issues come forth.

Romantic committed relationships are the most rewarding of all relationships. They are the corner stone of society as they are the stabilizing entity of civilizations. From these relationship spring forth children, homes, communities, sustaining economies, etc. But all who enter them must know it is not only the good times, but the bad times and the work that has to come about to deal with them, that make the romance real. Romantic relationships shift and ebb like contents in a bowl. Though there are happenings outside of it, that make the contents shift, the contents of the relationship are still there. Work must always be done in relationship so that the contents don't dissapate.

What's going on?

2005-01-05T21:50:00.000-05:00

I love the title of the song by Marvin Gaye. It is so literal. "What's going on?" And he proceeds to ask why are things happening in the world in such devastating ways. Of late there has been much happening in the world. Some happenings are inexplicable, but perhaps, totally explainable. It is known how tsunami's form and come into fruition, but why must it have been so devastating and have happened in an area for which there could not be ample forewarning. And because of this lack of communication we have such devastation. The pictures of the devastation the Tsunami brought forth remind me of how I felt when The World Trade incident happened. So much death and destruction during 9/11, but in relation to the devastation of the Tsunami, it cannot compare. But yet I feel the same way and ask the same question of myself. What is going on? Does this incident mean anything more than a terrible natural disaster? A disaster that seems so incomprehensible in the death that came about because of it.

But I know that some things cannot be explained and are better left to understand as an inexplicable happening. The happening of December 26, 2004 is one that will be felt by many as an awakening as to how easily an existence can be removed from the realm of life. The incredible loss of people because of this happening reinforces my resolve, again, to live life vivaciously for tomorrow is not promised.

I wish.... continued

2004-12-31T23:30:00.000-05:00

Our Deepest Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure about you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela

Speaking Up

2004-12-28T19:16:00.000-05:00

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld spoke with a group of soldiers a few weeks ago and a young man spoke of the need for rudimentary supplies that were shamefully not given them by the army that would help keep them from harm. It was a stunning moment to come from such a young man and many joked that he would soon be found on the unemployment line. I thought this moment as telling in how people reacted to it. Many felt the young man would, "get in trouble" I thought to myself that he should speak up when it comes to matters of safety and the preservation of life. If he had not stated the obvious need for life-saving armor and question the one person who could sign-off and get it to him and his comrades, than who would?

It is a reminder to me that there is a time and place for everything, but sometimes caution must be thrown to the wind. When to speak up and say what's on your mind is sometimes a balancing act. Should one grab the moment and speak, bluntly or eloquently, of the matter at hand? But what is one to do when in a situation that calls for plain talk? The situation that young soldier found himself in reeked of plaintiveness. He wanted to come home from Iraq in one piece, and wanted and needed the armor to make that happen. The moment he launched his question was measured by a camera, a microphone and an international audience, and had none of the finessed and nuanced speak and political correctness we are all so used to. The questioning was appropriate when it came to the matter of life and death.

I applaud anyone who speaks up, especially during times when it may not be deemed appropriate. When it comes from the heart and is a relevant matter, one can not be wrong for speaking up and asking pertinent questions.

I wish

2004-12-25T21:19:00.000-05:00

I wish
For all who exhibit to the world the greatness they are born with
Who are not afraid to do so
To those who get up when they don't want to
Who forge ahead though they may be sad
Year after year, to earn a living
Those persons who etch out an existence so that they support themselves and their loved ones
And do so proudly and with the knowledge that the job does not define them
That only they define themselves

For you I wish
Peace and happiness in the coming year
And the fulfillment of all the creativity you feel
Prosperity in matters of the heart, and if wanting,
Matters of the pocket
And, most of all, the sustaining love of self

The Pain

2004-12-20T07:21:00.000-05:00

I went to my company's Christmas Party and had a wonderful time. I have a guilty pleasure in attending the party because I do so primarily to laugh, discreetly, at the various co-workers who become so inebriated they provide comic relief. I laugh also to chase away the knowledge that I know a lot of people that I work with are in seroius pain. So much so that they try to wash it away with the liquour provided them from an open bar. The free liquor provides a route to ecstasy that they may not be able to afford normally, or may not be able to do if affordable among people who will excuse it and not be judgemental, will help them home in a company- paid-for cab, and be office fodder the next day around the water cooler. The dalliance of being a drunk will be excused by some as an abnormality, and not indicitive of what many who are familiar with the drinking-to-kill-the-pain phenomenom saw exhibited at the party. I am one that is aware. And I wonder why those so in pain can not admit they are and stay away from the temptation. Many, who are of this ilk did not stay away, and it was disturbing to watch, and so I laughed at the absurdity of it all, knowing a price would be paid in the days to come.

One guy has been M.I.A. He was beyond drunk and fondeling girls young enough to be his daughters, telling anyone who would listen that, "They wanna have sex with me!!" And when it was retorted that he was living a fantasy, he replied, "No. they really do! They do." The party was on Thursday. He did not show up to work Friday, nor Saturday. He did not call nor e-mail to say he would be out, which is unacceptable. His wife called on Friday night to say the rent check bounced and she was deperated to talk to her husband. He had not called home since Thursday. They have two children, and she needed to speak to him because the landlord was upset about the non-sufficient funds in the account. What made matters worse is that this guy has his paycheck direct-deposited into his bank account, and pay day was the day after the party, Friday. Saturday he didn't report to work nor call, and we all worked the job and made no mention of him only to surmise that he was on a binge. I surmised he is in pain and trying to medicate it with things not good for him and his family.

So often in this society we try to quick fix the problems we encounter. If we want muscles, instead of working out with the hopes of achieving that feat, steroids are taken. We are depressed because of not understanding the complexities of life, and so we take illicit drugs, hoping to medicate the thoughts away, only to, when coming out of a drug induced haze, encountering again not only the problems that were not addressed before the ingestion of drugs, but other problems that have ensued because this drug usage. And so I laughed at the party at the spectacles I witnessed so that I would not cry, as I knew I was witnessing many, many people in pain. And the pain was manifest in the carousing, and its after effects of people showing up late to work the next day, red faced and irritable, or not showing up at all. I wish people in pain knew and practiced better ways to deal with it.

Personalities

2004-12-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

This was the leading sentence in a NYC Daily News article:

More than 300,000 high school students used steroids last year, jeopardizing their health and sometimes altering their personalities, Newsweek reported yesterday.

This is a subject I have thought of often as it relates to illegal drugs. I am employed at a financial institution that often requires temporary workers to help with spontaneous abundance of work. Because of the immediacy of projects, my place of employment often is desperate to hire many such workers, and becauseof this desperation they often chose workers badly. I look at some of the choices of temp workers management has made and know that some have been on hard illegal drugs for sometime and have just come up for air, newly released from rehab. Some have the verbal cadence of heroin addiction and the loping and sometimes jolting walk of a crack head. I see clearly that these are persons who though may be clean are still and will be forever affected by the illegal drugs that they have taken. Many of their personality traits are one of self-righteousness, being preachy, and wanting to help people inappropriately They, though often they don't discuss that they were hooked on drugs, have common traits of a person actively taking drugs. A drug addict obsesses on their next high and the procuring of such and I believe those who are reformed need new things upon which to obsess.

Illegal drugs alter the personality of those taking them and for hard core drug users who stop, the effects linger. There is a commonality of a mean steak in those formerly and currently addicted, and it never abates. When in the throes of addiction many have done deceitful and mean things to get drugs, and that mean streak, even after addiction, never leaves. All of the traits mentioned, when presented in a work environment via the presence of reformed drug addicts, makes for problems. We receive temps who are on a high of completing rehab and are preachy and anxious to do the job and talk of themselves in boastful way, and push the mantra of their rehab which is to help others even when they say they don't want help. Obsessively searching for something to attach themselves to prove their worth. That is usually the first phase. They are blissfully happy and basking in their new found sobriety. However, after time, when they discover they are part of the rat race of workers and wonderful things will not happen to them because they are off of drugs, the second phase results, when the adulations received from counselors in rehab are no longer present and either there is recidivism and they disappear from the job or are fired because of infractions, or they become sullen and the mean streak appears and goes into overdrive. There have been several instances of temp workers going around stating they are going to get permanent employess fired by spreading malicious rumors. One such person was seen scurrying about to different supervisors, trying to plant the seed of a rumor, and was discovered doing this when several of the supervisors happened to discuss having the same lie told to them by that one person.

The personalities of persons who were deep in the throes of drug addiction is often one many do not want to encounter. The same can be said for reformed drug users as they seem to never lose that obsessiveness, and should they have gone through rehab, have an added inappropriate personality trait of self-righteousness and unsolicited helpfulness. The pain that lead them to drug addiction in the first place rears its ugly head and though some don't slide back into drug usage, they do things, gossip, manipulate, stir up trouble, cause drama, to numb the pain.

I look forward

2004-12-10T18:52:00.000-05:00

I am amazed at how fast this year has flown by. And I am pleased at the results of this year in my personal life. I am thankful for all that I have achieved this year, and am a year wiser because of this. Here I am to see a new day, and am thankful for that ability. My reflections of this year are of my family, work, travel, introspection, and best of all, peace within myself. I am as comfortable as I have ever been in my skin, and it has been a process. I am allowing things to roll off of me, and have acutely perfected a knowing way of doing so. Because of the attitude of self-preservation that I have perfected since the age of 16, I am able to travel life's sometimes intermittent trepidation knowing that this too shall pass. Life is good, and I hope this continues. I look forward to next year, and all the others that I am allowed to live.

Day.of.Infamy

2004-12-07T21:50:00.000-05:00

I am the grandaughter, paternal and maternal, of men who fought in wars of yesteryear, and thinking of what December 7 signifies to many forces me to take a moment and reflect. I have often wondered what my grandfathers thought when they were headed out, to serve in the army? Were they afraid? Were they concerned not only of the enemy but of the treatment they would receive from their commanding officers? What were their feelings when they returned home, and did they feel more patriotic because of their service, or less, or indifferent?

Both enlisted, and served in wars I've never heard them discuss. Performed tours never discussed. I've seen pictures of my paternal grandfather in uniform, and but for these and visiting my maternal granfather in a veteran hospital in which he was a patient and understanding that he could only be there because he was a veteran, would have never known, seen, or heard evidence of their enlistments.

I am from stock that served in The US Army, and this day reminds me of them and their service, and of many others who did, and are, enlisted.

Marginal

2004-12-05T13:49:00.000-05:00

I am often on the trains of NYC, and as such, am witness to many who are deemed marginal. I ride the train after paying my fare as a means of transport to my home, and not to hear sob stories. But often, I am forced to see and hear the stories of those who beg for a living, telling their stories of ineptitude. They speak of tragedies that have left them bereft, of employment and of hope. They speak often of hoplessness, and the need for those of us, who are their unwilling audience, to give them money because of their storytelling. The stories, upon dissecting, are many times unbelievable. I have seen one woman who has been pregnant for about ten years, continually, and uses this condition to garner sympathy so that commuters will open their pockets and wallets. I believe she just has a fat stomache. There is a couple who had a child burn in a fire and need money to bury their child. They have been telling this same story for ten years on the #4 train line of NYC. All of those that I have mentioned and the vast majority of those that I witness begging are obvioulsy addicted to drink and/or drugs.

I find these situations that are forced upon me as outrageous. Often during my commute it is the first time that I am able to sit still for 45 minutes. I try to use the time to plan. So I think and ponder what I must do. I think of the most mundane to the most important decisions of my life on these train rides. Many of these ponderings involve my thinking of how I am going to budget my money. My money is often too short to cover my budget, and thus, to have someone get on a car of a train I am occupying and loudly tell of their financial woes so that I and others on the car will give them money is preposterous to me.

NYC Transit has done studies on their ridership, and a good percentage are poor folk who can barely afford to pay for their own upkeep, let alone give money to person who are highly suspect, upon receipt of such money, to buy drink or drug with said funds. Times are hard for everyone and are made harder by those taking an inappropriate opportunity to jump in the faces of those on a train ride to beg for money when the pockets of those from whom they are begging are as empty as the beggars. The hard working people of NYC who ride transit are not on a train for a free ride (figuratively and literally) like the beggars. They are coming and going to jobs and are not looking for hand-outs. Beggars make harder an often already arduous commute with their stories of ineptitude.

Love

2004-12-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

This is written in the Hebrew Talmud, the book containg all of the sayings and preaching of Rabbis, preserved for all time: "Be very careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man's rib. Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his head to be superior but from the side to be equal. Under the arm to be protected and next to the heart to be loved."

I find this saying profound. It is specific in its relevance to what relationships should be, and the treatment of women in said relationships. It purposefully does not mention the treatment of men in relationships as it has been established since the beginning of time that they are to be treated with more respect than the women when in romantic and all other relationships. The respect that they are due does not need to be restated. The respect for men in any and all relationships is inherent, while for women, respect often has to be defined and dervived via her ethnicity, economic, age, and other social stratas. Should any of the levels to which she is a member be perceived as not influential, she will be looked down upon. And these levels dictate her place in most societal relationships, and quite often, in romantic relationships as well. To be thought of as less than your mate when in a relationship sullies what should be beautiful. The beauty of a romantic relationship - the beauty effecting immediately the two that have brought it about, and from its emanating rays, those who witness it - is a sustaining, almost tangible, entity that allows great things to happen. A life that feels this beauty can do anything, and the beauty of a romantic relationship can not flourish and prosper if all parties involved don't feel equity in the relationship.

To be loved is to be protected. And to be protected is to feel safe enough to go out and about and do things in the world with minimal fear of the ugliness the world sometimes presents. One can go back to the love after a long day knowing at home there is a shell of protection, a respite from ugliness, allowing for an imbibing of love potion for sustenance. To be loved and to love in an equitable relationship is the most supreme of all relationships, and the beauty from these types of relationships can seep into all other relationships, making for a better world. I wish for everyone equitable love relationships.

Pause

2004-12-03T23:20:00.000-05:00

My daughter and I went to a French Bistro on 57th and 6th Avenue in Manhattan while we waited for her appointed time to audition for a High School. The setting was nice. We were seated by the maitre'd and everything, including the ambiance was nice. We were seated in an exquisite part of the restaurant that allowed us to people see and witness all that is NYC. There was Sunday morning traffic, people scurrying to brunch and other endeavors, and the street exemplified a typical Sunday in NYC. My daughter was excited about her audition and about having a restaurant experience that was so unexpected. We had not planned on it, and were rather taken aback when we discovered that our 8:00 AM appointment at the art school was a precursor to the actual audition; essentially they corralled 250 potential students and their parents into the lobby of the school and gave them all appointment to come back that day after assessing the turnout.

My daughter and I decided to stay in Manhattan instead of returning home to the Bronx and found an arcade in which she could play the games she so loves. After doing that for a while, I told her of a restaurant I had scoped out while perched in a window seat while she was playing. It looked like a wonderful, intimate place, and we made our way there. It resulted in a wonderful meal, and provided time for my daughter and I to talk intimately. We had a great time and the Fried Calamari was great. The tab was paid and my daughter and I prepared to walk the short distance to her audition. As we approached the door, an elderly couple came in, the husband preceded by his wife, he holding the door open for her. She came in and proceeded to follow the maitre'd who beckoned for her to do so. The husband was behind her staring at me with a look of fear and he stumbled, trying to find his feet. My daughter looked at him, a little concerned that he seemed to be falling, and upon him finding his footing, continued out of the first door of the restaurant. I, the whole while, looking at him, familiar with the panicked glance as he perused me, looking fugitively, as if he wanted to run, but couldn't because his wife was unaware of the situation.

The situation, as I perceived it, is this man was not used to seeing an African-American person in that restaurant or, for that matter, in any capacity that reflected an equal standing to the one he found himself. He was so taken aback that he stumbled at the sight of me, and, I think, thought something wrong was happening in the restaurant and did not want to enter it. Seeing me and my daughter, both whom were taller than he, I think, he thought something was amiss. I chuckled to myself as I moved forward and past him while he looked at me with fear in his eyes.

This is an occurrence that has happened to me often, in varying degrees, in my life. The arched eyebrow of someone which tells me that I am not in the right place. I shouldn't enter the same Ivy League classroom that they are occupying except to empty the trash bins. I must have the wrong building. I should not enter the mortgage office and ask the secretary to direct me to the office in which the closing on my apartment is taking place. I can't possible be the woman who is buying an apartment. I am leaving a restaurant that has provided my daughter and I with a memorable time, and upon exiting this restaurant, I am slapped with reality of someone shocked at my being. I have caused confusion when entering places as I don't fit the bill of what should have presented as appropriate. I don't "look" like a person who should be there. "There" is their universe that is not multi-toned. Theirs is a universe that is not multi-chromatic. They have to get over it and stop stumbling, and staring, and stammering. It is truly not that serious.

Negative effect of ............

2004-11-28T13:24:00.000-05:00

The negative effects of the things I grew up with as a child are what I fight most so that they do not subjugate me into a state of ineffectivesness. There are many patterns of my childhood that now as an adult I have ascertained could have had effected me negativly but I have turned this negativity and those patterns that I witnessed as a child into life lessons. I have been a good student.

I remember the stories my father told me of his family being poor, and the trials and tribulations that were brought forth because his childhood was one of hunger, eviction notices, 10 kids fighting for what little food there was, locks on the refigerator and on the phone, etc. He often followed those stories of an impoverished upbringing with the telling of his current situation as a union card-carrying carpenter, who was proud of making a lot of money as an adult. Often he showed me his paycheck, usually $1000 dollars or more a week in the late 1970's, though I did not understand what the numbers meant because I was a child. And though my father grew up poor, though he knew first hand what poverty entailed - the grumbling stomache, the ill-fitting second hand clotes, etc., he would often squander this money he so proudly earned, in less than two days, only to have to re-visits, replicate, those days of hunger he felt as a child, because he did not know how to handle money.

My father was effected by growing up poor in the negative way that did not allow him to develop the skill of budgeting money. He did not know to buy groceries and stock up the pantry and refrigorator. He did not understand that he should buy things within your means. Instead, he would see expensive items, cars, jewlry, and buy on impulse. He would spend his whole paycheck on the streets, in the bars, in the clothing stores, jewlry stores, drug spots. The paycheck that he received on Friday would be gone come Saturday afternoon, when he would only then return home, downtrodden, to look at his child and her mother, and look into his refrigerator and cupboards and see them bare and know he had no money left in his pockets to satisfy his nor his family's hunger. The effects of growing up poor stunted his ability to offset the need for instant gratification. When he saw something he wanted, he could not plan to purchase it perhaps by putting aside money on a weekly basis until the purchase price was reached allowing for the appropriate budgeting for life's necessities while putting aside money for an extraneous purchase. He would, rather, pay cash in full, money down, and not worry of the consequence of his action.

My father, and many that I see around me, are poor not because they they don't make enough, but are so because they witnessed the pain of being poor as children and can not break the effect that has had on them. They take the income that they make and use their money indiscriminately. They are poor by choice. They think "poor". The effect of growing up poor has propelled them into adulthood negatively as they are unable to budget and plan monetarily as they can't see the long term gifts (financial stability, good credit) financial strategizing brings. All that is seen are tangibles, immediate gifts (watches, cars, etc.) that depreciate and go out of style quickly, but soothe their sustained childhood resentment of being poor. This sustained resentment has been carried further and is ever present in their adult life.

As the holiday season comes forth, I am reminded of how my father would have acted if he were alive, and the presures he would have succumbed to quicker than usual because of the bright advertisements for consumerism that are reflective of the Christmas season. I suspect some will be buying to dissipate the need for instant gratification brought forth by issues they still have with a beleaguered childhood. The negative effects of childhood linger often.

World AIDS Day

2004-11-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

World AIDS day is coming, the international day of action concerning AIDS and HIV infection, and I dread the memories it conjures. Having a father, and several uncles, and aunts, and cousins succumb to this wretched disease brings forth memories of those whose lives were cut short for the temporary feeling of a high that narcotics and/or sex brings. The choice was made to become involved in activities that some did not know were dangerous, who thought it only activities of fun, and could never come to terms that these momentary pleasures would lead them down a dark path and into an internal slumber. The children born of those adults who partook in instances that changed the course of their lives are the most tragic. These instances brought about a disease that would ultimate kill them and infect their unborn children. Children of AIDS, embryonically, were not given a choice. These children were given a short existence raft with debilitating disease, developed in utero, that was given opportunity because of irresponsibility. They are the ones mourned most as they never had a life to live. I do also mourn the adults I know and am related to who are gone, not for the reason of their death, but for the life they never had. The greatness of those taken from me and society, who could have left an indelible mark on the world, was erased before their time, their destinies denied. Never would they fulfill their legacies, and that is what I mourn and am reminded of when hearing of World AIDS Day, December 1st.

Ode to Old Dirty

2004-11-14T17:11:00.000-05:00

We are of the same age. We grew up during the time hip-hop was evolving. Many of us of this era mirrored the legacy of hip-hop. The beginnings of hip hop were humble. The performers of hip-hop did it for the love of creative expression. They were expressing the art they felt in their hearts. The pain and reality of growing up in the ghettos. The pain and reality of growing up poor. They expressed these feelings creatively through hip hop. The story of the children of hip hop was told by many an orator. Old Dirty Bastard of Wu Tang, the perinneal group of hip hop, comprised of 9 members, was the statesman of hip hop. His aura made him a stand out not only in Wu Tang, but also in hip hop in general. "Got your money" is a classic. His famous cameos like the one with Mariah Carey, "Me and Mariah go back like babies and pacifiers," is brilliant. ODB was brilliant in his art and his life is/was conflicted provided vast material. 13 children with many women, shootings, public assistance, but always able to express these dramas in rap.

Hip hop in its finest hour is an art of conflict. Started from bohemian roots, beat-boxing with a clap of the hands to a mouth and beating out rhythms from an overturned paint can with a stick on the streets of the ghetto in front of neighborhood folk to bling blinging with million of diamonds draped on a wrist with beat machines costing thousands of dollars, lip synching on a stage with an audience of persons of a different hue in a country were english is not its primary language.

The death of Old Dirty Bastard brings home that someone of my age group, so young, has dropped dead. He lived life hard. He went through much tribulation during his adult years, and one would suspect did so because of his hard childhood. The sometimes bad choices he made during his adulthood were much fodder for the US Press, but many of us of the hip hop community understood what and why he did some of these things he did because he was a product of his environment trying to live lfe and making mistakes along the way. His life mirrored a lot of those of the community he was born of, and he rapped about this life, and we listened. ODB was a revered member of the community, faults and all.

Old Dirty Bastard will be missed. RIP Russell Jones.

Regrets

2004-11-14T14:22:00.000-05:00

I have heard so many say they have regrets in life, and I listen to their claims, but do not join in claiming the same feelings. I have no regrets in my life. That may sound arrogant, but I can say, honestly, that I have tried to do all that I can in making attempts at and doing the right things in my life. I have tried to do the things that make me happy. I have tried, earnestly, to be the best at and in all my endeavors. I have tried to be a good friend, worker, mother, wife, daughter, commuter, listener, etc. I understand the concept of having regrets and have so at an early age. At that early age I said to myself that I would not live a life that had any regrets and have lived one that follows that philosophy.

Also, once I do something, I am at peace with it. I don't jump into anything, especially when speaking, without thinking, contemplating, the possible end result. And once the feat is done, I don't look back, knowing it was contemplated in a thoughtful and precise matter, and acted upon with dignity and respect for all involved. I do things with good intentions and without malice. This is the basis for all of my actions and thoughts in life, and with that foundation from which all actions and thoughts of mine spring, I can have no regrets, as my existence is comprised of attempting and doing the right thing. The effort has been made by me to be correct in my being a part of the human race, and that is good enough for me and allows me to have no regrets.

Of course, many who know me may not agree with my actions, but that does not concern me as I cannot make everyone happy, nor is that my job to do. I have to be at peace with my decisions in life. And I am. I believe I have done so with the thoughts of how the decisions of my life affect those around me and have moved forward with whatever decision knowing I was treating those affected by that decision with dignity.

I have no regrets.

Manipulative People

2004-11-08T21:07:00.000-05:00

I have often encountered many persons in my lifetime who are very manipulative and I have often wondered why they take such measures to achieve whatever it is they want through their manipulations. It is perplexing to understand such activities as often they are hurtful to all parties concerned. If the person doing all the manipulations would have simply asked for what they wanted and asked for something appropriate to the relationship between the persons asking and receiving, honestly, they may have gotten whatever it is they desired, and achieved that goal without duplicitous acts.

I have found that those who are manipulative are so because the things they ask of others that require these maneuvers are outrageous and inappropriate. Instead of doing something themselves that may make their lives harder, they try to get someone else to do it. Life is hard and there are many things people do not want to do but have to do because as a person one must do the responsible thing. I witnessed manipulative ways of others because the person doing the manipulating wants something inappropriately, or wants someone to do something that they should be doing themselves.

It has amazed me, in my daily travels, to encounter people who will look in your face and try to get you to do things that you have said you would not do. These are the people who will then try to circumvent your resolve via manipulation, subversion, and trickery, and just plain doggedness; continually asking you to do something that you have said no to on countless occasions. When told no, so bluntly, they then try to get you to do the very thing you have been very clear about not doing by instituting manipulative maneuvers. I have trained myself to realize that is a person who is trying to change me as a person, and has no respect for me as the individual that I am, and wishes me to be a drone, a follower, a submissive entity.

I have encountered these type of people in my personal relationships, my work relationships, and random encounters with strangers. A strange man will try to walk in behind me into my apartment building after I have opened my lobby door, and when I whirl around and ask, "Can help you?" I am looked at incredulously. I was told by one man that he was a cadet with the police department and I respond, "I don't care who you are. Step back," and closed the lobby door in his face. I couldn't believe that he was trying to do something that he wouldn't want anyone to do to his mother, sister, or wife, and then tried to use manipulative language that could assuaged the volatile encounter. Why could he not ring the bell to the apartment of whomever he wanted to visit to summon the buzz of the lobby door that would open it and allow him access? Why not do that as any responsible adult would? Then you have the usual encounters with relatives who try to get you to do things you absolutely don't want to do nor have the time to do. My mother tries to get me to do her hair under the pretense that she does not do the styles as well as I do to which I respond a hairdresser would do them even better. There are the guilt trips that people, family and otherwise, put on you to manipulate you into things you have said no to initially, and these I find, are the worst as they tug at your heart strings and may conjure up memories that are long gone.

I don't understand why the answer "no" is often not accepted. Why is that word seen as a barrier through which one can step through and receive the answer that was initially desired? Why can't "no" suffice? Why is the questioner too selfish to see that their needs as stated in the question, "Can you etc, etc, etc.....?" cannot be satisfied, cannot be met, via someone else, especially when they have been answered with a resounding, "no"? What many don't take into account are the emotions that they are trampling when they then try to subvert that "no" answer. Manipulative ways and the people that utilize them are to be looked upon as things to be avoided, and should that not be easily achieved one must stand their ground and not have their decision swayed. It has been a hard lesson for me to incorporate into my life, but it certainly feels good when I can, and I have done so more often than not. Life is too hard to do the things that you must do so that you can be proud of yourself as a responsible adult and then have someone try to drop their own burdens of personal responsibility on you. We all have a weight to bear and each of us should bear it accordingly.

Election

2004-11-06T21:19:00.000-05:00

On election day I voted and did so primarily because of my daughter. She asked that I vote so that she witness the election process. I truly did not want to vote because I am quite jaded at this point in my life and believe it will take a lot more than an election and voting constituents to change the face of America. There is high unemployment, underemployment, homelessness, and despair. I believe the political process is a jump start to change, however, I believe grass roots efforts are a more tangible and effective way of understanding individual, idiosyncratic communities and addressing the many issues that happen within such communities.

I was not surprised by the results of the presidential election as The United States has always proven to be a stalwart for conservatism when we are at our poorest. The diatribe that Bush spewed reminded constituents of religiosity - spoken to them via the guise of morality and included topics that were anti-gay and anti-choice - peaked their interest, held them spellbound, and propelled them into voting booths to pull the lever for Bush. The voting public thought it better to believe the good ol' boy that reminded them of their blue collar roots and of Sunday morning church. They did not want to vote for those with whom they are not familiar. They are not familiar with millionaires or heiresses, or with stem cell research, but are familiar with the morality issues that Bush so often touted.

And so I will continue to worry about my finances as I suspect they will not improve, but remain the same, or perhaps, get worse with this same administration. I applied for an interdepartmental position at my place of employment and requested a salary lower than what I knew was deserved for such a position and the work it entailed, and was not called to be interviewed. When I called to inquire what was happening with the position, I was told my salary request was too high and only others who requested substantially lower would be interviewed. Whomever gets the job will learn quickly they are not being paid appropriately for the work they do. Such is the fate for many Americans because of this and the prior presidential election.

Homeward Bound

2004-11-02T01:43:00.000-05:00

I am home and I am comfortable after a long day at work. I've just arrived and cannot quite remember how I got here. Often when traveling to and from work I steele my mind to the commute I am about to embark on. At my doorway as I exit, saying a prayer that I arrive to my destination safely, put my game face on and get to walking. I do the same when leaving work. Often when I put my key in my front door or when my hand goes into the machine so I can be scanned and clocked-in, I revel as to how I got to that point. I do not have instant recall as to what transpired during and how I commuted to that point. I am in a state of wanting to arrive to my destination safely and without drama, and as such, quell my anxiety by having a demur and dream-like existence during the commute to and from work.

I know were to position my self on the platform of my train stations so that the door of my train arrives at a precise point at the precise seat that I take to be away from the packed crowds of the NYC transit. I sit in the corner seat closest to the connecting-car door as it keeps me away from the crowds and often no one stands over me as the door that connects the adjoining cars is perpendicularly situated to me and should anyone stand there they would block all access to both cars. So I often don't have anyone standing near or over me. I also have the benefit of keeping space between myself and the wall that makes up the corner I am sitting in so that though someone can squeeze in next to me I will always have space on my other side. I have easy egress from the train because the passenger outlet door is almost directly on front of me and I can be out of the car in 2 steps. If anything were to happen, be it any kind of commotion, I have two means of egress to get away; the door in front of me and the door next to me that is not more than an inch from my foot. I have mapped out all that I will do in case of any type of trepidation, but I do hope for the best.

It is in these moments of transporting that I kind of daze out to take away from the tediousness of an at minimum 45 minutes commute that often has me unwillingly sitting next to people who have stepped on my feet, bumped me, elbowed me, and not said excuse me. of whom I am forced to smell their unwashed bodies and bodily functions, and do so without getting mad and going off and demanding an apology. On occasion I have demanded apologies and have often gotten the apology and a response that the person didn't know they'd elbowed me in the head. I suspect they said that to save face that they were being down right rude and embarrassed that I called them out on their Neanderthal behavior.

It is these types of moments that I steel myself against and thereby get into a out-of-body state so that I can function within the stark reality that I am stuck in a metal box, racing under the streets of NYC at 75 miles an hour, packed like sardines with other commuters, who I don't know and probably would not want to know, to go to a job that I don't particularly feel respects my work but profits from it immensely.

So I sit here tonight not remembering quite how I got to my home from my job. I am happy with the knowledge that I have established a coping mechanism that allows me to function within the confines of a stressful twice daily situation that steels me in an armor that keeps out the unpleasantness of my commute, and allows me to get to my destination with the least amount of mental anguish.

I am stepping out of my metaphorical armor and am now opening up my mind and getting out of my dream-like state. I am HOME.

Many Hours

2004-10-31T13:52:00.000-05:00

I worked yesterday for 16 hours. I am thoroughly disgusted by the fact that I must do a least 54 hours a week at my job to etch out an existence that resembles something of a normal life. That coupled with the knowledge that there are many at my place of employment who try to stop me from having overtime in a very dishonest way and some who are just out and out jealous that I have been granted the opportunity for overtime.

I wish that I did not have to do so much, if any, overtime. But should I not, my family literally would not eat. My base salary is so low that it necessitates my doing massive amounts of overtime. I do not do it for fun. I left my place of employment Friday night at 11:30 PM. After commuting for over 1 and 1/2 hour (there was a train delay that added to my regular 45 minute commute) I arrived home at 1:15 AM, Saturday morning. I then, after sleeping only a few hours, got up at 5:15 AM that same day and was out of the house and back at work by 6:31 AM. I designated myself as the person from management who opens up the job on Saturday as it provides me with ample overtime and quiet time as I am the first there for about 2 hours before anyone arrives. I get in early to work as the train systems of NYC are notorious for messing up on the weekend, so it alleviates any stress I may encounter on NYC Transit by leaving so early that there is no way I can be late on a Saturday to open up shop. If I didn't do it, management would look completely irresponsible as the rest of management trickles in on Saturday usually after our workers have arrived. I don't want management to look bad so I have accepted the responsibility knowing that this pads my check. This responsibility is a secondary concern to me as padding my check is my primary concern. Secondarily is allowing my workers to arrive at a job that is up and running, and having them able to clock in with no delay. Often, before I was promoted to management, I would arrive to work on Saturday and would have to wait in the lobby because management was late opening up shop. I lost precious time off of my check because I could not clock-in. And of course I was never given any recourse for re-coping time lost as that would point the finger at management's irresponsibility.

Usually during the course of my Saturdays at work I have person of all positions, workers and management, who try to figure out how many hours that I do in an attempt to figure out how much I am being paid. I find that offensive, and usually reply to their questions of when did I get in with an answer of "early". I never give a direct answer. Sometimes, if I am feeling defensive, I'll ask the person, "Why do you want to know?" They then usually slink off knowing I am ticked off at them questioning me. Persons in management who are nosy have apparatuses that allow them to look up my arrival and departure times and have actually went to my bosses to complain as to how many hours that I am doing in the hopes of stopping my ability to get overtime. My boss has chased them out of his office with the retort that I can get as much overtime as I want as I am dependable, and never abuse the time, as when I am in the office, I am WORKING, and am not slouching off like some of them. He stated that he can depend on me, unlike them. Some of those same person who tried to block my overtime, who were in management before I was, I would see years ago near the job, running because they were late to open up the shop on a Saturday morning, one so hilariously, with a shockingly white fat stomach that was exposed by a blowing wind raising up his shirt, while unwillingly jogging up Wall Street.

Many of management are resentful because they have been made salaried which means they are unable to get overtime hours. I have heard through the grapevine that their salaries are abysmally low. I understand that frustration. However for them to try to stop me from getting overtime because they can't is beyond evil. I did not put them in the financial constraints that they are in. I am having the same kind of financial issues as they are, but do not complain to those on the job as I deem that inappropriate. I do it on my blog, and to my friends, and to my family, but not on the job. I suspect because I don't complain about money on the job that it is assumed that I must be OK because I receive what they deem "a lot of overtime". Yeah, right. It seems that they believe I am privileged when in fact I know I am being used. I noticed that I am one of the few in management that was not made salaried, and I think I know why. My boss knows my personality enough to know that I would have not stepped foot on my job on a Saturday as I would not do any overtime once I was salaried AND salaried at a rate that wouldn't allow me to support my family. In addition I know my boss understood that not only would I not do overtime, but that I would eventually leave after finding other employment as it would be clear to me how much I was valued at my place of employment after becoming salaried. While I was on vacation and was not there on 3 consecutive Saturdays some workers came to me after my return and said the shop was not opened on time for 2 of the three Saturdays that I was out. Some of the supervisors told me that two managers argued as to who would open up on one of the Saturdays and one flat out refused.

In no way do I think I am being rewarded by being allowed to do overtime. It is a maneuver by my bosses to keep someone who they know works, is quiet, and responsible. They in turn allow me to have overtime. It is not a reciprocal relationship as I believe the bosses are getting the better end of the deal. What I find the most difficult about this situation is the resentment I feel from co-workers that I believe is misplaced. We are all in the same situation as people who are underemployed and underpaid. And for co-workers to not direct whatever resentment they have toward the entity that brings it forth and funnel it into activities that will force the bosses to treat us all more respectfully, monetary and otherwise, is beyond stupid, and only results in us hurting each other. I wish my co-workers could be more conscientious and aware. But until such time, I will be on the look-out for persons who try to block whatever perceived advantages that I may have.

When love goes wrong

2004-10-30T06:46:00.000-04:00

There has been a spate of spousal and significant-other abuse cases in New York City. They have been shockingly brutal. Recently, within the span of two days, a man shot and killed his girlfriend and then himself. The next day another strangled his girlfriend and then hung himself, both to be found by their three year old child who was able to summon his aunt who lived next door by telling her his parents were dead. With the frequency of these abuse cases comes much concern from those of us reading these stories. I believe these horrific cases come about because many are having financial difficulties because of the economically uncertain times we live in, and when this is added to the regular every day problems of sustaining a relationship, lovers cannot cope, and often take it out on the one closest to them.

I wonder how things can go so wrong in a relationship. Every relationship, be they personal, romantic, or strictly business, has hard times. These times are usually comprised of problems that may seem insurmountable. But problems can be alleviated and seem less burdensome when one has the love of another enveloping their existence. Romantic relationships are the ones that keep you ensconced in a blanket of love and able to weather the daily barrage of every day problems all people of all persuasion incur because you know you have someone who cares about you to come home to. So why would a person turn on someone they purportedly love? Was there ever, really, any love there, and if there was, why could they not work it out and form a united front to solve the problem or maintain their relationship while dealing with a sustaining problem? What could possibly lead someone to such despair that they hurt someone they have laid down with, shared a life with, shared time, emotions, love?

There seems to be an ever increasing problem among a population of people who profess to love each other. The problem amongst partners is domestic abuse, and it is rippling throughout so many communities - rich, poor, young, old, gay and straight. It has happened in mind numbing regularity. And it is taking its toll on a generation of the offspring that have been born from these once calm but now hateful unions. Many of the children have witnessed the abuse of their beloved parents, and one can only hope they, when they are adults, will not continue the trends of partner abuse, though history evidences children of abuse often do. Children are often the secondary victim's of spousal abuse, and the most indefensible.

One can only hope the reports of such abuses that seemingly are occurring with more regularity diminish, if not cease, to exist. And whatever the reason for its existence, be it monetary stress, or the arrogance of the aggressor, it is something that is hurting society as a whole.

Anxious for New Money

2004-10-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

There is a position for which I qualify that has been posted via my job's e-mail. I will be applying for this job clandestinely, and will not inform my superiors of my department. I hope that the position offers more money as the raise I recently received does not keep the wolf away from my door. When I met with my Director during my review he was extremely complimentary and said he could only give me but so much of a raise, and then told me I got a 4.5% increase. I just looked at him and blinked. My raise, what my employers call an increase, is not an increase to me because my salary before the increase was a joke. So 4.5% of 0 is essentially 0. I knew that I would not get a double digit raise, but crossed my fingers that I would be pleasantly surprised. And though I know my Director was somewhat sincere and has his hands tied somewhat behind his back, this raise amounts to nothing, and as such I must make moves. My applying for this job within my company will suffice for a first move of what I can be assured will be many in my quest to make enough money to subsist comfortably.

I have to gear myself to be scrutinized from head to toe; assessed to determine if I am good enough for the job, if I am qualified for the job, and will be brow beaten when interviewed, for the job. Essentially when going on job interviews I feel as though I am being judged and compared to all those who are applying for the position. This is a given and somewhat appropriate for the interviewer to do, but none the less, this type of scrutiny causes me angst. I must therefore put on more than my usual game face, and gear up for the challenge of being impressive in my eloquence and my presence. It is a damming exercise in fortitude when applying for a new job as it conjures up, for me, many insecurities, many of which are unfounded. But I will put these insecurities aside as monetary constraints are calling out to me as the victor in my inability to own a home, have money in my pocket, and purchasing groceries.
It's been about a year since my last job intrerview when I picked up part time Christmas seasonal work. It was so challenging for me that when I was done in the interview and told I would be hired, I cried, discreetly, on the bus home as it helped to release the tension that built up during the week before the interview. Job interviews have always proven to be, for me, excrutiatingly draining, though the interviewer would never know it. My game face and demeanor are always tight. However, inside my stomach is usually churning from nervousness. I will apply for this job as it is good to explore the possibilities of higher paying employment. I am comfortable with the duties of my current job, but not with its pay.

Comments of Inequity

2004-10-21T08:50:00.000-04:00

The Presidential Candidates wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry's truly put her foot in her mouth with the comment:

Asked how she would be different from Mrs. Bush if Kerry won the Nov. 2 election, Heinz Kerry said: "Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job -- I mean, since she's been grown up."

I truly question how a woman with children could utter such nasty words about another woman with children. Is not having children a job, and I add, one of the most important jobs a person may have, the cultivation of a spirit, of a soul, of a human being? And further, this woman, who has been seemingly dignified in her stance as a companion to the leader of the free world, has "had a REAL job" as a teacher, which many would contend is, also, one of the most important jobs a society has as it molds the future of those who will make up future generations. Teachers are deemed the gateway through which persons embark on the rest of their lives.

So it is astonishing that a woman would make such a divisive comment about another. I once attended an appointment with a mid-wife. I, at that point had two children, and was, by choice, not gainfully employed, and upon laying on the exam table she asked if I worked outside of the home. That question floored me as it spoke volumes about her reverence for my having two children and the work that it entailed, and her wanting to understand, and not assume, if in addition to that hard work, did I also have a job that paid. In that one questioning sentence she validated all that I do in my working to raise my children in a non-paying capacity, and she subliminally saluted that effort. Often during this time of my life persons of my family, often female members, often my mother, would call me up and tell me to do their personal errands and the reason why I had to do them was pronounced boldly with an ending statement, "Oh you can do this for me 'cause your home all day and your not doing anything." Usually they heard a resounding click in their ear as I slammed down the phone after telling them what they could do with their requests.

It is clear that many women do not value all that women do on a daily basis, in the home. It is understandable, but not acceptable why a man would do so, but for women to not understand what other women go through on a daily basis in raising families and working outside of the home, and the work that all these endeavors entails, is astonishing. And for such a hurtful comment to come from someone who may be the companion of the new world leader and who may influence policies for women's rights within that capacity, is scary. Though Ms. Heinz Kerry has apologized for her statement, I believe in her first words as her true opinion of Ms. Bush. I believe that she, though she herself is a mother, does not think of it as a job, when it in fact is, and a most important job and as such, a labor of love.

To assume something about someone who has appeared to be a quiet dignified person is galling. Why did this woman think of another in an incorrect assuming way? Ms. Bush has worked outside of the home, and done so in a profession that is often not given its due respect. I can only think that because she has not had "glamorous" employment, has worked outside of the home as a teacher and a librarian, one of such stature as Ms. Heinz, who has worked in many philanthropic positions of employment, when looking at such a person as Ms. Bush, it is easy to assume, and thus be completely and rudely incorrect in the assumption. To assume anything about anyone is to be divisive. If one does not know something definitively, one should not assume as in doing so only mistakes will ensue, and these mistakes can be hurtful. And these mistakes can be very revealing as to the character of the assuming person.

I have a new opinion of Ms. Heinz Kerry.

What would you do?

2004-10-16T17:39:00.000-04:00

Me and a group of friends were asked the question, "What would you do on the day you woke up and were at your best?" What would our lives encompass? Where would we find ourselves if we were at our best? I didn't verbalize my thoughts as many answered with long responses that told of their hopes of having better jobs/careers and of having made better choices in their lives that would have put them at a better place than they found themselves currently. All said, essentially, that they were not at their best and mapped a road that would lead them to their best. The question itself implied that the person asking didn't think they were at their best, not in an accusatory way, but a doubtful way, none the less. I didn't want to seem arrogant, so I did not respond to the question outwardly, but did so internally. My answer is that I am living my best every day that I awake.

I am sometimes frustrated, sometimes regretful, especially when I am feeling sorry for myself, but when I come out of the self-pitying party that I sometimes throw for myself, I realize I am blessed. When I awake, I am at my best because my children are surrounding me, my house is in order, I diligently pursue all that interests me like hobbies, travels, etc., my relationships are sturdy and stable, and I am happy. For me it is not the money I make nor the career that provides that desired money. It is the stability of my personal relationships with my children and my other significant members of my direct and extended family that make up the foundation of what makes me an accomplished person and makes me the best I can be. With the stability of these relationships, knowing I can go home and hear the giggling of my children, it is that which allows me to hurdle the seeming obstacles of life: jobs, careers, educational pursuits, etc., and be at my best while doing so.

I am currently at my best.

Random Acts

2004-10-11T19:28:00.000-04:00

Sometimes during quiet moments I think about the course of my day, and remember the encounters I have with people who've I met, but with whom I am not friendly. Retrospectively, I think of the kind acts they have bestowed upon me, and smile.

When traveling, I sometimes realize, after sitting on the plane, that the person who checked me in gave me a better seat than the one presented on my ticket. When traveling on a trans-Atlantic 12 hour flight, I was pleasantly surprised with an upgrade that was given unbeknownst to me. I only realized after sitting that I have been upgraded to a seat that had 2 vacant next to me an was located in a front row of seats and the next row was about 12 feet in front of me allowing me ample room on all sides.

When arriving at John F. Kennedy Airport for a 2 1/2 week vacation, I forgot that JFK and all other airports in NYC have no post office boxes, and I had a bunch of mail that I erroneously thought I could drop off there. After remembering when I saw no post office boxes and inquired for confirmation that per 9/11 they had been yanked out, I asked a proprietor of a store what could one do to get their mail in a p.o. box, and he said he would mail it personally, after he inquired about the mail's contents. I blinked and thanked him profusely and offered to give him something for his effort which he refused.

I walked away with a big smile on my face. I was happy that my mail was going to be posted, but I was happy more so because someone understood my situaltion and out of the goodness of their heart did something for me, a stranger, and that made me feel good.

There are so many incidents of this kind that after getting home I think about and am able to fill me up with the goodness that they exude. The guy who reached a seat on the train that we were both aiming for, who sees me, bows, and lets me have it. The lady who holds the door open for me. The woman walking behind me who sees that the tag to my shirt is sticking out of my blouse and sticks it in saying she does that all the time too, and no one tells her, so she is not only telling me but putting it down my shirt. These nice acts are the ones that pile up in my mind into a mound of goodness. And I often am not able to drink up this goodness until I get home as when they are happening they go by so quickly. But though they are quick, they are meaningful. They, these kind acts, make up the fabric of everyday existence.

It is moments like these, random acts of kindness, that re-enforce my view of the world. My view can be somewhat clouded at times by the few, but none the less, devastating acts of nastiness that I sometimes encounter, but I do believe in the good of people. I believe this good is inherent.

Escapism

2004-10-06T21:41:00.000-04:00

I am a person who values the art of the escapism. Once I close the door to my home, and sit down, I can peel away the pressures that I've endured during my usual hectic days by reading, writing or viewing movies and television. These are the various escape routes that I take to rejuvenate and acquiesce to and release pressures that are a never ending part of my existence.

Writing has always allowed me an outlet via which I can express all that I cannot say in a non-confrontational way, and in a complete way. Often when saying things to those that I wish to express a particular point much is left unsaid because the words did not come at the appropriate time. However, when I write there is time to contemplate the exact words that are needed to express the internal feelings. The time for contemplating allows for the perfect words that formulate all that I want to say.

Renting DVD's and cable is wonderful for me. When hearing of a boxing match or another sporting event that's coming on cable or opening my mailbox to see the brightly colored envelopes containing movies, of my choice, is exhilarating as I can wrap myself in the moments of the movie or the sporting event, and take pleasure in what I am viewing. I can escape in the abilities of the writer of the movie or the sportsmanship of the opponents of the event I am a witness to, and drink up their efforts. I am mystified by good movies, and like to dissect how the writer composed the lines, and try to understand the writers' intent. The sports matches are always intriguing as I imagine all of the sacrifices a caliber athlete has put into the precise moment at which I see them. They have prepared for years for a moment that may last only seconds and do so with the great hope that they will be victors. They do so in front of countless people, some live and some via television, who are there to analyze and observe their feats. Books have always fascinate me in their abilities to take me to the moment being described. The power of words has always been such a mystifying yet satisfying thing to me, and I relish a book that has an abundance of such. I am in awe of those people who produce the entities that allow my escapism. The awe is equally distributed for all those involved in providing me an avenue to release my pressures; the writers, the actors, the athletes, the camera man, etc. All that they do is art and through this art I can escape in its beauty.

Prism of Racism

2004-10-01T21:45:00.000-04:00

A sorry tale of Hilton's latest tape
'DUMB' AND DUMBER? A newly surfaced Paris Hilton video reportedly includes an ugly racial remark.
-->Paris Hilton has two faces - and one of them is very, very ugly.
In a recently surfaced 12-hour videotape, Hilton is shown in a rather disturbing scene with two African-American men who ask her if she would model their fashion line.
Hilton, standing with pal Brandon Davis, is polite to the men, but calls them "dumb n--s" after they leave, according to British reporter Carole Aye Maung, who reviewed the tape.
"Two ... guys begin talking to her," Maung told us. "She's being very, very sweet to them. [But] she definitely uses the N-word. It's so cruel, because they were so lovely, and she was being so lovely to them."
Hilton's reps refused to comment when asked about this specific incident on the tape, first uncovered by Star magazine.
According to Maung, the marathon recording includes footage of Hilton "making love" with Nick Carter in the back of a car, greeting one-time boyfriend Jason Shaw in the nude and rolling a "cigarette."
She jokes: "It'll be Paris Hilton Two: How to roll a joint."
It's doubtful she's laughing today.

The above blurb was in The NY Daily News yesterday and proved to be very disturbing to many. But for some it validates what is already intrinsically known to many minorities. One can be as dignified and polite as is possible when in the company of a person who is of another race, and who is being equally as dignified and polite, and know that they are being thought of as less than by that person. Many instances in my life I have been treated amicably by someone and have found out later that they did things behind my back and/or conveyed thoughts about me to others that were racists.

A medium that misrepresents whatever is seen through it is the definition of Paris Hilton. She is the manifestation of a prism as she is a blond, blue-eyed White woman who is a beneficiary of The Hilton Hotel legacy and fortune. As such she is thought to be wholesome via her background. What is seen through her is a life that is wholesome. She had a home video made with her knowledge that showed her cavorting, sexually and under the influence of drugs, with a man, and was forgiven. Her public relations people were able to spin the tale of a young impressionable girl who was taken advantage of by her older former boyfriend.

But from the aforementioned blurb the prism that is Ms. Hilton is being seen as an entity within and of itself. That prism is the manifestation of hate. The vileness and hatefulness of her comments are such that conjure memories for many who have strived to be the best they can be and are thwarted by small minded persons who talk the talk but live a life that is racist and when having the ability, choose to subjugate those who are just trying to live honestly. Why did she not just say she did not want to deal with the men who approached her? Instead she pulled the subliminal racism that is often practiced by those who feel they are educated. She acted as if she was interested, and was accepting of their views. But when the men left, she spewed her hateful comments. I have always been a proponent of allowing people of the KKK the right to freedom of speech as I want to know who my enemies are. I want them to be easily identifiable, and what easier way in which that can happen than for my enemies to voice their views. Persons like this Paris thing who never voice their views publicly, who whisper in private their racist thoughts, after speaking sweetly to the face of the person they think they are superior to, is the supreme enemy in the fight against hatred.

How does one fight an enemy that one can't see, that one can not identify? Well this particular enemy, P. Hilton, subliminal racist that she is, busted herself, live and in color. It can only be hoped that everything she touches is boycotted and her 15 minutes of infamy is up.

Videos are a wonderful invention, aren't they?

The influx of millions

2004-09-27T23:08:00.000-04:00

It is 11:00 PM and I sit in an office tower that is empty. It was, during this Monday, bustling with thousands of people, who are now probably sleeping in their beds, and will be waking up in a few hours to the hustle and bustle that is NYC. And I wonder how many of us that occupy this building during business hours, making millions of dollars for our employers, reap some of the benefits of those dollars? How many of us are living from paycheck to paycheck, and through our due diligence and moral character, work at our occupation with the express intent to do the job we have contractually signed on to do. And that contractual obligation is to make our bosses richer, through the tireless work that we do while we, who are further down the totem pole, can barely rise above the ensuing sea of daunting bills.

As I look at the roster of some of Fortune 500's companies in the lobby of the building in which I work, and feel the quietness of the lobby at night, I know come 8:00 AM, express buses and subways will discharge the mighty workers of NYC who are aware, just as I am, that the system is not quite fair to those who work diligently and honestly at life. There are the haves and the have nots, and certainly the have nots are immeasurable in comparison to the haves. We, the people, are the ones whose labor rewards the owners and power brokers of the companies we work for, and therein lies the inequity of the situation. The work that you put out is not often rewarded fairly, but often, rewards only those at the top of the totem pole, for they are the ones who broker the deals to establish and sustain the companies for which we work, and therefore feel entitled. Because of this feeling of entitlement they then establish a system that hires underlings to do the hard work of the company that brings in wealth, and then systematically distribute the wealth garnered primarily to those at the highest point of the hierarchy of the business while those at the bottom receive a pittance of the wealth that they have worked so hard to acquire for their bosses.

The system is brutal and very self-evident. There is truly no pretense as to who is benefiting and who is not. And we the people often have no way to combat what we know is an unfair situation. Is the answer unionizing, sick-outs, sabotage, etc. to get the point across to the-powers-that-be that the little man is a vital component, if not the most vital, than those who sit in the corner offices? Or do we fight the good fight subliminally by working honestly and diligently knowing that we are doing the right thing and hoping things will change somehow because of karma? Or perhaps do so knowing that the power structure never changes because the power is in the hands of those who have the deepest pockets, and surrender to the inevitable continuation of the little man being used and abused? The quandry that is big business is never ending in its brutality.

The Art of Boxing

2004-09-27T01:28:00.000-04:00

There are those who think of boxing as a sport that is barbaric and animalistic. I concur. And I am enthralled and thrilled with these and all the other disturbing things about boxing. The notion that two people are in a ring, pummeling each other, and strategizing the best way to win against their opponent, is amazing to me. It is the one of the few brutal thing in this world that is sanctioned by a governing body that allows the public to sit and look at opponents, some of whom are women, try to, essentially, kill each other. I have always loved boxing as it is raw and intense. There is no talking. There is no pretense. One boxer must try to physically hurt the other so much that they are unable to continue the match. Though this blatant brute force is the primary necessary requirement one needs to be a successful boxer, there is also a requirement of intelligence and cunningness. Many a fighter has used his brain and not just his brute force to beat his opponent. Such is the case of a fighter who is aware an opponent always drops his right hand after throwing a left hook. That smart boxer then knows to go in for the kill with a stiff left upper cut to the jaw. And down his opponent will go. Quickly to the canvas of the ring will travel the face of the opponent who telegraphs his moves to the savvy boxer. He will be laid out while his victorious ring mate raises his hand in victory, knowing not only his brawn, but brains were utilized expertly.

I like boxing because of its fairness. The best wo/man wins. S/he who is smart and cunning wins. No nepotism, cronyism, sexism, racism - none of the isms of the world - is involved in an honest bout. It is simply the gladiator who was smart enough and/or strong enough who will be victorious. That person who put in the work of training for months - perhaps denying themselves the carnal pleasures of drinking, smoking, staying up late, and devoted themselves to mastering the art of boxing, and then got into the ring - it is he who will be victorious after a fight that was played out fairly. Boxing, to me, is what life should be. Boxing is very base. If you put in the work, do the right thing, you will be victorious. And if you lose, you do so knowing you tried your best. Each opponent started out with the knowledge they would be entering a challenging situation, and both started out evenly. Both are opponents of the same weight class and approximate abilities. The rest is up to the individual to train enough and strategize correctly to win the battle.

Boxing is brutal, but fair. It is much more fair than life. Some persons are born with advantages of money and other prominence, while many are born to impoverished circumstances. Those who are born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths will subsist in a society that will reward them because of who they know and how much money they have in their bank accounts, while those who were born to common folk will have to claw their way up a slippery slope to achieve the kind of prominence, monetary and otherwise, that silver spoon kids are handed at birth. The playing field is very uneven in real life, while in boxing, it is supremely level. So level that when a defeated opponents' face smashes into it, they maybe be lullabied to sleep. I appreciate boxing and watch it as often as I can, knowing that the brutality I am viewing is not gratuitous, that it represents a fairness that I can only hope would happen in real life.

Worldwide Race Issues

2004-09-20T19:29:00.000-04:00

Often in the life that I lead I am aware of how I am treated by society. I am a relatively tall African-American and am very dark skinned. I am sometimes treated as if I will physically hurt the person I am interacting with because I am assumed to be violent. I see fear in the eyes of persons occupying an elevator that I enter. Purses are shifted away from me as if I will snatch them and run in a closed elevator. I am sometimes treated as if I will be a diva and act sassy because of my ethnicity. I have been told to my face that I am not able to do many things based on the assumptions that because I am African American I will inevitably be a failure.

During my vacation in Italy I was often made aware that the many race issues are not specific to The United States. My tour guide during my Sicilian travels was a Northern Italian who performed his duties superbly. During the many excursions throughout Sicily, he talked of the pride of The Sicilian people. He intimated that this pride, while it evolved naturally from the self assurance of Sicilians, was also derived from and used as a deterrent to views held by many other Italians that all of the island of Sicily and its occupants are slovenly and lazy. This message of pride was repeated often, daily, on the many excursions throughout Sicily, during long drives on our tour bus. When we encountered miles and miles of farms that were obviously painstakingly cultivated into rows of marvelous harvests of lemon and other agriculture, the tour guide pointed to them as proof of the hardwork Sicilians put into their lands, and further stated that they put such effort forth in all of their endeavors. At the end of our tour Francisco wanted us, who were from all over the globe, to go to our respective countries and let the people of those lands know that Sicilians were a proud people and not what they were long reputed to be. Unbeknownst to me, I did not know that Sicilians were considered dirty, lazy, and uneducated.

I, from watching some of Spike Lee movies, and from my living in NY City and thus interacting with and knowing Italians, knew that there were some Italians who were very dark and had very curly hair that resembled some African American's hair. I also knew of Hannibal The Conquers history of traveling on elephants from his homeland of Tunisia into Sicily when trying to conquer that land. During the second Punic War legend has it that the African troops of Hannibal mated with many a Sicilian woman and the progeny of such unions resulted in many dark skinned, curly haired Sicilians. I have to now wonder did this notion that those who are Sicilian are lazy come about because they are the darkest of Italians. Francisco the tour guide who was a Northern Italian stated that many Northern Italians looked down upon their Southern brethren, The Sicilians, and thought of them in a very negative way. Some, when vacationing in Sicily, and Francisco happened to be their tour guide, often stated to him how surprised they were at how clean and orderly they found the land and people of Sicily. They expected the fulfillment of the stereotypes.

I understood, after imbibing all that Francisco said, that Sicilians are looked down upon, because of the color of their skin, that though they are Italian, they are of a darker hue, and thus are seen as less than. I found this concept amazing. I found this concept amazingly sad and so similar to what is found in The United States. It seems that the darker you are, the more you are seen as less than. This notion is world wide. And no matter where in the world this racism happens, it opens wounds that fester for hundreds of years. The legacy of racism translates into many languages.

I must acquiesce

2004-09-19T13:08:00.000-04:00

I am fully ensconced in the dichotomy that is my world. I wake in the morning to hungry children who must be fed, clothed, and loved, and do so with as much love as I have to offer. They are sent off to school and into the world with an internal prayer from me that they learn scholastic and life lessons that will sustain them and help them navigate the world throughout their days with more ease than me. I then prepare for work, and get my game face on.

As I write these words I am feeling ill. I remember the days when I would forge ahead and not think about the ills my body communicated to me via pains and headaches and upset stomachs as I thought youth would always be on my side. I worked and played through the pain. I also gathered coping skills that provided an armor to block stresses that could cause more serious illness. But I am older and I am feeling shooting pains that I know have come about because of stress. And I must take a moment and acquiesce.

I know I don't feel well because I am back to that which has often driven me to run screaming to my vacation destinations. My job, my children, bills, romantic or otherwise personal relationships, unfulfilled dreams, and the pondering of such, has caused me to stress. When returning from vacation, I often abate these stresses for a long period of time, but of late, that period has shortened. It seems the shortening of these periods of bliss correlate to the mounting of stressful situations I find myself enduring. I must learn new coping skills as I am letting things cause me stress. I was always able to have a barrier to stress, it was as if I enveloped myself in an armor that repelled stress. But it seems that armor has been nicked by and has allowed new and improved stresses to seep into what it is protecting, my core, and has affect me physically and the essence that is me. I am stressed.

At work we were told in early August that we would be informed of how much of a raise we would be getting by late August, and that the actual raise would then appear in our first pay in September. Of course, that did not happen, and we have been told we would, most likely, get our raises in October, and that they would be retroactive to September 1st. This is extremely upsetting to me and many of my co-workers. I cannot voice how upset I am to any of the people at my place of employment because it would be unprofessional, and because of this dichotomy, I internalize the financial hardship this issue presents to me, while externally I have on my game face at work. I smile while inside I am angry at not having a raise for almost 4 years while diligently working a thankless job.

This anger derived from all of the aforementioned pressures has manifested itself into headaches. This anger impinges upon not only my physical health but my my mental health. This must stop. I must get an outlet that allows me to think of the positives my life always offers. I have healthy, beautiful children, good friends, a job, albeit not a lucrative one, but a job nonetheless, and relative good health, and a home. But I am stressed. Last year I started taking voice-over classes as I decided to try voice-over work as an occupation, and loved it. I was happy to be doing something that I loved that was creative and could ultimately lead to a cash flow that would allow me to quit a job that I don't feel my bosses respected me for performing per their not giving me a promised raise. I also took acting classes to help me with my voice-over work at the suggestion of my voice coaches. I had an avenue to express my creativity, but it costs big bucks. The classes relieved the tensions that I felt from being stuck in a job that stifles creativity, but because the job does not pay well, I am stuck in a catch-22. I wish to pursue creative ventures to stop the feelings of being stagnated by a low paying job, but cannot do so because the ventures cost money that cannot be paid for because I work a low paying job.

I had hoped, with the raise, to start taking more voice-over and acting classes, but am stymied because it has not come to fruition. I now have headaches that I know come about because of my frustration with my financial situation and its control it has over my creativity and that creativity's potential to make more money on my terms. So, I must look for ways to make more money. And I must look for ways to re-work the money that I already make. I must hope the raise that I get is enough to cease monetary anxiety. I must re-vamp my budget, and look at where I can cut corners. I must re-assess my financial priorities as I have to get back to what makes me happy. What makes me happy costs money. Taking classes makes me happy. And hopefully if I master these classes I will find new employment that will showcase all I have learned from these classes, and allow for a creative outlet coupled with a new occupation. I look forward to the future. I just hope it has less stress.

Reciprocation

2004-09-14T23:26:00.000-04:00

I went to purchase something in a store and walked up to the counter and said,"Hello," to the woman behind it. She gave me a disgusted look. I placed my items on the counter, and she snatched them to the scanner area, placed them in a bag, and barked out the price of my purchase. I've said hello to tellers in banks and they've scowled at me, finished the transactions, and not said a word to me, the hello never returned. I've said hello to persons walking the floors of departments stores, who clearly were employees as their cheery name tags designate them as such, look at me with contention. When I follow the hello with a question of what aisle I can find a particular item, some have a look of guilt, knowing they've been rude. And I am left wondering why did they think I was saying hello but to greet them with the respect they deserved as someone who will be servicing me. Was I supposed to just bark out a request. "Where is the flatware department?" or just slam down the items I wished to purchase on a counter. Perhaps they thought I was going to ask for a handout, a favor. Certainly none thought the hello was appropriate for me to say as they did not reply in return. Often none said anything, and returned the greeting with a look of trepidation.

I've always noticed how rude the general public can be to the people that service them. I've had jobs that has placed me in direct contact with the public and have been on the receiving end of their rudeness. I never connected that experience with what I should and have always done when approaching someone who will service me. Perhaps those service people who are rude to their customers were once treated rudely when they were customers, and now do the same to those they are paid to service? My experience as a service worker reinforced how and why I treat those who service me with respect. What surprises me is the reaction I get from service workers when that respect is given to them. When I was on vacation, the head waiter came over to the table where I was dining with my tour guide and asked him to translate his Italian to me to express his staff's appreciation of how I treated them. I was amazed as I did nothing spectacular. I greeted them when they first came to my table, said thank you and please, and I always looked them in the eye. Upon recollection, I did notice that many of the other diners and members of my tour completely ignored them when the servers served their food. In Italy, where I vacationed, the meals in restaurants are never brought out on a plate, but rather each course doled on a plate, by a server, at the table, while the diner sits. The closeness of the servers to the diners when leaning over to dish out food created an atmosphere that necessitated camaraderie between both, but often the server was ignored. When someone is that close to me, I make eye contact, not purposefully, but simply because they are in my face. And they are servicing me and deserve that respect.

I treat people as I would want to be treated, and do so in any situation that I find them. I want to be acknowledge when I am in a room filled with people and I would imagine that persons who service others want that acknowledgement. Drinks are not just magically served in a glass. Re-fills of those glasses do not magically happen. The hands that pour the re-fills are attached to a person who has dreams and aspirations just as I do. I hold this sentiment true for those who service me. In turn, I wish for them to treat me respectfully, however I am often confronted with rude service people, especially those that work in NY. I often ponder if a rude reaction to friendliness is a preconceived notion on the part of a service worker to protect themselves. They have often been treated rudely, so any acts of kindness cannot be computed as such because of its rarity in occurrence. Perhaps, in the interactions between service workers and customers, the point is to be voiceless, and do the job as if you are invisible. For those customers who act out of the norm, and treat service people as the entities and humans that they are, perhaps it is too unsettling to deal with the reverence given, and a rude reaction results. For those service people who act appropriately during the dispensing of service and thank customers for treating them respectfully in return seem to do so not only because of appreciation but because of surprise. I just wish that people would not react to appropriate actions in such an surprised fashion, or worse, in a rude fashion. Appropriateness should be common place, however, in the world we live in today, often it is not.

Consequence of Diaspora

2004-09-10T19:13:00.000-04:00

I spoke with a best friend today and we talked of the three hurricanes that have passed through Florida in the last 3 weeks in quick succession, and we both were amazed as to the quickness and destruction all of them seemed to have. She mentioned that a friend of hers spoke of hurricanes forming off the coast of West Africa, starting off as thunderstorms, garnering speed within the confines of the Caribbean, and then unleashing their fury, fully formed into hurricanes, unto such states as Florida and North Carolina. He believed in the possibility that these hurricanes are a consequence of the African slave market.

I was intrigued by this notion that the souls of those African slaves who were often captured thousands and thousands of miles inland and brought to the western coast of Africa to be shipped to Florida may have conjured hurricanes with their perpetual cries of injustice. Florida was the closest point from the west coast of Africa to which slaves could be transported, and therefore served as the gateway from which these slaves were then dispersed to other states in Colonial times. Florida has a history that bleeds the blood of those who made the passage from their homeland of Africa to a place unknown to them, snatched for chattel, to provide free labor for masters who paid pittances for them on the docks of Florida. These slaves were then transported by their new masters to places like Mississippi, Alabama, and North Carolina, places that have had the most torturous hurricanes in history come upon them.

The intrigue of hurricanes precipitated by the anguish of those stolen from their homeland in which they were once ensconced makes for sad thoughts. If true, the pain has become so palpable that it manifests itself into horrendous rains that pummel the land and people it encounters centuries after the pain was inflicted. The pain is living on and has become tangible. That the pain at the land point, when there was no return to the homeland for those newly enslaved, exhibits as hurricanes years later, is a lot to ponder. It is sad to ponder.

The consequence of the diaspora, perhaps theoretical, appearing as hurricanes continues the legacy of pain for the souls of the past and presents pain to those who live in the path of the hurricanes.

The good, the bad, the ugly

2004-09-09T18:43:00.000-04:00

I've returned to work. I did so on Tuesday refreshed from my vacation, and happy to be back in my hometown. Whenever I return to NYC after being abroad I always have a new found appreciation for all that it offers. The shopping, the museums, the cultural differences the populations exemplify, etc., are the many things that I appreciate more upon my return. I thought of this as I dressed for work and on my way to the #4 train for my trek into The City from my Bronx apartment. I was on the train reveling in post-vacation exuberance when this woman comes from another car of the train, bangs the door between the two cars shut, and proceeds to scream that she is hungry and wants all the occupants of this particular car to give her money so that she can buy food to feed herself because she may kill herself because SHE was stressed and in a situation. What were supposed to be the whites of her eyes were the color of brown paper bags and she looked like a life long crack user. Everyone's attitudes and thought processes on the train car shifted from individuality into a singular thought process simultaneously, and it blared "I'm not giving you jack," and she was stared down as she walked through the car, individually and quietly asking people to give her money. None complied with her request. She skipped asking me completely when in my vicinity as I guess my vibe was completely readable. The vibe I exuded was,"I have 3 children, and if I can work a penny ante job, so can you." I was very much a NY'er at that moment. I was back.

There was a flood in NYC that rendered much of the transit system immobile. The remnants of the hurricane that hit Florida wrecked NYC trains, and many NY'ers commutes of 45 minutes to their jobs turned into 2 or 3 hours. It always amazes me that the transit system of NYC shuts down when a little flooding and/or snow happens in its areas, but a man can be sent to the moon. The news media reported the many squabbles and murders that have happened in the week of my return to work, and I am amazed at the escalating violence that NY always seems to have. These events, some publicized and some that happened in my own little world, are a welcoming factor as they introduce me to my world of NYC. There is much good, there is much bad, and there is certainly much ugly. But I am happy to be back in NYC. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Vacation

2004-08-31T14:02:00.000-04:00

Vacations have always been an awakening for me. They are the thing that allows me to be adventurous. My vacation following the steps of Hannibal The Conqueror through Tunisia, Africa and Sicily, Italy did all of those things for me. I traveled alone to prove to myself that I can be adventurous and independent, though when on the plane, I felt scared witless at the thought of being alone in a foreign country. I am happy that I got through the feelings of being scared and went forth and had such a good time. I find also that my vacations always validate my notions that people are OK. When I arrived in these foreign countries, I've met up with the most glorious people.

I don't people watch when I am home in NY. Who has the time to do that; certainly I don't. I rush to get the kids ready and off to school, to get ready to go to work, to get to the train, to get as much work done during a 9 1/2 hour day, to clean the house, to do life. I would love to leisurely watch how people tick by watching them, clandestinely, perhaps by sitting on the steps of a plaza of an office building or on the stoop of a residential building, during the hours of their life when they are up and about. I can't do that when I am home as I am a part of that hustle and bustle that is NY. Sometimes in my travels throughout the city I catch people who are obviously tourists visiting NY looking at me and others who pass them, with respectful curiosity. This happens often when I and many others disembark from the train station in The Wall Street area of NYC. Many of us stream by, rushing to get to our ultimate destinations, some jobs, some The Staten Island Ferry, and we pass the out of towners who have lined up, triple deep in a line half a block long, to take the double decker buses to ride through The City on a Tour. And the feel of the curious eyes looking at you, sizing you up as you rush by, with a wondering element, some discreetly viewing you as you pass by, some just bodaciously staring. When this first happened to me, someone looking at me, who was standing in line, it was a little weird, and I had a NY moment internally. To paraphrase, and clean up the language, I said to myself "Why are these people looking at me and the others who are coming out of the train station like we're an exhibit in a museum." After several hundred times of this particular occurrence, I now often ignore the stares as I have been able to answer my internal question. Many disembark from the train literally running at break-neck speed so that they can reach the ferry for the next one is 30 minutes away. These running NY'ers are young and old people, women and men alike. Others get off the train with looks of pure dread as it is another work day. Some have pleasant looks. The others who are getting off the train and are not running for a ferry are often a close second in their pace as they are often rushing to arrive to work on time. I gather that to those who are waiting for a tour of NY and see the unbelievable amount of packs of people who come out of a small hole in the ground in intervals, scurrying in hundreds of directions, each pack bigger than the other, we are a curious bunch. I understand that these tourist see in each of the faces and the clothes and the actions connected to it a story. I often notice the respectfulness in their gaze. They see the construction worker, dirty from head to toe with dust, rushing to get to the ferry to get home, and right behind him a man in an Armani suit, clean as a whistle, on a cell phone, talking of a deal he's just left that resulted in millions of dollars for all involved. Each person getting off the train has their own way of dressing, their own body language, and their own way of presenting themselves to the world. Rich, poor, middle-class, and working poor people who were together moments before, packed like sardines, breathing in each others' breathes, and are now released from the subway and are scurrying to their destinations. And it is all so very interesting to watch.

When I arrived in Africa and Italy, I was able to do what those curious tourist of NY have done. I people watched as I had the time to do so. I wached discreetly and respectfully. I watched the ebb and flow of people in Tunisia, many poor, scurrying to work. Some walking long distances, some trying to hitchhike, many riding scooters long distances. The women elegantly riding scooters who managed though they had on head wraps and long flowing skirts, true to the religion they practice. I watched the people of Sicily, farmers and people in the metropolitan areas, hardworkers in the farm fields and in offices buildings. The farmers in dirty overalls and the metropolitan workers styling in fabulous fashions. All reminded me of the hustle and bustle of NY. All seem to have a common thread, and that is working and doing so with a dignity that is prevalent throughout the world. People who get up and go to work, some not happy, and that is evident from their stern countenances, but they go. I thought about the possible stories behind their faces. Are they content with their jobs? Are they content with their lives? I look at their dress and try to pinpoint how much they make in a week, in a year. Are they able to take vacations to far away lands? Will they ever come to NY to vacation? If they come to NY would it not just be for vacation, but to stay to forge a life, as many when hearing I'm from NY state they would like to live there. None in Tunisia speak of vacationing in NY. They speak of it as a place they wish to live as life in Tunisia is hard. Some in Sicily say the same thing.

I take from my people watching abroad and my limited conversations with some of these persons that all have it tough throughout the world. People watching allows you a window into people's worlds and they are no different than mine. To people watch in other countries is to gain perspective on peoples situations in a different context. The sights are different. The edifices and landscape are vastly different from America. I saw a lot of antiquities. Ancient temples that existed before Christ. I walked lands during my vacation that have been walked by people for thousands and thousands of years. But the people that are there now are people similar to me. They are carving out a life the best way they can. Most with dignity and respect. People are OK. My people watching abroard reinforced my theory.

Screamed On

2004-08-07T08:42:00.000-04:00

On Friday, I had an appointment with an optometrist and was the first patient to arrive. When entering the office I encountered the optometrist who greeted me and said when his administrative staff arrived they would do my paperwork so that I may be seen by him, but until that time I should sit and wait as he was the first to arrive to the office. I did so gladly. After a few minutes another patient arrived. She sat and waited without comment to me. The doctor was no where to be found. The first administrative person for the doctor's office arrived shortly and proceeded to go behind the front desk. He looked me in the eye. The other patient went up to him, and started to tell him the reason for her being there, and they went into a discussion. After listening for 10 seconds, I asked all in the room if I were invisible, and the administrative assistant looked at me as I continued with telling him that the patient who was speaking to him was rude as she knew I was there before her, and he was equally if not more rude, to have not greeted us both, and then asked who was to be seen first. He apologized quickly, the rude woman did not, but stepped out of my way, and I proceeded to the front desk and had my paperwork done, and was seen by the optometrist. I reflected on the event as one that was abnormal and consisting of rude people.

I then got ready for my second shift job and arrived ready to work with a good attitude. By 11:20 PM I was being screamed at by a custodian in front of my staff. The incident was very upsetting.

My job is in The Wall Street area on NYC and it is open from 8:00 AM until 12:00 PM during the weekdays. My department's floors, the ones that aren't carpeted, were to be stripped and waxed, unbeknownst to those of us who work at night, during the night shift. There seemed to be no procedure for doing the floors as access to our lunch room and bathrooms was not allowed. Those of us who overlooked the staff were not informed that this process would happen and in addition, that access to the bathroom and lunch room would be denied for 4 hours. Management, I among them, tried to calm the staff who complained of being treat like sweat shop workers just a quarter mile away from the Statue of Liberty and the irony of such during this situation. We managed to calm them down, and talked to the custodial staff who we told had to have the floors back to a place that would allow our staff to walk upon without someone slipping between the times of 11:00 and 11:30 PM as we needed to have staff clock-out and use the facilities and then have them leave the building. We were greeted with a negative attitude from the custodial staff, but they were told they had no choice as it was unacceptable that we were not told before hand that things such as water and bathroom facilities would not be available for 4 hours, and that as such, they had to make these things available for a least some minutes as we were human beings deserving of respect. They grudgingly obliged verbally. Many of us in management felt we were allowing the custodial staff more latitude than they deserved, I among them, as they had not followed any procedures when buffing the floors that would have allowed a measure of dignity for the workers in them having, at least, minimal access to bathrooms and libation. But all in management tried to make the best of a terrible situation by not being argumentative with the custodial staff in front of the subordinates that we supervise.

11:00 PM arrived and many ran to the bathroom and lunch room for the much needed breaks. I, at 11:20 also took the opportunity to use the facilities and encountered a wet floor that had a gloss like substance on it. I gingerly took two steps on my heels and entered the bathroom. When I came out a custodian was standing in the only doorway by which I could use to get back to my desk, and he was screaming at the top of his lungs, "What did I say!!!! What did I say!!!" while clapping his hands on every syllable. I could not believe I was being spoken to in such a disrespectful manner. I blinked with rage while I stood in the doorway of the bathroom and was thinking to myself how I was going to get away from this guy who was standing in the only exit. A co-worker pushed him out of the way and stood in front of him and beckoned me to take her hand while I navigated the two steps across the slippery hallway. While we were doing that, the custodian continued to scream, while she and I passed him through the narrow doorway, in our ears, and he was joined by others in the custodian staff in screaming admonishments to me for stepping on a floor that we were told would be dry. I was internally counting to ten as I thought I would explode with rage at being addressed that way. I needed to get away from the initiator of the verbal attack as I thought I would attack him with my fists. By that time the two others of the management staff arrived and were verbalizing their amazement at the custodians' disregard for etiquette when dealing with people. The initiator and another custodian responded to the managers' statement with the question of who was in charge. They wanted to know who was the senior manager on the floor, to which everyone pointed to me. I then saw the fear in the custodians' eyes. It was an "Uh Oh" moment. I unleashed, in my most Kings English verbiage, that should I not receive an apology in the next 60 seconds I would be in their boss' office bright an early on Monday, and give him or her an earful as to the mistreatment I and my staff had received, in particular me, as I was screamed at for daring to use a bathroom that I had been denied access to for 4 hours. I got my apology several times. Certainly it was not heartfelt, but rather, given, out of fear.

Many times when I encounter people who think it is OK to be rude and disrespectful to me, it is a person that does not see me. I am invisible to them and as such can be treated disrespectful. I am invisible in that I am a person who, in their mind, cannot bring forth repercussions for their rudeness. If I am screamed at or ignored I will not do anything that will bring about any consequences. I am thought of as a powerless. I am a woman. I am African-American. And I am therefore thought of as powerless. I am not thought of as a person deserving of respect. I am not thought of as an African-American woman who should be respected because I am a human being. I, when subjected to episodes like the two I had on Friday, was reminded of the imbecilic thought process of some that I encounter in my everyday life. I try to fight this inconceivable notion that I am invisible, and it is always hard. Usually, when I speak to them and sprout the words that tell them I will not tolerate disrespect or they find out that I am in a management position on my job, they acquiesce and become respectful, but not because they see the error of their ways, but because they are fearful of the consequences I may bring to them.

It is not comforting that I get respect after such incidents because of fear, as the most desirable respect would come about because the person noted the error of their ways, re-focused, and began to act appropriately. But I will take the respect however I get it. I just hope the next time all concerned will deal with the next person respectfully because they are deserving of such. The respect will come forth because they are a person who rightfully derserves it. I am forever hopeful.

Foundation of Contentment

2004-08-05T18:05:00.000-04:00

I take vacation once a year. I always try to go by myself to a far away place, enjoy the sights, and think of myself as an adventurer, so that I may come back to my world rejuvenated. I save all year and sometimes do so by cutting corners with the family finances. I, when my children were younger, would often give all that I had to my family. If something was needed for my children that might break the family budget, I would juggle with it, cut corners, and get whatever it was I thought they needed via my not getting things that I needed. Retrospectively often what I thought was direly needed for my children was not that important. But in order to do what I thought was the right thing, to sacrifice to get them whatever it was I thought they needed, I would sometimes skip getting my hair done, not buy shoes or clothes, etc. I did these things thinking that's what a mother does for her family. I was proud of it, but had lingering doubts about my actions. I thought that struggling was a distinction particular to mothers. I thought mothers do all that they can for their families to the detriment of themselves, but when I sacrificed that way for my family, I was uncomfortable with the dissatisfied feeling I was often left with inside.

When will the sacrificing end? When will the bills that require sacrifices cease to be insurmountable? Bills never stop coming, and sacrifices will always be a way of life for those with responsibilities. But how does one do these things, pay the bills and fulfill responsibilities, without feeling drained and subjugated? I realized that I must put myself first. I must take care of my needs, and not feel guilty about doing so, so that I may be satisfied with my lot in life, and then, from that foundation of satisfaction, diligently take care of my family and do so with sacrifices, if necessary. It was a hard life lesson to learn as I was always given the message through media and family members that having a family meant forfeiting many things that you normally buy and do for yourself for the good of your family. There was never a qualifier for that message of sacrifice. The message was never tempered with the caveat that one has to work this life from a foundation of happiness. If a caretaker is not happy with their life, how is it possible for them to do the things that make others close to them happy?

Trips on airplanes strengthens my resolve to look out for my happiness first and foremost. When taking my first airplane ride many years ago, I was impressed by the strategies of survival given to me and the other passengers on the plane by the stewardess on what one must do if the plane should decompress, particularly the strategy given to people traveling with children. If a person is with a child, they are instructed to place the oxygen mask that drops before them over their mouths securely, first, and then place the oxygen mask of the child they are with over that child's mouth, secondly. I have applied this strategy to my life fully. From this strategy I am resolved to be supportive of my interests so that I can be supportive to my family members and their interests. I am determined to pursue those interests that make me happy so that I will feel rewarded which will then allow me to be comfortable in seeking and supporting rewarding pursuits for my family members. One cannot give support to others if one cannot support themselves. If one cannot help themselves how can one help someone else? Can one make others happy if one is not happy?

So when I go on my next vacation, and I hear the instructions on the plane for caretakers to take care of themselves first so that they can then take care of their children, I will smile as I have applied this strategy of surviving the decompression of a plane as a strategy to survive life. Because I have adhered to this strategy of making sure I am happy, I will be going on vacation that I have whittled from my tight family budget, and I hope that I will return from my vacation content. I try to always remember to value my happiness with the hopes that in doing so I will be able to do the best for those closest to me because I am content. If I love myself, I can love others. If I am happy with my life, I will try to do things for those close to me that will make them happy. I can make sacrifices for my family because I will do so from a foundation of contentment. And because I am content, I will be at my best to try to do all the things that are good for my family. I will make sacrifices for them without resentment because I have made certain that I am happy and at peace with myself.

Hannibal The Conqueror

2004-07-31T17:41:00.000-04:00

Hannibal The conqueror has always intrigued me, and I am about to take a vacation to follow in his footsteps. I look forward to it as I have pursued many travels to follow and investigate the history of people and places I have admired. Nelson Mandela of South Africa and the Pharaohs of Egypt and the paintings of France have all intrigued me and I have traveled to their lands to try to understand what would foster such beauty.

I am looking forward to being in Tunisia, Africa and Palermo, Italy as they are the lands Hannibal traveled when questing to overthrow a land.

I desperately need a vacation from the life I live here in NYC. It has been exactly a year since my last vacation of sightseeing in South Africa. I am always nervous when going on a trip as I don't know what to expect. It is a good type of nerves as it is one that is anticipating the discoveries of lands I never imagines I would reach as a girl. I hoped to reach them, but thought that it wouldn't happen. Of late, I got that attitude out of my mind and went on my own quest to visit these lands I dreamed of as a child. I also vowed to do these explorations on my own, with no one to accompany me, as that adds to the exhilaration of discovery. I was able to travel great distances and did it alone. On my travels I have met many women who are also traveling alone to these far off places. And we give each other a knowing look. We did it on our own. It is often that friends are asked to accompany such woman on these trips but many excuses are made, some viable and some just make you scratch your head. What is one to do when all who are asked do not want to make the effort to go on a monumental excursion? Do you stay home and hope next year or the next decade is the time when said friend or other friends or family members will go with you or do you take the plunge and do for yourself? I say go for it, and go for it I have.

I am nervous and I am happy to be nervous because I have achieved a dream. I have reached a goal. I'm already thinking about next year's travel. So here's to rejuvenating experiences and here's to achievements!

Aug. 28th I return to The States for more vacation (downtime at home with the family), and then to work September 7th and the dichotomy of my life.

Voting

2004-07-29T22:47:00.000-04:00

The Democratic Convention is happening in Boston and I am not as excited as I usually am at the prospect of voting for a new President of The United States. When I was 15 I attended a camp for girls of that age who were elected to attend from schools throughout the state of NY because they displayed leadership qualities. We were thought to be the best of the best. The camp was located in Albany and I had to travel from my home to 42nd Street and Vanderbilt to get on a chartered bus that would take me to upstate NY. Me and about 30 other young women were driven to SUNY Purchase University Campus, and it is at this site that I learned about the electoral process of running a government. There were about 350 girls from all over NY State and I was one of about 10 from the NYC area. It was a week that lives on in my mind as it invigorated me into believing in government as a tool that can bring about change. The camp's duration was a week, and during that time we were taught how a state government and electoral process was run. It was interesting to all who attended and allowed for camaraderie between girls from vastly different cultures. Most of the young women I encountered were very nice and accepting of the vastly different cultures of the people the met, and for some, I gathered, it was their first time encountering cultures of people different than their own. One of my experiences at this camp was not my first encounter with racism. I was asked were I was from by an upstate NY young woman, and when I replied NYC she further inquired what part, and when I told her Harlem she stated I didn't act like someone from Harlem. I asked incredulously how is one from Harlem supposed to act. She blushed, and I just stared at her and blinked in anger, and then I just turned and left the area. Mario Cuomo, the then Governor of New York State came to the camp and gave a rousing speech on the electoral process of NY State and his commitment to it and the young ladies he was addressing. He admonished us to become a part of the process by believing in the system as he, the son of an Italian immigrant, had. He beat racism by being a part of the system. He talked powerfully of being thought as less than because of his heritage, and beating the odds to become the person he was before us: an elected official who could go on to being The President of The United States. He changed the system and the government with his being a part of the process. He voted at eighteen and got involved with the political process. And he wanted us to do the same. His speech really awakened a light, a fire, a torch, in me, and I have never forgotten his words. I and everyone else in that auditorium gave him a standing ovation at the conclusion of his speech. During that week not only did I learn about the running of a government, but how to deal with persons diplomatically. It was a camp that I profited from because I took so much from it. It allowed me to learn about the electoral process we, as American, hold so dear to us, and exposed me to its mechanics. I learned from that experience to appreciated and respect the process of government. And to utilize it for change.

I remember when I turned 18 I was so excited and dutifully cast my first vote. I envisioned things changing because I and many other had cast our votes and we would be heard. Some 20 years later, I don't believe the theory has not panned out, and things seemed to have not changed. Nothing has changed. I was driven home a few night ago by a co-worker who has a nice car. It was not late and there were many people outside as it was a warm summer night. When we pulled up in front of my building, we noticed a police car had been following us for 20 feet, and was inputting the license of the car we were in into their on board computer. The people on the sidewalk and we the occupants of the car went into high alert. I departed from the car and my co-worker departed from the street leaving behind the cruser. I stopped in front of my building with some of the older neighbors of my building who discussed with me, perplexed, why the police were not out and about looking for real criminals and instead were bothering two women who work six days a week, who were not criminals, but were profiled as such because they were in a nice car. I knew that something is wrong with the system, and it has been for a long time. Many nights when walking home from the train I see all kinds of crimes being committed in my neighborhood such as the sale of drugs, prostitution, etc, but I often don't see the police who could stop such things from happening when I am forced to witness such indignities. Crime has been a persistent element in my neighborhood. It has ebbed and flowed, but essentially I have seen the same conditions in my neighborhood. Many who are more knowledgeable in the undercurrent of crime say there is much more crime than I will ever know going on in my neighborhood as I am someone who does not mix with that type of crowd, and that should I ever know the extent of the crime involved, I would be shocked. Much of this crime grows from people who are disillusioned, unemployable, and without hope. I do not condone the actions of the person committing these crimes because of the qualities of their lives. I do however understand that much has not happened to make people more hopeful.

Many are doubled and tripled up in apartments. It is common to have three families, many inter-related, living in a two bedroom apartment, many short on food, and hope. The schools in my area are such that I take my children on a 12 mile trek to school in Manhattan as my Bronx schools are horribly inadequate. At one point because they were all too young to travel by themselves, it was a 4 hour round trip, every day 5 days a week, for me or their father to get our children to school. And we did this trek for 6 years.

I voted that first time, many years ago, to change these types of inadequacies: overpriced housing leading to tripling up of occupants, no jobs leading to people going hungry, taxes inappropriately assessed and distributed leading to underfunded schools. All of these inadequacies ultimately lead to people committing crimes. Is it right that someone that is poor commits crime to thwart the ill effect of not having money? No. However all can understand the origins of the thought that begat the crime. If people don't think they have hope, they will not do hopeful things. A person not believing in the greatness he was born with will try to snuff out that greatness in someone else. He will steal from his neighbor because he has no respect for anyone or anything. I voted that first time to change our government for the better. I voted that and many other times thereafter to bring about change of a flawed system. Today I am not enthusiastic about voting. The system has not brought about change, and there seems to be more despair. The system continues to be flawed.

My daughter asked recently if I will vote, and I told her I don't know. She was shocked and said that she knows I always vote. I replied that for the first time since I've been eligible to vote, I have thought perhaps I will not. Maybe I will take a pass this go around because the government and the power of its constituents that Mario Cuomo told me they have has not been witnessed by me. She said to me she wanted to learn how to vote and asked if I could take her with me to the booth when I voted. I agreed. I never thought those years ago at that camp, when I was filled with the spirit of citizenship, that I would ever be so disillusioned that I would not want to vote. I am surprised that I will only vote to show my daughter how to, and not foremost, to participate in the process of improving and changing the system. I want to pass on the torch of enthusiasm of citizenship to my daughter, and hopefully she can bring back the fire, as mine has diminished greatly.

World Trade

2004-07-27T16:54:00.000-04:00

September 11, 2001. The day of terror found me watching the news as I always do because I can't go back to sleep so quickly after the children go off to school and I see that a special report is on all the stations about a plane accidentally flying into one of The Towers. While I'm watching and the newscaster are having conversations that seem mindless, I see another plane plow into the other Tower, and the newscasters don't see that happen. I am stunned because I saw it, but think perhaps I didn't because no one on the news has mentioned it. It never occurred to me that it was a terrorist attack because it was stated that the initial plane's collision with the Tower was speculated to be accidental, but when I see the another fly into the other Tower I know it is a terrorist's attack. I am a typical New Yorker and worry about how this will affect me monetarily. Will I be able to go to work today or will they shut down? The Towers are less than a quarter mile from my job. I ponder how this tragic turn of events will affect me.

It is then that I call the job to ask if there will be a shift tonight, and I am told no, and that the building is being evacuated. I am not pleased because my check is not going to have overtime hours on it because of this. And then it happens before my eyes on the television screen. People are floating out of the windows of The Towers. What!!! My mind cries. They are stepping out, some quite dignified, as if they are taking another in a succession of steps on a sidewalk, but this step is in mid-air. One woman holds down her skirt when the air hits it and makes it balloon. She is modest when knowing she will die. These are people who have chosen to die this way. The planes have hit the floors below them, and they are trying to escape what I know must be hellish heat. What!!!!!! I can't believe my eyes and I am upset that I am seeing these images. I call a co-worker that works another part time job on 14th street during the day and works my night job with me and tell her the news that our job, her other job, will not be open, and we both commiserate about it screwing up our overtime, and then it happens. The first Tower collapses before my eyes on the screen and we both gasp on the phone.

There are sirens going all over my Bronx neighborhood and I surmise they are fire engines racing the 12 miles to downtown Manhattan with the hopes of helping out. What is going on! I just had lunch at the book store in Tower One. Every other Tuesday go to work early to get my check, make a quick U turn out of the office, cash my check, leisurely stroll over to The World Trade from the bank, go up to Borders Bookstore, get lunch, and because I have a whole paycheck in my pocket, fantasize about buying any and all of the books that I want, but usually don't because I am on a tight budget, but love the thought of the possibilities as this excursion to a fantasy land of books relaxes me and prepares me to deal with the world. And it is now gone as are many of the people who have occupy the Tower. Something is wrong with my world!

I think to myself that I have to get the children from school because stuff is not quite right with the world. I must have them close to me. My youngest is home with me. My other son's school was dismissed and he's coming home, but I must get my daughter. The trains are working uptown and I get to 116th street in Manhattan with no problems. I look across second avenue and am in sensory overload. I see down the hill about 20 blocks and on the horizon I see smoke and hear sirens. Is that smoke from the World Trade? Yes, I say to myself, it is. It has wafted uptown. The smell is indescribable. Acrid, plastic. I must get my daughter. She is the only child in her class as other parents have picked up their children. She is somewhat oblivious to the tragic events taking place, and is helping her teacher clean up the classroom. We walk to the train, and she asks about the plume of smoke she sees downtown and I tell her the truth. We are both quiet. We board the #6 and connect to the #4. The trains uptown are still working well in the uptown area and arriving home is effortless, but I am weighed down by what I have seen on TV. When I get home, my son had arrived before me and is safe. Hubby gets home shortly after and my immediate world is safe and correct. All the most important people are with me in the place I call home, and this bolster me into a state that allows me to think about the tragic events that have happened.

I know one of my best friends works across from the WT and her boyfriend works in it at The Mercantile Exchange. I worry about them, but know, in my heart, that they both, upon hearing the first plane hit, would have left immediately. I talked to her that night and she is calm and we discuss that she and her boyfriend are safe. We discuss the enormity of what has happened and I tell her I am glad she and her boyfriend are safe.

Some days after the attack I tell her I am having horrible nightmares, and can't understand why? I was not in the midst of the destruction. I was home. Why am I acting this way? It seems so ridiculous. She, in her wisdom, tells me that I have watched many minutes, hours, of people perishing. I have seen horrific events unfold before my eyes. I have heard terrorist's acts unfold and take down an entity that I visited regularly since I was a child; it is an edifice that my mother and friend's mothers have worked in. I have dined in Windows on The World several times and remembered it as the place where I have had some of the most exhilarating dining experiences of my life, and now it is gone, and in a so horrific way, in a terrorists way. My friend then told me of her experiences that day. She told me she heard the first plane hit, and not knowing what to do. And of people at her job debating what to do. Some were arrogant, and upon learning that a plane had flown into a Tower they stated that everyone should go back to work because nothing else would happen. At that point she knew she should leave because she thought to herself that those were the statements of arrogant people. How can anyone know what will happen to a building that has had an airplane flown into it? Those who utterred the statement were not engineers. They had no more knowledge of the situation than she did, and she relied on her common sense, and that propelled her to get her purse and walk out the door. Many of her co-workers joined her. When they hit the plaza in front of her office building located a block away from The World Trade the first Tower came down, and a cloud of white debris came their way. It was a massive cloud that was floors high. They tried to run inside, to the lobby of their building, but were blinded. My friend recalled her falling a few steps after she started running and she joked with me that she would never laugh at movies that have the stereotypical white-girl-falling-after-taking-a-few-running-steps-from-danger scene again because she did just that when she saw that dangerous cloud coming her way. The Cloud. It was a cloud that she knew was the building once known as a Tower of The World Trade Center. It was now descending upon her and enveloping her with its debris. And as she was speaking to me she knew it was a cloud that contained all that was a building and its occupants. The cloud consisted of many things, including people, pulverized, and my friend shuddereds. This cloud of people, machinery, asbestos, computers, insulation, came upon her and she tasted it, them, breathed it, and them, and had it, them, embedded in her skin. As she layed on the ground, after attempting to run, for a split second, she looked for her shoe that she lost, desperately, by feeling the ground she could not see, and when she finally got up and moved to the lobby door, she could only do so from memory as she could not see more than a foot in front of her.

She was covered in debris when finally she reached a seat in which to sit. My friend was completely white from the debris that was The World Trade Center, and its content, and its occupants. Her co-workers, her friends, tried to brush off the debris from my friend desperately. One friend obsessively kept saying, "We have to get this off of you," and worked her way over every inch of my friend's exposed skin with a water-soaked napkin to wipe away the debris. My friend expressed her gratitude to that woman as it served as a loving testament of her and her co-workers coming together to help each other. Her story continued as she relayed her boyfriends experience of 9/11 and having his supiors say to him that he was silly to leave The World Trade as terrorist had not been able to take the buildings down in 1993, so they would not be able to do it in 2001. The logic was totally and inconceivably stupid, and he left the building. When walking away from the structure he heard large bangs on the atrium ceiling he was walking under and saw bodies hitting the glass structure that made up this ceiling. These were the bodies of those who chose to jump out of windows. It was unbelievable. He walked over a 100 blocks to get home to the Bronx.

None of us, the four mentioned in this story, received professional counseling. All have been counseled by the conversations we have had with friends who talk of the experience of being in NYC 9/11 openly and honestly. We talk of returning to work under deplorable conditions, I in Jersey City, New Jersey. I remember being able to see The Winter Gardens, the gateway to The World Trade for many, directly across the river from my job's Jersey office, and see it illuminated at night, ominously, with clouds of smoke from the still simmering fires two and three weeks after the attacks, and breath in the putrid air that drifts all the way to Jersey. My friend, who goes to work too soon, as ordered, 2 weeks after the attacks, across from what was The World Trade, knows that the air quality is unsafe, and that the headaches she's getting as she works are from breathing in the acrid air, but she continues to work, because she needs a paycheck. I, and many of the workers of the area continue to work. My job opens up its main office, and I go there that first night with an eerie feeling. There is no bustling on Wall Street, it is somber. There is an acrid smell in the air for over 2 months. A smell of computers and of foulness. But we all continue to go to work because we have to.

I walk to the bank were I usually cash my check shortly after my job has opened up its main site and allowed its workers to return. This is the bank located a short distance from The World Trade in which Borders Book Store was located. I would go there after cashing my check to luxuriate in the knowledge of books but now can't because it is gone. When leaving the bank that first time I try to walk the short distance to what was the World Trade to see the pit that was once its foundation. I cannot do it. I, to this very day, have never gone to that pit. I've never liked going to cemeteries.

These memories will live on in me and others who experienced 9/11 from different perspectives as New Yorkers.

Dichotomy

2004-07-26T19:26:00.000-04:00

I awaken on Monday morning, and think to myself, "Another week of the job. Gee, I can't wait 'til vacation." And then I put my game face on, preparing for the day to come. I have many hours to prepare as I work at night, so the process is purposefully slow. I mingle with the children as we scurry through the neighborhood buying groceries, going to the park, and coming home to wait for the arrival of their Father. And then it's on.  I must prepare for work.

I must remember to change my tone of voice as during today, and all other days, I have had occasion to scream at my children so that they will get in line and act right. So I must change the tonality of my voice to fit in with the corporate structure I am about to encounter. I have often been told that I am quiet at work and it is assumed from this that I must be a quiet person. Should my family ever have someone state to them that I am thought of as a quiet person on my job they will laugh and ask again for the name of the person described as quiet and reply that though the name may match the matriarch of their family, the description of her is the opposite of what she is at home.

I must also remember during my preparation for work that I must quicken my step.  During my leisurely pursuits through my Bronx neighborhood with my children my pace is quite slow as I am not hurried. Upon leaving the train station in The Wall street area where my job is located, should I not quicken my step to break-neck speed upon exiting the train I will surely be trampled as all who are there move lightening quick.   I must also prepare to be more than cordial with all of those that I encounter as I must pose the obligatory question of how everyone's' weekend was and answer the returned obligatory question of how was my weekend with a jovial response. Many whom I work with are persons that I would not think of being friends with outside of work. However, while I am in the work place I must act cordially.

My life at home and my life at work are dichotomous. One must make a living and be a productive part of society. And one must make a life outside of the job that is true to the person. That life outside the job is the most important aspect of a person. A person's private life is paramount to all else. I am a woman who loves family and that is evidenced in my private life. The job that I have provides for me and my family and our lifestyle. It is a subdivision of my life, but does not subjugate me. The job is a part of my life, but does not define me. What defines me is my private life. My changing while getting ready to go to work allows me to deal with the many things and people I will encounter during my pursuit of a livelihood.   It is about being an adult and getting my game face on. Being an adult sometimes requires acting and doing so helps me to deal with all aspects of my job.   However, I do look forward to taking a break from my acting and going on vacation.   And when returned from a rejuvenating vacation, I am ready for my next performance.

Contemplation

2004-07-24T17:51:00.000-04:00

This Saturday afternoon I sit and contemplate my view of The Statue of Liberty. I work directly across from her in The Wall Street area of NYC. The Statue of Liberty has persisted as a symbol of freedom for many throughout the ages.

I remember seeing The Lady of The Harbor and it having an impact on me like it had never before as a 16 year old shortly after moving out of my parents home. I worked in the Wall Street area also at that time, long ago. I, at that time, upon viewing the statue, knew that I was an adult at an age that many perceived me to be a child. I did not, at that age, look, act, talk or walk like a child. I had experienced so much negativity by the age of 16, much of that experience was shoved upon me by my parents, and it necessitated me getting away from them. And at that impactful viewing of The Statue of Liberty, when I realized I was on my own in the world, I knew I had to be an adult, and the viewing solidified my belief that I knew I would be up for the challenge. I knew that I had no adult to rely on (not that I had any to rely on when I was living at home) or to talk to. I was on my own for the long haul. Certainly I could not fare any worse in taking care of myself than my parents had done of taking care of me up until that point. I did not have a moment's trepidation during that time of upheaval as I knew nothing could befall me that would propel me back to my parents' home.

Suffice to say, I have not stepped foot in the house of my childhood but for one Christmas. I attribute my stubbornness in not returning often to my childhood home to prove the point that I could survive without returning to the place of my discontent. I could and did survive living without the support of those who were supposed to protect me.

Seeing the Statue of Liberty from my view point in Battery Park City on that day shortly after I left my parents home was a beautiful experience. I looked across the harbor and saw hope. The Lady of the Harbor represents a symbol as she is viewed by all who see her upon arrival from far away lands be they from the 1800's on ships pulling into ports or from airplanes as they circle to land at JFK airport in the 2000's. The Lady is a symbol of freedom to all who view her. She represents freedom from whatever oppressor has subjugated the person who gazes upon her. I viewed her in a similar way because she represents freedom to live without feeling frightened or neglected. The Statue of Liberty has represented throughout time the ability for one to make it despite the odds. I look at The Lady as I write these words some twenty years later and know that I beat all the odds

Harlem

2004-07-17T16:17:00.000-04:00

Harlem is the village that I grew up in. My Harlem is the town located in The City that never sleeps. My Harlem is the town that many did not want to live in. It was the town with abandoned buildings, nightly 4 alarm fires, and corners festooned with the walking dead. The walking dead were those hooked on heroin, and crack, who nodded and scratched on the many corners of Harlem. My enclave was a town not often visited by Whites who often only ventured into the region on their way to upstate NY or Conneticut via The Major Deegan, AKA I-87, traveling 65 miles an hour. I remember the simpler Harlem, the town that no one wanted to live in, but African-Americans did, and called it home. It is home to many who thrived and became the movers and shakers of the world despite some of the aspects of Harlem and because of a lot of the aspects of Harlem. It is the home that I grew up in that though it had its problems was and is the place I revere.

I remember a Harlem that when walking along your block, you were greeted by your elders who were quick to chastise if you were doing wrong, and as equally quick to praise if you were doing the right thing. The Village of my youth had me and friends going to The Rucker Tournament on 155th and eighth Avenue to see incredible B-Ball before it became commercial as there are now corporate signs everywhere at Rucker. My Sugar Hill Harlem was the one that had its yearly block party on Edgecombe that provided the obligatory politicians, shaking the hands of the elders of the block for votes, and the kids scurrying about, dancing to the the emerging hip-hop and rap music of the time that was being blasted from king size speakers, illegally getting juice from jerry-rigged public street lights. The children playing games, and swimming in monstrosity of the pool-on-wheels that was driven into the block every year, and clamored after and luxuriated in. The buildings of my Harlem are majestic and sturdy and many have been around since the turn of the century. Strivers Row, Morningside Heights, Sugar Hill and Riverside Drive are areas of Harlem that all have buildings that can remind persons of a Parisian, Holland or San Francisco Street as the architecture of buildings of Harlem are eclectic and many represent these regions of the world.

The Harlem of my youth is different from the one that is here now. The Harlem now has the Starbucks with $2.00 coffee Lattes, and a movie theatre right up the way, both on 125 Street, and owned by a prominent African-American Man and not like The Harlem of my years that had the vast majority of business in that area owned by jews that didn't and wouldn't want to live in the neighborhood they served. The Harlem of today's has jews and many other races of people that formerly would have never dreamed of living in Harlem clamoring to live in its enclaves as the drugs, and empty, burned out building, and nodding congregants have gone, and are replaced with buildings resplendent with opulence, and over-priced rents, and purchase prices.

My Harlem of old has been replaced by a new Harlem, and they mirror each other. Both are riddled with problems, and both have the problem of racism, unemployment, and inequities in housing. But throughout the history of Harlem are people who subsist as no one can as this place is populated with generations of native Harlemites that have proven their stock. The people of Harlem are people that regardless of change cherish the neighborhood of their birth, just as I do.

The Bronx

2004-07-15T22:24:00.000-04:00

I live in The Boggie Down Bronx. The Bronx. It is the only borough in New York City whose name is proceeded by the word "THE". Perhaps that word proceeds the name of the borough to signify its importance. The Bronx of the the 1980's was a place of transition. I first lived in The Bronx during this decade and it was ablaze. When riding the #4 elevated train and looking out at the charred edifices that once housed people of different ethnicities, I wondered about the landlords that most likely were the ones who set the buildings on fire so that they could collect insurance money.  How crazy is it that a human being could displace so many hundreds of people, and perhaps, should the evacuation of such building not go well, kill countless people because of a deliberately set blaze, all for a dollar. It happened many, many times. I had residents of my borough tell me that they slept with one eye open just in case they had to run from their home because they understood how lucrative the burning of an apartment building was to a landlord versus the renting of those same apartments.

Through that horrendous time of The Bronx its residents and I subsisted, and better times have emerged. It is a new Bronx, one that embodies the many cultures that now occupy it. Cambodians, Mexicans, Italians, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, West Indians, they are all here, loving and living in The Bronx.

When I now take my train ride on The #4 Train to get home to my apartment in The Bronx, I see the vast amount of construction of new buildings. There is such a boom of construction that it is hard to remember how bombed out The Bronx used to look.  Those of us who lived through those times called The Bronx "Beirut"

I am proud of my adopted borough and the way in which it has rebounded. It was always looked down upon. Once, when I was in Paris, France and a cab driver asked where I was from I replied that I lived in The Bronx, and he looked back at me and said that he knew there was a lot of killing in my town, and asked how could I live there and feel safe. I didn't know how to answer the question as I had never felt threatened my whole time of living there. No matter how rough times were, there was always a certain understanding amongst the small, small criminal element of my neighborhood of The Bronx, and the other, vast law-abiding citizenry of The Bronx. The understanding was that those who didn't do dirt should not get dirty. If one was not part of the life of crime, one should not become a victim of it.   So one would see the pimps and the other criminal elements on the various excursions through the neighborhood, but it often did not impinge upon you drastically. One knew the cops knew of the situation, and that it would be dealt with. And the other also knew that people are just trying to live, and to let them pass without incident.  Cohesiveness of the different elements of the neighborhood allowed all to exists peacefully.

The 2000's has proven for The Bronx to be the the century that has seen it flourish and prosper. Those that are residents of its majestic hills and valleys have seen its lows and now are proud of its highs.   The Boogie Down Bronx is worthy of its own Bronx Cheer. So here's to you, my beloved Bronx. You are revered and deserving, and I am proud to be a resident.

Even though you're Black, you're pretty

2004-07-10T11:21:00.000-04:00

I have been told by many that though I am black I am pretty. The statement alludes to the premise that to be African-American is to be ugly. So if you are pretty and African-American that occurrence is an abnormality.

This statement has been said to me by Whites and Blacks. Whites have often been thought of as a people that hold their beauty as the standard by which all other races are measured, and often the Black race doesn't even reach the bottom of their measuring stick. Within the AA race, conversely, they are often thought of as a people that measure beauty by the standards of Whites. Therefore, the lighter a AA, the more potential for them to be beautiful. I am a dark skinned AA, so I am, by the standards of the White and AA race, not beauty pageant material.

But, alas, I guess I must break the standard because I have been told often that though I am Black, I am pretty. When the statement comes from Whites it speaks to my race, as it seems no woman who is Black can be pretty. When the statement is made by an AA, they are speaking of the darkness of my skin and how its hue refutes the adage which laments that a lighter toned AA woman are automatically thought of as pretty because of their proximity in skin tone to Whiteness and those on the opposite end of the spectrum are automatically ugly because they look nothing like the ideal.

Whites often never think of Black woman as pretty or beautiful because AA woman throughout history have never had a mystique about them that encompassed beauty. AA woman were and continue to be thought of as animalistically sexual. There is nothing subliminal about them as woman. Prettiness and beauty are the subliminal aspects of sexuality. Pure and animal sexuality can be applied to the ugliest of things as it raw and ostentatious - the opposite of subliminal. And for Blacks to think of woman of their race as beautiful is to think they are similar to those they think epitomize the standard of beauty - white woman - and to do so eliminates their darker hued sisters who are therefore closed out of the definition for beauty.

So should I consider myself lucky to be an exception to the rule of beauty as applied by many? No, I consider myself unlucky because that statement, "Even though you're Black, you're pretty", is a testament to how little we have progressed racially. I shake my head because such an ignorant statement speaks volumes as to how far we have to go.

Respite

2004-07-09T19:33:00.000-04:00

I love to lounge. I love to lounge so that I may think of all the possibilities of my life. I hate that I am unable to lounge often because of my work and life schedule. The job and bills that need to be paid require that I work 6 days a week. Three kids and a significant other and home life require all the rest of my time somewhat. So it is not often that I have the luxury of respite.

When I go on vacation I often do so by myself. I go to very far off lands to get away from the stresses of home. My last vacation was South Africa, and I was very relaxed on the trip because of the sights I took in, and because of the needed rest that I got when staying in luxurious hotels. Room service also provided for a respite from the constant cooking I seem to do. To have someone else cook and serve food to me was and is heaven.

I am able to contemplate thoughts when I am on vacation that cannot easily enter my mind when I am in my everyday life. Lounging during vacation is obligatory, however during regular life it is almost impossible. Respite allows me to conjure, think clearly, reminisce, daydream, and set goals. It is a rejuvenating time. When I am not able to pause, to rejuvenate, I am frustrated. I know during the hectic times when I am unable to get a quiet moment I may be losing precious thoughts that could have been captured and turned into realities. These thoughts are the seeds for my becoming a better person, mother, and friend.

Respite is what I need to re-group and become better person. I must always be on the path for becoming a better person and must carve out a niche that allows for pausing. Lounging rejuvenates my soul.

Loyalty of Siblings

2004-07-08T20:55:00.000-04:00

I look at my children and see a loyalty amongst them that is inexplicable. My daughter picks up her younger brother from school, and on one occasion I went to meet them at the train near the school. I was surprised at how she had such a hold on my son, leading him down a crowded NY Street by the hand with a very determined step, while he munched on an cherry icy, lagging behind her, happily enjoying the icy, unaware of his sister's determination in getting him home safely.

I look often at my children when they play together, and the way in which they help each other during play if one doesn't quite grasp a concept. I look and admire the cooperation they have with each other, and hope this cooperation can subsist throughout the coming years in a way that allows them to help each other when I and their Father are not around.

I also look at my children when they fight, and see that they are going for blood, and know that this intensity comes from the love they have for each other. To fight the ones you love is to fight with the knowledge that someone you deeply love has somehow betrayed you, and you are now fighting because of the betrayal. I also am witness to them picking themselves up after fighting, and hearing a few words of wisdom from their parents, and understanding that whatever resulted in fighting should not negate the love that they have for each other, but lead to an understanding that family can agree to disagree. My children are mastering that aspect of life and in doing so have a galvanizing loyalty to each other that is truly profound.

I am happy that my children are loyal to each other, and know that they have someone who is blood who will do whatever they need done for them should the need arise. Loyalty is important, and even more so, among family members as it is stronger because it is a synthesized loyalty grown from having DNA in common.

Because of the circumstances of my childhood should I have had siblings who'd have shown me the loyalty only siblings can provide, my path through childhood would have been somewhat easier. I am happy that my children will have that benefit.

Thankful

2004-07-03T08:14:00.000-04:00

I am thankful for all of my blessings. I often complain of not having enough money and love. I hate my job, hate my small apartment, hate my significant other, intermittently hate my children. I sometimes hate my whole life.

I look around and see those who don't have jobs, and think then that I am blessed to have a job. I look around and see those who are homeless, and am thankful that I own an apartment that provides shelter for me and my love ones. I see the father of my children who works at our relationship as best he can though I am unwilling sometimes to meet him half way, and the way that he provides for his children and me a homelife that is nourishing despite the grumpiness of all concerned, and I am thankful. My children come into focus as healthy and happy children sometimes caught in the throes of hormones and becoming young adults, and understand that the path to adulthood sometimes frustrates parents because it does not run straight and narrow, but is sometimes crooked, bumpy, beaten, uneven and frustrating to the parents who have to bear witness and suffer because of the course their children are taking. I do realize my children will come to the end of their paths as developed and mature adults and tell myself I am thankful they are up for the challenge.

I pity myself sometimes. I think of what my life would have been like if I had parents who were not children when they had me. I think of the vast possibilities I would have had if I was a child that was cared for properly by parents who loved their child. And then, when I snap out of self pity, I remember that my experiences as a child have molded me into the person that I am today. I am a person that knows I am deserving of goodness. I am a person that has accomplished many great things despite many early disadvantages and obstacles. I have a stable lifestyle that consist of a committed relationship with children, family and friends, home and job. I must always remember to be thankful for all that I have because I am blessed.

Abuse

2004-07-02T21:18:00.000-04:00

I was an abused child and at the the age of 37 still feel that I am being abused. My mother often calls me and I often do not return her messages upon receiving them as I know that when we talk she will say something abusive. I am an abused child though I am 37 year old.

I did not speak to my mother for a six years span. This occurrence happened because she, as usual, was being disrespectful and abusive, and at the age of sixteen, I had had enough. I would see her thereafter in the streets of Harlem and would walk by without speaking. I left her home and taught myself that it was not OK for someone to scream at and be abusive to me.

When my father died six year later my mother sent word of wanting to speak to me through family members. I debated about communicating with my mother and was told to do so by my significant other who, at that point in our relationship, did not know all of the circumstances of my leaving and not speaking to my mother. He now knows and regrets that I began speaking to my mother because he has had a taste of her nastiness. I also regret that I started communicating with my mother because it has proven to be disastrous.

She has used every opportunity up until recently to be verbally abusive, and has done so, often, when she is tipsy. She has also been somewhat manipulative. I have found out that many distant family members think because of my mother's lies that I have never left my childhood home and live there with my 3 children, and that I often do not have a job. She has created a persona of the sacrificing grandmother who has to take care of her inept daughter who has babies and can't take care of them nor herself. Her answering machine has three boxes in which persons can leave messages. Two are for her and one is for "The Kids". My mother lives alone, but this message on the answering machine would make anyone think children live with her. When I questioned her about it, she could not come up with a plausible answer.

My mother calls me on the phone, and when I pick it up she is often, without saying hello, screaming out demands. "What's the number for that thing we talked about?", I'll hear her screaming before I have even gotten the receiver to my ear. She is often at work when placing such calls and she is using her cell phone in her break room at her job, talking, if not screaming, loudly. She does all of that for effect. One effect is to let her co-workers think I am home during the day, and therefore do not have a job, giving the effect that I wasn't and couldn't be doing anything that had or would tire me, though I work during the night. Another, is to talk to me in such a way as to have those hearing think I am being bossed around by a person I am indebted to i.e., someone living with their mother with three children. Another is to make the request as if I was sitting around not doing anything useful and am at her beck and call. I will, when hearing the screaming requests, lay the receiver back in its cradle. She does not call back. My mother has stopped using that tactic.

I don't see my mother, and I do not call her because she is verbally abusive. It reminds me of my childhood, and I will not be forced to revisit my childhood. When I speak with her on the phone it is because she has called. I do not hesitate to hang up should the conversation becomes abusive. And my mother knows that, so of late she has been very careful. Her calls have been reduced to about 3 a month and there have been no hang-ups by me of late.

I would like to go back to the 6 years when I did not speak to her. The anticipation of abuse is as unnerving during a phone conversation as actual abuse. My mother will never change, and I know that as long as we have a relationship, her propensity for verbal and manipulative behavior will appear and I will be victimized by it. Eventually I will have to severe all contact as I did when I was younger because she is not worth the trouble and I value me. I am deserving of peace of mind.

Happy Everyday

2004-06-26T08:07:00.000-04:00

I was too tired last night to do the math to figure out how old I am. I stopped counting about 10 years ago. I remembered it was my birthday about 4:00 PM yesterday when I looked at the date. I said to myself that date looked so familiar, and then started laughing to myself when I occured to me that it was my birthday.

I am genuinely surprised I am on this earth each day, let alone each birthday. At 12 years old I didn't think I would make it to 16 because of the circumstances of my childhood and the chaotic and violent home my parents provided for me. I bet myself at twelve that I wouldn't make it because of my parents. I thought that no one would care to stop the violence they visited to me, and that when I was gone no one would care. Trust that at the age of twelve I wanted to live a long life and I fought with literally tooth and nail to stay alive. I know that my resistance to and returning of violence to those who put it upon me helped in diverting a lot more violence I knew would have been directed my way. I knew that should I have been complacent and accepting of beatings they would have come more frequently. I fought back like I was fighting for my life. And I was.

I am here at an age I envisioned but did not think I would reach. I fought for it to happen, and the fight was worth it. I am proud of my ability to overcome dire circumstances. I look back and know I created my own destiny. A birthday is a milestone to many, but every day lived to me is a milestone. It proves that I am a survivor. I am victorious in every day I live as my presence evidences that hard times can be overcome.

Happy Everyday to me!!!!!!

Crush

2004-06-25T21:54:00.000-04:00

I often have a crush on men that epitomize my ideal man. Vin Diesel does it for me in this moment in time. Nice brown skin (when he's tanned) killer body, deep deep voice. I swoon when I hear him speak. He fits my ideal of a handsome man.

When riding transit, to break up the 1 and a half hour round trip ride, I look at the occupants of my car, specifically those of the male persuasion and think of them as a potential mate. I glance nonchalantly and sum them up. Not tall, is a instant disqualifier. Big and brawny makes for 75% of the mark to a keeper for mate potential. I daydream about men, and think it strange as I have one at home.

Why do I daydream about men I would never approach, or meet, knowing instinctually there is a great possibility they would be idiots because they think more of themselves than anyone because they know they are pretty boys? Do I think of these strangers daily because I'm hot in the pants? Because I am bored? Essentially I do it because there is no harm and therefore no foul.

I love my man, and if I say so myself, he is quite the looker, and what attracted me to him was that he has a body like Vin Diesel, and a honey complexion, and light eyes and an incredible deep voice. All that he is all that I lust for when looking at the men on my trek to and from work.

Looking and lusting breaks up the monotony of my long train ride, and adds thrill to my day. I don't act upon it towards those strangers that I am looking at clandestinely. Only when I get home do I then act upon these glances by being somewhat aggressive with the Hubby because I have those thoughts I have had on the train. This adds spice to the love life in a voyeuristic way.

I like my glances for cute men as it allows me to daydream and create wonderful moments with the hubby. What's the harm in innocent voyeuristic dalliances. So, here's to more wonderful train rides with beautiful men to scope out.

Invoking the Spirit

2004-06-23T17:56:00.000-04:00

I want to evoke the spirit of family members who have been successful. So many in my family have been persons who are of no consequence. Drug addicts, thieves, prostitutes, liars, and thugs. I want to be like those in my family who are homeowners, college graduates, business people, dignified and beloved by their family. I strive for the success that they have achieved, and think of them all the time in trying to replicate all that they have done.

When my mother calls me I wonder often how I could have been born to such an evil, dysfunctional individual. I am saddened that her inability to be a good person has impacted on me in ways that repercussion throughout my life. I often wonder were it is that she got lost and did not want to emulate her forefathers, but instead, acts like a thug and wants to spread pain and misery to all who meet her. Or perhaps, she never had the desire to emulate her mother and all the other wonderful people in our family and just took after the element of the family that is bad.

I remember being told of the family member who graduated from Columbia University during the early 1900's. I also remember being told of and seeing the deeds to 100's of acres of land my Great-Great Grandfather purchased in the 1800's and left to his descendants and has provided a livelihood for some family members who sell timber and rent out camp grounds on this land. I think of my Grand-Aunt who is well into her 80's who had a stable marriage of over 50 years and purchased 2 homes in the suburbs of NY, one of which she and her husband rented out for over 30 years.

It is those family members that I wish to invoke spiritually. I want to replicate their success. I wish to be as poised and respected as they are and were. I want their dignified lives. Their lives have provided a road map upon which I want to travel. I admire them and wish their success for me. I hope they are looking at me and hearing my wanting of this success, and will guide me.

Boxes

2004-06-19T10:02:00.000-04:00

I am an African-American Adult Woman. Because of these facts, I feel that I am often treated like an inept woman. I have people that I work with, many of whom are subordinates, assume that I must lead a tragic life because I am African American, and therefore need their advice on how to make my life more endearing. I am often thought of as a quiet woman, and that further burdens me with the perception that because I am a minority who is quiet, I am ever the more tragic. Because I am not incessantly speaking of the things I do in my life must mean I do nothing in the time that I am not seen by the person who has this perception of me. These same people are certain that during the years before meeting them I could not have done anything worth merit as I do not brag of my accomplishments in those years prior, and as such, are shocked to learn of my being in a stable relationship for almost 20 years, homeowner for almost 25, married mother of 3 children, well educated and traveled.

I can only think that racism influences when those hearing me talk about my children assume I must be a single mother. I believe racism plays a big part when it is assumed I have never traveled, and that when hearing of my taking a vacation to Egypt assume I must be visiting relatives' homes (I am not Egyptian). Or ask incredulously how I got into a Ivy League School as though I couldn't have done so without a pistol to the head of admission unlike all other students who filled out an application and waited with baited breath for an answer. I have actually had people question if I was telling the truth about my attendance at an Ivy League School. Whenever it gets to the point of someone literally calling me a liar about my accomplishments, it is very upsetting.

Why must I be perceived negatively? Why are there any assumptions about any aspect of my life? Why if assumptions are made are they made negatively and not positively? Why can I not be perceived as the brightest woman ever who went to an Ivy league school, instead of thought as a stereotypical single Black female with 3 kids by different fathers.

I am proud of who I am, but perturbed by the general assumptions people make about me. These general assumptions are like boxes that you are placed in and locked in. The pity that often ensues is equally infuriating. These same people who though view me negatively think that I am worthy of their guidance in getting out of the quagmire of inaptitude because I do not "act" like the usual stereotype which is classified by the word "ghetto". And as such, am deserving of their help. It is often during this phase of trying to "help" me that they usually get screamed at by me because they have stated a misconception and assumption about me during their role-playing of savior of "The Poor Black Girl". I had one little boy, all of 28 years old, who seemed perpetually high off of some drug, tell me he felt like he was my father and wanted to give me career advice. One co-worker, a guy, who admitted to me some months earlier that he was a recovering heroin junkie and that during his active phase of addiction received welfare and sold food stamps to support his habit, told me that I should do something more endearing with my life. After calming myself down for two hours, he was reamed and raked over the coals for saying something so disrespectful to me, and doing so based on assumptions. This person knew nothing of my efforts and success in helping to establish two birthing centers in some of the poorest congressional districts in the US. These birthing centers are located in The South Bronx and The 5th Ward of DC. I did not tell him of my efforts and success in establishing these entities as I don't have to validate myself to anyone, especially a junkie. He was just told to never speak to me about what I should do with my life, keep his mouth shut, and to worry about his own life.

I am confident in my abilities, and I am confident in others inability to think of me as an able and adult human. Racism is at the core of people's inability to think of me as their equal or superior. I know that it is immature to think racism will disappear. But as long as those that perceive me negatively don't voice their racism to me I don't care about their thoughts of me. Words do hurt, and I will not be hurt verbally without returning fire with a dignified response.

Anonymous

2004-06-16T16:58:00.000-04:00

I live in NYC, and often seem to be looked upon as a non-entity. Many times I have stood on line to purchase items in a store, and upon getting to the counter I am looked through and beyond to the person behind me by the person at the register. This gesture seems to signify that they will help the person behind me. I am straightforward in telling the counter person that I am standing in front of them and that I was next in line to which they often act surprised.

Why does that happen every so often? Am I invisible? Or do some want me to be invisible? Perhaps they think if they treat me as such, I will cower and not say anything so that they can continue with their disrespect towards me?

But lo and behold, I speak up. And then I am no longer invisible, and the counter person snaps into an air of realization that they have a live one who will not be subversed into an abyss. And then I am served in the fashion to which I am accustomed, and have just trained that counter person in the art of treating me: with the ultimate respect.

I then take my purchase, and leave. I will often revisit events like this and contemplate why someone would be so nasty. Why would someone who didn't know me try to hurt my soul by being so blatantly disrespectful, and wonder what purpose does being disrespectful serve to their spirituality other than to diminish it?

But then I leave the thoughts as the events that made me contemplate are inexplicable other than to describe them as hate-filled, and leave it at that.

I am a person of worth and dignity and when hateful people sniff that out, they will try to chip away at what they see and want but can't have as they are evil and nasty. With these thoughts I can get through every day life. I am a person of worth and dignity.

Rage

2004-06-12T09:07:00.000-04:00

I read somewhere that depression is rage turned inward. I sometimes am depressed and I am sometimes filled with rage. Both emotions scare me as they epitomize my being out of control. I'm neither often, but when I am I fear the end results of these emotions. Will I lash out at the ones that I love? Will I crawl into myself and fester in a slumber or darkness. I worry about what these emotions will manifest.

I am able to contain both emotions, when they occur, so that they don't impact on anything or anyone other than myself. I have sought counseling when I was much younger to deal with these emotions and from my sessions of counseling have developed coping mechanism that allow me not to act in ways that are destructive. The coping mechanism allow me to understand that often things are not as bad as they seem, and should they be, they are surmount. I do not have to act enraged or turn that rage inward, turning it into depression.

I rage when I feel if I've been disrespect. As an African-American Woman living in a society that sees me automatically as inferior acts of disrespect happen daily. There are stupid comments based on assumptions such as, "It must be hard raising three children by yourself," when I've been in a stable relationship with the father of my children, my husband, for 18 years. Or, "You're so well spoken," which, like the aforementioned, is a comment that reeks of racism. I tell myself that those that have uttered such comment of racism are inferior in their thinking, and in no way are their comments a reflection of me. Their comments relay their perception of me, and their perception of me is viewed through the prism of racism. That type of perception is based on inherent racism. I don't react with rage nor do I acknowledge the act of racism other than to sometimes say to the person making the statement that they are racist. Sometimes I will just sigh inwardly and note internally to stay away from the person as they have proven themselves to be toxic and unworthy of my presence. It is at such times that I have to choose if I will act with rage and perhaps scream or hit the person who has brought it out in me or not, and in not letting out the rage, allow it to travel inward which ultimately leads to depression. Or I can release it from my being, in ways I've learned in counseling, without verbal or physical violence and know that I have dealt with an ignorant person justly, and leave it at that. I often choose not to rage and release whatever hurt the person has conjured.

With time has come maturity in dealing with the rage. I can reflect and know that I can deal with rage as it is usually a manifestation of my dealing with a situation of ignorance. My wanting to control my rage is paramount to me subsisting in the world and appreciating all that it has to offer.

Do I have to?

2004-06-11T00:17:00.000-04:00

It is so peculiar that I have to remind myself that I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. I have many in my life that scream the words to me, "You have to ....," And to them I say, of late, "I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do." To this reply I often get a perplexed look, and I then explain to them that because I am a grown woman, and pay my own bills, and am not their slave, I can do or not do anything.

Unfortunately, choosing to do what you want to do is a novel concept to many who live in our society as we have been trained to follow social norms such as kissing the over-perfumed aunt on the cheek during the holidays as a child though she terrified us. This is usually the start of doing things that you don't want to do.

I recall a particular incident of my childhood that was a pearl of wisdom in how to not let anyone push you around. My best friend's Grandparents drove her home from school every day, and because I lived on the way, they dropped me off near my home. My friend's Grandfather said to his wife in an agitated tone that she had to do something to which she responded that all she ever had to do in her lifetime was, "Be black and die." I pondered that statement. She was of a hue that would always obligate those who met her to know she was Black, as there would be no way for her to ever disguise her Blackness, and all humans must die someday. From this statement made that eventful day in that car I gathered that anything anyone does is their choice, always, and as such, they cannot be forced to do anything. One does not have to do anything, one can only choose to do something.

I remind myself of what my best friend's Grandmother said to her beloved. I knew she loved him dearly. I knew she would do anything for him. But from that conversation I knew that she chose to do things for him, that she chose to love him. Those things that she did for him were choices and not things that she had to do for him. They were things she did for him because she wanted to and not because she was his wife and therefore had to do. Whatever things that he told her she had to do was not going to get done because she reminded him that her choice was not to do it.

I recall that lesson that I learned as a child that all that we do consists of choices we have and will make. We can never be forced to do anything good or bad or indifferent. If I don't want to kiss my over-perfumed Aunt, I will simply say no. If someone asks me to help them move to another apartment, I will say no. I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do as I have choices. Choices are the root of what defines you. You choose to be moral or immoral person. You choose to do the wrong or right thing. No one forces you to do wrong things, if that's your inclination. Choices are the embodiment of what we are as a people.

Shopping

2004-06-07T17:24:00.000-04:00

Did you ever go shopping and find everything you need and have enough money to purchase these items?

This happened to me on Sunday. My son's birthday is on June 9th, and he asked that we get his presents before his birthday. He showed me exactly what he wanted, and I purchased them at the time. We had a nice time. He hugged me and thanked me for the gifts. I pretended to grunt at the expense, but was pleased I could provide all that my child requested of me for his birthday.

I read recently President Bush will be signing into legislation The Draft. The modern day Draft will allow The United States of America to draft boys and girls. I wondered about my sons and daughter and immediately thought of the possibility of a move to Canada.

Life is so good right now, and I seem to be getting a leg up on it. I hope this proposal of drafting United States Boys and Girls does not come to fruition as that would be problematic for me and many other families of The US.

War may be a necessary evil, but I did not sign up for it, nor did my children. No one ever fought for me so why should I send my children to fight for anyone else.

My time with my son on Sunday was precious and it holds memories that I will never forget. He is a good boy who is caring and has a good heart. I look forward to him growing up, and not to him or my other children entering into anyone's war.

Music

2004-06-07T17:17:00.000-04:00

I listen to music that moves me to tears. There are songs that I hear that help me to cleanse my soul. These songs help me to release all that ails me.

Angela Bofill, Patti LaBelle, Areatha, those are the singers that can help me to get ready to face the big bad world. I put on their cd's full blast and have a good cry. I release the anxiety and the hurt as their sons fortify me for the trip into Manhattan to a job that sometimes leaves me empty.

I have to do so much overtime to make ends meet as I do not make a living wage. In doing so, I am anxious that my superiors will question my long hours, and take them away from me, or worse fire me. There are constant bills that the money I make from overtime eats up. There are also every day regular problems with hubby, children, and just life in general.

So to hear a song that speaks to those problems, that tells me that all will be well allows me release, temporarily, but release none the less.

I can't help but think of the old adage, "Music soothes the savage beast." I feel like a savage as I work inhuman hours and worry astronomically about bills. The music I choose helps me to deal with these problems. I'm listening to Floetry as I write and I am soothed.

Now if I can get a way to get more overtime without living at my job.

DarkChild

2004-06-04T10:19:00.000-04:00

I have a deep chocolate complexion, and am often complimented on it. But sometimes, throughout my life, I have been discriminated against because of it.

I love my complexion as it is unusual in its deepness. I have not met many in The United States who have complexion as deep as mine. Most persons I've met who have complexion that are similar to mine are maternal family members or persons from Africa. As a child I was treated differently paternal family members because I was a dark skinned child. The treatment differed from those who were light skin in my paternal family. The light skinned children were told they were beautiful and much attention was showered on them while I and other dark skinned children of the family were often disregarded. We were thought of as less than the other, lighter children. We presented as less than because of the color of our skin. Strangers have treated me differently than my lighter skinned friends as my dark skin tone seems to conjure the thought process that I am bad, and predisposition to doing illegal things more so than a lighter skinned person. When friends and I have entered stores inevitably I am followed as I am suspected of stealing, but my companion is not, and the only difference between us is skin color. Lighter is better and darker is bad.

I have, through out my life, received many compliments about my skin color.  Many strangers have thought my complexion beautiful and said so to me. I am proud of my complexion, and have never wavered when the few that thought of it as a detriment voiced their opinion or treated me differently because of it.

I also have an unusually deep voice. I am often thought to be a man by those who talk to me on the phone, and often get, what I believe, is more respectful attention to the matters I am calling about from the person who thinks I am of the male persuasion. I am quite amused as I am in love with my voice and the richness and tone that it presents, and the misplaced respect that it garners. I have also been complimented on my voice by many.

My skin and my voice are rich and deep and allude to my ancestors of Africa. These two elements of my physicality represent who I am as a person, and connect me to my heritage. When I see footage of artists such as Paul Robeson, Odetta, and hear and see their deep, resonating voices and complexion and see pictures of Sojourner Truth, and Harriette Tubman with their deep complexion, I know that they are not far in descent in a lineage that started in Africa,  as the deepness of both skin and voice tone reflect the continent.

Though there are people who look at me and hear me and think my skin tone and voice do not represent beauty or feminine qualities, I know better. I am the embodiment of the continent from which my ancestors come. I am representative of the beauty that is that continent and its people.

Bragging

2004-06-04T08:51:00.000-04:00

Why is it that some think if you don't speak of all the things you do or have done in your life on a daily basis that you are not doing or have done anything?

I have a work environment that consists of people bragging of their plans of vacations and other extravagant purchases, children's accomplishments, expensive hobbies, and famous people that they are acquainted with. My co-workers also tell of everything they've done from the time they were born until the time they arrived at the job were they've met me, and of course, on that day of introduction started the bragging as to what they had done that day and bragged of what they planned to do in the future.

I am very private about my life as I don't think persons who are not family would be interested in my past, present, or future exploits. In fact, I know my family is not interested in my past, present or future exploits, but must listen to me wax on as we live in the same house and to escape my dialouges they have to leave the house. It gets cold outside, so they stay and listen. I know that they are incredibly bored when I talk about my future, past or present exploits because they tell me. Often. If a see a picture of Paris and I tell of how exciting it was when I was there, I often get a, "We know. We've heard the story 50 million times. Gosh." I get that they are bored with my stories, but their family and they simply have to put up with my repeated stories.

I would never torture a co-worker with such stories as I don't want to appear to be uncouth. If asked do I do a certain thing, such as travel, play a sport, partake in buying something expensive, etc. I then may talk of some of my expoits, but to mention such unsolicited is not appropriate. I know how I feel when someone comes up to me, and unsolicited, tells me of something that they have done. If it is a co-worker that I barely know I grin and bear it and am usually excited for them with the underlying question in my mind of, "Why did this person tell me about this and I don't usually talk to them, nor do they ask about me about what I do with my time?" It's situation like these when they arise make you ask those types of questions and when you answer them internally you come up with the solution: they are just braggining!

Those same people that brag conversely think that if you don't brag that yours is bigger than theirs you must not have or done anything. I once had someone give me a complete run down, unsolicited, of a European Trip. When I congratulated them on going, they then stated that when I finally got to Europe I would like it. I blinked for a moment as I was amazed that this person assumed that I had never been to Europe. Why not ask have if a person has been to Europe, and the conversation would continue from there based on the answer. This guy completely jumped over that logical step of asking a pertinent question that is viable to the interest of the conversation and skipped to acceptance of the impossibility of travel for the person to whom he was speaking. Suffice to say, he made an ass out of himself and I told him so as I have traveled to Europe many times.

Again, because I am often not asked personal question on my job as everyone understands that I am quite private, does not mean that I do not have accomplishments. My not speaking of my life lends itself to appropriateness at work as I am there to work and not to congregate. What it only means is that I am not speaking of my accomplishments, and not that I don't have any. I am sure that part of the reason I do not discuss my accomplishments is that I try to be modest. What then often happens is my co-workers filling in whatever blanks they feel they cannot glean from my conversations. And the fill-ins are assumptions. For people to assume is strange, but for them to assume to the "negative" is an even greater strangeness. The assumption is based on the impossibility and not the possibility.

The bragging is done to bolster one's own self image. It is done because of the insecurity of the person uttering these sometimes embellished claims. Bragging is also done to subjugate the person who has to listened to these words of self-praise. That aspect of bragging replicates a child saying to another, "Look what I have and you don't."

My Hair

2004-06-03T22:35:00.000-04:00

My crowning glory is my hair. So why do I hate it so at times. Because it is difficult to maintain, and the maintenance is expensive. I love my hair. It is thick, thick, thick, and black. It has never failed me as long as I have paid an adequate amount of attention to it. But whoa if I didn't pay attention to it. I would get a backlash that would be exhibited in tendrils similar to Medusa on my head.

My hair and its condition reflect how I feel about myself and the environment I find myself in. Should I have a good run of days such as no drama at work, money somewhat abundant, bills able to be paid, husband given' good lovin', children actin' right, my hair can usually be found bouncin' and behavin'. Should my environment turn stressful, such as having to work massive amounts of overtime, working a job that doesn't treat people equitably, the stress shows in my hair. The locks are a bit awry and dry, and not as conditioned because the stress manifest itself through the shafts of my hair. The stress is projected throughout the strands as they stand at attention and do not lay down sleekly. My usually supple strands have been sucked dry by stress.

I love my curly hair and its abundance. It is a friend that deserves to not be affected by stress. It is a crown that should be polished with shampoos and conditioner and styled with grace as it shows the world that the possessor of such strands cares about her inner-self and the adornment that tops off the temple that is her body. It deserves my respect and attention, and will be treated as such.

The City

2004-06-03T18:17:00.000-04:00

As hard as it is to live in The City of New York, with its intolerably high cost of living, the racism, the lack of decent and affordable housing, crime, lack of clean and inexpensive transportation, etc., it is fantastic.

I can be depressed and not at all feeling well about various issues of my life, but when I walk out of my home on a Spring like day such as today, I feel as if all my problems slip away. This afternoon in the city was glorious. I had to run some errands in my neighborhood in The Bronx and was pleasantly surprised at how beautiful a day it was. I then took the train to 42nd Street to take care of some personal matters and again was amazed because though there were teeming crowds of tourist rushing about I was nonetheless not perturbed by them as I normally would be (any blue blood NYer hates tourist) as my mood was bolstered by the magnificent weather.

NYC is resplendent when the weather is perfect no matter if you are in the heart of a ghetto or the heart of the upper East Side as it has a synthesizing energy that establishes itself in all of its residents. This energy uplifts all who partake of it because it is inescapable. You will feel the weather even if you are ensconced in an apartment. The weather of NYC on such a spring day will invigorate the homebound and the jet setters alike because the energy the city brings from the beautiful weather knows no bounds. It infiltrates all in the city because it cannot be shut out. Through closed blinds, closed eyes, closed doors the weather infiltrates and invigorates. I felt like the day awakened me from my winter slumber.

The weather has made me happy and aware that there are always new days no matter how bleak the last one was. The weather has made me aware that I should welcome each day though they may not all be sunny and glorious because the dreary days are surmountable. There will always be bright ones to follow.

Mother

2004-06-01T17:23:00.000-04:00

My mother told me to when I was five to never call her that or any variation of the word mother. I was told to call he by her name. That was a sign of the kind of relationship we would have.

Recently L. admitted to me that she became pregnant with me to keep my father who was 17 years old at the time committed to her. I believe that is the reason why I was told not to call her mom as being a mother was not her intention in having me. She wasn't trying to be a mother; she was trying to keep a boy by having his child. Another reason for her not wanting to be called mother was her not wanting the embarrassment of people knowing that she was as young as she was and with a baby and had I uttered the word mother to her in public the secret would be out. L.'s trick of having a child to keep a boy didn't work as well as she thought as my father wanted a boy, and nothing else. I am a girl. Having a girl child did not keep him interested, and I'm truly not certain that had he a boy things would have been different. My father roamed the street with other girls at the time of my mother's pregnancy and had one pregnant at the same time as my mother. That girl's pregnancy resulted in a brother I have seen about five time when I was younger and whom I have no interest in acquainting myself to. My father ultimately landed in jail while I was in foster care.

My mother had me when she was 14 years old. She and my Grandmother decided to put me into foster care and retrieve me when my mother would be capable of taking care of me. She did so when I was 5 years old and she was 19 years of age. She wasn't equipped to take care of me mentally or physically, but put up a front that convinced the social workers and my Grandmother that she was ready for the challenge. I think, no, I know, my mother had been watching too many t.v. programs and was convinced per these shows that raising a child would exemplify the shows: it would be easy. L's job required her to leave home much earlier than the beginning of my school day, so she told me to go to school by myself, and to come home by myself. I was a latch key kid, and it worked out OK. But she handled it as a child would by saying gruffly to a 5 year old child that, "I have to work so you'll just have to just go to school by yourself." She stated that remark in a very confrontational and resentful manner with no encouragement or praise. That was the beginning of my understanding that my mother was not like the other adults I knew. Ultimately I guessed that she was a child trying to act like an adult.

My relationship with my mother continues to be strained as she has never been a mother to me. She, through the years I lived with her, exhibited that she only had me to try to keep a boy and only got me out of foster care to entice that same boy to live with her with the hopes that we would all live happily ever after. Well the boy came to live with us shortly after I got out of foster care, continued with his drug habit that he picked up in prison and started physically and mentally abusing the child my mother had to entice him into staying with her. When my mother came to the realization that her dream was deferred, she couldn't throw me back from were I came as that would be an indictment of her inaptitude as a parent, so she simply ignored and neglected me. She would have done the best thing for me had she given me back to faster care as the one family that had me throughout the duration of my foster care instilled in me the foundation from which I have prospered in being a responsible child, adolescent and adult. I am a credit to the foster care system.

All of my mother's time and energy went into trying to keep her boy/man. She worked to give him money to get him high and buy him the material things that he demanded. She dabbled also in drugs and drink but was a functioning alcoholic/drug addict that showed up to work most often. During that time I was abused I received no baths or attention. I dressed myself, and taught myself to bathe, and made sure I did my homework and chores. All the while my parents were doing their thing of getting high, fighting and acting as if there were no child in the house. I learned about explicit things at a tender age as my mother would do things in front of me to prove to my father that she would stoop to any depth to keep him, and he did things in front of me because he would be high all the time and didn't give a damn.

I left home at 16 to get away, and have done fairly well in my life. I think I have done so because of the foster care system and its ability to give me a foundation of principals. And in spite of my mother and father chipping away at that foundation, I am here to proclaim my victory as a somewhat normal person with a family and a career.

Working the Grind

2004-05-29T16:51:00.000-04:00

It's Saturday and I am at work and I'm trying to make money. Sometimes those two statements do not correlate. I work in The Wall Street area of NYC and have worked there for eight years. Many equate working on Wall Street with money. For many of the peons that work there (I am a master peon, thank you very much) that reputation of Wall Street as money-making does not translate for those who work in the The Wall Street area to money earning.

For those who work at the firm that employs me, money has been tight as they have not received a raise in 3 years. I have not received a raise in three years. There were many promises of one throughout the three years, but ultimately none came about. And we are all concerned as rumor has it that there will be a raise of 4% this September. That calculates into 1% for every year of service for the last 4 years. This current course of events causes all to retrace how and why they ended at a job that would so overlook its employees fiscally. Also, in making the decision to keep a job that refutes the importance of its worker by offering 4% raise after 3 years, does one stay long after the disrespect has risen, plateaued, and risen again?

My work duties consists of mind-numbing repetitious work. It is not work that allows creativity. I tell myself that I choose to be at my job because it fits my children-saturated schedule. The job, and for that matter any job, never defines you. I believe you define the job and what it means to you. You are to make it what you want it to be. My job provides a paycheck that helps my family to subsist. It is a job that provides me with a schedule that allows my days to be free and my nights of working the job to be over at 11:30 PM. Because of my free days I am able to be a parent that can go to teachers conferences, take children to doctors appointments, etc. These are all the things that my job are to me.

The money is not the best, but the schedule suits me. It is not the most creative, but allows me free time in which I can create. As such, the job is ideal for me in that I define the job and do not allow the job to define me.

I take the positives and make them the reasons for keeping the job. Acknowledging and defining the positives in a somewhat difficult position makes the job acceptable.

Formidable

2004-05-27T22:41:00.000-04:00

I so want to be a formidable presence. I have been told that I am, and at times I believe that I am. But I want to believe it inherently. I want to be seen as an entity that garners respect. Sometimes, it is difficult to believe in my abilities, but I will fight the good fight to carry on in being a presence.

Life is difficult at times. Life is a challenge. I believe I am up for the challenge.

I want to be a formidable presence. I believe I am up for that challenge.

Children

2004-05-27T21:37:00.000-04:00

I am the mother of three. I have a girl and 2 boys. I am proud of them all. They are an extension of me and in their being so independent and resilient, I believe I am the same: resilient and independent.

My daughter called me today, and it seems she did so to just talk. She is 13 and sweet. She called me after she got home from school to ask what does it meant when someone, particularly a boy, calls you a "Ten". I told her that means that they admire your beauty and think of it as the epitome. She asked if I had been called that ever. I said no because none of the guys I hung out with would utter such a corny statement. Now a dime piece is more like what I have been called, and often. My daughter said she thought I was a nine. I thought that was so sweet. I hold that conversation precious, and I think it was a bonding moment.

My boys are as verbose as my daughter, and often provide me with moments that allow for us to bond. They are not afraid to speak their minds and have timeless wisdom. I am proud of them.

I wish to have all these types of moments with my children as they allow me to be closer to them, and understand them.

When all is wrong in my life I can look at them and understand I have created something that is beautiful.

My children are beautiful.

Dilemmas

2004-05-27T17:55:00.000-04:00

So often I am doubtful of what I am capable of. I am doubtful that I can reach my full potential, and that truly scares me. Often in my life I have been told I am nothing and that I will never be anything. I have doubts about myself because of these hateful statements. I have also been given subliminal messages that people are surprised at my abilities. An example of that is someone saying I'm so well spoken. To that I often state to them the question: What did you expect. When some find out the college I've attended, I get raised eyebrows, and questioned as to how I got in. Often I reply that I held a gun to the head of the admissions officer. I can't fathom how else they believed I got in other than taking an admittance test as all others do to get into a school. I mean, it is an idiotic question, but none the less a question that states that the one posing the question does not believe in your abilities.

I am planning a trip that covers the path that Hannibal The Conqueror, a Carthaginian, traveled in his exploits of war. In the planning of this trip I am realizing a dream I have had for quit some time. It, this trip, is a dream come true. It helps to reinforce all that I know about myself. It helps, this trip, to reinforce that I am a person who can pursue my dreams, and not the listen to the voices of others who think I am less than what I actually am.

First Time

2004-05-25T20:12:00.000-04:00

I'm posting for the first time.

I hope that I have worthy experiences while posting. I have many thoughts that are bottled up and wish to set them free.

Saturday a friend and I went to a French Diner in The Meatpacking District of NYC and while waiting on line to be shown to a table, we were ignored and overlooked by the Maitre'D. I felt invisible. I corrected her and said she passed us over. She apologized and asked the pertinent questions like how many were in our party, etc. But I found it puzzling that she looked at me and my companion at the head of the line, and then looked beyond us to the next couple behind us. I can only assume that because I am an African-American that she did not believe I was with my friend who is a White Male, and that he must have been with the couple behind us. I, in her vision, was invisible, and therefore she looked through me. It was perturbing to say the least. I was really calm when I told her she skipped over Chacos and I, and she apologized for her faux pas, but it still bothered me. Once again racism reared its ugly head in a very subliminal way.