It's A Family Reunion

I have a lot of first cousins on my mother's side of the family. My grandmother birthed 17 children, four died in infancy. I never knew my Aunt Helen, she died before I was born but I knew the rest of mother's siblings. There are only four of my mother's siblings still living.

Over the years, we've gathered for a lot of funerals, often in clusters. My mother died two weeks after her oldest sister, my Aunt Mabel. After my mother's funerals we (a group of first cousins) gathered and mused as to why we had never held a family reunion. We decided to rectify this oversight and give ourselves a reason to come together other than to bury someone. The Hall (my mother's maiden name) family reunion committee was formed, consisting of my sister Rhonda, my brother James (aka Jimmy), and my cousins, Michelle, Jennifer, Betty Rose, and Laura Ann. By the third planning call the group had reduced to me, Michelle, Jennifer, and Betty Rose. The others had succumbed to the dreaded family reunion planning committee dropout syndrome.

After months of the family reunion planning committee meeting via bi-weekly conference calls, we held our first Hall Family reunion from July 3-July 5. It was well attended with 80+ family members joining in the festivities. We talked, we ate, we sang and we danced. Members of my grandmother's family, the Flemings, also participated in the reunion and I got to meet people whose names I had only heard in family stories told by my grandmother. Then there were those of us who knew each other but had not been together other than for a funeral in years and it was a delight to reconnect in an atmosphere that didn't involve sorrow. In an email to my friend Mark, I summed it up thus: "Our family reunion went well. Only one relative drank too much and she wasn't a mean drunk. There were no fights, and only a few minor insults. We may do it again in two years."

I neglected to add that I did The Twist with my cousin Betty Rose in front of a room full of people, laughed loudly and often, hugged a lot and was hugged a lot in return, and that a good time was had by all.

Why Are All Those People Crying?

This post has been rattling around in my head since yesterday; however, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must reveal that my blogami, Mark, also addressed this topic in a post, The Death of Strangers, that I read before writing my own. Any plagiarism on my part is totally unintended. BTW, Mark's post includes a really great piece of photoart.


I've watched a lot of television in the last two days. I've felt a little sorry for Farrah Fawcett. She had the misfortune to die on the same day as Michael Jackson. Farrah was a star but MJ was a superstar, a cultural icon, a bit tarnished, but nonetheless, a shining star. MJ has excited the sort of tear-streaming, "I can't believe he's gone," drama that followed Princess Diana's untimely demise.

Good and grown men and women are holding vigils, mourning the death of Michael Jackson. I don't get it. There is something overdone and fake about it all. A lot of crocodile tears, offered more for the display of grief than any real feelings of mourning. I take it back; maybe Farrah was the lucky one, her family and friends allowed a bit more privacy as MJ's fans make a display of expressions of grief.

I grew up listening to MJ and his brothers. I was far more into the Jackson Five than I was into the Beatles. They were young black boys with cool clothes, big afros, and a soulful sound ; and they made a young black girl growing up in a southern town believe that there was a world for her outside of her own backyard. I suspect that I wasn't alone in feeling that the five brothers from Indiana spoke to me of hope and opportunity. I sang along with their songs and tried to copy their dance steps. When Michael went solo, I continued to be a fan. I still sing along with the radio, Billie Jean was not my lover, she's just a girl who says that I am the one, but the kid is not my son. Every time that I hear Beat It I start shaking my hips and tapping my feet. I cry over She's Out of My Life..

Of course, I am saddened by Michael's death, but I'm not in mourning. I'm saddened because his death reminds me of my own mortality. I'm saddened because he was a young man, who died early. I'm saddened because he struck me as a troubled person, who in spite of his success and fame, never found any lasting happiness. I think that he was a musical genius and I am saddened to see his creative force extinguished.

However, I just can't join the teary-eyed masses who engage in wailing and gnashing of teeth as if they've lost a family member. I confess that I am fascinated by this outpouring of what I dub pseudo-grief. I empathize with the Jackson family; I can imagine how overwhelmed they must feel, especially as total strangers try to claim the family's private grief as their own. Michael Jackson has left a legacy of music and memories that belongs to the ages, but the enormous sorrow of his passing is the rightful property of those who knew him and loved him as a person, not as an icon.

In the Absence of Profundity...WTF

After such a long absence from these pages, I feel an obligation to say something profound. Hmm...well...um...sorry, nothing comes to mind. I've been working a lot of 10 to 12 hour days and that kind of work schedule sort of saps your profundity gene.

There have been so many things that have caught my attention during this month of blog-silence, things that have made me mutter WTF as if it were some ritual chant. Regrettably, most of them have faded from my memory, although there are a few standouts.

There is the young woman who went to school without her underwear on the day that pictures for the yearbook were being taken. Sitting on the front row of the bleachers for a shot with her fellow members of some club, she became upset when the yearbook was published, feeling that she had inadvertently flashed the camera. The young woman and her mother made much ado about the photograph, demanding that the school recall all of the yearbooks. The school declined to do so, insisting that the picture didn't reveal anything and much ado was being made about what was no more than an innocent shadow on the image. The mother and the daughter were all over the news, making certain that those of us who didn't have access to the yearbook knew all about the daughter's faulty memory. Why else would you put on a short skirt and neglect to add underwear, except you forgot?

Then there is the husband who decided to fulfill his sexual fantasy of watching his wife with another man, but neglected to include his wife in the planning of the event. Instead, he hired some guy to pretend to break into his home and pretend to rape his wife. Oh wait, if she wasn't in on the plan, maybe pretend isn't the right word. The wife called the police and her husband was placed in a non-pretend jail cell. I hope that the next stop will be divorce court.

These stories are just small potatoes in the WTF competition compared to the ongoing attack on Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Among the nonsense spouted by conservative pundits has been comparing her membership in the National Council of La Raza to membership in the KKK. La Raza is a private, non-profit, and non-partisan organization focused on reducing poverty and discrimination, and improving opportunities, for Hispanic Americans. It's difficult to believe that any rational, thinking individual could equate an organization like La Raza with the KKK. Until La Raza starts burning crosses in the yards of non-Hispanic people, not allowing them to live in their neighborhoods, bombing their churches, and advocating for a complete denial of rights based on skin color, then it equals the Klan about as much as night equals day. Don't waste my time or yours sputtering about why do Hispanic people or other ethnic and/or racial minorities in this country need special organizations. It's really very simple. No, I'm not going to explain it to you. I've written about racial discrimination way too many times in this blog. If you don't get it by now, you're hopeless. Besides, I've reached a place in my beliefs where I no longer consider it my responsibility or the responsibility of any person of color to explain to the majority about racism, discrimination or prejudice. Work it out amongst yourselves. I'm in a tough love phase.

There are countless advocacy groups in this country that La Raza parallels: the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, AARP, The ARC of the United States, etc. I don't believe that the spouters of this garbage about Judge Sotomayor or La Raza believe it. They speak out of fear. This country is actually moving forward on matters of race, beginning to recognize that the bigotry of the past has no place in the 21st century. My message to Limbaugh and his dittoheads: get over it and find some real issues to focus on, like homelessness, poverty, genocide, famine, war....

Laugh Loudly and Often

Mama had a well developed sense of humor and I'm pretty certain that she would appreciate the WTF Awards. She conferred quite a few such awards in her time. Her favorite time to share her nominees was usually at 7:00 am on a Saturday morning. The telephone would ring very loudly, (Ever noticed how the phone rings much louder than usual before 10:00 am?) causing me to flail about in an effort to locate the phone and extricate myself from the bed covers.

"Helloooo..."

"Good morning baby girl, were you asleep?"

No, I'm up planting a vegetable garden to feed all the starving children in the world and when I get done, I'm going to bring about world peace. Okay, I never said that, instead I'd say, "Hey mama, I was just about to get up." We both knew I was lying but it didn't really matter.

Mama's favorite candidate for a WTF award was her sister, my Aunt Nellie Ruth. I could judge just how extreme my Aunt Ruth's behavior had been based on whether my mother simply called her Ruth or Nellie Ruth. Calling her by both of her given names was a good sign that whatever event my mother wished to relate was a real doozy.

My Aunt Ruth is in her 80's now, but she has been behaving with all the entitlement of someone who has reached the age of 100+ since she was in her early 50's. My mother swore that Aunt Ruth just decided to be old one day because she felt that entitled her to demand that everyone wait on her. Perhaps that's why Aunt Ruth had such a predilection for calling the rescue squad. She never had her "attacks" in the daytime; it was always in the wee hours of the morning. Around 4:00 am, Aunt Ruth would awaken and determine that her head felt hot, and that she felt dizzy. Certain that she was having hot flashes as a precursor to some major attack that involved her heart, she'd dial 911, get dressed while waiting for them to come, and be waiting when the rescue squad arrived, fully dressed and carrying her pocketbook. Once she got settled at the hospital, she would call my mother and announce, "I'm in the hospital. You need to come see about me and notify my church members that I'm in the hospital."

At first, my mother would hurry to get to the hospital, but after several years of multiple emergency room visits, mama would turn over and go back to sleep, confident that she could wait until the sun rose to check on Aunt Ruth at the hospital. Mama also began to question the hot flashes that always preceded the 911 call.

"Nellie Ruth, you can't be having hot flashes at your age! You're in your 70's, you don't have anything to have hot flashes with!"

"I am too having hot flashes all about my face and head. I've had three heart attacks!

Aunt Ruth doesn't call the rescue squad any more. She has settled into regular visits to her doctor in the daytime. She has never been diagnosed with any heart trouble of any significance, but she still insists that she has had more than one major heart attack. Indeed, her heart is so weak that the doctors didn't tell her directly that she has had the heart attacks, but she knows from the way they look at her and whisper in front of her.

Mama's youngest brother, my Uncle David calls me often just to talk. He used to talk with Mama several times a week from his home in Dallas. We find ourselves cracking up over how my mother would relate one of Aunt Ruth's 911 adventures.

Mama wasn't perfect and neither was our relationship. She was fully human, like the rest of us. We had our disagreements, our confrontations over things that I can't really recall any more. What I remember was her laughter, her ability to do all the voices when she was telling a story, the way she remembered the smallest details of the events that she related.

Thank you for all of the loving comments. I really am okay; I wouldn't trade the occasional tears for anything. They just remind me of how much I loved her and how much I was loved.

Doing Okay: Living and Grieving

Mama died eight months ago today, on September 15. I didn't have to work today; as of 8:00 pm yesterday, I had already put in 47 hours. Today I got to stay home. I planned to do so many things today--weed my rose bed, clean my house, and do the laundry. However, the best laid plans...let's just say mine went astray and I spent my day in far less productive pursuits.

I decided to catch up on my favorite television shows. I worship at the altar of the DVR. It allows me to keep up with shows that I like even though I haven't been home on average until after 10:00 pm for the last month. This was season finale week for a lot of shows, definitely must see television. It was while I was watching CSI: NY that I had my meltdown. A member of the CSI team died. Her boyfriend, also a team member, was on the phone with her when the bad guys shot her. At first I was just misty-eyed but then I realized that the ragged sobs echoing in my living room weren't coming from the television. I didn't cry for long, maybe five minutes. That's how it is now, I go from normal to falling apart and back again in a matter of minutes.

It's unpredictable. I'll be sitting at my desk, analyzing a bill that allows some municipality to license golf carts to drive on city streets, and without warning my world just tilts off its axis and I feel as if all of the air has been sucked out of the room. For a moment I want to wail out loud, but I press my fist against my lips and muffle my sobs, and it passes. Sometimes I'm driving, singing along with the radio and something--the words, the melody, or maybe it's the memory the song evokes--pushes me over the edge. It's not so bad in my car. I don't have to stifle the sounds and I can cry loudly.

We don't talk about grief in this culture. When someone dies, we offer our sympathies to the family but then we politely move on. We use euphemisms for death--she passed away; he moved on. Anything to avoid saying that someone died.

No one ever tells you about grief. Logic tells me that all of us are touched by death and therefore we all experience grief. Perhaps if we shared more of our pain, we could help each other cope with it. Instead, we barely speak of it and offer useless platitudes: she's in a better place or you have to get on with your life. Or the all comforting, "Death is a part of living."

Here's my truth. Grief is a living thing. It inhabits you like a virus and flares up when you least expect it. You can and will go on with the business of living, but there will be times when the grief will engulf you, a dark force squeezing you so tightly that you are certain that you will not survive it. That's when it is important to let the tears come, to cry as hard as you can, great heaving sobs that turn you inside out; it's your salvation, your release.

My ache for my mother is constant. Death changes those who are left behind. I see the same ache in my sister, my brother, my father, all of us who knew and loved her. I don't think that my pain is unique; that's the rub. It's as if society has made some pact to just not talk about grief.

So if you ask me how I'm doing, you'll get an honest answer, "I'm not fine, but I'm doing okay."

If It Quacks Like A Duck, It's Torture

I began writing this blog entry on Monday, April 20, but wouldn't you know it, my boss actually expected me to do some work. The week progressed from busy to busier, so I'm just finishing it up today. Hey, this idea was fresh on Monday.

My sister likes to tease me by pointing out when I state the obvious. Well here I go, I'm about to state the obvious--waterboarding is torture. According to the headlines in the news, the CIA used waterboarding 266 times in interrogating two (2) suspects. That's right folks, just two suspects.

According to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum, Abu Zubaydah, an alleged Al Qaeda operative, was subjected to waterboarding 83 times, and the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Before anyone gets all excited and starts screaming, "They were terrorists! Don't you love your country! They don't deserve any better!" Yes, they are human beings that may have committed acts of terrorism. Yes, I love my country, but that doesn't mean that I'm blind to its flaws. Because I love my country, I believe that we deserve better.

I grew up in the 1950s, during the Cold War. I vaguely recall discussion in the news of the Gulag and Siberia and Russians. I didn't understand what any of it was about but I do remember when I was older, watching some movie that was about brave men who escaped from some prison in Siberia where they had been subjected to torture. The escapees were the heroes; the torturers were the bad guys.

I remember when this country wore the white hats and aspired to be the good guys. We weren't always perfect, but we tried to uphold ideas of right and of justice, sort of like Camelot, without the king or the round table. What happened to us? It's easy enough to blame George W. Bush, but that's not fair or accurate. He didn't elect himself--twice. I understood our anger after 9/11 but anger is like acid, it eats away at your reason until you are consumed with notions of do unto others before they do unto you, a total corruption of the tenets of the God that everyone from Miss America to Grammy award winners thanks for making it all possible.

Our new attorney general, Eric Holder, stated definitively that waterboarding is torture and President Obama has put an end to its use as an acceptable interrogation technique. However, some of my fellow Americans are upset that the president released the memos that confirmed what we already knew, that the CIA used torture to interrogate prisoners. Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Obama Administration should be investigated for releasing the torture memos, joining the chorus of Republicans accusing the president of putting the nation at risk by releasing the torture memos.

The funny thing about having ethical standards and applying the principles of justice is that it's easy to do when everything is going well. It's no real test of your ethical nature to do the right thing when there are no challenges to be overcome. Let's take a simple example. You are an ethical person who believes that stealing is wrong. However, you've recently lost your job. You're facing foreclosure and you have a family to care for. On your way back from a job interview that didn't go very well. you witness an accident. A Wells Fargo truck loaded with cash crashes into a guard rail, flips, and there is money all over the highway. It's not your money, but other people are leaping out of their cars and gathering up piles of bills. What do you do? Is stealing suddenly acceptable? Should you grab your share? Or do you uphold your principles and not participate in all the money grabbing fun?

When this country was attacked on 9/11, adhering to our principles, to our ethical standards was our biggest test and I think that we failed miserably. We had an opportunity to rise above the hurt and anger and demonstrate that we would not abandon our struggles to maintain justice, to uphold right, even in the face of this devastating attack. I'm no Pollyanna, and I don't believe that pre-9/11 America was a paragon of virtue, but I do think that we aspired to be better than our baser impulses, tried to walk the high road even though we sometimes failed. After 9/11, we quit even trying. We not only tortured people, we justified it and now, we'd rather pretend that it didn't even happen. The motto for a lot of people is, "Let's not talk about it."

That's stupid. The past cannot be unwritten by pretending that it didn't happen. I'm glad that President Obama has dragged our nasty behavior out into the light; however, now he faces quite a dilemma. People were tortured in violation of our own laws and the Geneva Convention; shouldn't somebody be punished?

There's the rub, who do we punish? The CIA agents were told by then Attorney General John Ashcroft that their interrogation techniques were within the law. Former national Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice gave approval for CIA operatives to use waterboarding on prisoners. President Bush apparently believed that we were acting within the law. He was fully aware of the techniques being used to gain information, as was Dick Cheney. Can we hold the CIA agents accountable without also holding the lawyers, Bush, and Cheney responsible? What precedent will it set if the current administration were to prosecute CIA operatives who acted with the full approval of the previous administration? Is it fair to hold the foot soldiers responsible for carrying out policy that was set at the top level. What about Congress? There were memos , meetings, and presentations about what was being done to detainees. Are there members of Congress who should be indicted?

Sorry, but I don't have any answers, just a whole bunch of questions, annoying isn't it? I do have a prediction. There will be no trials of anyone because to pursue charges against anyone would require pursing charges against them all and that's not going to happen. I'm not even sure if it should, because I think that ultimately the guilt is shared by all the people in America who turned their backs on justice in pursuit of vengeance. Perhaps the best that we can do is to acknowledge our collective fall from grace and commit to regaining that high road again where we strive to "...hold these truths to be self-evident..." that all humankind is created equal.

Tweet! You're Tagged!

With all the serious issues confronting us, I'm not really in that much turmoil about the proliferation of social sites on the Internet. I just thought it would be mindlessly amusing to write about them.

A few months ago I joined Facebook. I still don't really understand why. I think that I wanted to belong; and all these people that I liked were on Facebook. The only problem is that I have no idea what to do on Facebook. You can write on other people's walls, which is sort of appealing, kind of like jumping on your grandma's bed when you're a child. Until she catches you, it's a helluva good time. Of course, these aren't real walls, they are virtual walls.

You can also collect friends. Some people have hundreds. An old friend from my college days that I've reconnected with has 523 friends. Marc has 471. Rod has 156. Beth has 130. I have 35 friends. Maybe I need to work on collecting more friends.

There are lots of groups to join and games to play. Beth, Ken, and Yasmin are my mafia cohorts in Mafia Wars. My mafia name is Lady Sweetness. I have lots of weapons and I've mastered quite a few jobs. I find this to be a safe outlet for my violent impulses. For example, just the other day when this guy changed lanes without signaling , cutting me off and making me have to brake hard, I didn't use one word that necessitated washing my mouth out with soap. I also haven't had the urge to slap anyone upside the head for two weeks.

However, it seems that there are just too many of these groups to join. Some time ago, I evidently signed up for Tagged. I really don't recall doing this but they (the Tagged site) keep sending emails telling me that someone said "Yes" and wouldn't I like to say "Yes" back! I think that Tagged may be a meeting site. I have a message from Rodrigo, "How are you doing sweet looking lady? lets talk sometime." According to his profile, Rodrigo is 25 years old, lives in Brooklyn and has 317 friends on Tagged, all female. Hmm, probably not the love of my life.

I recall joining LinkedIn, a networking site. It has potential for expanding my network of professional contacts but I'm too lazy to use it effectively. That would involve my actually having to spend time building up my profile on the site and joining some of the subgroups.

The other day I was reading Robin's blog, Random Threads, and she was writing about Twitter. I've been hearing rumors about Twitter, that it's more in than Facebook, and filled with celebrities. Why, John Mayer twitters, or twits, or tweets--I'm not certain of the appropriate term. Rebecca also recently wrote about Twitter in her blog, Provocation of Mine (d).

Robin included a link to another blogger's very informative piece on how to Twitter. It's all there-why do it, how to sign up, what it is, everything that one needs to know to begin tweeting on Twitter.

I'm left puzzling how I'm supposed to get anything done. I see my days being consumed by time on the Internet. Do I start with Facebook, maybe play a round of Mafia Wars, followed up by a little wall writing? Then I need to check my messages to see if I've been kidnapped, if so I need to escape and then I must kidnap someone else. Next, I'm off to add some plants and fish to my lil' blue cove. Oh dear I've got to check Tagged, just in case Mr. Right has clicked "Yes" on me. Okay, it's time to tweet on Twitter. Take a lunch break and then, hit LinkedIn, maybe someone in my network can help be find a new job. My boss is also on Twitter and she feels that I've tweeted one hour too many and it's adios for me. Gee, I'm exhausted.

Technorati Profile