I bet you think this song is about you

Ever listen to a song and know that someone else would think of you if they heard it? I do this all day long. It's not so much that I'm vain - most of the time, I'd really rather it didn't apply. Especially harrowing are the songs that are relevant to more than one person. Makes a girl wonder why she repeats her bad histories, and why she apparently is brought to awareness by her playlist.

Today's songs made uncomfortably applicable by self-reflection and hypothetical second and third party observation, are:

Dosed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kickstarts (Bar 9 Remix) by Example
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps by Cake

Ballet :D

 The Paris Opera Ballet is coming to perform Giselle at the Kennedy Center!! The below images are not of Giselle, as I would hope everyone can tell, but aren't they amazing?

Rant that has been a long, long time coming

A truism about our generation: if something is food, then there is a hip hop song that makes it a sex act/ sexy thing.    We cannot seem to separate our love of KFC, cookies, milkshakes, takeout, lollipops, licorice, cherries, pie, alcohol, milk, tastycakes, etc from our genitals. I understand why, biologically... but intellectually I can't stomach it.

In addition, our musicians have a seemingly unending fascination with picking ONE WORD and making a song built on that ONE WORD, and one beat. "Back to life... back back to life...eyes eyes eyes, eyes eyes eyes eyes!" OMG. Seriously. where are today's Bob Dylans? Where is the complexity? I'm not asking for much - just some nouns and adjectives in addition to the eternally repeated direct object.

That, and can we stop calling each other daddy, girl, mommy or baby while also requesting said person to grind up on us? ALSO: let's stop making songs talking to people in a club, when 98% of the people listening to the song will not be anywhere near a club at the time. No more shout outs to the DJ. No more "creative" attempts to start the new euphemism for a girl shaking her ass. IT HAS BEEN DONE. TO DEATH and is largely pointless.


Now for intensity levels. Not every song will be the grammy performance equivalent of the end of the Lion King. We don't need every 3 minute audio assault to sound like God is cumming on an amped up disco hall (I am talking straight at Kanye, Rhianna, Beyonce right now). We do not want me to get started on Kate Perry, the test tube baby from this limited creative petri dish.  S   he dresses in cupcakes, and would have us believe dinner mints are sexy as hell, and should be taken for breasts. I for one do not treat dinner mints like a good date.

WHEW

land of honeysuckle and ambrosia

Can we ever know?

I am surprised to find myself 25 years old. Lying in the warm grass at night in the heart of the National Mall. The Capitol lies lit up at my feet and the Washington Monument serves as headboard. The smithsonian castle presides at my right. A museum of something at my left. The smell of honeysuckle, grass, summer and clover rides the air.

Headphones around my neck play French indie music. Against all odds I am alone. Beautifully alone. Not part of a tourist group. Not a couple. Not a daughter here on holiday. Not crushed into a bar or asking for a lemon slice at a restaurant. Just me with me. Pledging some sort of loyalty to my dreams.

You see, I am exactly who I thought I'd be when I was 10. It was close - I almost didn't make it. With each unlikely detail... to my hairstyle and job.... I am happy and proud of who I am. At this moment, I feel exactly in the right place at the right time.

I couldn't have known, when I was 10, why I wanted this. And I didn't know last year how I'd get here - no idea what it would take. I'd almost given up. Almost.

Almost.

So two white women, a rabbi and an African walk into Baltimore..

Since moving to Baltimore, I've heard a lot about race. Racism, racial tension, racially defined neighborhoods, racially motivated assumptions and / or privilege. In fact, the longer I'm here the more I see. Baltimore seems to have a psychological corner on the racism market; it's more fixated on the pain of it. Even more than DC.

Now, I hail from Idaho, and I'll just assume you know it's a fairly homogonous culture. In the west / northwest, in fact, black Americans or African Americans in my experience were regarded as demi-celebrities. They were the coolest kids, exotic, interesting, funny and sought after. No one talked about poor neighborhoods in racial terms. There was no "poor black" phenomenon. No crime associated with race specifically or broadly. So to come out to Baltimore and hear people openly talking about where to live based on racial geography, or neighborhoods I couldn't / shouldn't go to, is bizarre. BIZARRE. Blacks vs. Jews vs. rich vs. poorer vs. white vs. Asian.... BIZARRE.

Given all that, what do my mom and I do? Move to Pikesville (WOW is Pikesville Jewish) and join an all-black evangelistic church. I mean joined. We're the only two pale people there, out of 700-1000 others. Which we didn't think was all that odd until everyone around us said "Wow, you're brave."

Know why we joined?

Because it's fun, uplifting, warm, welcoming, inspiring, demanding, and we felt instantly at home there. Why does that require bravery? I'm not ignorant to the very real, painful and difficult ways in which racial perception shapes experiences and opportunities in life. I've worked long and hard on diversity boards, in refugee resettling, and many other real-world efforts to change old and damaging ways of looking at the world and each other. But I'll be damned if I know why people think I'm somehow "brave." Or that a whole neighborhood's occupants should feel alien because they're a different color of human or have had different experiences. (And usually our experiences aren't that different anyway.)

So, dear Baltimore: what happened here?

International Women's Day - reversal of gender in images

Warning! This post is going to be more sexual than normal. This being International Women's Day though, I thought it'd be fun to post a pic from a blog I came across the other day. The blog is malesubmissionart.com, and features men in generally artistic (NSFW) submissive poses. The reason I think this is fitting for International Women's Day? We're so used to seeing these images with women in them that we'd not even glance twice.

As you look at these pics I've chosen, picture a woman with the same expressions and body posturing. We've seen it in Abercrombie & Fitch, Levis, Axe commercials, tequila commercials, that Charlize Theron movie... everywhere. We see it at Urban Outfitters and the halls of high schools. It's just that they're girls. Why is it so strange for us to see women in traditionally male genderized roles of control and gratification, and so shocking to see men in positions of vulnerability, comfort, or aroused fear?

We can do better to honor our women by realizing how ingrained our expectations of gender are.

A treehouse on the coast of West Africa

Today, I found out my uncle died. I know before his kids know - my aunt and uncle have been on a cruise in Mexico, and she's trying to come back into the country and having a hard time working through the legalities. As I'd hate to have to do, at a time like that. His kids don't know yet, because my aunt is waiting to get back into the country tonight and tell them in person.

He was pretty young. I remember a lot about him from when I was a kid. He made clocks; really pretty ones, with custom rings, and wrote letters to Santa with his kids. My mom hired him almost 30 years ago, and he married into the family shortly thereafter. I was mostly close to his two daughters. Who are mostly ok in their lives. But anway.

My mom and I met for lunch today, just to sit and remember him. We sat inside a coffee and ice cream parlor and hugged and looked out at the rain and read an article about adults building treehouses. So we just decided to buy property on the Ghanaian coast in Ada where she has close friends, and build a treehouse home to live in and come back to. The kicker? We're serious.

Love you Uncle Danny. Come see our treehouse when we're building it?