Musically Inclined

One of my great regrets (that I'm determined to remedy one day in the future) is that, despite my great love of music, I've not yet learned how to play a musical instrument.

I do have vague memories of a couple of piano lessons with a teacher I absolutely hated. She was incredibly harsh and cruel with me and I found myself wishing I could die instead of having to go to those lessons.

Then there was my pathetic attempt during the summer between 5th and 6th grade to learn the flute, mainly because my friend Anna played the flute. Indeed, flute was the instrument that all the petite blond girls knew how to play, and I wanted to fit in.

Ultimately, just as my efforts to fit in failed miserably, which now I thank God for, I also failed at both flute and piano. Neither the flute nor that particular piano teacher inspired any sort of passion in me, so both were quickly abandoned. Alas, I never gave a recital while wearing a fancy dress, my parents anxiously wringing their hands and praying I didn't flub the whole thing. and there certainly were no medals from orchestra or band contests.

Clearly there are worse things than being in your mid-thirties and unable to read sheet music. But, in my inability to learn an instrument I am an anomaly in my family. My mother plays violin. My sister plays violin and my brother played cello. And my father? I'd say my father is one of the best jazz musicians living in the Midwest, if not the States as a whole. He plays multiple instruments and directs a major university jazz studies program.

I attended my dad's summer school class last Wednesday where he put on a concert for the students with two other local musicians. They played classic standards they all know, without rehearsal, without sheet music. It was, in essence a "jam session" where they went with the flow on the selected tunes, songs like Hoagy Carmichael's 1930's standard, "Georgia on My Mind" and Duke Ellington's 1942 classic, "C Jam Blues".

My dad told the class about the importance of being able to keep eye contact with and "read" the cues of your fellow musicians. They all know the basics of the tune but just improvise everything else, all by reading each other's body language.

It got me thinking about what an amazing skill it is to be able to do that. How many things do we each miss out on or not do as well as we could because we're unable to either improvise or read someone else's body language?

So, here's some footage (taken with my crappy digital camera) of my dad with his two colleagues, reading each other's cues and merrily jamming along. I can't count the number of times I've seen my dad perform. It's been a constant in my life since I was a small child. But I still get amazed every time I see him stand up from the piano and grab his trusty trombone.

Hope you enjoy:

When a Black Woman Asks For Help

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday that broke my heart. She's someone I've known since I was nine or ten years old and she's been going through a really tough time for the past year or so. I've often wished I was back in Chicago so I could be there for her more than I have been. I don't want to put her business out on front street but talking to her made me think about something I've asked myself many times over the years: What's the response when a black woman asks for help?

I've been thinking about this for many years because when I was in college, I noticed an interesting phenomenon happening with a few of the young black men who were among my best friends. Almost all of them lived at home with their parents, none of them were going to college even though one or both of their parents was college educated and they were often treated by their mothers and most of the friends we mutually had as an endangered species. Not that that perspective was necessarily wrong because looking at the statistics, they are often in physical, mental, spiritual and emotional danger. I also worry about all those statistics when I look at my own sons and the possibilities of what could happen scare me. It's just that the same care and attention was most often not given to the black girls and women I knew.

Out of the black women I knew, none of them lived at home with their parents. Almost all of them were going to college. Many had more than one job on top of school responsibilities, and if any of us said we were short on the rent and didn't know where the money was coming from, there was no helping hand to assist. If we were hungry, well, we just had to be hungry. We were not regarded as being an endangered species because we're supposed to be the Strong Black Woman -- you know, the woman who has endured birthing babies in the field and going back to picking cotton twenty minutes later.

For so many black women I know, there is a complete double standard in how they were brought up compared to their brothers or male cousins. The brothers and cousins were "loved" and the daughters were "raised". The lives of many of the black women I've known have been an intersection of the real axis of evil, racism and gender inequality. I remember how in high school, guys I know were expected to have girlfriends and their mothers would chuckle over their son's attractiveness to the opposite sex. The more girls calling the house the better.

On the other hand, some girls I knew were called whore and slut and beaten/grounded if a guy called them up. Academics were pushed with girls, and although they might be pushed with the boys, being cool was pushed just as much.

So many of the girls I know, girls who are now women, were raised with the attitude that black women have got to be self reliant, you've got to hold it together and if you're having a tough time, you better hustle and figure it out on your own because you don't have anyone to count on but yourself.

I remember being 19 years old and asking my now husband why it was that he was always getting asked if he was hungry but no one ever asked me if I was hungry. His black male friends were always being asked if they were hungry too. If these guys said yes, somebody would immediately fix them something to eat. Or, if we were out in public and one of my black male friends said, "I don't have any money," someone would buy them a meal or pay for their movie ticket. If they didn't have a ride somewhere, then someone would come pick them up. If they needed a job, hook-ups would happen.

Sometimes this all got particularly weird and seemed to have racial undertones to it because we hung out with a very diverse group of people. The sociologist in me would wonder how much of a role guilt was playing into some of the interactions I'd observe between my friends and those in our circle who were not black. I just knew that young black women weren't being cultivated and nurtured in the same way. Some would use the word "coddled" instead of nurtured. Sometimes my friends made me angry though because at times it felt like they sort of milked some folks' perceptions in order to get a hook up.

The person offering up the food or money for a movie ticket was most often not a black female. Black females would look at these guys and be like, "And? So? I guess you're not going to the movie then."

There was the racially sexualized dynamic between the black males I knew and the young white women of our acquaintance. I remember one college boyfriend brutally explaining to me that he was cheating on me with a white girl we both knew because she would give him, "her car, her cash and that ass."

Funny how some things are said to you and you never forget them.

Anyway, I can't tell you how many times this discussion about the differences in the way black women and men are treated by society has come up when I'm a room full of black men and women. Most often it's turned into a huge, heated argument where the women are sharing what they've been through and how they didn't have, for example, white girls lending a car, buying laptops for them or taking them shopping at the mall and they didn't have a mom at home telling them that it didn't matter what they did, they'd love them no matter what, and if things didn't work out, they could stay at home forever.

The men turn around and say that at least the women don't have to get harassed by the cops and put in special education. At least the women don't have folks grabbing their purse and crossing the street when they see a scary black man coming. The conversation never ends well.

So, like I said, my friend is really going through some struggles and yet many of the same people that would bend over backwards to lend a helping hand to the guys I knew back in the day are blind and deaf to her plight. She's not too proud to ask for help, but listening to her yesterday, her requests for assistance are being ignored.

I can't help but wonder if the response would be different if she was male.

Badly Behaved Children

Sometimes I get a little annoyed when folks go on and on about how shocked they are that my sons are so well-behaved. The typical comment goes something like this:

"I just can't BELIEVE how good your kids are! I mean, look at them! They are just so well-behaved, it's AMAZING!!!"

Those are the moments I want to ask in return, "Why can't you believe it? Because they're black and male? Do you think all black males are heathens who can't behave? Hmm???"

But that would be me reading into the situation a little too much, even if I do sometimes think that racial dynamics are a part of the shocked response to their good behavior. I never ever do the, "Oh, but you should see how they bad they are when they're at home," thing. Instead, I verbally agree with the person, especially when my boys are in earshot. "Yes, they are very well-behaved. They are such good, polite boys."

We talk about the proper way to behave a whole lot in my house. Plus, I was a teacher, a teacher that did not play around and accept anything less than excellent behavior. Kids learn how to behave if you teach them how to and reward them for being good. To me, it's the essence of vanity to think you can go somewhere and be rude or disrespectful.

My seven year-old just started taking Kung Fu lessons at a place a couple of miles from my house. My husband took him to the first two lessons but I wanted to go so I took him last night. There are six other boys in the class and five of them are really badly behaved. My husband had warned me about how bad they are, but I still wasn't fully prepared for how they were talking back to the Sifu. These boys are a little older, maybe 6th graders, so the Sifu was giving them sets of push ups to do as punishment for being disrespectful. It really didn't seem like these boys cared all that much because they were doing dozens of push ups.

I saw my son watching these boys and then he'd look over at me to gauge my reaction to this. I kept shaking my head at him and giving him the "eye".

I started having flashbacks to something that happened when I was at a middle school basketball game. This girl in my class named Eleanor called her mom a bitch in front of everybody. What did Eleanor's mom do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She just stood there and said, "Oh, Eleanor, don't talk like that, honey!"

And what did Eleanor do with that? "Well you are a bitch! And I hate you! I wish you weren't even here."

My mouth was totally hanging open and I remember my mom just looked at me with this look that said, "If you ever do something like that, I will kill you."

The parents of these boys at Kung Fu last night were sitting right there watching their sons misbehaving. I think they saw my mom's look on my face. But them? One mom actually had the nerve to laugh and say, "They just come in here with so much energy, don't they?" They were totally being Eleanor's mom.

I made sure to talk with my son after the class about it all. I told him how I liked how respectful he was, how carefully he followed directions and how he thanked the Sifu after class. Then I took him to Robek's to get a smoothie treat. He asked me why I thought the other boys were bad and I told him it's because their parents let them act like that.

Later on, I got to thinking about how every single one of those misbehaving boys are white. After I got home I was talking on the phone with a girlfriend of mine and I told her about these boys. I started joking with her, "What they need is a black mom to set them straight because black moms don't play that."

Total stereotype, I know, but I think there is a grain of truth that certain cultures, particularly black folks, don't look kindly on their children misbehaving in public. And if your mom or dad is there, that's a definite no-no. It's not regarded as cute or funny and there's the cultural legacy that misbehaving in public can get you killed. Google Emmett Till's story if you're not sure what I mean by that.

Clearly, I know from teaching that black and Latino kids can and do misbehave in public. But again, I never saw it go down while the parents were sitting right there. I had students who would talk much smack, they'd be all, "Call my momma, I don't care!" Then when I'd call mom and get her to come up to the school, the tears and apologies would start big time and they'd never be a problem again.

The flip side of this is that while some of this cultural stuff is true, it also gives rise to, like I said, stereotypes. White parents are nice, but passive wimps, and black parents are mean and will beat your ass if you even look at them wrong, (especially if they're from the Caribbean).

Now, I don't beat my children at all. I do the modern version of discipline, which clearly, parents of all colors do: explain the rules, enforce the rules and reward and punish accordingly. I'm curious though, what do you all think about all this? What do you think about culturally different ways that people raise their kids or discipline them? In your experience, what do you see happen?

Book Love

I'm home alone since my husband took my sons over to a friend's house to hang out. Nothing good is on TV and no new movies have come from Netflix yet.

But no worries because I have a whole lot of books in this house that need reading.

I'm one of those people that drops the $30 on the the Barnes & Noble membership/discount card and actually gets my money's worth back in a couple months. I know in theory that it's possible to walk out of there without buying anything, but I'm not to that point yet. There's always something good to read whispering in my ear, "Buy me! I have a pretty cover and I'm really well written and engaging!"

Oh and then there's my three library books that I haven't read yet because I'm reading something I picked up at my neighborhood independent bookstore, Skylight Books, two months ago. And yesterday I realized I haven't read "Dracula" in about a month so I picked that up and began reading that again for the millionth time.

Clearly, I have waay too many books swirling around. I place the blame for this book insanity love squarely on the shoulders of my parents.

I know I've mentioned before that my mom and dad have an amazing collection of books. In fact, I feel extremely covetous when I think about some of the cool books they have. Last time I was home, I about died because my mom gave me a gigantic coffee table book I've been in love with since I was a little girl. It's called "Four Fabulous Faces".

The book's about the transformation of Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford from unknown actresses to mega stars. The photographs in it are amazing and it's fascinating to read about how much power studios had over the appearance of these four women and how their looks changed over the years.

Anyway, I commented on another blog today about how I first read the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" when I was quite young because the book was just sitting around the house. I think it was stacked on a chair in my parent's bedroom. They always have had the best books just sitting around. In fact, I would not be surprised if they have 2-3,000 books waiting to be discovered by an avid reader.

So you see how growing up this way, I think it's normal to have tons of books around. In fact, I've been absolutely horrified on the occasions I've gone to people's homes and have been unable to find a single book lying about. Or what's just as bad is when the books someone has are the ones they bought eons ago for a college literature class. Those books always look so lonely collecting dust on a forgotten shelf.

It's quite judgemental of me but I tend to think it really says something terrible about a person if they have no (or almost no) books around. At a minimum, I believe it means they have no class no matter how fancy their house or car may be. I also start to wonder if the person's secretly a serial killer or in need of serious psychiatric help.

Just kidding, sort of.

The other day I'd just read about Bill O'Reilly's comment about lynching Michelle Obama and felt so mad about it. I called my mom to ask about a book I remember being in our house. She wasn't home so I left her a very vague, rambling message about this book. I knew it contained some very graphic pictures of lynchings in it. I told her I remembered it was soft cover and I described the size.

My mom sent me the following email yesterday:

Dear Liz,
The book you are probably thinking of is The Black Book by Middleton Harris published in 1974. The book was about more than lynching as you may remember. It is a folk history. There are now more books specifically about lynching. Without Sanctuary by James Allen and Lynching Photographs by Dora Apel are just a couple.

My mom's a genius to be able to decipher my message and figure out what in the world I was talking about. I'm sure she knew what book I was referring to off the top of her head. I'm doubly impressed by how she's able to throw out a couple more must-read titles just like that.

I decided to check out how much it would be to get my own copy of "The Black Book". It's out of print so if I want a version that's full of rips and is taped up, I'll pay around $45.

If I want one that's not in mint condition but doesn't have ripped pages and scotch tape on it, I'll pay around $85.

A nice copy is around $125. EEK!

I may not get that particular one but I know I'll be getting some version of this book eventually. I need to have it sitting around for my sons to discover. And maybe one day they'll have a blog and blame me for them being in love with books too.

I really hope so.

Straw Hair

It's Saturday night again. Wasn't I just here a week ago? Funny how it came back around so quickly.

I spent my day at a Los Angeles Unified School District parent leadership training. I'm now president of the School Site Council at my kids' school. I got myself elected to pretty much every other school committee as well.

That means that today I was supposed to be learning about how to be a member of all these committees. That happened somewhat, but what I really came away knowing for sure is that there are some VERY angry parents in this school district. Every time the facilitators presented some information, they'd ask if we had any questions. Without fail, a parent would stand up and launch into a tirade about all the illegal (or legal and wack) stuff some principal is trying to pull.

I get their issues. I truly do. But after two hours of this, I was mentally exhausted. After four hours, my goodie-goodie self was texting my sister and socializing with the lady sitting next to me. After six hours, I felt like bumming a cigarette off of someone and taking up smoking just so I'd have a reason to go outside.

This marvelous day was capped off with me winning a door prize that came wrapped in Star of David wrapping paper. It was a pair of 99 Cent Store candlesticks. Uh huh.

And now I'm home and determined that this will not, I repeat, NOT be another Saturday night of laughing at my email spam. Seriously, it can't be. Especially after I spent Friday night curling my hair up with straws.

Yes, I said straws.

This was yours truly at around 1 am last night.

Yeah, for the uninformed, that's called a "straw set". And I hope it's obvious it's called this because those are drinking straws up in my hair. 72 drinking straws to be exact.

It took me about an hour to put them all in. Then I sat around for eons waiting for my hair to dry. I watched two movies, wrote a friend and by 1:30 in the morning, it still wasn't all dry. The gifted-child in me figured I'd just prop a whole bunch of pillows up and sleep sitting up, like if I was on an airplane.

That worked for awhile. But by 3:30, I finally gave in and laid down on those straws. Ouch! The uncomfortable things we women do for beauty! Believe me, I was so grateful my hair was dry when I got up two hours later.

I'll confess, this straw thing was an impulsive, spur of the moment experiment but I really like it. It was interesting though how today while I was busy socializing during a session, the lady next to me was all, "Girl, your hair is too cute! Where'd you get it done?"

"Um, I did it myself," I replied.

"You did it yourself?" she asked in disbelief.

Her mouth fell open while I nodded proudly and replied, "Yeah, I learned from a YouTube video.

"What! You learned how to sew in some weave from a YouTube video?"

We had about 30 seconds of back and forth, with me saying, "No, really, it's not a weave! It's my hair!" and her saying, "Stop frontin'! That has got to be a weave!"

I thought I was gonna have to let her pull my hair to prove to her that it wasn't a weave, but she finally believed me.

This led to a discussion about hair and black women in general. I told her about my recent decision to not chemically straighten my hair anymore. You can read all about it in an article I wrote about a month ago for Anti-Racist Parent. But in a nutshell, it's because I no longer feel I can teach my kids to be proud of their blackness if I'm changing an inherent part of my black identity, my hair.

She shared how brave she thought I was for this and confessed, "'I can't stand when those naps start growing out of my head! They're so..." She paused and sighed, searching for the right word. And then it finally came.

"Ugly."

She's not alone in feeling this way. Black women are trained to do battle with and hate their hair. Most black women in this country have no idea what the natural texture of their hair feels like. At least that's not the case for me because I've gone back and forth between straightening and not straightening for years.

If you're not black, no one cares if you decide you don't want to straighten your hair to within an inch of it's life, till it feels like straw. But if you are black, wearing your natural hair can become an ideological and political statement. And it's a fashion "don't" according to a (now former) Glamour magazine editor.

But, I'm really feeling my "don't" hair so I'm going to keep rolling with it. In fact, I think I'll sit here and pull on my springy curls while I watch the movie classic, "Network" on PBS. It's a very appropriate Saturday night choice since as far as the haterade on black women's hair, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

The End Of The World During "At World's End"

Thursday night found me at The Grove checking out opening night of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End". No need for a spoiler alert here because I'm not going to tell you anything about the plot.

I'll will tell you that it's a very very long film. Almost three hours long. Don't get the large drink, okay?

No, it's not the best film on earth, but I wasn't expecting it to be. The fact that the other two were decent movies at all was a nice bonus on top of the real reason the films became successful: the eye candy factor.

I'll go ahead and confess my sins in case you haven't guessed from the picture. My main reason for going was so I could see some Orlando Bloom.

I adore Orlando Bloom. In fact, I like him so much that three years ago, I had an Orlando Bloom themed birthday party. I like him so much that I have a full-size Legolas poster in my office at work.

No, I'm not kidding.
Yes, I completely understand if you think that's a bit freakish and extreme.
No, I don't care whether you think I'm insane or not.

Orlando is hot. He's so hot, I think MIMS wrote his "This Is Why I'm Hot" song while watching some Orlando Bloom movies. But we all know that hot isn't enough for Liz. You have to be hot and a nice guy for me to be down. Orlando's niceness always comes across in his interviews.

If you're trying to think up a reason why he's not hot, like, for example, you want to say he's a bad actor, just admit it, you're being a player hater. Besides, I know I'm not alone in my adoration. In fact, I guess the parents who brought their FOUR children to "At World's End" must feel the same way that I do about Mr. Bloom.

These idiots dragged a baby that looked to be around six months old, some toddler twins, and a bigger kid into the theater. By bigger, I mean that the boy was probably, at the most, five years old. Oh, and did I mention that the baby had a stinky diaper and the father changed it in inside the theater?

Now, in case you think I'm being overtly judgmental, I'll fess up. I let my kids stay up late. I'm not one of those parents that make my kids go to bed at 7 pm, mainly because if I did that, I'd never see them. I'll also admit that I sometimes take my boys out on a weeknight. Maybe we'll get really wild and roll by the Los Feliz Toys-R-Us.

But my kids are not going to a PG-13 rated Pirate movie at 8:15 pm on a Thursday night. Only a truly selfish dumb ass takes their small children to see a movie where there are rotting pirate teeth, monsters and people getting hacked with swords. I mean, all that might scare the children. The poor little children might start to cry.

And cry they did. Profusely. During some of the action sequences, these kids hollered so loudly that I seriously thought it was the end of the world instead of "At World's End." And neither parent got up to take the crying children out.

I get the rebellion. I really do. As a parent, you can start to feel a little resentful that pre-kids, you could go to the movies whenever and see whatever you want. No "Rated G" restrictions to have to deal with. No paying for a babysitter. No having to be home at a decent hour. Hours of Orlando-gazing on a big screen instead of your TV at home...

I guess the parents figured they had paid their $12.50 admission price per child so they weren't going anywhere. Plus, they probably thought that everyone else in the theatre would merely think the wailing was some additional sound effects at the end when Will Turner...

Oh, yeah, I said I wasn't going to tell you anything about the plot. Just know, those kids weren't the only one's in there crying. (Shh...I was crying too!)

Girl, That Skirt!

I'm usually not a big shopper but yesterday I went to the mall and did a little material object acquisition. I got a case to protect my new red iPod from iDeath. More socks for my two sons. A shirt from Ann Taylor and a very lovely and classic shirt dress from Express. Although I bought the dress, while I was trying it on, I found myself thinking that it was a bit on the short side.

My, how things change. This dress was just above the knee length. Ten years ago, I would have thought the dress was a bit long. Twenty years before that, despite the fact that I was forbidden by my parents to wear mini skirts and they had never bought me one, I wore skirts that were so short that the security guards at my high school threatened to send me home to change.

How did that happen?

Every day I left the house wearing the mother sanctioned Talbots-type conservative outfit, complete with penny loafers. The school bus would come, number 172, blaring Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me".

I'd climb on and slide to the last two back seats. Once on the bus, I'd find myself seated across from a boy who reeked of weed and enjoyed our ride to school by surreptitiously sipping from a flask and slurring my nickname "Lizzie" into "Ishhe".

"Isshe, you gonna put one of them short skirts on today?" he'd ask.

In response I'd laugh and tell him he'd better not peek while I changed. Then I'd take what I was actually going to wear to school out of my backpack. These skirts that emerged from my bag, a short black denim or a micro mini red cotton number, were borrowed from my second cousins who also attended my high school.

To start the transformation, first I pulled the skirt up and over my pants. Then I'd unbutton the pants and slide them off. I'd fold them up and stick them into my backpack. A couple times a week, I'd step off the school bus in one of these mini skirts, rain or shine, and whether it was 20 degrees or 80 degrees. After school let out, I'd transform back into the conservative pants and stick the skirt into my book bag. I wonder what that bus driver must have thought of my back-row transformations. (Unless she reads this blog, I guess we'll never know).

My parents were none the wiser until the unfortunate day my dad, unbeknownst to me, decided to pick me up from school. I remember strolling to my locker with one of my cousins, (their lockers were right next to mine). We were strutting in our matching black skirts and red tops like we knew we were hot stuff. And then my cousin gasped, "Oh my gosh, Liz! There's your dad!"

I looked down the hallway toward my locker and horror of horrors! My father was standing right there and he looked furious!!

If I could have turned and run the other way, I would have. But, I couldn't. So I propelled myself forward and heard him growl, "What do you have on?"

I've always been quick on my feet so I told him some lie about how someone had spilled their chocolate milk on me at lunch and how my cousin had had some extra clothes in her locker so I'd had no choice but to put the skirt on.

He didn't look like he believed me at all. My cousin tried to back me up, but he still wasn't buying it. I was such big trouble with my dad that I couldn't even imagine the thunder my mom would bring when she found out. I knew I'd be lucky if she let me out of the house ever again and alas, my mini skirt days were definitely over.

When I finally got to college I figured it was my chance to wear minis again. But, it was the height of the grunge movement. In general, minis and grunge just didn't make a good mix. Still, I remember the first time I went to my parent's house in a mini skirt, focused on proving that I could wear whatever I wanted when I wanted. All my mom would say was, "Oh, that's a cute outfit!" That drove me crazy! Why couldn't it have been a cute outfit five years earlier?

Since then, I've worn my share of mini skirts and sometimes miss the days of going dancing in a denim mini, black opaque tights and black Doc Martens. I guess it's good that I got all that out of my system because I've clearly become more conservative in my thirties if I think that a just above the knee-length dress is short.

At this rate, I'll probably be in floor-length skirts and dresses by the time I hit fifty.