60. Booty Envy

If you know me in real life, then you probably know I'm not the most well-endowed chic on the block. I have very little T and almost no A.  As a black chic, the T isn't so much of a problem, but the A is a significant handicap.

Over the years I've had a few male friends who were comfortable enough to point out my virtual A-lessness, and to impress upon me (out of love?) that I might wanna work extra hard in the personality department to compensate. I don't know about that, but I have definitely become abnormally booty conscious in the last 6 years or so. I'm like a dude, the way I peep butts everywhere I go. 

For instance, I couldn't tell you which of my friends has the biggest cup size, but I could definitely tell you who has the biggest butt. (You know who you are.) and it's not just my friends. Chics on the street, in the grocery store, at the airport. It's like I have booty radar. Out of control. 

In my defense, I'm not totally weird. At least in my family.  As evidence I offer the following exchange.

As my mother bends over to pick up a bag:

Oldest sister: Look at mama's booty.  It's her fault none of us got a butt. At least I got a chest.  Y'all messed up.

Middle sister: I know man.  At least I coulda had one or the other. Gimme something.  This ain't fair.

Mother: You should feel lucky. I coulda been ugly. 

Middle sister: True

So you see, booty consciousness runs in my family. As I suspect it runs in a lot of flat booty families. Still, I should probably stop staring at chics' butts in public. I feel like it's some crazy kinda fight waiting to happen.


(Post-Script: I did this post on my phone riding a train through New Jersey. Say I'm not dedicated.)

59. This is What We Were Talking About

I've had mixed feelings about Arizona's new immigration law. I get the part about law & order and needing to enforce laws that the federal government won't. But requiring any number of brown people (and only brown people) to prove they have a right to be here, and giving white officers the power to demand that proof invites a nasty kind of racial profiling.

Since the law was announced, I think most of us have just been waiting for that first instance of a legal citizen being detained so we could say, "This is what we were talking about."

Well now it's happened. In Illinois.

A Puerto Rican man was arrested in connection with a car theft, and police in Berwyn decided it'd be a good time to check his immigration status. Even after he produced a birth certificate, it took 3 days for officials to determine (to their satisfaction) that he was legally in the U.S. An American citizen spent 3 days in lock-up under and was threatened with deportation... to Mexico.

The whole thing is beyond retarded. And it's exactly what a lot of people expected would happen, often, when the law was passed. In an interview on cable news, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona argued that it might be really easy to ascertain who was here illegally because "if they're driving a truck with no license and a dozen people stuck in the back" there's a good chance they're smugglers.

The problem is that it's not really about who's probably here illegally. It's about who police officers with new powers think is here illegally. It's about who looks like an American and who doesn't in their minds. I think the law works in theory. In practice, It's all bad.

58. On Friendship

I have always wanted to write a treatise on Love & Friendship. People don't write treatises anymore. Back in the day everyone and their mother had a treatise. On Marriage; On Democracy; On the Good Life; Everyone was writing "on" something.

The only treatise I've read on friendship was Cicero's and it's long as crap. But there's a golden passage about how the job of a true friend is to require our best of us. And not to let us succumb to our faults. Friends don't let friends be wack. I've been blessed with the friendship of a few people who also believe this and who keep me on my toes. One day, when I've done one of the Grand Things I hope to do in this life, I'll have them to thank for it.

In the meantime, Love & Friendship is #6 on the list of things I'll be writing about a lot. You may have noticed. It's just my thing.

-------------------------------------------
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

-Henry Ward Beecher

57. Su Casa Es Mi Casa

One of the great truths of my life is that much of the goodness that comes to me will (and has) come vicariously through my friends. Their families, their friends, their jobs, their homes. I am so accustomed to benefiting from my friends' blessings that I am genuinely happy for myself when they get good news. It's our good news.

Two of the homies just got awesome jobs. We got a job! Last year, when Baby Girl was born... We had a baby! It comes so naturally to me. And, though I can't say how they feel about it, I think that's a good thing.

As certain as I have been of the quality of my friendships, I'm only now starting to realize how deeply invested I have become in the lives of my friends. Not simply because I want them to be happy or to do well, but because I honestly believe that they are my purpose family (I just made that up... I may come up with a better term later).

What I mean is that they are the people I see myself doing my most important work with. Building and loving and teaching and growing with. They're the people whose visions of the purpose-driven life most closely match my own. The people whose work I respect and would sacrifice for. And since no one does anything alone, they're the people I believe have been given to go with me on my way. As I've been given to go with them on theirs.

So... You're running a school?... Alright, what's our vision for the school? You got a job in television?... How can we have the greatest impact with that? You're having a baby?... We're having a baby!!! =) And so on.

As time goes on, I imagine I'll only become more invested. I already have to be careful about saying "we" when I'm talking to other people, like my homie's boss. But between me and them I'm comfortable that we have an understanding. Su casa es mi casa. And vice versa.

56. Road Blocks

You may or may not have noticed that every couple of weeks there's a significant gap in posts to this here blog. Whenever I leave town, or someone else comes into town, my discipline takes a bit of a dive.

Last weekend, the homie and baby homie were in town looking for a place to live. So I was playing host and chauffeur (happily) and getting all kinds of quality time in. Before that, I was out east to see another homie become Dr. Homie. Good times.

This latest round of non-posting was because of a short trip to Milwaukee for the Maxwell/Jill Scott concert. I had never seen either artist in concert so I was excited to go. I had also never been in a box/suite at an arena before. So it was a new experience all-around. Here are my general thoughts:

1. Boxes are awesome. So comfortable. Really... the only way to go. (Okay, maybe not the only way, but a really, really good way.)
2. Why have the show in an arena if you're not gonna come close to selling it out? Did any of the cities sell out? I wonder...
3. Guy Torry is not funny.
4. Jill Scott may just be The Baddest B*tch (sorry Trina).
5. Maxwell is fine. And corny =(. And this one hurt because he and I are lovers (in my mind), though I've been cheating on him with Common for two weeks.
6. What's the point of encores? Just sing all the songs and say Good-Night.

As a post-script, I'll add that I'm not a concert person. They just aren't my thing. I don't really enjoy the songs any more than hearing them on the radio. But for a concert person, I highly recommend Ms. Scott. She really is talented.

55. Quote of the Day

I envy my friends who can casually use drugs and alcohol.
-Michael, Intervention

Change "drugs and alcohol" to "ice cream and cookies" and that's me in a nutshell.

54. By Any Means Necessary

In writing a dissertation, there are a number of maxims you come across that are supposed to either motivate or inform your progress. "The best dissertation is a done dissertation." "Give em what they want and get out." Etcetera and so forth. It's all good advice, and it all boils down to one main idea: Get it done.

With that in mind, I've enrolled in a Dissertation Proposal Write-In. It's 5 days, 4-6 hours a day, nothing but writing, and they provide food. To get in, you have to write a check for 50 bucks (a lot of money for a grad student). If you complete the program, you get your check back. If not, they cash it. Interesting concept.

You say you want to write. Cool... Here's your desk... Write. Oh... And if you don't, you owe us 50 bucks.

What if it always worked this way? If instead of someone offering you a job or a fellowship to write something, they charged you $100/month to write nothing. I feel like I'd be a lot more productive. I could have a fellowship, I don't, and I'm not at all bothered, because I don't feel the money I don't have. But if I had to write someone a check for the amount of money I gave up in not getting a fellowship, that would hurt.

So this is what it's come to. I will have my most productive writing week to date, or I will pay the University of Chicago $50 for nothing. If that's what it takes...

53. The Little Town in Maine Post

A year ago, I moved to a Little Town in Maine. Like Puff, I'm dissertating which is really just a shorthand way of saying I go wherever someone will pay me to teach/research/write until I get my advisor's stamp of approval and I'm allowed to go find a "real" job (then I'll still have to go wherever someone will pay me to teach/research/write but I'll get better benefits and a bright-eyed research assistant I can unload five plus years of pent up exploitation on. What joy is mine).

My travels led me up to the northeast edge of the country, 3 parts New England and 1 part Canada, where the population of people of color is 2% at best and composed of Rwandan, Somali and Sudanese immigrants, military folk, college students (students not faculty, and with an emphasis on athletes) and a few ancien African-Americans descended from eighteenth-century black New England families or some combination of the above. To put that in better perspective, I know all five adult black women in town and all of us are affiliated with the university.

It starts getting dark at 3 p.m. here in the winter. The town (don't blink, you'll miss it) closes shop at 5 p.m. (the really rowdy ones close at 8). Driving slow is the norm and honking is rude (for a native Chicagoan, this damn near kills me). Walking is big, running is bigger, kayaking in the summer (and snowshowing in the winter) is biggest. Everyone has partners (this a meta term that pretty much signifies long-term sexual relations whether married or otherwise) and kids. And playdates. The public radio station plays classical music 80% of the day and there is no Tell Me More or hip hop & R&B station (utter fail as far as I'm concerned and really? All day? who wants to hear classical ALL day?). Waking up at the butt crack of dawn is not only commendable but expected and if you admit you don't expect to receive the New England Look of Disdain.

I think I kind of love it.

Which is weird. Because I'm pretty much the opposite of everything above. I mean--I'm urban. The hell am I doing on the other side of the world in a little town where I can't even find good leave-in conditioner?

But there is something refreshing and familiar--in a Northside Chicago sense--about the blue collar, laid back townspeople. I won't describe them here because I'd have to think and choose my words and this was supposed to be a quick morning post. I'll just say that I got here and I knew them. They were my Polish-Italian immigrant descended neighbors in Chicago's Lincoln Square, they are my mother's overworked and underpaid co-workers, hell, some of them are my mother with her stubborn and loving belief in equal opportunity. And I appreciate that they don't come laden with the same oppressive baggage that I found in, say, St. Louis or Atlanta or D.C. Oh, they have their own issues, and put some of these folks in those cities for a few years and I'll bet white privilege will have its way with them. But their issues aren't the same. Time, place and historical context has given them a willingness to engage you.

And a willingness to leave you alone to do your own thing since their sense of self doesn't revolve around oppressing you.

So to everyone who ever looked on my move to a small town in the Arctic circle with disbelief--yo, it's cool. Give it a try. Life is grand.

52. Style

One of my favorite blogs is The Sartorialist (peep the blogroll to the right). The blogger is a fashion photographer who takes pictures of folks on the street in his spare time and posts them online. The idea is to showcase great style. And great style has eluded me thus far in this life.

My grandmother has it. I think the woman in this photograph (copyright The Sartorialist 2009) has it. I do not have it. Jean Cocteau said that "Style is a simple way of saying complicated things." I read that on a New York City Subway car. I like it a lot.

Great style leaves you with the impression that a person put on everything they're wearing on purpose. There is no laundry day. They weren't running late. They're not wearing the things that didn't need to be ironed. They decided to wear what they're wearing. Almost as if they were wielding their clothes.

And what's most remarkable is that it doesn't have to be complicated. This woman is wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I wear jeans and t-shirts all the time, and I never look like this. I'm just covered in clothes.

As I get older, I've set for myself the goal of someday equaling my grandmother in flyness. I think I can do it. I just have to crack the style code. To figure out the difference between wearing one's clothes, and wielding one's wardrobe. It'd help if there were a set of rules I could follow, but there aren't. It's not a matter of matching this kind of top with that kind of bottom, or not. It's a matter of seeing in 3 dimensions I think. Not just color and fit, but feel.

I'm determined that it doesn't have to cost a lot of money either. Mostly because I don't have a bunch of money. I have some time though. And a sort of passion for making more out of the face I present to the world than I do now. As I have small successes here and there, maybe I'll post a few pics to the blog.

51. Idol Hands

Yesterday after touring the homie's new gig (post forthcoming), me and a friend got to arguing about whether we can go too far in celebrating living people. She was all for naming things after living folks because she believes in having living heroes and honoring people while they're alive. I was anti because I don't believe in hero worship. (She'd prolly say "worship" is the wrong word.) I also think "living legends" or heroes border on idolatry.

So we go back and forth and eventually find some common ground. We agree that young people ought to have living, breathing examples of excellence. And young Black people ought to be able to follow the example of someone who hasn't been dead 40 years. So for the most part, she wins (... for the most part).

But just 24 short hours later I walk in the house and my mom informs me of this. My hometown has decided to rename the main street after the 44th President of the United States. WTF?

Recognition is one thing. Support is cool, too. But renaming a frikkin street?! The MAIN street?! I'm snappin. In real life.

To revisit the homie's argument, yeah MLK was great, but he's been dead 40 years, he's over-studied, etc. and so forth. Why do we only f*ck with dead people? Okay cool, let's raise up some living folks. But this? If we honestly think that Barack Obama is deserving of the same kinds of salutations and recognition we bestow on MLK (i.e the Nobel Prize, dedication of streets, etc.), maybe we need to spend more time studying the late Reverend.

This is my beef with black politics. We got integrated and now it's all feel-good, middle-class, psychological power struggles. Forty years ago you had to free somebody (or die trying) to be That One. Now... I'll admit I get a little happy inside every time I see Michelle Obama doing the damn thing as First Lady. But I would never, ever, ever-ever-ever, argue that her being there is actually "doing" anything for a poor black girl on the South Side. That's not a knock on Miss Michelle - she is one of my role models in flyness - but I think it's important to separate what makes me feel good from what saves souls and feeds people. I feel like once upon a time that's what we were about. Now I don't know.

50. True or False...?

I officially have a co-contributor.

=)

49. Penvy

Get your mind out of the gutter. The other penvy:

We all get marked up with the green pen from time to time. There's no crime in that. I am not saying that your are not allowed to criticize other writers or this crazy industry. Yet, there's is a problem when you become overly concerned with(and angry about)the success of others. This is a warning sign that you are headed down a slippery slope into paralysing bitterness.

Her simple advice?

When you are working, you feel better about yourself. After all, writing is what makes you a writer. And when you feel like a writer, you are less worried about the latest celebrity book deal. Your mind is on your characters on your poetry, on your art....

And remember, you started writing because you love to write. When I say get to work, I am not telling you to pick up a hammer and start breaking rocks. When I say get to work, I'm saying get back to you. Get back to where you started from when you said you wanted to be a writer, when you didn't know anything about the business.

I say again: "You started writing because you love to write...Get back to you."

(x-posted at Nunez Daughter)

48. If You Ask Me, I'm ready

I can apply this song to every aspect of my life right now: professional, personal, social.



Today's update in black girl speculative fic behavior, I fell in love with the semi-cheesy mini-series Tin Man. If you have Netflix, you can watch it instantly. If you don't (who doesn't?), then Blockbuster it. But check it out. Directed by Nick Willing and hosted by the good folks at SyFy, it rereads and reworks L. Frank Baum's (and MGM's, let's be real) classic The Wizard of Oz.

And these guys don't regurgitate another cotton candy Disney 'toon. Without getting a PG-13 rating, it is a satisfyingly and sufficiently dirty fairy tale that doesn't sugar down torture, death, blood--I'd say there's even a suggestion of rape and sexual assault. And that's what good myths and fables are made of (ever read Grimm's Fairy Tales in their original form? Those stories are bloodier than 300). Plus Zooey Deschanel is a great actress. She manages to convince me that she's barely an adolescent without making me work to get there.

47. New Course: Afrofuturism

I am writing here because Puff invited me. That is all the introduction you need or get.

I was worried about accepting the invitation. Because I feel like this is a general space for generalists. And I am so not a generalist. I am a specificist (yes, I made up a word). And I'm fairly emotive. And if you are a generalist, do you ever feel? I mean, do you feel a lot about everything? Or nothing about nothing? Or anything about something?

But the stuff I write about tends to be a little heavy. And sometimes you just want to share some popcorn with the people. And sometimes it is too much to tweet. So here I am.

I want to teach a course about afrofuturism.

Required readings would include: Octavia Butler (of course, but not her oft touted novel, Kindred. I want my students to read the entire Xenogensis series. Her critique of slavery and colonialism in this series is actually much more interesting to me than her time travel fable), Beloved (if that isn't afrofuturist, I don't know what is, even if everyone and their mama has read it), "Ibo Landing" from Dark Matter (alongside Daughters of the Dust), Andrea Hairston's Mindscape, Maryse Condé's Segu, Grace Jones, George Clinton and Janelle Monae's three suite symphony The Chase, Archandroid, and X (because by the time I teach this class, she probably will have the last suite out.

Hell, by the time I teach this class, I might have my own afrofuturist novella finally out.

Objective? To see the afro-diasporic past in present afro-diasporic speculations on the future.

I am a historian considerably preoccupied with the present and the past's ramifications on the future. And since I am a historian of slavery, I live in the eighteenth century and see slavery and its structural inequalities everywhere. I see them moving into the future because we are irrevocably caught up in a past we don't understand, but I also know that from the first departure of the first slave ship from the first port on the West African coast on the way to the "New World," we were already imagining new ways of conceiving our existence. Ways that transcended the barracoons and the below-decks and the depths of the ocean between us and home.

That is all. Now dance:

[Edit: I added a number to the title. I felt like I was messing up Puff's master plan. My bad homie.]

46. If I Were LeBron James...

Delonte West would never play in the NBA again. Ever. He would have a family emergency, or a mysterious undetectable illness, or a sudden urge to play in the European leagues. He would be black-listed in Cleveland for life.

45. Whose Business Is It Anyway?, Part 2

Andrew Sullivan has a great follow-up to the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece on Rand Paul. He lays out the argument I was trying to make, except clearly and with a better sense of the history of the '64 Act.

Quoting Paul in an interview:

INTERVIEWER: But under your philosophy, it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

PAUL: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part—and this is the hard part about believing in freedom—is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example—you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

I think this is an important, and understandable argument.

More from Sullivan:
I don't agree with Paul on the Civil Rights Act because I believe that the legacy of slavery and segregation made a drastic and historic redress morally vital for this country's coherence, integrity and unity. But was the Act in many respects an infringement of freedom? Of course it was.

To bar private business owners from discriminating in employment would have been an unthinkable power for the federal government for much of American history.

...To my mind, this is settled law and should remain that way. But it is not without cost to liberty... And a real libertarian will feel some qualms about it. Not because they are racists or homophobes (although some may be). But because a truly principled defense of individual freedom will inevitably confront the huge role government now plays in policing fairness in what were once entirely unfair private transactions.

The entire piece is well worth reading.

44. Heavy Rotation

I have a bad habit of only listening to the first 80% of an album. When I can tell it's winding down, I switch it out or start it over from the beginning. On the bright side, even after listening to an album for years, I sometimes discover a "new" song that I love and never heard before. Recently that happened with Cee-Lo's "Under tha Unfluence (Follow Me)." I put this one on repeat in the car at night and blast the chorus with the windows down.

You gotta believe in something... So why not believe in me?

43. Whose Business Is It Anyway?

One of the great things about blogging is that it offers a quick way to "say" some of the things you wouldn't otherwise have a venue or opening to say. I can run-off a list of my favorite ice cream flavors (something I'm pretty passionate about) in 10 minutes and keep it moving. If I forget a flavor, no biggie. I'll get it in volume 2.

For some things though the "quick & dirty" nature of blogging makes writing a lot harder that it probably ought to be. For instance, I've been wanting to do a post on immigration for a while. But it feels like the kind of think I have to get "right." I can't have an oops when I'm talking about people's rights to work, and study and raise their families in a safe space. I don't want to have to come back and say, "I think I may have gotten this wrong."

So most of my politics posts have been sitting in my brain being revised and edited for accuracy since I started this project last month. Today I think I have a politics post I can bang out pretty quickly.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a piece up about Rand Paul's opposition to parts of the '64 Civil Rights Act. Paul doesn't believe that the government ought to have the right to tell private citizens who they can and can't offer services to. It's a private transaction.

I've actually kinda felt this way for a while myself. I'm all for the Civil Rights Act, but I've always wondered what the Constitutional basis was for telling a private citizen that if she's going to serve anyone she has to serve everyone. There's no law prohibiting anyone from boycotting businesses on the basis of race, and I don't see how you could enforce one. But would it be so different?

Someone told me it was a commerce issue and the right of the government to regulate commerce gave them the ability to enforce non-discrimination in commerce. That makes sense. I think moreso though it's a practicality issue. As Paul said in an interview, he's against systemic discrimination. I think the problem is that the distinction between private and systemic discrimination is a false distinction.

The systems that run our lives are made up of lots of privately owned components. If private grocers and restaurants won't serve black customers, they can't eat. If private employers won't hire them, they can't work. If privately owned banks won't give them credit, they can't buy homes or start businesses of their own. So private discrimination self-arranges into systems of discrimination affecting large populations of people.

Maybe this has always been obvious to everyone else. But it's taken me a while to think through it. And I still think that if one could make a rigid distinction between private and systemic discrimination, a government check on private behavior would be difficult to justify. This seems to be about means and ends. The incursions into the private sphere serve a compelling public interest. That's an unfortunate reality for me. But a necessary one of course.

42. No Somos Criminales

I've decided to do the dissertation on immigration reform. This will either prove to be a very good idea, or a very bad one. I'm sure of that. The upside... can't imagine doing it without mastering Spanish. So good or bad, I'll be +1 language when it's over.

41. Team Work

I told you my team was nice. One of the homies is reading a slave novel. She trips a lyric fantastic in her spare time:

I am [now reading] Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende. It’s like watching a car accident, a collision of metal, glass and soft, meaty human bodies, in slow motion. Into the blender, hit mix, tear flesh from bone, coat the glass red, hemoglobin run a muck under the relentless pressure of some outside violence, ignore the scream of the gears, the turning blades as bone matter resists, but, no, push through, taking, tearing, plunging forward simply because you have the power to do so. Rip apart, swirl together, then call it pacification, christianization, civilization, natural order of Man.

- Nuñez Daughter

40. Ice Cream is Delicious

It just is. I don't know what it is in my programming that makes the taste of ice cream one of the five sensory wonders of the world for me. But it is.

Yesterday I discovered Breyer's All Natural Homemade Vanilla. It tastes like the vanilla of your childhood. Before you ever knew about a Haagen-Dasz or anything fancy. A few weeks ago I discovered another flavor that quickly climbed the list of my Top Ten.

So, as summer approaches, I'm offering up a smattering of goodness you might wanna sample on those days you decide to treat yourself. These are in no particular order.

Breyer's All Natural Homemade Vanilla See above.

Haagen-Dasz Dark Chocolate Mint This is a Limited Edition flavor and I don't know how long it'll be out. The chocolate is so rich, you can't eat much of it at once, which is nice, because it lasts longer. And the mint takes some getting used to, but after a few bites, it approaches a perfect balance pretty quickly.

Ben & Jerry's Sweet Cream & Cookies This is pretty much cookies and cream except that it's not made with vanilla ice cream. The sweet cream has a slightly stronger dairy taste and it goes really well with the chocolate cookies. (Breyer's Oreo ice cream is the next best thing.)

Thomas Sweet Ginger Snap Chewy ginger snap cookies in vanilla ice cream. It's from an ice cream shop in Princeton, New Jersey and I plan on stopping by whenever I am in Princeton for the rest of my life. It was really, really good.

Baskin-Robbins Pralines & Cream This was one of the flavors I took a shot on when I decided to get something other than my regular (cookies and cream). So good. The coating on the pralines is just thick enough to be crunch and it goes really well with the vanilla. There may also be caramel in it, can't remember. But it is excellent.

Do take advantage of this list. I'll try to discover a few new flavors this summer. Maybe something with fruit it in. Or something from some mom&pop place. We'll see.

39. Two-for-Two

Last night was a pretty good sports night for me. The Celtics went up 2-0 on the Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Chicago Blackhawks went up 2-0 on the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

No, I'm not a hockey fan. But I mess with Chicago teams (of any sport) in the playoffs. Plus that USA-Canada game in the Olympics got me hype for hockey. If I could see the puck, hockey could be like soccer on ice. Exciting to watch when the stakes are high enough.

38. This Is Culture

A question that I constantly wrestle with is "What is culture?" Maybe because I've spent so much time in higher education, I'm constantly confronted with questions of culture and identity and how people construct the communities they belong to. These questions are important for everyone, but I don't think people outside of academia confront them as explicitly as academic folks do.

At this point in my life I think I have a fairly well-developed concept of culture. Of what it means and how it shapes people. For me, the most remarkable instantiations of culture are in the moments when 100 or 100,000 people who have never met can be in a room laughing at the same inside joke because, even though they've led 100,000 different lives, they share some basic experiences. They share a culture.

Culture is what makes things like this Cedric the Entertainer clip not just funny, but socially remarkable to me. The joke is only funny if you know the song. And because he knew his audience would be a few thousand Black people, he knew they'd be a few thousand Teddy Pendergrass fans. It's part of the culture.

37. Free Food

My favorite place to eat when I'm in St. Louis is the St. Louis Bread Company (aka Panera Bread). They used to sell a Tuscan Chicken sandwich that was a jam for a long time. I still mess with the Greek Salads.

I never went as often as I'd have liked because I'm not one to drop $10 on lunch every day. But now comes news that Panera is opening a non-profit version of Bread Co. in Clayton, a well-off suburb of St. Louis. Instead of prices, the items have suggested donations. And instead of paying a cashier, you leave the money in a donation jar. Customers can pay as much or as little as they'd like.

I actually think this is a pretty cool idea. It's not a soup kitchen, and the money doesn't go to charity necessarily, but it makes it possible for folks to walk in, get a good meal, leave what they can, and go on with their day. If there were a neighborhood where public transportation, and grocery stores and restaurants all worked this way, it'd be a interesting kind of social experiment.

I'm afraid it would only be possible in fairly affluent neighborhoods though. I remember KFC's unfortunate free chicken promotion a couple years ago. Folks were literally running off free chicken coupons at Kinko's and standing in line for hours to get a free meal. I can't imagine how much money KFC lost on that one. Or how much Panera might lose if there were lines of folks out the door to get their "free" Tuscan Chicken sandwiches.

I also think I might have a hard time with the "Leave your fair share" part of it. If "fair" isn't the suggested donation, I'm not sure what it is. If I left anything less than that, I'd probably feel like a jerk. And if I left more, I might feel like a chump, since the money isn't going to kids with cancer or anything, but just to keep the restaurant open. Might be easier to go to a regular restaurant, pay the price, and have my meal anxiety-free.

Now if there were a non-profit spot with set prices where all the surplus went to charity, I could see myself going there a lot. And feeling really good about my $10 sandwich and salad.

36. The Parent Trap

The older I get, the more I feel like my peers are separated into two groups: Parents and Non-Parents. I am in the latter group, as are most of my friends. While most of them do plan to eventually have families, I am quite serious about having my children vicariously through other people and spoiling them as if they were mine. I have never wanted to have children of my own.

Whatever it is that explains that lack of desire, probably also explains why I have an increasingly difficult time relating to my peers who become parents. Not the older ones, the new ones. Older parents don't generally have stories about the super-cute thing their 14 year-old did yesterday. But the new ones...

I can't take the new ones. Nearly everyone I know who's had a child in the last 12 months is thisclose to getting cut from the Facebook roll. I'm just not one for the posts about how "Being this cute should be a crime!" or "He is the most precious thing in the world!" I know... I'm a grouch. I don't have the cute baby gene. The one where every kid under 1 is amazingly adorable and everything they do has to be photographed and commented on.

Not that I don't love to hear about "my" children. Of course I do... they're mine. I love seeing their personalities develop and watching them learn new things. But everyone else's kids...

35. Heavy Rotation

I am seriously considering purchasing Melankton by Kate Havnevik. I've downloaded (paid for) two songs and I think I'd kinda like a couple more. Her sound reminds me of bjork, but she's just this side of normal. Really thoughtful lyrics and the kind of production you can drift away to.

I love the way you live so intensely, enjoy every minute of life... laughing loudly. Unlike you, I am not pretending.

34. What I'm Talkin Bout

Bill Simmons is saying what I'm saying:

If [LeBron] cares about winning titles (multiple) and reaching his full potential as a player, he has only one move: the Chicago Bulls. That's always been the play. If you've been listening to my podcast or reading this column, you know that I've been touting this possibility since the winter, and here's why: Deep down, I think LeBron (and, just as important, the people around him) realizes that he needs one more kick-ass player to make his life easier. That means Miami or Chicago. And really, I can't imagine him signing with Miami because Dwyane Wade is almost too good. LeBron wants help, but he doesn't want to be perceived as riding someone else's coattails, either. Wade might be the best player alive for all we know -- he certainly was in 2006, and he's been banged-up and trapped on bad teams ever since.

No, Chicago makes more sense. Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah proved they were warriors these past two springs. They could be LeBron's Pippen/Grant or McHale/DJ. Easily. Rose could take the creative load off LeBron on nights when he doesn't have it. Rose could come through a few times in the clutch. Rose could hide some of LeBron's faults. It's the single smartest basketball move for LeBron James. It's the Michael Corleone move.

LeBron in Chicago would = Me caring about the Bulls for the first time since Jordan left. LeBron and D. Wade would = Me having a stroke.

33. The Weakest Link

I have awesome friends. In real life. It's to the point that I sometimes wonder whether everyone else has friends like mine (and I just think I'm lucky), or whether I really did win the friend lottery and line up 5 or 6 winners back to back. I really think it's the latter. Maybe I'm wrong. At any rate...

One of my favorite things about the folks around me is their drive. I'm surrounded by people who wake up everyday, ask themselves how they can be better, and go out and do really creative things to make themselves and other people better. Some of it's academic; some of it's professional; some of it's social. But they're all pretty ambitious when it comes to being the best they can be. And for the last 5 years or so we've all been brainstorming the amazing work we'll eventually do together when we've each come into our own as teachers, and artists, and parents, and moguls.

And now, out of "nowhere" all the little stars over our heads are starting to line up. This last month has been remarkable for how many blessings and opportunities (I think those are the same things) have befallen my little circle of special people. The things that we've said we wanted to do, that we would do one day, are literally falling into our laps. All around me folks are making moves, some literally =), to accomplish the things they've dreamed of doing.

So when my own magical little opportunity recently presented itself, I couldn't help but marvel at it. And as much as I appreciate it, I'm even more driven by a desire not to fall behind my friends than I am by the desire to realize the thing I want most in the world. This isn't a bad thing (I don't think). It's just that I've grown to think of my folks as a team. As a member of the team, when everyone is contributing, you don't want to be the one who keeps turning it over. Especially not when you know you have something to contribute.

So even if I *might* be liable to let a remarkable opportunity slip through my fingers (I'd like to think I wouldn't), I couldn't do that and look my friends in the face. I want to feel like I deserve to be on the team. Not because I had some great games last season, but because of what I'm doing now. That's the thing about my team... It's very "What are you doing with your life right now?" There are no weak links.

32. Slackin on My Pimpin

There's nothing like a trip outta town to temporarily derail one's fabulous new habits. Last weekend I was in Maryland to see one of the homie's graduate. Great times (as always). But of course, leaving town always raises the questions of what one will eat, where (and if) one will work out, and whether one will get anything done while they're away. For me, the answers were: Everything; A little; and No. In that order.

So now I'm back, trying to kill the fast-food cravings (I swear there's crack in fast food), getting back into my run routine, and trying to stop forgetting that I'm a student with papers to write. The first part isn't that hard. Although those first couple of days I was going through serious candy withdrawals (serious). The second part is no problem. And the third part, well... I wasn't really on top of that before I left, so...

31. The King James Version

A lot of people are talking about LeBron James' meltdown in Game 5 last night. (Maybe meltdown isn't the right word... Maybe you gotta start hot to melt down?) Just as the play-offs were kicking off I asked a friend of mine what he thought the chances were of LeBron ending his career without a ring. I think he put it at 30%. I put it at 60%.

For all his talent, I've never gotten the impression that LeBron would slit his opponents' (or his teammates') throats to win. Jordan made me feel that way. Kobe makes me feel that way. LeBron seems to believe that he should win because he's the most talented guy on the court or because his team has the best chemistry.

We all know he can take over games, that he can be brilliant, that he can carry his team to a W with little or no help from the other four people on the court. But I wouldn't bank on winning a championship that way.

As a pitchman, I heart LeBron James. That Nike commercial where he jumped off the diving board in a white suit and folded up, looking into the camera mid-air, before executing a perfect dive, is one of my all-time favorites. And I think this article may be a little harsh on him. But man... how sad would it be to be the greatest player to never win it all? When everyone... like everyone... knows you could.

30. Fat Girl Logic

I have a pretty addictive personality. I've known this for a while. When I find something I like, I generally gorge myself on it until either a) I no longer have access to it, or b) my brain finally gets sick of it. Mostly this is true with food.

One of the most often-repeated rules of eating well is moderation. Moderation is key. I have never moderated anything in my life. It's feast or famine. Either I'm not eating cookies, or I'm eating all the cookies. I have never wanted a cookie in my life. And I don't understand the people who do.

My thinking is, the second cookie will be just as delicious as the first, so why wouldn't I eat it? And the third will be just as delicious as the second, the seventh just as delicious at the sixth, and so on until the bag is empty. This isn't always completely true. Sometimes around the twelve or thirteenth cookie I get a little tired. But never, ever after the first.

So, as a fat girl at heart, I've learned to treat cookies like alcoholics treat alcohol. Better not to have any at all, than to try to have a bit and walk away, which is damn near impossible. Once you get a taste...

29. It's a Family Affair

Or at least it should be. Back in the day a friend of mine started a blog as an outlet for the random sorts of things that would occur to him on any given day. A sort of "organized brain-dump", I think he called it.

Eventually, he recruited me and another one of the homies to join him. I had a lot of fun writing in that space. The group element of it made intuitive sense to me. It was an outlet, but also a kind of peep-hole into a couple of people I thought were really interesting. So there was a social and personal benefit I hadn't anticipated.

When I decided to start blogging again, I thought about re-launching that project. But it didn't feel right to do it by myself. So here I am by my lonesome, with the General Musings 2.0, Puff's Personal Edition. I think I'll take a page from the homie and just start inviting folks to participate.

Of course, given that folks have Twitter, and Facebook, and whatever else folks are using to broadcast their every waking thought these days, it may be a hard sell. Who has time to write more than 140 characters anymore? We'll see what happens.

28. Jhumpa Lahiri Hates E-Books

Last night I attended a reading and interview of Jhumpa Lahiri at the University of Chicago. She read from a story in Unaccustomed Earth and then submitted to questions from a faculty member before taking questions from the audience. I learned a few things.

1. There are few things less enjoyable than sitting through a completely inept (and completely unnecessary) introduction. This man sounded like someone walked up to him on the street 5 minutes before and offered him 10 bucks to introduce a woman he had never heard of.

2. There is a tone of voice that, irrespective of what it's saying, grates on my nerves. One of my mother's televangelists has it. The woman interviewing Ms. Lahiri last night had it. She sounded like a hippie kindergarten teacher at pains to use her most delicate inside voice so as not to startle the children.

3. Writers don't necessarily like (talking to) their readers. It makes sense. You can't control what people take from your writing. And being asked to explain and validate someone else's psychic experience of your writing is probably fairly annoying (over and over again).

4. Jhumpa Lahiri hates e-books. She didn't actually say that. She said something like "to each his own." But she also said that even if she were stranded in a cave (or something) and couldn't physically carry her books with her, she still wouldn't take an e-reader. So that's what she meant. A woman after my own heart.

During the Q&A I got up to ask a question, but just as the student in front of me got hers out a woman came and whispered to the rest of the line that that would be the last question. I think I had a pretty good one. At least I wasn't going to ask her about how hard it is to be a brown writer (again).

27. Tomorrow Never Dies

I really like Ta-Nehisi Coates. And someday I would very much like to have his job. He's a pretty earnest guy who knows a fair bit about a fair bit and is unusually honest about what he doesn't know. So he makes for a pretty good cultural commentator.

A recent post got me to thinking about my obsession with the written word and my deathly fear that all the texting/chatting/Facebooking we do is killing it slowly. There are those who insist that "there are no good old days." And then there are those of us who are sure that just because things were never perfect doesn't mean they were never better.

If we can imagine human society advancing in real ways, why the inability to imagine it declining? What is there to say about a society in which the sum of thousands of years of agricultural technology expands the scope of the human diet from a few durable crops to a few hundreds crops, only to see that same technology mix with economics to restrict our diets back down to a few crops (corn, soy and potatoes) in a matter of 20 years? And what does it mean that in a society where literacy has expanded with each successive generation, because of computers a good many "highly educated" persons cannot legibly write the English alphabet?

Is it so obviously untrue that a generation of young people who cannot carry a decent phone conversation because they grew up texting is socially handicapped in some way? I remember when Facebook status updates were automatically formatted to begin with "is." I became so adapted to writing them that I (and some other people I know) found myself instinctively thinking in terms of "is" statements. There has to be something worth exploring about that.

For my part, I do think that a world of virtual connectivity, where we spend infinitely more time looking at each others' screen names than we do each others' faces, is worrisome. Technology isn't a bad thing. I love that I can be in Maryland in under 2 hours or across the Atlantic in 12. The problem for me is that we seem more and more to believe that we don't need to actually cross the Atlantic when we can just sign onto GChat and talk to the person on the other side. Virtual life is great for all those times when you can't access the real thing. But when we stop trying for the real thing, when we stop believing that there's any difference between the two, I think we've taken some serious steps back as a society.

I'm a little extreme on this point. I acknowledge that. I like to see my friends' faces. I like to hear their voices and climb in the passenger seats of their cars. I like to do all the things I'll wish I could do again when my time here comes to an end. And when that time comes, I cannot imagine that I'll ever find myself wishing I could sign onto GChat just one more time.

26. Writing Workshop: "Truth Comes In"

Something I'm working on:

Truth comes in like water through the walls-
Slowly, after the heavy rain.

When the house guests and the uninviteds,
When the healers and best friends have had their say

When the co-dependents and companions
and last lovers have left

When dust settles on the growing quiet
At the kitchen table

The truth comes in
and whispers
What it is.

25. Terror-Musing

The second most interesting thing in politics for me right now is anti-American terrorism. I'm fascinated by the people who carry it out, the people who are its targets, the way that we talk about it, all of the politics around it. Mostly I'm interested in the way we think and talk (publicly) about the relationship between anti-American terrorism and Islam.

One of the most fascinating elements of the "Who is a terrorist?" conversation is the Right's insistence that we profile Muslims and the Left's rebuttal that we don't profile white men when one of them blows something up (which is true). I think racial profiling is one of those topics like abortion and welfare. To be a good liberal you have to take such an extreme position on it that you completely cede the middle ground to the other side. And the truth (at least politically) is almost always somewhere in the middle.

I often wonder what an honest conversation about modern anti-American terrorism would sound like. Like I wonder what honest conversations about abortion and welfare would sound like. I hope to be a part of one someday. In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal has a very reasonable piece on the attempted Times Square bomber. I dug it.

24. Reading, Writing, (Running) & Arithmetic

I've read that the first step in becoming a novelist is to find a way not to work for a year. Save up enough money so that you can quit your job and have nothing to do but write. Someone actually said that. I thought it was ridiculous at the time and I think it's ridiculous now. Not that it wouldn't be nice. But really... who are they talking to?

More realistically, I think the key to writing is making time. Not freeing up every hour of every day for 365 straight days. But 2 or 3 hours a day before and after work, more on days off, and whole days on the weekends. Subtracting a little time from this or that and adding it to writing helps out a whole lot. It's all about the math.

Here's mine:

If I have 10 productive hours a day, 7 days a week, then I have 70 hours a week to allocate to whatever I need to get done. I currently spend about 27 hours a week working at and commuting to the library, and I am committed to running an hour a day, 5 days a week.

70 - 27 - 5 leaves me with 38 hours a week to write.

Of course, my priority right now isn't a novel, but a dissertation. I figure the same principle holds. By my math, when I'm not bullsh*tting, there are almost 40 hours in a week for me to get it in. Let's see what we can do.

23. Heavy Rotation

Another song I can't get enough of is The Weepies - World Spins Madly On. It's got that "Whatever happens, life goes on" vibe that I find is so essential sometimes. I wish it were more than 2 1/2 minutes long. Just as I'm getting into it, it's ending. But I guess that's what Repeat is for.

I just got lost, and slept right through the dawn. And the world spins madly on.

22. Special Collections

There may be no better job for a lover of magical books than to work in the Special Collections of a library. The kind of goodness that comes across my desk on any given workday really couldn't be equaled or accessed in any other way I can think of. In the past few months, it was my "job" to catalog an autographed collection of Langston Hughes' poetry, a first edition of Countee Cullen's Colors, a set of newspapers from the 1800s advertising slaves for auction, and a copy of D.H. Lawrence's Love Poems wherein I found "Return", one of my new favorite poems.

But by far my favorite thing that has ever happened at my job is this:

Walking through the stacks one day I caught a glimpse of a book with a bright gold spine. It was about 14 inches tall and 3 inches thick. The book was gold velvet and was stamped "The Golden Book of Tagore" in gold leaf on the spine. Naturally I picked it up =).

It turned out to be a tribute to an early 20th century Bengali Nobel Laureate named Rabindranath Tagore. Mostly it included essays from friends and colleagues detailing his virtues as an artist and a man. There wasn't much of his work though. So later that day I checked out a handful of books - poetry and plays. Didn't get into the plays, but the poetry was very decent (I mean that as a compliment). I added him to my roll of Admired Writers.

A few months later I'm photocopying the archived papers of a woman who's name I don't remember for one of the library patrons. She'd requested copies of some of the woman's photographs and correspondence. In the middle of the assignment I notice the signature at the bottom of one of the letters: Rabindranath Tagore

It turns out, the woman (whose name I wrote down but don't remember), was the widow of a writer who had been deeply involved in the literary community of his time. When he died, she opened their home in Chicago to a community of writers around the globe who would come through the city for work. Artists like Tagore would stay at her home instead of in a hotel when they were in Chicago.

In the letters he wrote of his work, of the difficulty of writing well and living well among people, of winning the Nobel Prize and it's effect on his working life, of his travels and his lack of enjoyment of steam ships. And in one of the letters, as a gift, in appreciation for her friendship, he writes to her a poem, previously unpublished. It has always been my plan to go back, photocopy the poem, and frame it for my room.

In the meantime...

RETURN

Now I am come again, you who have so desired
My coming why do you look away from me?
Why does your cheek burn against me - have I inspired
Such anger as sets your mouth unwontedly?

Ah here I sit while you break the music beneath
Your bow; for broken it is and hurting to hear:
Cease then from music - does anguish of absence bequeath
Me only aloofness when I would draw near?

21. Writing Workshop: Untitled

She couldn’t believe it. Any of it. And she believed least of all that he had wanted to be there. He hadn’t been stranded… he had stayed.

Through the night she watched the clock. Time was passing so quickly! Already it was 3am. She felt like she must have missed something. Four hours had passed and she could not recall so much as a heartbeat. As they lay there she felt as though she were watching him with someone else. She stared at the arm curled round her waist. Tried to concentrate on the weight of it. Nothing was real.

Four o’clock! She turned so that she could watch him. Then she might remember what it looked like, if should could not feel anything. She never slept. Not at all that night.

In the morning, they lay tangled, awkward. They did not speak. First she was relieved. It was as if nothing strange had happened. Then disappointed. It was as if nothing at all strange had happened.

20. 100 Pages a Day

What would it take for me to read 100 pages a day?

Clearly my conviction that I could earn the Ph.D. "in my free time" was in error. So I'm developing a different approach. I figure there are about 1,500 pages of effective reading sitting between me and a solid research proposal. 100 pages a day gets me two weeks reading, two weeks writing, and a proposal draft in about a month.

Not that I'm suddenly in a hurry. But someone I'll obviously be thanking in the Acknowledgments of my dissertation keeps pointing out to me that "God didn't make a spirit of procrastination." I'm thinking 60 pages in the morning (when I'm fresh) and 40 in the evening (when I'm tired).

I'm also reluctantly re-ordering my productive priorities. At least until I'm a candidate, I figure it has to be work, proposal, running, photography, writing, dancing. The current order - work, running, photography, dancing, writing, proposal - has obviously
not worked well.

19. What the... ?!?!?!?

In my inbox this afternoon:

The Committee on Creative Writing presents

Jhumpa Lahiri

Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake

2010 Kestnbaum Writer-in-Residence

May 10, 7:30 PM
International House Assembly Hall
Reading from her work.
Interview with Donna Seaman.
Book signing.



Did you peep the "Writer-in-Residence" part? She'll be here for a year! What the... ?!?!?

18. On the Writing Life

One of my favorite things to read is writers' journals. I've found that a number of great writers kept amazing journals. Henry Thoreau is famous for his. Emerson less so, but still. I recently discovered that Bronson Alcott, who was really a teacher and only ever wrote half-heartedly, kept a remarkable journal.

Today I read a passage from Emerson's:

Cambridge, October 25, 1822

I find myself often idle, vagrant, stupid and hollow. This is somewhat appalling and, if I do not discipline myself with diligent care, I shall suffer severely from remorse and the sense of inferiority hereafter. All around me are industrious and will be great, I am indolent and shall be insignificant. Avert it! ... I need excitement.

That Emerson would write this is not in the least surprising. That he wrote it when he was 17 surprised and shamed the hell outta me. Either I have yet to have my moment of clarity as a writer, or I have had it and made nothing of it. I genuinely hope it's the former.

17. Either Miles Are Shorter on the North Side...

... or I am killing my 10-minute mile time. Of the 3 marked miles on the North Side path, we got a 9:32, a 9:53, and a 9:48. The idea that I ran an "easy" 9:32 (in the middle of a 5-mile run) is pretty hard to process. I mean, I know that "fit" chics routinely run 8:30s or better, but a) I'm not a fit chic, and b) breaking 50:00 really was the highest running goal I had set for myself.

So what to do now? Shoot for 9:30s? 9:00s? Decisions, decisions.

Speaking of the North Side, there's nothing like a change of scenery to get your energy up. I don't love running with 300 other people, but the view... I could definitely fall in love with the view.

16. What if...

... Nicki Minaj rapped about something other than sex and sneakers? How dope would she be?

15. Preach, Preacher!

One of the benefits of living with someone as zealously religious as my mother is that you can't help but absorb some of the hours of television preaching she watches everyday. Right now she's on Bishop Arthur Brazier.

Generally speaking, I don't mess with TV preachers. Just not my flavor. But Mr. Brazier is kinda rocking my world right now. He's preaching on Fear, and how it is not an appropriate motivator in the life of a Believer.

What he said that struck was quite simply that Fear is the biggest problem in some people's lives. "They're afraid to live. And they're afraid to die." Thinking about that, and what it really means to Live, and to be afraid to undertake it, is awesome to me. I think a lot of life is wasted that way. Stuck somewhere between life and death, because we're afraid of all the little deaths and failures we might suffer, if we were to live too audaciously.

This has actually been a running theme in conversation with one of the homies. I think it'll only become more important.

14. Where am I???

The bane of my existence is missing mile-markers. I run on a 16-mile bike/run path along Lake Michigan. Generally speaking, there are markers for each half mile. So one of the ways I get through runs is to set mini-targets and hit them along the way. Mile 1... done. Mile 2... done. After hitting each target, I reset for the next, having used up all the mental energy I allocated for that one split.

So few things annoy me more than looking for that mile marker at the end of a lap ("I'm almost done... almost there...") and not seeing it. Because it isn't there. Of course, 12 or 13 minutes into what's supposed to be an 11-minute mile, I generally figure it out. But stopping in the middle of nowhere is not nearly as satisfying as seeing the marker come up and crossing it. I always curse the city parks system just a little bit when that happens (... "Where's my mile marker?!?!?")

Anyway, for the two miles that were correctly marked, I came in at a totally respectable 10:35 (second mile) and 10:19 (fourth mile).

It's quite possible I set my goal too low. If I can run 10:30s now (and I'm not in very good shape), maybe I should be shooting for 9:30s (the miles that killed me this week). We'll see how I feel at the end of the summer.

Today's running project: New shoes. My knees are asking for them.