Yes We Can

For once, the Indiana primaries--and by proxy, my vote--may mean something. Usually by this point in the election cycle, the candidates for the two major parties have already been decided and, frankly, whatever school board election going on usually isn’t enough to drive folks to the polls in May.

This year it’ll be a little different. Senators Obama and Rodham-Clinton continue to duke it out for the Democratic nomination. This translates into actual presidential nominee campaign stops in our fair state. Suddenly, we’re relevant.

One of the last times we were relevant was in 1968 when Senator Robert Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency in. During his visit to Indianapolis, he had to break the news that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.

Living in Indiana, you kind of take a few things as de riguer. Our screwed up time zones, our love of basketball (despite the state of the Pacers), and our primaries not counting for much. It’s a shame that we get inured to the fact that most times we are kind of left out of the process.

As a nation, we love oppositional politics just as much as we love being cynical about politics. Cynical me believes that whenever the party of the Presidency and Congress are the same, we get a little nervous. However, let’s face it: the differences between the parties aren’t much. The parties are more about consolidating their own power and beating the “other” guys than any real agenda. On the flip side, we “survived” President Clinton, we “survived” President Bush. We “survived” a Democrat-ruled Congress. We “survived” a Republican-ruled Congress.

Not-so-cynical me believes that we can actually make a difference in the primaries this year for the first time in a long time. I’m still hoping for an election that will raise the level of debate in the country, one that will woo us with ideas, no matter how controversial. I don’t want to see a repeat of elections of yesteryear, where pragmatic politicians throw out some platitudes, count on electoral disinterest, and rally their most faithful. That’s the sure route to mediocre leadership. Then again, we get the leaders we deserve.

We’re ready for change.


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My Donuts Bring Me to the Yard

My donut costs 65 cents.

Though you could probably care less about me and my love of donuts, allow me to put this more in context. For the last couple of months, I nurtured a simple morning ritual: I break for a mid-morning snack around six in the morning, take myself down to Marsh, and I treat myself to a donut. The cashiers smile at me, I drop two quarters in their hand, and I go about my day.

Then last month I dropped two quarters in my cashier’s hand and she looked up and said “they’re now 65 cents.”

That’s a 30 per cent increase. For my donut. Did no one think that we’d notice?

We’ve always had pretty low gas prices, especially consider prices some are paying in other parts of the globe. We’re just now passing the (inflation adjusted) gas prices highs of 1981. Let’s face it, oil is not a renewable resource, yet from 1975 until now, fuel efficiency has improved little more than about 10 miles per gallon. Thirty years of technological advancement has only eked out an extra 10 miles per gallon. We need to be developing alternatives, seriously pursuing other technology, but we’re short-term thinkers, so we don’t unless we absolutely have to.

I wanted to take a family vacation, a nice drive down to Atlanta to visit some friends. I remember canceling this same trip last year when gas prices jumped to $3.50 or so. This year, the trip might be possible, but only in light of serious cutbacks in other areas of our life.

And the cost of my donut went up 30%. I don’t think you feel me.

We, as a nation, have had to drive our minivans less, car pool more, and take mass transit more. We had to cut back spending in other areas. What happens when things I can’t live without, things I can’t cut back on, go up? Bread, milk, eggs … 30% adds up quickly as the transportation costs of getting our products to us get passed along. At what point does the economy finally grind to a halt.

I have to start cutting back somewhere. But I'm going to miss my donuts.


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Out of Patience for Politics

I know, I've got to quit wading into politics, but I’ve about had it with the shenanigans of Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton and her camp.

This is the first time in a while that I’ve not only paid keen attention to the primary (as opposed to my cursory interest in the horse race the media tends to depict it as). We have an opportunity for a completely fresh slate, no incumbent running, no vice-president running as heir apparent. While the Republican question is settled, since my vote is still up for grabs, I am still interested in what the other side of the aisle has to offer.

And I’m seeing too much politics as usual.

You would think the prospect of either a woman or a black presidential candidate as nominee for a major party would be historic enough. It’d be great to see this campaign as a battle of ideals, ideas, and messages of hope.

Senator Barack Obama has invigorated this election cycle, if only as an outsider with limited beltway experience/taint. What I don’t want to see, Senator Rodham-Clinton, is more business as usual as the alternative. If you want to chew each other up before the real election in the Fall, well, I guess that’s between you and your strategists.

I understand that win-at-any-cost politics while maintaining plausible deniability is the legacy of President William Jefferson Clinton. Veiled racism is a new color to your palette. I wonder just how many Geraldine Ferraros/taking the black voters for granted/ left-wing paternalists are in your camp: working alongside us, in seeming support, until one of us gets a little too uppity and needs to be put back in our place.

Don’t think we don’t know coded language when we hear it. We’ve been tacitly demonized as boogeymen of welfare and crime long enough to know it when we hear it. Just like we recognize someone willing to come into the hood when they need something, only to flee back to the suburbs once they’ve gotten it.

So, Senator Rodham-Clinton, I expect more from any potential leader of this country. I’m tired of having to choose between the lesser of two evils. Do better.


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We Wear the Mask

“I can’t explain, you would not understand. This is not how I am. I have become comfortably numb.” –Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb

We put on masks, masks that become part of us, ones we wear in order to interact with others and the world. Before too long, we become trapped by these false ideas of ourselves. These false selves, these lies of who we are and how we see ourselves, start developing when we’re young. How our families shape us, how we let our friends define us, the fronts we put up in order to appeal to potential mates. We may derive our self-worth from what we do, we’re of value because of how we behave or what we have.

And yet some part of us is miserable under this definition of who we are and longs to find a way out from under it.

We come to believe this lie and try to fix it ourselves, essentially creating a self-salvation scheme as we try to re-create ourselves. “I am not”–a man, for example–but “I can be if”I have the right rims, the right car, the right kind of money, the right bling, the right girl, go to the right school, get the right job. “I am not”–where I should be in life–but “I can be if”I have the right job, the right house, the right kind of money, the right family, and live in the right neighborhood.

On one hand, we see ourselves as gods of our own domains, free to live as we choose. On the other hand, we’re trapped by definitions of ourselves that we can’t seem to escape. Part of leading a self-examined life means getting over the fear of facing ourselves. We have to see the obstacles in our lives, realize where we are, then we can overcome it.

Be they problems in your family, addictions, compulsions or bad decision making patterns, we have responsibilities to our lives. We must be diligent. We must strip away anything that hinders us from being the people we were meant to be. We must always be growing, be “becoming”. Start with a few simple questions: What do you want to change about yourself? What do you know needs to be changed in your life?

Think through the issues you need to change, don’t numb yourself to them. Shed the imposter and become fully who you were meant to be.

"Sanctity lies in discovering my true self, moving toward it, and living out of it... While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements, and the adulation of others, the true self claims its identity in its belovedness. We give glory to God simply by being ourselves." –Brennan Manning


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Enjoying a Good Silence

Our lives are noisy. From the moment we wake up to the blare of our clock radios, to the radio to accompany us to and from work to the television which keeps us company at home to music as a running soundtrack to our lives as we jog or run errands, our lives are filled with constant noise.

When we doing have the noise, the sheer busyness of our schedules, our self identities wrapped up in what we do. Too many of us think that we’re indispensable, that we have to be at our jobs, at every meeting, at every volunteer group or whatever, from sun up to sundown. We run ourselves exhausted, fueled by the certainty that there is not enough time in the day to get everything done. But we try anyway. In being busy for busy’s sake, we fail to realize that much of it boils down to empty activity, ways of hiding from ourselves.

Rather than always running around filling our lives with being busy, maybe we ought to try the underappreciated discipline of learning to be still. Our need for constant diversion fuels both our restlessness and our avoidance as we end up never attending to the things that matter most. Ultimately, we become disconnected from ourselves, God, and each other.

Sometimes we just need to disconnect from the world. Silence is the final reduction, to be completely at rest, in solitude so that internal dialogues can best be had. Oh, we don’t want to. Think of how we punish criminals: it’s one thing to lock them up in their penal communities, but when they are too bad among themselves, we put them in solitary confinement. In the silence, you have the madness of yourself and only your inner junk to deal with. When you have to confront who you are, your fears and your doubts. In this unknowing of ourselves, we are left to deal with the depths of your heart, the emptiness, the loneliness.

But this is a fight that must be waged if you are ever to finally know peace. Times of renewal and reflection, silence and solitude, helps us to cleanse our hearts and listen better.

[This blog would have been a lot shorter had I just written: "Thank God Spring Break is over and my kids are back in school."]


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You Can’t Save Everyone

At three o’clock in the morning, when our phone rings, we have a pretty good idea who it is that’s calling us. We all know folks whose lives s are filled with constant drama, who always find themselves in situations, who always need to be bailed out one way or another. Folks whose tendency towards bad decision making results in consequences that suddenly become your problem.

Their lives follow a familiar pattern: your friend picks the wrong person, and you are left to pick up the pieces. Their temper allows a simple misunderstanding to be blown up into to all manner of new heights. Their work situations are ever untenable, always due to the fault of a boss or some co-worker (never their fault). And this is before we get to the alcohol and drug abuse.

You can’t save everyone, especially folks who aren’t ready to be saved. Folks often don’t recognize themselves as self-destructive, their hard-to-control impulses are merely quirks of theirs that people have to learn to accept because they “keep it real.”

They don’t understand that watching them spiral frustrates friends and those who love them. No one wants to watch people they care about make poor life decisions or hurt themselves and we hate the feeling of powerlessness that comes with ringside seats to their latest drama.

But we also can’t live their lives for them. Sometimes you have to let people make their mistakes, our job is to be there for them, to walk beside them, to help pick up the pieces but not do the sweeping ourselves. You have to know when to distance yourself from them as to not allow their drama to bleed into your life and as to not be the constant maid for their lives.

Some people are their own worst enemies. Granted, some folks attract needy people and like to play the white knight charging to the rescue. It’s always easier to focus on rescuing someone else than dealing with your own life, but you have to do what’s best for both of you. Compassion is good; to drown in their mess is not. Sometimes you have to set boundaries for both of your sakes. Sometimes compassion means helping them find the tools to clean up their own mess. But at three o’clock in the morning, my phone shouldn’t be ringing all the time.

[You know, it's easy to say this, but I already know in my heart that when the phone rings, I'm going to answer it. I know you can't save everyone, especially those who don't want to be saved, but sometimes you just have to keep trying.]


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I Don’t Twitter

Seriously, I hate Twitter. I hate the idea of Twitter. In fact, as I hop on my hypocrisy broom since I have a column and a blog, in this age of blogs and Twitter and Facefook and MySpace, it may be time for many folks to shut up.

There’s a reason we aren’t telepaths: I don’t have to hear your every thought, especially when you think it. Too many of us as is don’t take the time to sit with our thoughts, to mull things over, before we open our pie holes. No, we feel something in the moment and then blog it, let your mouth get away from us (or rather, our fingers get ahead of us as we come down with a case of keyboard courage).

Maybe I’m just disappointed by the level of conversation. More likely, I see myself as a professional writer and with the Internet being largely a medium of words (and porn), I tend to cling to the pipe dream that as written communicators, we should be able to present our ideas and opinions in clear and precise ways. Of course, the other edge of that writer’s sword that I’m swinging is that writers have ego enough to believe that what they write deserves to be read. Unfortunately, Twittering everything that pops into your head gives plenty of room for people to see the shallowness and vacuity of those thoughts.

It’s easy to shoot yourself in the foot on the Internet. As we vomit our gossipy messages all over the Internet, heedless of the mess we make, we forget two things: one, careless words can’t be unsaid, even more so on the Internet; and two, the Internet is forever and we don’t realize that nothing is truly deleted.

Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon who can’t idly flit away a day updating folks on his mood. Keep in mind that I don’t text message. I don’t believe the language of Shakespeare should be reduced to OMG C U L8TR, but that’s a rant for another day.


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My Vote is Up for Grabs

Here me candidates from all parties: my vote is up for grabs. Young, middle class, black male, a prime catch if you can hook me. Technically, I’m a registered Republican (don’t get all excited: When I decided to register to vote, I called up each party. I care, but I’m lazy, so I called the Democrats first since they’re first alphabetically. They told me where I could go to get registered. Then I called the Republicans. They came to my door. That’s why they get the right of first refusal of my vote.)

And since I’m really in the mood to make friends, I’ll add this: though I’m a conservative Christian also, I recognize that I can’t simply litmus test candidates based on two issues. Seriously, I don’t know how much homosexual rights and abortion policy have to do with stances on the environment and foreign policy (and don’t give me “character” because we’re still talking about politicians).

At a cursory glance, Republican rhetoric centers too much talking in terms of money and running the country like a business. That’s good and all, but there aren’t too many things I want run like a business, except maybe a business. Serving the needs of people is very seldom bottom-line nor cost effective. Democrats don’t look much better. Too often they run the campaign position of “we’re not them”.

Have you noticed that a lot of these “vs” arguments no longer matter to a lot of us? It’s like they are more interested in arguing with each other, not realizing that they are disconnecting from whole generations of people in the mean time. At some point, if they wish to remain relevant, they will have to turn around (or outside of one another) and start answering the questions being asked of today’s culture. Because when it comes right down to them, the terms describe camps a lot more than they do people.

So here’s what I’m asking O Red and Blue platforms: show me something. Give me your vision. Give me some real candidates, not cardboard cutouts whose “turn” it is to run. You give me intelligent ideas and a sense of hope for the future, and you will have my attention. If not, I will just sit on my couch with my big bowl of apathy topped with cynicism and pray that there’s something good on television.


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Seriously, You Can’t Say That

Kelly Tilghman, play-by-play announcer for The Golf Channel's PGA Tour broadcasts, while bantering with Nick Faldo about young players who might challenge Woods she suggested that they "lynch him in a back alley." I can almost hear her echoing her fictional counterpart, Ron Burgundy, when he said “I immediately regret this decision.”

Of course she came out with the requisite apology (two days later). Tiger’s representatives declared it a non-issue, but she was suspended for two weeks by the Golf Channel. This wasn’t the same as the Don Imus spewing-viciousness-for-its-own-sake situation. Nor was this Tiger’s first brush with folks misspeaking around him (Hello, Fuzzy Zoeller and your fried chicken and collard greens comment).

Yet my gut reaction was to essentially give her a pass for her slip of the tongue, after all, who among us hasn’t ever said something stupid that we (immediately) regret? The greater issue to consider in evaluating the situation is to recognize that such comments happen within a certain context.

First off, Tiger and Kelly are friends. Jokes you make within family that sound horrendous when someone outside the family hears them, much less, repeats them. We can speak one way with our “boys”, one way with our family, and another way in public/on the record. Still, we have to always be mindful: some language and images need a “handle with care” label attached to them.

Because, secondly, there is a greater problem of context: such comments will always be heard within the cultural-historical context of America, with its convoluted past involving slavery, civil rights, and race relations in general. The image of lynching harkens back to an unfortunate, to say the least, time in American history. Lynching is simply not an image to be taken lightly, but rather is akin to making a rape analogy and I doubt she would joke about that. Such a comment would be heard differently to different ears.

In short, it’s stupid and you can’t say it. However, I don’t think she should have been suspended. I think her apology should have stood on its own, she be reprimanded, and allow the conversations to be had about why what she said was a poor choice of words. We can’t police every bad sentence, because that would stifle conversations that still need to be had. We have a First Amendment right to make a fool out of ourselves, but more importantly, if we truly are to turn the page on this chapter in our history, we need to allow these conversations to happen and in so doing, we need to have thicker skins.


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You Earn Your Reputation

I was listening to the Colin Cowherd show the other day and he was ranting about how cities earn their reputation. Reputations can be assets or detriments depending on what those reps say about the place in question. This prompted me to think about how true this was of people also.

Rumors may swirl around you, people may talk about you, but if they are saying the same things, one has to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I believe that there are Teflon folks and there are Velcro folks. With Teflon folks, nothing sticks to them. Rumors might spread about them, but what makes them Teflon is that the rumors don’t track with their personality and character and thus don’t really stick. Velcro folks, on the other hand, everything sticks to them because the rumors aren’t a stretch to imagine and line up with how they are or act.

Think of a reputation as a brand. Think of the reputations some of your friends or family have. They are promiscuous. They are unstable and need to be medicated. They are drunken buffoons. They are spoiled. They are a no account loser who can’t hold a job. They only use people to get what they want.

Don’t get me wrong, people can be the victims of cruel smear campaigns. I remember high school. However, I’m talking about the reputation you have among your friends, among those who really know you. You can rail about how everyone misunderstands you, how everyone else is in the wrong. Or you could examine yourself. At some point, it might be check the mirror time. There might be a point where you have to examine your method, how you handle situation, how you comport yourself.

We develop blind spots about ourselves. Sometimes other folks see things we can’t see. Meanwhile, our whole lives are an advertisement, a testimony, to the type of brand we are. Because people earn their reputations.


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Fathering Fathers

I’ve always had my father in my life. Say what you will, since everyone has their faults, he has been a constant presence and 80% of parenting is simply being there. So it’s difficult to imagine how I’d feel if he’d walked out on our family or not been in the picture in the first place. I can’t imagine the profoundness of my sadness or how that might evolve into anger or how that anger might transform into outright rage or hate.

Too many of us don’t know how to be fathers because we’ve never had a real father or have never seen the importance of a real father due to the absence of one in our lives. I love my two boys and I plan on raising them to be the type of men they ought to be, and one of the conversations I have started to have with them (even though they are only in kindergarten and first grade) is that I’m not raising another generation. There will be no misunderstandings on this point: if they consider themselves grown enough to have sex, they will be grown enough for the responsibilities that come along with it.

They will be raising that child. I’m not the automatic babysitter and I’m definitely not going to be giving up my weekends so that they can continue to rip and run as if they don’t have a care in the world. I have done my time. And guess what? They aren’t going to dump all of the work of taking care of the child on the women they got pregnant. They will be a part of that child’s life if I have any say in the matter.

I have been blessed to not only have my biological father in my life, but also other men who have been models of what true fathers should be. I think I had underestimated how much he has shaped and formed my life. I also realized the great debt that I owe them for the man that I’ve become and how much I love him. We should all be so lucky to have such fathers.


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Hey You Girl

I was walking through the neighborhood the other day and I overheard a boy call out to a girl, each all of 6, “hey you, girl.” The girl in question stopped what she was doing and quickly attended to the boys’s query du jour. Oddly enough, it occurred to me that the level of dialogue between the sexes doesn’t improve much with age. Normally I’d ask “Men, how are we talking to women?” though this time my question is “Women, why do you answer?”

We’ve allowed some parts of our culture to drag us all down, especially in a celebration of the deprecation of women. It’s easy to blame hip hop, it’s everyone’s favorite boogie man. It’s a loud, brash, often obnoxious target, and if only all of society’s ills could be vanquished if the worst parts of it were to cease. However, too often, however, it’s every bit the mirror we don’t want to stare into. Maybe it’s time to move beyond hip hop to the elements of our culture that inspire and fuel it.

We’ve become numb to much of the racism, homophobia, and sexism in our language and call it entertainment. Our entertainment may degrade, demean, and debase, but as long as it’s to a good beat, we don’t say much.

We are sold images. Now we’re sold and packaged as images for mass consumption fueled by (low) expectations of us. Our men little more than drug-dealing thugs and our women treated as if they all dance on a pole or are all out to get into men’s wallets.

My point is that women are at least complicit in the objectification. Ladies, all I’m asking is that you consider a few questions: How much should you tolerate? What do you support? What does accepting poor behavior and conversation say about you (or how you see yourselves)?

Maybe it speaks to a lack of respect for ourselves. All of us, damaging ourselves starting with the way we speak to one another. Women, it’s hard to say “respect me for my mind” when you have your minds out on display and flopping all over the place accessed by anyone who shows even the slightest attention. Demand respect, get respect, attract what you put out. Respect starts early and needs to be taught, reinforced, and most importantly, needs to be modeled.


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Living the Via Negativa

In our culture we rarely have room to explore our darkness in our books, movies, and music without debasing ourselves. Such exploration, be it through horror novels or sometimes harsh music, can allow us to examine our darker sides and even, by seeing our darker sides, to self-correct. This isn’t anything new. Making an argument against a certain viewpoint by showing the negative conclusion to which it ultimately leads has been called via negativa, or the "way of the negative."

Yet, there is dueling trend in our culture, where the marketplace exploits and promulgates certain images. From depicting women as prostitutes to the proliferation of the N-word (a vicious and demeaning word with a history of death and dehumanization behind it) in both our movies and music, it’s like we’re taking the worst of who we are and marketing it as something to aspire to. In our exuberance to keep topping ourselves, keep pushing those boundaries, we’ve forgotten who we are.

Flirting with the indecent has led to innovations: from the blues to rock ‘n roll to hip hop, to the rise of the independent film, to books we wouldn’t otherwise be able to read. Going against the grain has always made the artist stand out. There’s a fine line we artists should be walking, with the responsibility of the artist being to consider quite seriously the idea that we may be glorifying or somehow making cool or acceptable the dark and macabre things of this world.

I don’t want this to be read as a call for the indecency police. There’s a time for the incendiary, the edginess, but we don’t want our normative state to be angry and edgy. And while the via negative allows us to wrestle with despair and sometimes see or find the beauty in the darkness, that gives too much credit to too many of our so-called artists.

We’ve lost our sense of shame. We’ve lost our sense of honor. In so doing, we’ve lost our sense of character. We witness the coarsening our language and the dulling of our conscience. So we need to realize that while we don’t need to censor artists, our eyes work, our ears work, and we know where the stop button is.

Apologies for the random rant.


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In the Room

Last spring, a black assistant coach referred to members of his special teams unit as the “White Nation.” All sorts of banter goes on in an athletic locker room, the room being the social context for such comments. Many things can be said in the room, from well-intentioned racial badinage to sexist comments to any of a number of potentially embarrassing jokes. This isn’t to excuse any of that, only to point out that often things said within the room are just that, within the room, and can be especially dangerous outside of the room.

However, I’m intrigued by the idea of joking as acceptance, as a way of letting folks into the room, into their circle. There is a bit of a cultural element at work here, and, no, I’m not referring to growing up playing the dozens or anything like that. But rather, as a guy. Guys can be harsh with one another, riding each other, busting one another out of a sign of camaraderie and equality.

Now, I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by trying to pretend that the locker room mentality, the same brandishing of wit often displayed at a “guy’s night”, is the sort of intellectual sparring one might have seen among the ancient Greek philosophers. Often stupid and crass, at least in guy locker rooms, humor can be the leveler of the playing field, where no one gets a free pass. Humor and nicknames are dual-edged weapons: they can include people as well as be injurious to them.

Not everyone can take certain levels of joking, some folks being more sensitive than others. There can be a fine line between a bullying insult and the camaraderie of equals. What some might consider an insider’s joke others might consider mean-spirited. The difference is one of intent and intent is much easier to gauge when you not only understand the nature of the relationship but also are confident within it.

So being brought into the room comes with a certain amount of risk and may require the development of thicker skin and greater intestinal fortitude. However, by my estimation, there are worse things - like being left outside the room.


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My 2007 Blog Year in Review

Since it’s that time of year where we reflect on where we’ve been. (Plus, I’m gearing up for a jaunt out to Seattle for the Hollywood Jesus Annual Gathering where I’ll be one of the speakers. They want me to do a presentation about my blog On Magical Negroes.) So I thought I’d end the year with a look back at some of my favorite blog posts ... written by me. You know, in case you missed any of them (in no particular order despite the fact that my favorites top the list):

Horror Premises: White People are You Kidding Me? – yeah, I knew once I hit post that this was going to be my favorite blog of the year. If only from the amount of giggling Chesya and I did while “researching” it.

A Writer's Dark Night of the Soul – one of my blogs for "Blogging in Black." My angst-ridden plea to when the muse goes silent and/or it goes too long between validations (i.e. that golden ticket known as the acceptance letter). Though my interview with Alethea Kontis was another fave.

Prayer of Emergence – because sometimes I need to be reminded of a few things.

On lighter notes, there’s nothing like medical procedures and my family being, well, us. So we have The Catheter Incident, Restaurant Debacles, and Broaddus Family Tradition Continues.

Take Your Ass Home – nuff said. None of us are so important we can’t go home.

Betrayed by Faith? Growing Through Disillusionment. You’d almost think there was a theme to some of my musings this year. Actually, both were "blog homework assignments" (it's a thing that happens on my message board: different folks get tagged with topics to blog about).

Black Self-Image

Who are you having these conversations with? Part I and Part II.

American Idol – in my rationalization for watching the show, I was reminded of how this is analogous to the business of writing, both as a writer and as an editor.

Speaking of other threads of thought through the year, there was the “Community Series”: Participatory Community. Earn the Right to Speak. Earn the Right to Complain. Community Crutch.

A few Friday Night Date Place blogs can be mentioned. The Right to be Picky. For the Love of Money. A Thief Always Gets Caught. By the way, you forfeit the right to feeling “blogged at” if you’re calling me up and end up using the phrase “you ought to blog about this” in the conversation.

Of the columns I write for Intake/Indy.com, Pipe Down IPS gets an honorable mention only because it generated so much mail for me. Sheesh, considering that I write about race and religion fairly often, I can’t believe cheering at a graduation proves to be the most divisive issue I’ve written.

And a few of my Hollywood Jesus reviews were personal favorites: 300, Pan's Labyrinth, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Transformers, The Riches, and Sunshine.


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Cosby’s Call to Arms

I finally got around to reading the transcript of Dr. Bill Cosby’s remarks in commemoration of Brown vs. the Board of Topeka Education to see what the brouhaha was all about. I understand that a lot of my white acquaintances want me to co-sign what he said, having heard snippets of his comments, but with all due respect, what these were were the equivalent of a barbershop conversation. A family conversation where some dirty laundry gets aired in order to possibly work toward a solution. So that’s the context in which I make my comments.

Few people call out the problems. Teenage pregnancy, families without fathers, drugs, and the chasing of materialism without any thought to life in the long term. These are all symptoms of the true state of despair in which too many people live.

I feel like an old man complaining about today’s youth. Maybe I’m mis-remembering the past, but it seems to me that there was a time when black folks lived together in community. That we have someone lost part of our cultural ethic, having gone from marching in order to secure equal education to dropping out of school in record rates and playing “gangsta”.

Too many of us have bought into the lie that we have no choice, that there’s no point to dream, that no one cares. We’ve bought the lie of low expectations. It is intellectually easy to blame racism and the actions of “some” people within the community. Folks may have their own ideas about what “some” may be code for, particularly as an attack on the poor. However, I believe that leaving the conversation behind, not having it at all, or forgetting about the poor is truly attacking them. It may be easier to kill the messenger because that’s sure beats wrestling with the actual problems.

The conversations may be hard; even still, the solutions are easier said than done. But the conversations need to be had. Often and loudly because how we treat the poor defines who we are as a culture and as a country.


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Food is NOT the Enemy

I love food. I think that it’s about time that I admit it. I love its taste. I love its color. I love its texture. I love its smell, and the warm memories that often go with that smell. I love the experience of eating. Yet I find myself at war with my body. I was a good soldier in this war. Each day I check my POWs, measured in terms of pounds lost. I take stock of the enemy’s forces by counting carbs. Waging military campaigns with names like “Atkins” or “South Beach”, I reconnoiter territory, setting some foods as off limits. And I close out the day by inflicting on the troops a boot camp regimen of exercise.

Okay, I’m too lazy to count anything before I eat, but I don’t want to get trapped in the tyranny of a (perpetual) diet. We make ourselves miserable, turning one of life’s simple pleasures into an ascetic torture. We remove the joy from eating.

So obvious fasting is one of those spiritual disciplines that’s not in the cards for me. As spiritual disciplines go, this was the one that always annoyed me. There is something about it that almost required you to proclaim “stand back, for I am holy, and I am fasting” (or maybe that was just me). However, this does remind me that there is a spiritual aspect to food.
Think of the fellowship that often surrounds the act of eating, be it with family or with friends, even co-workers. Think of how much more food is enjoyed when done in the company of people you love. Think of the religious ceremonies–communion, the Holy Feasts of ancient cultures, Ramadan, Kwanzaa–built around food.

My goal is to walk the line between gluttony and being a slave to a diet. Right now my “diet” mostly consists of me drinking water as my beverage of choice and having smaller portions of what I eat. Sure, I have a 0% muscle index and when I flex, nothing moves. And when my kids draw me, I am a bald face circle on top of another circle. Daddy the snowman figure. I’ve at least got to do something about that.


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Long Memories for Taxes

November 6, 2007 local voters did what politicians always said we could do (as their excuse for not legislating term limits) but never did: we “voted the bums out”. It didn’t seem to matter what party folks were, the incumbents had to go. Anyone even remotely connected to the property taxes debacle had to go. And now the politicians are running scared because while they can schedule tax day as far away from elections as possible, property taxes come due awfully close to election time. Oops!

Suddenly our legislature has gotten bipartisan fever as they try to come up with solutions to the property taxes imbroglio, I mean, relief. They don’t necessarily want to push to raise income taxes, because we’d “see” that too painfully. An increase in sales tax wouldn’t be felt quite so acutely. The last thing they want to do is further penalize homeowners.

We live in the land of opportunity, seeking prosperity for ourselves and a legacy for our family. The lure of home ownership is part of what we’ve defined as the American Dream. Ownership means folks have a stake in the community. Higher taxes may seem like uptown problems, but—as Indiana faces a skyrocketing foreclosure (and bankruptcy) rate—we risk knocking the legs out of the housing market once folks realize they can’t afford the tax on their dream.

Many of us were clutching to middle class by our fingertips. I know that when I opened up my property tax bill, essentially our government was asking an extra three months mortgage payment out of me; or, to put it another way, an entire month of my wife and I’s combined salaries. I didn’t (and don’t) mind making sacrifices and paying my fair share, however, there is a tipping point.

There’s an old folk saying about how if you throw a frog into hot water it will immediately hop out; but if you put it in cold water and slowly raise the temperature, it will eventually allow itself to be cooked to death. While, this folk doesn’t match the reality for frogs, it does match the reality for tax payers. You increase our taxes all at once, you’ll get a revolt. Apparently if you raise them by degrees, we’ll allow you keep raising them.

All I’m saying is that it’s time to break out the thermometers people.


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Holding to Nothing

We’re in the midst of a generation that has what I have diagnosed as “acute failure to believe.” It’s a mental and spiritual malaise about politics, religion, and social issues because they has simply disconnected. Few take stands on issues if for no other reason than stands are easily discredited amounting to “I don’t have a position but here’s why your position is wrong.” Don’t get me wrong, this is a stance I take when folks are talking about stuff I don’t care about, which may be the problem: we don’t care about much.

Too often, I feel like my friend who ended up in this conversation:

Person A: Here’s why your job sucks.
Person B: Hang on, do you even have a job?
Person A: No.
Person B: That’s why you have no money and you’re treading water in life.

We lack passion about ideas, cast adrift on a sea of self-interest, not committing to much. If you hold to nothing, there’s no point in you arguing with me. It’s like talking to quicksand. Some folks want to run their mouths on topics they don’t care about, willing to argue in circles because ignorance knows no fear (I think I just described most message board discussions).

I like talking to people who hold to things, especially if they’re open in their thinking. They challenge me, sharpen me. Sure, there are issues I don’t care about just as there are issues I’m still searching on. We need to nurture our intellectual question which too many have squelched in our respective journeys.

Be they a political party, a religious belief, or even a social issue, we need to live in hope that we can come along and do better. That our ideas matter. Let’s face it, most of our ideas amount to our best guesses about how to live and work out solutions to the problems and questions we face. We are all on a continual journey of searching. It really is okay to lead a self-examined life.


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In the Shadow of Downtown

A friend of mine has a rule when buying a house. Sure, he does the whole viewing thing with the realtor, but he goes back to the house at night, parks his care, and watches the neighborhood. His reasoning is quite simple: Every city has a shadow self.

It was an October night like many others, although there was a frost warning for that night. Outreach, Inc. was doing one of their “street” nights where they go around the city looking for homeless youth to offer them services. The first place we stopped was a place dubbed the Hispanic railroad because of the high Hispanic population typically found there.

A scree of rocks led up to the railroad tracks used to get to the black-tarped rooftop. Several soft spots, unsure whether they would hold our weight, mined the warehouse roof used to squat. Moldy sleeping bags, rugs, and crocheted blankets became doors to block the biting wind. A soldier and his wife been on the roof for a couple of weeks. The soldier was due to be shipped out any day now. He wouldn’t be the only veteran we’d encounter that night.

In the shadow of downtown’s buildings.

Next we went to West Street and Kentucky Avenue to “The Tubes.” Torn up quarry remains lined a path down the bank of the White River. There we would find concrete tubes as houses with sheets of plastic as doors. The scene would be repeated at the McCarty Street Bridge and the Washing ton Street Bridge, with the tresses used like small apartments, quiet places where folks could stay warm.

There’s a perception that the poor want to live like this, that they are there because they are lazy or are there strictly as the result of their choices. The reality is that most want to transition out of the streets, from this way of life, but they were let down, if not abandoned, by the system. These are the forgotten, making use of anything and any space to stay warm and form a semblance of a life.

All in the shadow of downtown.


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Imagination is Bad

Now, maybe I'm bias, because I'm a horror writer, but there is an element to our culture that seems to eschew imagination. Don’t get me wrong, this has nothing to do with me watching someone lecture my wife on her letting our children believe in the tooth fairy. And it certainly has nothing to do with some of the church objecting to the idea of “pagan holidays”, as if most the church's history isn't made up of pagan festivals.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine went to their local annual "fairy festival" in honor of May Day, a celebration of spring where the kids wear little fairy wings. There's food and music, nothing really weird. However, the event drew protestors. People yelling at parents that they were damning their kids to hell.

My friend, someone who struggles with her own views on God, rightly wondered if those protesters may have inadvertently turned those children (and parents!) away from religion by scaring them and how someone could think yelling hateful words was a good way to spread love and a Christian viewpoint. I’m sure it certainly made her rush to return to my church. It certainly left at least one five year old wondering why the man said that Jesus didn't love her.

I simply told her that she missed the point: obviously it is important to be defined by who you are against rather than who you claim to follow. There is, likewise, no freedom to meet people where they are and build bridges to them. It’s easier to throw stones. Or protest. (Luckily, she gets my sarcasm).

There is room for imagination and make believe in our children’s worlds. The idea is to have child-like faith, with the idea of keeping a sense of awe, wonder, and appreciation of mystery. I’m really not threatened by Halloween, the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus. And as long as I’m there doing my job, to help them learn to differentiate between fantasy and reality, my children won’t be confused.



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Forgive Us our Trespasses

We are a second chance, forgiving culture. It doesn’t matter if you’re leaving stains on dresses, dangling your kid from balcony windows, taking steroids, or pitting dogs in combat. We’re quick to forgive. At least if you’re a celebrity, what about the rest of us?

There is a line in the Lord’s Prayer that goes “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” At least part of the idea of forgiveness is that it frees you. I’m not sure who said it, it may have been Oprah, but it is said that “refusing to forgive someone is like drinking poison, and expecting the other person to die.”

To move on, you have to have closure. It doesn’t mean you forget the offense: trust has broken, and all sides need to learn from it. However, asking forgiveness also opens dialogue. It takes courage to forgive another. Even moreso in those occasions when you have to forgive people who haven’t asked for it: there are times when, in order to no longer be a victim and to not let another have the last word over you or your life, you have to forgive those who have harmed you.

We’d like to see some sort of contrition when folks ask for forgiveness. The “I’m sorry”/”I’ve wronged you” is the first movement in the symphony of forgiveness. It’s important to express an understanding of our guilt.

Another movement involves repentance. When Tim Hardaway repented for his “I hate gay people” admission, deeds had to follow. He turned his back on his old way of doing things since repeating his mistake would only numb him to them. He sought re-education on his ideas, admitting fault, failure, and inadequacy. Because asking for forgiveness is humbling. You are at someone else’s mercy in view of your life and you realize that you aren’t in control.

Forgiveness is a gift. Forgiveness is a journey. Forgiveness is never easy, but we all would want a second chance.

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Circus Blues

I never experienced nostalgia for the circus. It was something I was dragged to because my parents assumed it was something "the kids would love." So about a month ago I passed along that family tradition.

People talk about the magic of the circus the same way I think about the magic of childbirth -- if by magic they mean dirty, grimy and far different from what you see on television.

Continued in Intake's "Big drag in 3 rings"


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Life in the Meadows

"If Indianapolis hopes to stem rising crime, it can't afford to ignore Edgemere Court or neighborhoods like it. City officials and community leaders must step up and sustain efforts to sweep away the mayhem and urban decay. As The Star's Matthew Tully reports this week in a three-part series on Edgemere Court, the lack of concentrated effort is one reason why squalor continues to plague this neighborhood and other parts of the city. Community policing, which is a key in uniting residents and police officers in fighting crime, has fallen by the wayside. Job-training courses, mental health services and other programs once provided to Phoenix's tenants by its former owner, are no longer available."

My sister used to live in the Meadows for a time. She was in the middle of doing her "prodigal child" routine, but I still wanted to keep in touch with her, but I would only visit her only during the day. The level of squalor present, the sheer decay, represented an experiment gone bad. From the rampant crime, to the structural rot, to the entrenched poverty, society had turned its collective back on a portion of itself.

It was a symptom of a self-perpetuating problem. We need to address these problem areas aggressively rather than letting them fester and, in turn, become worse. Most of the solutions people seem to have amount to tear such places down or remodel the neighborhoods and have new people move in. Unfortunately, this amounts to little more than moving the problem rather than deal with it – kind of like chasing the homeless from downtown. We’re talking about a human problem requiring human solution and human connection.

There’s a perception that the poor want to live like this, that they are there because they are lazy or are there strictly as the result of their choices. The reality is that most want to transition out of the streets, from this way of life, but they were let down, if not abandoned, by the system.
How we treat the poor defines us as a culture and as a country. I believe that government needs to assist those unable to take care of themselves, but is that where we are and what we’ve been reduced to? I have to be honest in saying that a system that supports dependency without accountability hurts any community, especially a community burdened by institutionalized racism. The programs on the surface seem to help poor people. The intentions were good, but the solution and remedy was short-sighted.

God identifies with the poor and those in pain, liberating them from injustice. It's the hope that says just as He reached out to the forgotten, those "outside" the establishment (religious or civil), we are to care for the "least of these", widows, orphans, the poor. Our mission is to join with His, to relieve suffering and fight injustice because evil is real and ongoing. And our forgetting of the poor is just that: a preventable evil.

It’s easy to blame the poor. They are under-represented. There aren’t many political action committees, few professional lobbying, publicists in the media on their behalf. I can’t help but be reminded of Jesus’ words "the poor you will always have with you." Jesus’ story is the story of poverty: God humbling himself, becoming poor and weak. Human. In order to free the oppressed from poverty and powerlessness. Becomes a victim in our place (at the hands of a corrupt justice system no less) and transforms the condition of bondage. That doesn’t mean we get to simply quit caring about the poor.

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For those keeping score at home

Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyoming and Spokane, Washington have banned tag at recess because they don’t want kids chasing each other; plus, it might lead to harassment. Other schools have dumped contact sports such as soccer and touch football. This is on top of all the other schools that have already gotten rid of dodgeball.

Alright parents, enough is enough. I get that we want to keep our kids safe. I realize that I risk sounding like an old man telling his kids how “back in my day, swings were wood and if we fell off we landed on pavement,” but where have all our games gone?

Continued on Intake's "What's up with games?"

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Stopping the Violence - Being Better Neighbors

A longtime feud between teenage girls is apparently behind a shooting that left the city with its youngest gunshot fatality this year, and a mother and her baby in critical condition Wednesday. The gunfire that killed Ramirez L. Smith Jr., 15, and wounded his pregnant mother was preceded by three skirmishes involving his sister that began at Northwest High School on Tuesday, then escalated throughout the night.

This entire story hits too close to home for a couple of reasons: one, Northwest High School is my alma mater; and two the park where the penultimate confrontation occurred is a stone’s throw from where I moved from a year or so ago (in fact, one of my former neighbors was interviewed for the article). I’m still waiting for the politicians to begin railing against the pandemic “culture of violence,” but that might only be trotted out for school shootings. We’re forced to ask whether we, as citizens, or our elected representatives are neglecting public safety and quality of life issues? What can we, the average person, do to help stem the tide of violent crimes among young people Indianapolis? We keep waiting for folks, politicians, churches, and community leaders to do more than talk. There comes a point where talk is cheap. When you’ve done all you can do to draw attention to a problem and have to come up or join in with a solution.

While it is easy to demonize our “culture of violence” (from our atomized nuclear families, to what passes for our entertainment, and our glorification of guns), those things don’t address the individuals. Our young people often seem determined to sabotage themselves before they get started. Take, for example, the culture of disrespect. Sometimes, when all you have is your name and your rep, your pride becomes of critical (if not overwhelming) importance. Disrespect becomes an assault on one’s sense of being. Couple that mindset with a cultural affirmation of fighting to display toughness, anger at their general situation, and violence as the only problem-solving mechanism at their disposal, and you get incidents that lead such horrific endings.

Yes, we face a systemic problem and education is the only silver bullet we have, especially when combined with the dual values of moral and economic responsibility. We need to begin buying into a worldview that promotes dignity, work, marriage, family, and healthy community. We all have our roles as parents,, leaders, church members, and, frankly, adults to point young people to a better way of living. We need to be giving our teenagers some reason to pursue a full way of living beyond the consuming and materialistic mentality they are being programmed with.

As I’ve said before, there is something ... broken in our culture. There is a love of violence, a seething anger that bubbles just beneath the surface. Maybe we–the people, the community–need to do more to stem the tide of violence where we can and bear our share of the burden. It will be a difficult road because in some ways it goes against the grain of our culture. Around the corner from our old house was a burned out husk of a house with the word “snitch” spray-painted on the side. Still, I’m reminded of the two most important laws, echoing the law experts of Jesus’ day, are to love God and to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” Yet we continue to fail to be good neighbors - we keep looking for loopholes of “who is my neighbor?” So the true question we have to ask ourselves is how can we be better neighbors?


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On Michael Vick

As often happens when a high profile black figure comes under scrutiny, the discussion seems to be framed as a racial issue: Black people, hurt by and distrustful of the judicial system vs. white folks who are upset by black folks’ blind support of “one of their own.” That’s not the part of the story that interests me.

Continued on Intake "Don't Be Like Mike."


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Gen Con 2007 Report

It’s that time of year when hordes of the devoted make their annual pilgrimage to nerd Mecca, that is, my very own Indi