“I love the commitment to you just being who you are.”
The above quote is something American Idol host Randy Jackson said to contestant Haley Smith after her audition in 2012. She ended up “going to Hollywood.” Although she didn’t make the finals, getting to Hollywood was a big deal.
Haley did in a motorcycle accident recently. I ran across the story about her death (and her American Idol journey) when I went down one of the many rabbit holes I end up descending in my work as an editor for SmartBrief.
Many things about her story (her testimony, as it were) struck me. She was working three jobs at 18, one of them as a vegetarian in a meat-packing plant. I have always (it feels like) worked multiple jobs and had side gigs. I can so relate to the fear of not making it financially being something that propels a person to work, work, work.
Amid all that working, though, she had a spirit that she clearly didn’t waver from. Watch the original of the song she performed (Chaka Khan and Rufus’ singing Stevie Wonder’s “Tell Me Something Good), then watch Haley do it.
It is in being truly myself, and living a life that demonstrates the things I used to try to explain in a rote script, that I best convey a message to the people around me about my values. Unfortunately, I have become sporadic in my church attendance, something I intend to rectify soon, but what hasn’t changed is my gratitude that I can be uniquely me. That’s a pretty divine gift. Randy was “on to something good.”
RIP, Haley.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
I want to write a comprehensive blog post about the power of a shower (full disclosure: I didn’t think up that phrase. It belongs to an entire organization).
The idea of a blog post about providing places for people to take showers who don’t have their own facilities has been germinating in my head for quite some time. It started when I included an article about mobile restrooms for women in Pune, India, in the International City/County Managers Association newsletter from SmartBrief, which I edit. The concept itself interested me, especially because it helps create restroom equity for women. I also recall the conversation I had with the copy editor about this article.
The copy editor said, “WiFi? Why do the buses need WiFi?”
This copy editor and I knew each other’s worldviews well enough by this point in our working relationship that it made perfect sense that I hadn’t batted an eyelash when reading that refurbished buses that had been turned into mobile toilets also had showers and WiFi whereas he wondered why WiFi mattered.
I said, “… in many developing countries, people rely heavily on smartphones, so perhaps because of that? Or because it’s meant to be a bit of a respite (the cafe, etc. [have I mentioned the buses have cafes?]). I guess life is hard there and it’s an attempt to make it a little less so?”
A friend with knowledge of the city of Pune said, ” WiFi makes sense to me. It’s ubiquitous now. Pune is a major city outside Mumbai. I don’t think class matters. Everyone uses the Internet everywhere….If they want people to spend time there (beyond just using the restroom) WiFi will make people stay longer. Similar to a coffee shop here. No WiFi vs. Free WiFi? Fugghedaboudit. [This perhaps ties in to the fact that the refurbished buses are still trying to determine revenue models.]
How Lava Mae is helping people in the US get showers
Closer to home I learned recently of an organization, Lava Mae, that offers free showers to homeless people in San Francisco. The organization has developed a toolkit to help other communities start their own, similar, projects.
While the project is all kinds of interesting, here’s the phrase that jumped out at me when I read it Friday: Radical Hospitality™.
Lava Mae’s material describes Radical Hospitality™ as “delivering an unexpected level of care.” In addition, Lava Mae says, “Radical Hospitality™ starts with how we treat and value ourselves and team members.”
My comprehensive look at mobile toilets and showers around the world as well as why they matter will have to wait. In the meantime, to honor my commitment to Five Minute Friday, here is my five-minute free write on the topic.
Five Minutes on Radical Hospitality™
Two of my friends and I volunteer once a month at a local mission, helping prepare and serve dinner then cleaning up afterward.
I read the article about Radical Hospitality™ Friday, right after volunteering at Grace Mission Thursday night. I thought about the way my two friends model respect and compassion for every person who comes through the line.
I thought about my reflexive reaction when I had parked at the mission and one of the people who eats at the mission started talking to me. He wanted to explain that the headlight of my car would be less cloudy if I used toothpaste to clean it with. I thanked him and moved on, but I’ll admit I had been fighting internally against other, less thankful instincts. Did he mean me harm? Was I going to be able to get into the workspace safely?
It reminded me of the dilemma I always feel dealing with homeless people in New York City (and that I especially felt when I lived there). My strategy was basically to ignore them (and try to make up for it by doing my fair share of volunteer work). It didn’t get any easier to cope with when I would take my young daughter for a visit to the city. “Just don’t look at them.” “Just say no.” I have never been able to reconcile the way I navigated the city with the countless needs these people had.
One of the participants at Grace Mission asked for my arm Thursday night and put this sticker there. Perhaps sometimes the best teachers about Radical Hospitality™ are those being served.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
What wish would you make for a child who has come to mean something significant to you if the two of you were having to take your leave of each other after spending a year together, working closely?
One of my favorite young actresses, Cate Elefante, just finished her time as part of the Les Misérables US Tour. I have followed Cate since I saw her as “Little Lulu” in Waitress (December 2016). She and her family share generously on social media about her experiences. This has been nice, because I love all things Broadway, and it is fascinating to get a bit of a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how things work on a national tour.
Cate shared on Instagram the backstage festivities among the cast as she closed out her time. There is a point where Maggie Elizabeth May* is giving Cate a speech (it’s the fourth frame at this link). I saw this brief speech on July 28 when it was first posted, and I have thought about it so often since then.
“Most of these people have dreamed of being in this show since we were your age, but if we had a chance to do it all over again, and had a wish to be granted, we wouldn’t wish for one more show. We would wish to be a kid again. And that’s what you get to do and all of you guys get to go do. You get to go home to your garden, and your family, and your school, and your house, and you get to play the best role of all. We will have you forever in our hearts, Cate, but oh my dear girl. Go be a kid, and promise us to never grow up.”
I so envy people with acting and vocal chops. That’s partially because I love performing, and performing tends to attract audiences more when done by people who are good at it.
Although I envy people in theatre for their talent and their opportunities to perform so often, the other part of that life I’m drawn to is the togetherness and sense of unity. Of course I am sure there are dysfunctional casts/crews, everywhere from the 3rd grade end-of-year performance to the most popular shows on Broadway and the variations in between, but I think they are the exception.
Although I can’t equate my experiences as an extra and volunteer for FSU Film with theater, I suspect there are many commonalities. The sense of unity, the spirit of “let’s get this done,” the almost palpable love of the craft of making art is something I have rarely felt in other environments.
I did work with quite a few child actors in my time at the film school. I saw some truly remarkable talent. I don’t know that any of those kids stayed with it, but I often weighed in my mind what tradeoffs they were experiencing. Absences from school, being held to a strict work ethic, the pressure of being directed, breaks in routine. At what point did the attempt to reach the next level of acting success start to erode the benefits of a “normal” childhood?
I appreciate the adult actress acknowledging the tradeoff Cate and her family had made. The first time I watched the speech, I wondered what her finale was going to be. Would it be “I know you’re going to make it big someday”? “I wouldn’t be surprised to see you win a Tony when you grow up”? “Acting will never let you down”?
No. She reminded her that childhood is a precious gift. A gift that most adults who take to the stage nightly quite possibly would want to experience again.
When each of us adults is faced with life “on my own,” there are those moments when the lightness of being a kid again beckons.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
*If I have misidentified Maggie Elizabeth May, I apologize and hope someone will clarify. Thanks, prosopagnosia, for these little blogging speedbumps.
My children had birthdays recently. My daughter turned 23, and my son turned 20. Just like that, NO MORE TEENAGERS IN THE FAMILY.
This milestone felt so big to me. Not in a bad way, but in a reflective way.
The days between June 26, 1996 and July 1, 2019 were excruciatingly long. The years, as the saying goes, were breathtakingly short.
What does it take to make a young adult?
I put on “The Things We’ve Handed Down” by Marc Cohn to play for my five minutes of writing about being the parent of two non-teenager young adults. It’s the song we used on Tenley’s birth announcement.
Will you laugh just like your mother Will you sigh like your old man Will some things skip a generation Like I’ve heard they often can
I see the things we’ve handed down in our children, of course. So many times, though, I don’t think we handed them something but they came into the world with qualities that don’t come from anything we did or from any DNA we contributed to the process.
It’s hard as a parent not to worry about the wounds we’ve created. As I’ve said here on my blog often, I wonder sometimes what I did in overcompensating for the things I grappled with that will create my kid’s material for the therapist’s couch.
Ultimately I come down to: I did it all out of unconditional love. I don’t know if there’s anything else we can give a child besides that.
I suppose it’ll take a lifetime (theirs) to know.
Happy birthday(s), Tenley and Wayne.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
I suppose this isn’t such a “closet secret” now that I am writing about it here (and I’ve written about it elsewhere), but my inexplicable junk TV go-to is “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”
I realize most of you who know me will ask, “WHY IN THE WORLD?”
I don’t understand it myself, but here’s my quick explanation (not fact-checked by the way, just plucked out of my head).
I wish I could drop tons of money on a party for the most frivolous of reasons. Have a good hair day? Line up the caterer, STAT.
I wish, when someone was asking me a mundane question such as “do you prefer French dressing or thousand island” that I had full wardrobe and makeup for the vignette where I answer.
I wish I didn’t have to worry about money (or choose to) in the way I do.
Although I disagree with most of what they do (how they dress, how they conduct themselves, the excess of it all), there are a few things that show their ultimate humanity.
I often think of Kim’s second marriage (I think it lasted 71 days) and the THREE Vera Wang gowns she wore throughout the ceremony and reception. I think of how many people that money could have fed, how much is truly could have done. (My recent week doing the #RationChallenge makes that even more of a prominent question in my head, but it’s her money — I’m as irritated at the snubbed nose at the sanctity of marriage as I am about the money.)
I often think of the rather unsavory road that led to the Kris/Robert marriage in the first place. Who knew that could end up being a launching pad for an “empire”?
I also know I would hate the constant public attention. It drives me a little nuts when they complain about the pressure of the public scrutiny, because without it they would be just another extended family in California. (I do, however, feel for their little kids who have literally never known a life outside the cameras and weren’t given a choice.)
Besides the platform part and its potential to help causes with just the dial of a phone or the swipe of a credit card, I realize I have all I need even if I don’t have all I want.
I probably need to remind myself that platforms don’t have to be Kardashian-level public to be effective. Perhaps it’s not a matter so much of keeping up as it is of keeping on (doing what I’m doing).
Five Minute Friday Question
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
Let’s talk about the questions we should ask to avoid getting into debt.
Knowing the prompt this week was “question,” I’ve been thinking since Thursday about what I would say.
I don’t want to overshare, and it’s a tad ironic that I am writing this when I am five hours away from ending the Ration Challenge, when I tried to understand what a refugee deals with (while also raising awareness and funds for the work of Church World Service).
But I have learned to write the thing that bubbles up the most, and here it is.
I would not face some of the financial worries I face in midlife if I had asked better questions years ago. (Again, my financial worries are minor relative to the survival challenges many people face, but they are my responsibility and responsibility is my deal.)
I wish I had asked in my early 20s when I took out that first credit card, “Is this necessary? Do you really know how it all compounds and adds up?”
I wish at several points in our dating, marriage, raising a family and midlife, I had asked more pointed questions about our choices. (And I am not laying blame here — we are both responsible, but I can only retroactively change one person’s choices — even if I only do that in my head.)
I wish I had asked more “what if’s.” What if someone gets laid off (which has happened to my husband twice? What is someone gets so sick they need almost constant care (which happened with my father-in-law)? What happens if a major issue arises with the house?
Had I asked those questions then, it would be so much easier for the current questions to include, “Where will the next vacation be?” or “How much more can I give to a favorite cause?” than “How am I going to get out of this debt?”
Five Minute Friday Question
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
When I saw “goal” as the prompt for this week, I breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed so easy relative to other Five Minute Friday prompts.
“Seemed” is the operative word here.
I’ll stick to the immediate goal, though. I think I’m going to find it feeds (no pun intended, as you’ll see) into some longer-term goals.
I’m starting the Ration Challenge tomorrow. For seven days, I’ll eat foods that are the equivalent of the rations given to Syrian refugees in camps in Jordan.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I signed up somewhat spontaneously and definitely before I read the “no coffee” part.
I just had to look up how to cook rice (a big part of Ration Challenge week, which makes sense). And I have a home ec degree!
(My home ec degree is a bit of a smokescreen, though. It’s a child development and family relations degree. The college isn’t even called home ec anymore (it’s human sciences now). But still, shouldn’t I know how to make rice?
I’m here to report my first batch didn’t burn and didn’t stick to the pan … and takeaway number one out of what will undoubtedly end up being many is that not a single grain escaped. I didn’t carelessly leave any on the counter or let one bounce away. I’m going to need them all.
Although the primary goal is to raise awareness and funds for refugees, I think deep down I have some other goals. I want to break the cycle of eating just to break up the day. I have been needing to deal with my caffeine dependence for a while (I’m not supposed to have any due to health reasons and let’s just say I break that rule day in and day out). It will definitely not kill me to miss wine for a week.
The goal is to help refugees, but I have a hunch it’s myself that I may be helping at least as much.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
Many of us say while socializing, “I’m bad with names. I may have to ask you next time we see each other.”
That’s certainly the case with me. The truth of the matter, though, is that I tell people I’m bad with names because it’s easier for them to understand that than it is for them to comprehend my difficulty with faces.
And all of that is ironic because people are so important to me. The last thing I want to do is make someone feel they don’t matter or that I didn’t care enough to remember them.
I have been thinking about specific individuals, and what they must be named, lately due to my work. One of the newsletters I edit, UN Wire, covers events in the world that are of interest to people who follow the United Nations Foundation.
Every time I work on that newsletter (three times a week), I struggle to get my head around the sheer volume of people who are dying or suffering in our world.
I did some crude math based on a recent issue. Adding up the deaths, injustices, illnesses and crimes against humanity, I came up with:
13,527,834
Thirteen MILLION, five hundred twenty-seven thousand, eight hundred thirty-four human beings. The types of issues included being displaced, being food insecure, children who had been raped, women who had been raped, victims of Ebola, births among 10-14 year old girls in Guatemala, UN personnel and implementing partners who had submitted abuse allegations, people injured or killed due to cyclones, people held political prisoner, people displaced/killed in Burundi and Syria, education disrupted and more people living as refugees.
***end of five minutes***
I am preparing to participate in the Ration Challenge, during which I will eat the equivalent food as that eaten by a Syrian refugee for a week. I needed to have a name in my head to picture who this is for. It’s so easy to see the mushrooming numbers of people suffering and forget that every single one of those people is someone’s daughter or son.
I’ve joked around about how hard it will be to live without coffee for a week. I’ve send fundraising emails making fun of the fact that I rushed into this challenge without fully comprehending the “no sugar” and “no alcohol” parts.
But life for Elhem is no joke, and her name will motivate me.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
The article talked about how Ellicott City, Md., has had two 1000-year floods since 2016. It went into detail about the flooding in general, about the environmental factors around Ellicott City that have contributed to a topography that makes flash flooding worse. There were facts and figures (explained in a relatively straightforward way).
Juxtaposed against that (and my favorite part) were the stories of the people. The business owners who rebuilt after the 2016 floods, amid lofty hopes that life in their quaint community would return essentially as it had been before. The teenagers who grew up in the area. The visitors who kept Ellicott City financially sound. The fact that the whole reason the city was situated where it is had to do with its proximity to the water (in the 1700s).
Much of the “people” part of the story focused on Eddie Hermond, a veteran and one of those people who draws other people into their circle and connects people who otherwise wouldn’t have grown to know and care about each other.
Eddie died after the 2018 Memorial Day flood, swept away by the floodwaters as he was trying to help a woman (and her cat) escape danger.
***end of five minutes***
For Memorial Day 2019, Eddie’s friends planned together where they spent last Memorial Day — the day they lost him. Here’s what the writer says about chatting with Eddie’s friends:
As we talk, a server pours a shot of Jameson’s whiskey and sets it high up on a shelf behind the counter. Sara tells me that it’s a shot for Eddie—that was his favorite drink. The whiskey will sit up there behind the bar until it evaporates, and then they’ll fill it back up again.
I can’t get that imagery out of my head — of the shot of whiskey, sitting silently on a shelf, evaporating so gradually you can’t see it go until it’s all gone. The cultures of the places we love the most … and that edify us the most … be they offices, homes, churches or something else … have some type of watchful spirit in the Eddie mold. Still remembered, still a part of the place that transcends the tangible.
Remembering the “Eddie” figures in our collective lives matters. Here’s to you, Eddie.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
We walked together the couple of blocks, through the park, and got in line at the ice cream shop. We weren’t there very long when a white woman approached us. A more accurate word would be accosted. She accosted us. The way she walked up to us I assumed daddy knew her. He did not. Almost immediately, she was yelling.
I didn’t grow up in a family of yellers. Naturally, she scared me. I didn’t identify, until years later, that this is what started my panic attacks. Her face was red and she was pointing at him and then at me. Since I was on his shoulders it seemed like her finger was directly in my face.
“Where did you steal that baby from?” she screamed.
I was about three when Dad was driving us one day along winding suburban roads. Being economists, Mom and Dad could tell you where everything in the world came from, like cars and refrigerators and crayons. If you were sensible, you drove only Japanese or German cars, because they were better made. This was why we had a Toyota.
I was in the back, strapped behind a seat belt, reading. Mom was in the passenger seat. Dad had stopped driving. Maybe it was a red light. Maybe he was lost. A car sped up from behind us and screeched to a stop alongside us. A man was making big movements with his arms. Dad rolled down his window. The man’s face looked like boiling water. He was yelling at Dad. I didn’t understand what his words meant, but they scared me. I was too young to know much, but I knew that this man felt like he was better than Dad. And this meant we were different.
I looked away from the man’s face, which was red and white at the same time, because he reminded me of monsters in my picture books. Dad didn’t say anything. Something uncomfortable was moving in my belly, like a stomachache when I was sick.
The man suddenly drove away. Dad and Mom were still quiet, then they began whispering in Gujarati. I felt something new rising up inside me. I felt shame. I wanted to be as powerful as the light-skinned monster man, and I did not want to be like Dad.
Humanity in Practice
How does a prompt like “practice” factor into these two little girls’ stories? I would be naive to suggest that these red-faced human beings spewing hatred and ignorance could transform into kind, humane people by taking a class, reading a book, meditating or in some other way trying to better themselves.
I also, in thinking about this prompt and these two people — Kelly who I know through social media and advocacy and Anuradha who I only know through her book — kept going back to what such encounters at such young ages did to and about the actual things they chose to practice.
Did they take up ballet and discover the joy of dance? Or did they instead adapt some deep-down conviction that they were somehow undeserving of the freedom that comes with creativity? Did these types of interactions carve away some essential building block of confidence and change the course of their lives forever?
I also wondered what those of us who have white privilege (and we all do if we are white) can do in 2019 to change things. If you’re reading this, it’s probably a pretty safe bet that you aren’t one of the red-faced people. However, the moments in our lives and the choices with which we are presented every moment give us an opportunity to build up rather than tear down.
***end of five minutes***
I have been grappling for the last few days about personal feedback I received regarding a message I was responsible for approving. After reflecting for several days, I finally (and belatedly) got to the point where I accepted that I had been inaccurate at a minimum and possibly utterly wrong. Here was the inner monologue that took place before I got there:
But I’m reading “White Fragility” for goodness sakes. I’M TRYING TO GET IT.
Red-faced tirades aren’t the only way damage is done. Quietly abandoning what we know to be true hurts others also.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.) Also I blew the five-minute limit this week by a bunch. Feel free to go on a red-faced tirade against me about THAT. 🙂
