My Ree Ree

Yesterday, August 16, 2018 seemed to be the end of an era with the passing of my all time favorite recording artist Aretha Louise Franklin.

I have listened to Aretha throughout my lifetime. It all began with listening to her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin and then listening to her sing gospel as a young girl. Her God given voice was always something to behold. I feel as if I have k own her all of my life. Her music formed the tapestry of my generation.

I saw her several times, beginning with a small venue in Miami, and ending with a performance at Humphreys in San Diego. The voice never wavered throughout the years. Aretha was always Aretha.

The lady who was never without her purse, even at the Kennedy Center affair when she placed it on top of the piano😊, was a true treasure.

I loved that she honored and maintained her church roots, from her gospel inspired singing to her great church lady hats. I remember our morher’s disappointment when she began singing secular music. Mother never quite got over that.

I think I know the words to every song she ever sang, and I even sang a duet, with Ruby, at a Morse a High talent show a couple of tears before I freetired. We sang Natural Woman.

I lived that Aretha maintained her privacy and spoke only what she wanted the public to here. She was an old school secret keeper, even until the end.

Fortunately, for all of us, her legacy will last forever through her music. No one can replace her, because she was a singer for the ages.

I am sure that she was greeted at the Pearly gates where she will meet those who have gone before. What a choir that will be!

Rest in Heaven my Ree Ree. We lived you, but God loved you best.

MARVELous Black Panther

I have not blogged in a very long time because every time I thought about it, what usually came to mind was Washington D.C. and all of the shenanigans surrounding it.

However, FINALLY there is something which has thrilled me beyond belief, and increased my HOPE that good will win.  I saw this movie yesterday and am still thrilled by what I saw.  I loved seeing a young Black girl, so smart, and yet a perfect little sister.  I loved seeing STRONG, BRILLIANT, LOVELY black women as the heroines we really are!

  I loved seeing a Black movie, with a primarily Black cast, in such a positive light.  There was no sex, no violence, no cotton fields, no slave narratives, and none of the other negativity that we usually see.  I remembered the Blackploitation films of the past, and cringed.  Who created and spread those images?  It was encouraging to see FOR US, BY US.

I remember when I visited Africa for the first time, someone there told me that we had been turned against them, and taught that they were savages running around with no clothes, and they had been turned against us by being told that we were here killing each other.  Who spread that?????

I remember Tarzan movies, and I also remember a time that we all believed that that WAS Africa.  Sadly, many, even our own people, still believe that.  I remember the Black and Proud movement, and often wonder what happened to it?  I remember hearing black folks speak disparagingly of Africans, without ever knowing one, or having visited the continent.

 I remember, even us, discriminating because of colorism.  I have seen us, in many instances, becoming our own worst enemies.

NOW, a movie, based upon a comic book, has a chance to change many many things.  This movie showed the wealth of an African nation. It showed the powerful women warriors.  It showed folks who look like me doing great things.  It showed  Oakland and Wakanda, just making an important and powerful connection.  It showed two points of view, both valid, but one more powerful, and meaningful than the other.  It showed two enemies who challenged each other, coming back together.  It showed the legacy of a father, even though the son had to realize that HE was the king now.  That is so important because it showed us that the young must find their own way, using some of what they need from the past, and some of what their present requires.

It showed an abandoned child and all that comes with that--at least he had a chance to see his true homeland and appreciate the beauty of it.  His hurt was so great that he could not get past it.  Sometimes HURT just HURTS.  In the end, however, his town will benefit from what some from his true home, will do for it.

It is my hope that all who see this movie will use it as a starting point for us to come together as we did in the past.  It is my hope that we will know our power, know and EMBRACE our heritage, and realize that all throughout the diaspora, the African blood runs deep. I have seen it all over the world, and there is no denial of it. We ARE African!!! I have seen it in Salvador, in Bahia. I have seen in it Cuba. I have seen it all over the Caribbean. . I have even seen it in South Carolina, which, I believe is the most African like state in the United States.  Even the dialect is West African like.  It thrills me to see those connections.

Let us make WAKANDA a rallying cry, a beacon in the darkness, a call for unity, a return to what made us who we REALLY are. Let us praise our ancestors, and be proud of all they have done to bring us this far.

 As we cross our arms across our chests, LET US ALSO MOVE OUR FEET. #Wakanda Forever!

Thoughts, Prayers, and Policy

Lately there has been so much going on, and what is heavy on my mind today is the latest mass shooting, and this one in a church again.  It is very sad, that  a place of worship in Charleston, a small town in Texas, a school, a theater, and so many other places have been victimized by someone with a gun.  The man in Las Vegas went on a rampage after he entered a hotel with a cache of guns and killed so many innocent people who were merely trying to have fun.

After each of these events, which by the way, are deemed terrorist acts, mental illness, or whatever seems to fit the particular bill, there has been an immediate response “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families.” Exactly, what does that mean?  Are they idle words? Are folks really thinking about the families and praying for them?

The other  immediate comment is “It is not time to talk about gun control.” However, many of the immediate conversations lay blame on someone in Congress, some immigrant, some negative characterization associated with the sad occurrence.  Why not talk immediately about gun control?  Is the NRA running Washington?  What is the fear of this organization?  How can a man with a history that the latest gunman had, possibly buy a gun?  Weaponry is a huge industry in this country, and I imagine money moves almost everything.

If hunters need guns, they certainly are not hunting people.  How are legitimate gun buyers distinguished from those who should never be able to buy a gun?  I wish I had an answer.  I get so tired of hearing “Guns don’t kill people, people do.”  Guns in the wrong hands, kill people!!

Policy is what should matter right now.  While thinking and praying, FEET SHOULD BE MOVING!

A speech I gave Saturday, #Loveupclose

     Thank you very much for your invitation to speak at what, I cannot 

Believe is your 40^th Class reunion.  It seems like just yesterday you were 17, at Morse, in class, learning things which you may or may not have used the last forty years. 

       At first I thought, what could I say to you because you are already OLD, so you probably know everything already.  Then I thought about all of the things that are happening in 2017, especially with the political climate we are experiencing today, and said, there must be something fairly interesting to talk about.

      So I looked around my world, at my age, and tried to think about what is most important no matter what else is going on, and what I came up with was LOVE!  It is what should be constant in our lives, throughout our entire lives. I think I may know just a little bit about love since Mr. O and I will celebrate our 50^thwedding anniversary this May.

      If you are on my FB page, then you already know that I have a hashtag (previously known as a pound sign) which is #love up close.  I believe that when we really get to know someone up close and personally, it is almost impossible to hate them for who they are. We may dislike them for what they do, but up close, we always see something in them that we can love (well most people anyway.  Then I wondered, is it more difficult to love up close today than it was in l977 when you graduated.  

     I asked a question on FB ( my research base ) “What did you love during your high school years, and what do you love now?  Did love change over the years? What remained constant?

    The answers, of course, ran the gamut. Back in the day, it seems that what most people loved was sitting on the hill doing I don’t know what, (although some of you know what you were doing—rhymes with DEED). Others loved beautiful girls, playing or watching Tiger teams, hot tamales, cheerleading, having good people around them, going to TJ, ditching during lunchtime, meeting the loves of their lives, and losing a boyfriend or girlfriend that they did not need anyway. 

      What I thought most interesting was that almost everyone loved the stress free life. When you think about the things which irritated you then, you have to remember that you did not have to pay rent, buy food, or have any of the responsibilities that your parents had.  The biggest responsibility they had was taking care of you and worrying about you.  I bet you long for those days now.  

     How does the neighborhood in which you grew up compare to the neighborhood you now live in?  Is the same unity there?  Do you know all of the people in your neighborhood? Do you feel like you have a lot of things in common?  What did you get from growing up in your neighborhood that you still value?  You  probably  still have a connection to all of the people, with whom you grew up because  you shared so much history. (Sister’s visit)  As you have aged, you have seen many prosper, and others may not have had the lives they envisioned.  It still amazes me how many are no longer with us, even though we know that no day is promised to anyone.

     Many of you loved meeting the person you thought was the love of your life, but today, you are so glad that somebody stole that person from you. 

     What you loved forty years ago has changed, although some things have remained constant.  You knew then, as you know even more now, that the love of God is paramount.  He is the person who loves us even when we don’t think we deserve it.  

    The love you felt from your parents and family members, which sustained you then, still sustains you now.  Your love for everything is deeper, it thrives, and it grows.  The love you were shown, you now pass to your children and grandchildren.  You value love more now, than perhaps you did then.  You know the power of love.  You now know why your parents loved you no matter how many bad things you did because you have loved your children in the same way.  You know that “puppy love” of old, does not compare to the thriving love you now experience from your spouse (maybe), or from those around you.  The love from friends, today, is powerful, especially when those friends are those with whom you grew up.  I have always believed that “Old friends” are the best friends because of what we have shared, but there are also other friends who come into our lives later and their  love, and our love for them  can be just as strong.  

      Some (very few) said they love their job—that is one of the secrets of life—when you love what you do, it does not even seem like work.  I never thought of teaching as work, it was pure joy—loved it when I was there, and now love not being there just as well.

      What you have found out in the 40 years you have been away from Morse is that in life everything changes, stress changes, life changes, obstacles change and goals change.  Love, however does not change.  If we truly love up close, our lives would be more joyful  If we could love, even the seemingly unlovable, our lives would be more joyful.  If we can extend love to those around us, joy will come.

     The love we all shared at Morse High over forty years ago is why we are all here today.  It was that old school love, however you define it.  It was the kind of love we never called bullying—we just talked about each other and just made up . It was the kind of love that made us look beyond differences.  It was the kind of love which made us care about each other just as we do now.  It was that special TIGER LOVE!

 I challenge you to continue that Tiger love in your family, at your work-place, and with those with whom you are in contact.  I challenge you to  LOVE  up close during your next 40 years.

Can You Hate Up Close?

If you know me, you know that I am a child of the south, born, and brought up in Miami, Florida during the time of segregation.  Everything I knew and saw was black--my neighborhood, church, school, friends, teachers, and preachers.  I loved my environment, always felt safe, and always had people around me encouraging me, and being positive.  That environment gave me a strong sense of who I was and also made me feel that I could do anything.

 The only White people I remember seeing were the Millers, for whom my great grandmother had been a cook for many years.  Whenever she went into their house, (and sometimes I was with her), we had to enter through the back door.  I also saw grocery store owners in the neighborhood, insurance men who came by the houses trying to sell insurance to people, and others when we went downtown, or outside of the neighborhood.  I remember when Blacks could not enter Miami Beach except to work, and I remember going to Virginia Key, the Black beach. It was all very natural, and it was really an “Us” world, and a “Them” world.

Off to Knoxville in l960 for college, and the civil rights movement permeated my four years there.  Sit ins, organizing, marching, and activism framed college life during that time.  Since my college was a HBCU, there was still very limited contact with White folks.  Although everything I had heard most of my life,  never painted a pretty picture of who they were, and what they represented, I had still not been up close and personal enough to form an opinion for myself.

My “southerness” however, made me wary and suspicious of white people I encountered. I never allowed myself to get close! As I grew, and my circle grew, I began to know them UP CLOSE!.  It was very difficult to HATE up close, because there was the opportunity to get to know them on a person to person basis.  I was able to see the commonalities, and of course, was also able to see the differences.  I always expected those differences to be respected, and did not expect to become them, or have them become me.

I think those who hate, have not ever been able to TRULY be up close with people different than they.  It always intrigues me when I ask friends, how many people of other races do they actually have as friends, not people with whom they work, but people who have actually come to their houses for a meal.  It is a question that many should ask themselves.  The answers are usually interesting, because most, have few real friends of other races.

I have come to believe, given what is happening in our country this week, with so much hateful behavior taking place, that until people can honestly get up-close, there will be no true togetherness.  It now seems that we are going backwards as a country.  Unless, we can all get to know each other Up Close, we will still hate those with whom we have not interacted.  Hate is based on fear, and we fear the unfamiliar.

Are people born or nurtured as racist?  Racism is systemic and embedded in our lives every single day. The eradication of this new version of racism, the unmasked, unhooded type, requires more than just words, but action.  These terroristic thugs seem to think that they need to protect what they have--whatever that is.

This climate has been created by the person occupying the house on Pennsylvania Avenue.  It took him over 48 hours to read a speech from a teleprompter, which as a Tweeter said, “seemed like it was being read by someone forced to read something written by the people who captured him." I wonder Who he knows UP CLOSE as an equal?  Actually, I don’t think he sees anyone as equal to him.

I am always taken aback when someone begins a conversation with “I am not a racist,” or “I have Black friends.” It is what you do, how you act, how you treat others, which matters.  It is not just race, it is gender, religion, and any other category which seeks to divide us.

I wish I had an answer for how we can get Up Close. I CANNOT HATE UP-CLOSE.  Up close allows us to dislike people for reasons other than their race, gender or religion.  We may, however,  dislike them for the way they behave, or because of some of the things they do.

Until people are unafraid to have a REAL conversation about race, I can see no “up closeness.” FB shows me that every day.  Posts about almost anything, except race, elicits all kinds of responses.  When the posts are race related, I can feel the tension, through my device.  I imagine, however, that those conversations are best in person.  It takes everybody, from all races to sit and have these conversations.  I saw a post on FB last Sunday which said “Instead of White ministers going to Black churches to talk about Charlottesville, they should be going to White churches to have those conversations.  Hmmmm?!

Let us LOVE UP- CLOSE

The Middle East: A Different Travel Experience

We returned a couple of weeks ago from a 20 day cruise throughout the Middle East.  We flew to Dubai and were treated royally by two former students, Adam, and Anthony, who live there.  We went a few days early and were hosted by Adam and his family in his home. Anthony was a magnificent tour guide who had lived in Dubai for seven years--Adam has been teaching in Abu Dhabi for almost four years.  It was wonderful seeing Dubai and Abu Dhabi through their eyes.

Dubai is definitely not our cup of tea.  My mantra during the entire time there was :fake, fake, fake.” It is as if they transformed the desert into the most “un desert like place possible. Who needs a ski lift inside of a shopping center?  We did not even bother to see it. The entire city was far too much excess for our taste.  The workers, of course, are on the low end--many live in camps, and are brought to Dubai just to serve.  If we had flown to Dubai and that was our destination, I would not have been happy.

Our cruise began there, and it was probably one of the most interesting trips we have taken.  We visited, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Oman, Fuijarah, went through the Suez Canal, Saw the Red Sea, I think we were in nine cities in various countries.  Loved being in the Muslim world, and seeing it for myself. Wore my abaya in the Grand Mosque, and observed the culture of the Muslim countries.

Enjoyed seeing Jerusalem, Sea of Galilee, River Jordan, and other parts of the Holy Land.  Did not like seeing the barbed wire topped wall which separated Palestine, but that is a story for another time.

I loved the sounds of the minarets, loved talking to the people, was not frightened when we had a machine gun toting security guard on our tour bus, did not mind having to have our passports with us in Egypt and Israel, never felt threatened, even when we went to Sharm El Sheik only accompanied by a young Egyptian cab driver, loved Oman--loved finding out that they are descendants of Ethiopians.

Loved not hearing the name of the occupier of the White House the entire time.  When My President was elected, and we travelled, everyone wanted to talk about him. We were very close to Syria when he made one of his pronouncements (I have deleted it from my head).

We also went to Dubrovnik (we had already been there, and walked the wall), Crete, and Venice--we did get off the ship and it rained, just as it did when we were there before.  However, it is still a fascinating place and the ship was there overnight (as it was in other places).  Crete was nice, but nothing beats Santorini (which we visited before).  We flew from Venice to Dublin, just because it was an option.  Spent the night there--arrived, took a hop on hop on bus for over two hours, went to a pub for dinner--souvenirs for the grands and back to the hotel--a real whirlwind.  Loved it--very green, more pubs than churches, informative cab drivers, both of whom love living there.

I had a running commentary on Facebook, and have probably forgotten so many details.  So glad that we went when we did--glad we did it from a cruise ship.  An interesting, but not for the inexperienced traveler, IMHO.

Booker T. Washington High School: This Place

I was in Miami last week to attend a the Booker T. Washington Living Legends Award Gala, and it made me think of how my life was framed by having been born, and “made” in Miami.

Since I left Miami, I have been to many places, and seen many things, but this place, Miami, is the closest to my heart.

We have lived in San Diego for over 45 years, but whenever someone asks me where I am from I always reply that I LIVE in San Diego, but I am FROM Miami!

My High School was the place which made me whatever I have become. This is the place where I understood the value of being taught by people who looked like me. This is the place where I learned that it is nice to be important, but more important to be nice. This is the place which allowed a brain to be the great equalizer. It did not matter where you lived, how much you had materially, but it was the brain which mattered.

I thank God for this place, and throughout my career, I have tried to duplicate this place by being that Hazel Davis, that Georgiana Bethel, and so many others, who valued us and made us believe that we were truly somebody. I hope that somehow I have created a PLACE for others.

In the meantime, I will always be grateful for this Place, which, as our school song states—it was our "Source  of Inspiration."

I was delighted and humbled to be presented as a Living Legend. Because it was from “This Place,” it was very very special.