Fin Whale 2004

I took this photo on a whale watch with a group of young people I work for. Some of them had never been on a boat nor seen a whale that wasn't on TV. It was beautiful.


Fin Whale 

H-2-0 and Charlie Robinson

I have always loved water, oceans, lakes, rivers. I don't think I could live any where land locked. I need water. I need to see it, smell it and touch it Growing up it was Coney Island, Jones Beach, The Jersey Shore and the Hudson River. Not where it meets the ocean in Manhattan but up north where it winds it's way through the Hudson valley.
When I was little maybe even before I was born my parents bought a little summer house on the Hudson. This was a big thing because $4000 was a huge amount of money to them at that time. They had a mortgage of $20 a month on it and would spend any "extra" money they had slowly fixing it up. It was a tiny little house with 2 rooms downstairs and 2 rooms up and it sat on a point of land where the Roundout Creek emptied into the Hudson. I think it used to be an Native American village before the white folks kicked them out because I was forever finding arrow heads just laying around in the yard. Later this would be confirmed by the local college's anthropology class asking for permission to dig (permission denied by my dad who told the professor "Don't you think you've taken enough?". I guess later it became kind of a dump because there were all these old bottles from the 1800's laying around also. I used to collect them along with the arrow heads . I would take them back to the city and show them to the kid's in my neighborhood but they didn't believe they were real.
We would spend just about every weekend up there and most of the summer. My brothers hated spending so much time up there, it took them away from their friends and the excitement of the city. But I loved it. (until I got older) I had so much freedom when we were there. I could pretty much go outside whenever I wanted, get as dirty as I could and best of the best my dad would take me fishing. I loved that time with him . He worked a job that would keep him from home for several days at a time so any time spent with him was precious. I love that time with him so much that I would grab my little bamboo pole, dig some worms and run away to the river when I missed him or was upset about something . Some how I felt safe there. Not what your typical 4 year old should do and for the record I couldn't swim yet. This behavior would send my mother into a panic with good reason but I never stopped. She would threaten to never let me go fishing again, keep me in the city, spank me, tell my father to spank me (he never did). I would risk everything to get to the waters edge.
I still go to the waters edge when I'm sad or upset but I also go there when I'm happy or when I want to remember my dad or just because. Memories of my mom take a different form but water is all about Charlie Robinson and me.

Amerikkkan Made/Ryan White Conference

I know this is heavy handed but I'm frustrated and need to vent. So last night I finished watching a 4 part program called Slavery and the making of America . It should have been titled Slavery made America. It's Black History month ya know or as my best friend calls it "Employ a Negro Month" As this is the time she gets the most speaking engagements. It's a PBS production and it's thankfully not by Ken Burns. Frankly I'm tired of white folks telling my "amerikkkan experience". It's narrated by a bunch of mostly Black, really smart folks who give a detailed look at slavery in the u.s. from the first 11 "Atlantic Creoles" to the industrialization of slavery in the Carolinas to reconstruction. Many of the stories follow one persons experience rather than your basic academic approach, much mo bettah. It felt like they were family talking about family. What fascinated me the most was the erosion of rights. From being able to purchase freedom (taken away when the Carolinas industrialized slavery) to lost/constricted voting rights (during reconstruction). But through it all there was this sense of optimism. How the fuck can you be optimistic in the face of that ? I look at my personal experience with imprisonment (DWB) and how it affected me and continues to affect me, and think no way I could have survived that. But I think if I were in the situation I guess I would have carried on like everyone else. That sounds so trivial now that I look at it. But really how would I handle it ? Would I disassociate ? Go to my "happy place" ? What the fuck would I do ? Would it be easier for me because I'm bi-racial ? Or would I have been sold off so not to be a reminder to master of his miscegenation ? Would I try to run away ? Would I be part of a rebellion ? What the fuck would I do ? I have no idea. As I now ponder the continued erosion of our rights as members of this society I ask myself the same question . February 7th National Black AID's awareness day came and went without much ado, at least in my world. Yes I made sure the young people I work with knew what was up . I pushed for more of them to be tested and a few actually did get tested by me that day. But so many of them do not see their good health as a right. That they have a right to know their status. That they have a right to timely health care. That they have a right to live period . So now what do I do ? We can't run away or disassociate from this slavery. We can't just go to our "happy place" Nothing will make the loss of these rights easier and we are already being sold off, by our government , the health care system. So I guess the only answer is rebellion. As I attend conference after conference I have to listen to the rhetoric of "cultural competency" as told from a euro-centric point of view. How do we get more " young minorities tested" ? How do we build trust in a health care system where the smell of Tuskegee still lingers ? So after returning from another of these conferences I make a promise to myself and the young people I work for . I will do all I can to get your voice out there. I will get you to as many conferences or forums as I possibly can and when I can't I will carry your words . I will fuel your rebellion in anyway I can. I will test the shit out of you. I will do my best to find you appropriate health care providers and get your ass there. These are rights not privileges though it's seems at times only the privilege can attain them. So let's have some of the optimism of our ancestors and believe that better things will come and protect the rights we have now. We can not let these erode away.

The Gates

Yesterday I did what I love to do. A completely spontaneous road trip. I had been cruising around with my camera, listening to NPR and something came on about "The Gates" It was a beautiful day, I had a full tank of gas and no obligations so why not? I snuck down to the city. I say snuck because I have friends I love in the area and I knew if I talked to them I would really want to see them and there is only so much sunlight in the day this time of year and after all it was all about "The Gates". After a record breaking drive down (I've got to stop speeding I don't want to give "the man" a real reason for a DWB) I parked and hoofed it over to the park. There were too many people but despite that it was so beautiful. I love the color orange almost as much as cobalt blue and as far as my eye could see there was orange (some would say saffron..whatever) gate after gate with billowing cloths hanging down like those things in a car wash. I walked forever it seemed, up, down, around. Trying to see it from every angle I possibly could . All gates no fences. Fences have always fascinated me. What they keep out or in. As a kid one of my favorite things to do was walk on top a fence. Like it was my own private high wire and if I fell on the "keep in" side the excitement would be trying to get out.
Sometimes there would be a gate, somewhat disappointing and other times I would have
to climb over or under to escape. I have some great scars as memories of these adventures. Today there was nothing to keep out or in. Just a beautiful journey through. As dusk approached I headed back to my car and drove back to Boston smiling all the way. I guess this was my wonderful "orange" Valentine to myself. Better than chocolate.

Greenwood 

Questions ?

So today I got this e-mail from a friend that came from a friend that came from a friend..yada yada yada... The gist of it is you answer all these questions about yourself (43) and send it off to that person and any other folks you might want to torture. Then I guess you wait and when it comes back you find out all these things about the person you didn't know ...OK that's cool, but maybe those are not the questions you want to ask them or even answer yourself. As for me I've always had a problem with answering and asking questions. I feel like I'm invading that persons privacy or putting them on the spot ...OK so I'm projecting . I feel like I'm on the spot when questioned, not sure why as most questions people ask are pretty benign but I get all butterflied when it happens none the less. So I try not to put myself in a position to question or be questioned. Not good for a variety of reasons...It makes me look awkward and generally I'm a fairly confident person, so awkwardness does not become me and makes me look somewhat shady, but that is so not the case as I am usually very straight forward, except when it comes to women I really like. Then I fall apart. My ears get all hot and I can't say the things I want to because I could be reading the situation the wrong way, or the right way and I don't want to mess up a good thing... and on and on and on... As I stated before in "Smiling Face" I do have a tendency to over analyze ...We all know that's just garden variety fear of rejection. So what's the worst that could happen ? My feelings/ego bruised ? Oops..Off on a tangent again. Where the hell am I going with this? Oh yeah... Questions... So anyway, I do have this one friend who can ask me anything and by some other worldly power she possesses I am compelled to answer all and anything she asks so of course she is the one who sent me the e-mail...(thanks Sara). All in all it was pretty painless and it would be great to know more about the folks in my life I care about. I just wish all questions were as easy as this to answer and I was a little more courageous when they're not...

Brooklyn colors 

Shrine to my Brothers

This weekend I experienced an amazing exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art by Kehinde Wiley titled Passing/Posing. His work (oil on canvas) is an homage to young Black urban men. Placing his subjects on huge canvases with vibrant colors, portrayed in ways previously reserved for powerful white men and of course their possessions, is Wiley's attempt to address the absence of these images in art past and present. All of the men assuming poses like the ones found in renaissance paintings, imposing, confident and at times disturbing in their intensity. The exhibit is separated by rooms, the last being set up like a chapel with rich velvet cloths draping the entrance. Paintings resembling the stained glass windows found in a cathedral adorned the walls with a four paneled fresco suspended from the ceiling. The installation invoked a quiet reverence to the space. A quasi-shrine to the "Invisible Man" Ralph Ellison writes about. A man so invisible that "the man" they call president used the fact that Black men have a shorter life span than white men to justify (to a group of Black leaders no less) that as a good reason to "reform" Social Security as we know it. I mean if your not gonna live long enough to collect it what's the point...right. Rather than address the real issue as to Why are Black men dying before the age of 65? or How do we change what has created this disparity in the first place?, it's taken as status quo. No purchase given to... I dunno reforming health care maybe or to stop making the white male the primary focus of any major disease research. Passing/Posing is as much a shrine to Black urban males as it is a testament to the privilege of white skin and the continued invisibility of Black men in amerikkka. I am happy to have seen this work by Wiley but I wish it was not necessary...