The Gift of Order (My Sister's Gift)

It took days, but I finally organized my pantry.  Sure, the baskets from the Dollar Tree that I used to hold canned goods and condiments had already been labeled, and there was contact paper on the shelves (but not attached to it), but it wasn't organized and it wasn't functional.  Stuff I use regularly was up high, while stuff I use occasionally was within easy reach.  Now it's organized and functional.

This may not be a big deal to you, Dear Reader, but it is to me.  Organization is not my strong suit.  Nor is maintaining it.

I've been living in my house for five years, but I can say that I'm just now really moving in.  In order to organize my pantry, I had to unpack wedding gifts that I had not opened since I married ten years ago.  To be honest, I think that when Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB) and I  moved in, we just put stuff where we could find it and kept stepping.  We didn't value functional organization enough to create it or maintain it.  This is despite the fact that BMNB is a self-proclaimed neat freak.  I think I brought him down.

To be honest, I thought the ability to organize a space, to create order from chaos, was a gift reserved to a few.  One of those few is my older sister.  She can look at a space that's a hot mess and create the Taj Mahal of organization -- beautiful and functional.  She makes it look easy because it comes easily to her.  I don't think she realizes that her ability is indeed a gift because it is second nature to her.  She's the kind of person who goes through her mail weekly, tosses and shreds, and balances her checkbook to the penny.  Pit her against any hoarder, and that hoarder is going down, although she would not want to work with hoarders because she doesn't want to work with their emotional issues.  When I tell her that people pay good money to have people do what she does instinctively and for free, she shakes her head and says she wouldn't want to be bothered trying to get clients and making a business of it.

Because I thought organization was beyond my reach, and because I accepted the brand I and others put on me as this flighty, disorganized person, I would literally look at my pantry, turn my head in denial, close the door and walk away.  I didn't realize what a gift having order is.

I had to not only want order, but believe that I could achieve it on my own.  Having to prepare my house for an inspection by an adoption social worker and to host Thanksgiving gave me the gentle nudge I needed.

I started in the garage.  "Everything goes through the garage," I told BMNB.  We had been dragging around the same crap since we were both in college, and despite moving across the country, we never pared down our stuff.  We just packed it up and took it with us, storing it when we didn't have enough space.  It's been freeing to let things go, donate them, or Freecycle them.  I'm a huge fan of freecycling -- you post what you have on your local Freecycle listserv, people who want it let you know, and you leave it on your front porch for pickup.  Easy peasy.  We're not done with the garage yet, but with Thanksgiving coming, we had to shift focus to the interior of the house.

I decided to make it fun by rewarding myself.  Although I had trepidation about organizing and creating order, I knew that I do have a gift for creating beauty out of ho-hum spaces.  I thought about what I'd really like to have to decorate our living room and family room, and I bought those items on sale, online or at thrift stores:  Slip covers (since we won't be buying sofas anytime soon); curtains and drapery rods; chairs for my mother's dining room table (solid wood for $5 each from a local thrift store -- I got ten of them); headboards for the guest beds (I got them at a thrift store and plan to paint them); and a rug for the family room.  I bought as much as I could as inexpensively as possible. My reward was that when I finished organizing the living room, kitchen and family room, I would get to put up the curtains, roll out the rug, put on the slip covers, and paint the headboards.  My penchant for decorating/interior design would be the motivation for organizing.

If I had known how much peace order brings, I would not have needed to reward myself.  Order is its own reward.  When I walk into the pantry, it gives me peace.  Once I cleared away stuff that was old, cleaned the shelves and lined them (this time I committed -- I actually attached the contact paper to the shelves), and put up wire shelving to hold appliances, I could slowly see the pieces coming together.  When it was done, after throwing out a lot of old canned goods, grains and the like, I could see what food I really had.  I could find things.  And although I did it on a budget, the order in itself is just plain beautiful.  It gives me peace to know exactly what I have and to be able to find it. I open that pantry door, and it's like a choir of angels starts singing the Hallelujah Chorus.

Having order is a gift, and you don't really appreciate it until you have it.  And you can have it if you choose to achieve it.

I don't have my sister's gift of being able to instinctively create order out of chaos.  She would have finished that pantry in hours, not days.  I'm still not done organizing the rest of the kitchen, the family room, and the living room.  But now I realize how much peace I deprived myself of all these years by thinking that order and organization were for other people and not for me.  Like anything else worth having, you have to commit to achieving it and maintaining it, especially if it doesn't come to you as naturally as it comes to my sister.

If my sister ever changes her mind and starts a professional organizer business, I'll let you know.

For more information about freecycling, visit Freecycle.org for a local freecycling group near you.

God Bless The Child, Especially If The Pastor Won't

For S.T.  My apologies for the delay.

Yours truly has been asked her opinion of a story in the news about Pastor Marvin Winans' refusal to bless the two year-old child of an unwed mother in a church dedication ceremony for two year-old children.  The story states that the offer was made to bless the child outside of the dedication ceremony but not as part of it.

My response might surprise you.

Out-of-wedlock births present a problem for the black community, a large portion of which is steeped in religion and cultural beliefs.  How do you celebrate the child of unwed parents without approving the means by which he or she arrived?

I would not pretend to tell the leader of a church how to run that church.  I would not even think about telling Pastor Winans that he should do something he feels his faith compels him not to do.  I do, however, think he missed a teaching moment and an opportunity to bring an entire family closer to God.

If I were Pastor Winans, I would have blessed the child and taught the child's parents.  I would have required a meeting with both of them as a condition of having the child participate in the dedication ceremony.  I would not have told them that they were wrong.  I would not have shamed them.  Instead, I would have explained what Pastor Winans must have believed was God's divine plan in requiring two parents to make a child and how a blessed union was God's way of making sure children would be taken care of.  I would have asked why they hadn't married, and I would have put them in a support group for single parents to help them not make any more children out of wedlock.  Most important, I would have tried to use the dedication ceremony as an opportunity to bring the entire family closer to God, to know His love AND His forgiveness.

In other words, I wouldn't have wielded my faith as a weapon of rectitude, but as a weapon of love and redemption.  But hey, that's just me.  I was raised to believe that a child is a blessing from God no matter how he or she gets here.

So there you have it -- BWB's response.

The House GOP Members: Burning Down the House

"Watch out.  You might get what you're after."

Talking Heads, "Burning Down the House."

It is only fitting that on the end of Day 15 of the Government Shutdown, and only one day away from the first-ever U.S. government default, I dedicate the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" to the House GOP members.  I couldn't imagine for the life of me that our elected leaders would play Russian Roulette with the full faith and credit of U.S. obligations and would be willing to tank not only the U.S. economy but the world economy in an effort to get back at President Obama.

Do they hate this Black man that much?  Oh yes.  Yes they do.

Before you go all ballistic and accuse me of playing the race card, let's call a thing a thing:  This shutdown isn't about defunding Obamacare.  It's about embarrassing and weakening this African American president whom the GOP has despised since Day 1 of his first term, what with Mitch McConnell vowing to make him a one term president (How's that workin' for ya, Mitchie?) before the President even started governing.

Note how the target has shifted.  First they wanted to defund Obamacare.  When they realized that the President wasn't going to roll over as easily as he did in his last term (see, that's what happens when a President is re-elected -- he can tell you to kiss his ass), they were lost trying to find any semblance of a bone to be thrown at them (e.g., medical device tax repeal) so they could declare victory and avoid embarrassment once polling showed that the nation primarily blamed the GOP for the shutdown.  Instead of unconditional surrender by reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling without negotiation, these fools would rather "burn down the house" by incurring the first U.S. default.  When your own party elder, John McCain, declares defunding Obamacare as a "fool's errand" (which he has done not just once, but twice within the last week), that should tell you to give up the ghost.

But not these rabid Republicans.  They even have the nerve to protest outside of the monuments they have shut down and blame the President for the shutdown.  They're worse than that sick joke about a child killing his parents and seeking the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.

Almost as insipid as these House GOP members are the people who support them, who have no idea of what a U.S. default would mean or even how "bad" Obamacare really is.  BMNB (my husband, Black Man Not Blogging) and I have recently had the pleasure of having conversations with these idiots.  I spoke with a clerk at Target who told me that Obamacare was going to run up the deficit.  I told her that, in the short run, costs might rise, but in the long run, as more healthy and young people are forced to buy health care insurance, health care costs would go down and, as a result, the national deficit.  I walked away and it hit me:  I just had a conversation with an idiot.  She probably makes minimum wage, works less than full time, and isn't receiving health care benefits.  She needs to thank her lucky stars that there is Obamacare, because she's probably going to need it.

My husband's strange encounter with an idiot involved someone who told him she opposed raising the debt ceiling because it would just encourage the government to "spend, spend, spend."  My husband responded, "The spending has already occurred.  Raising the debt ceiling just ensures that the government can cover the bills it has already incurred through its appropriations."  He, too, realized he'd just had a conversation with an idiot.

So here's to the idiots in the GOP who hate President Obama's black ass so much that they're willing to burn down the house.  They're probably related to the Confederates who were willing to burn down a country because they hated black people so and the segregationists who were willing to lynch black folks instead of acknowledging our equal rights.  Today's GOP idiots should at least have the intellectual honesty to put on their white robes and burn a cross in the White House lawn.

But as the song "Burning Down the House" says, "Watch out.  You might get what you're after."

What the GOP Could Learn from a P-I-M-P (And Get the Government Running Again) (NSFW)

We're on Day 14 of the government shutdown, all because Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell don't know how to keep their party in check.  There's a lot that the GOP could learn from a P-I-M-P.  Hell, there's a lot they could have learned from Nancy Pelosi, who still keeps her party in check without benefit or need of the title of Speaker.

Mind you, I've written admiringly about pimps before, not because I respect what they do, but because I respect their ability to get something so morally bankrupt done with minimal (or minimized) transaction costs.  If pimps (well, real pimps, not government pimps) were running the GOP, Senator Ted Cruz' idiot idea of shutting down the government until Obamacare was defunded would not have gotten far. (And kudos to Bob Schieffer for repeatedly asking how the GOP let Ted Cruz get this far.  As far as I'm concerned, Bob Schieffer is the only thinking journalist on the Sunday morning talk show circuit.)

You see, pimpin' runs on rules and hierarchy that maintain smooth relations (and pardon the language -- it's the language of pimpin', not mine).  Rule:  A bitch can't look a pimp in the eye.  Rule:  When a pimp is walking on the sidewalk, a bitch gets off of it.  Rule:  A bitch can't talk to pimps other than her own.  Rule:  A pimp's bottom bitch has seniority and priority over the pimp's other bitches.

If seniority and hierarchy account for anything, and analogizing to pimpin', how is it that Senator Ted Cruz, who is, shall we say, "new to the game," able to lead a cabal of new bitches to shut down the government without the pimps (party leaders) keeping them in check?  At the very least, no government shutdown formed in Congress should have gone off without the say-so of Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as the say-so of more senior pimps, uh, leaders, like Senator John McCain (Mack of the Year, 2008).  Even if the party leaders agreed with it, they, and not the Tea Party bitches new to the game, should have been leading the shutdown and deciding what terms would lead to the government's reopening, not the other way around.  GOP, where are your rules?  Where is your hierarchy?  Where is your pimp game?

If Senator Cruz were a bitch, he'd be considered "out of pocket."  The other pimps would have had permission to beat him for being "out of pocket" and leading the other bitches astray.

I guess the GOP's senior pimps, uh, leaders, have absolutely no pimp game whatsoever and definitely less than Nancy Pelosi.  Imagine that.

Could someone from the GOP call Too Short so we can get the government running again?

Oh, and Speaker Boehner, the first rule of pimpin'?  Don't love them bitches.  Just sayin'.

Dear Mr. President: Don't Blink, But Do Fart On Their Heads

Dear Mr. President,

When boys wrestle, especially brothers, the ultimate in victory is for the winning boy to not only sit on head of the defeated boy, but to fart on his head as well.  In families, it's usually the older brother who ends up sitting and farting on the head of his younger brother as a deterrent to future challenges.  Mr. President, you didn't grow up with brothers, but there's a lesson to be learned from the wrestling of boys.

But first, Mr. President, I have a message for you from my sister regarding this standoff with congressional Republicans:  Don't blink.

In this standoff/government shutdown, there's far more at stake than just a budget or the debt ceiling.  As you've so aptly put it, what is at stake is the ability to govern without being forced into false crises created by a small contingent of Republicans who are out of step with the majority of the nation.  So my sister's advice to you, Mr. President, is to continue to stand toe-to-toe with them and don't even think about blinking.  Don't flinch.  Stand your ground.  Which leads to a message from me:

Don't just sit on their heads; fart on their heads.

I, like so many other Americans, am so weary of Tea Party efforts to derail the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare."  It's the law.  They need to get over it and move on.  The rest of the country has.  Given that many of these representatives represent broke-ass states with people who desperately need health care (and could stand to back away from the fast food joints and processed foods in general) but fear anything with the word "Obama" in it, they ought to just move on.  But shutting down the government and threatening the first U.S. government default ever?  Now that deserves not just sitting on their heads, but farting on them, too.

The Republicans know they have backed themselves into a corner and are looking for a way out.  They know that, the longer this goes on, the more dim their hopes become of recapturing the White House in 2016.  They know all of this, but like a little brother wrestling his older, bigger brother, they don't know how to get out of this political headlock that will eventually lead to the political equivalent of you not just sitting on their heads, but farting on them as well.

When they capitulate, and they will, Mr. President, take that victory lap.  Do whatever is the political equivalent of sitting and farting on their heads so they will think twice about pulling this stunt again.

Don't blink, Mr. President.  But do fart on their heads, so to speak.

Sincerely,

Black Woman Blogging

The Hardest Part of Getting Old (The Stuff of Elders)

I'm 50.  It's safe to say that there are probably more days behind me than ahead of me and I am now an "elder" of my family.  The hardest part of getting old for anyone in my position is that, in these remaining days, you will be called upon to do the most difficult things, things you would not have been called upon to do as a child or even a young adult, if lucky, because they are the stuff of elders, and rightly so.

Most of the usual complaints about aging relate to health and body change -- diminishing eyesight and hearing, stiffness in one's bones, graying hair.  But all the while your body is changing and your faculties are diminishing, you will be called upon to do difficult things and, because of your stature as an elder, you will be expected to do those things with grace and magnanimity, and without showing grief or any self-indulgent displays of emotion.

You will be called upon to walk with loved ones who are older than you on their journey as they battle life-threatening disease -- cancer, Alzheimer's, you name it -- without showing the deeply-held fears you have about what those battles hold for them.

You will be called upon to make medical decisions for others that are literally the difference between prolonging a life no longer worth living and releasing them to God.

You will be called upon to decide when a suffering pet must die and be responsible for making that death occur.

You will be called upon to tell a elder in ill health that he can no longer drive, live by himself, or even continue to live in his own home anymore.

You will be called upon to console a grieving child facing the death of a loved one for the first time.

You will be called upon to bury your parents.

You will be called upon to radically change your life to ease the oncoming end of someone else's.

You will be called upon to change the adult diapers of your beloved elders without looking uncomfortable or inconvenienced and with a look of love on your face.

You will be called upon to give hope in the most hopeless of situations.

All of these things you will be called upon to do, all the while calling upon all the faith and home training your parents and elders instilled in you.  You won't think you can bear to do any of these things.

But you can.  And you will.  Because, as an elder, you're stronger than you know.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians (Trayvon Martin On My Mind)

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

~ African proverb

I've been staying silent on the George Zimmerman trial.  But really, why are we calling it the "George Zimmerman trial" when in fact Trayvon Martin's on trial, and he's dead? Just as in the African proverb, George Zimmerman, the hunter, is being glorified enough to be acquitted.  I understand the difficulty of the prosecution's task -- disproving Zimmerman's self-defense claim beyond a reasonable doubt in a state that has a "stand your ground" law.  It would be the height of irony and cruelty if the "stand your ground" law allows you to stand your ground and defend yourself against a confrontation that, but for your own actions, would never have happened, especially since it involved a teenage boy.

I feel so much for Trayvon's parents.  I've seen this movie before.  My family has its own George Zimmerman.  His name is Christopher Allen Smith, he is white, and he killed my cousin Gidd Robinson in broad daylight in front of his kids.  But for Gidd's mother, Gidd's fiancé, and our huge extended family banding together and putting pressure on the Yolo County District Attorney's Office to prosecute, Christopher Allen Smith would have gotten away with it.  Like George Zimmerman, Christopher Allen Smith was in his vehicle at the time the events leading to a homicide occurred and could have driven away.  Like George Zimmerman, Christopher Allen Smith decided to confront someone because he didn't like what he saw.  Unlike George Zimmerman, Christopher Allen Smith stayed in his truck and, shooting across the passenger seat and his own child, shot my cousin, who was walking his daughter to school, because my cousin allegedly flipped him off.

In the case of my cousin, the story as my family understood it was that he was walking his young daughter to school, and Christopher Allen Smith was speeding down the street.   My cousin yelled at him to slow down because there were children out.  Instead of going on, Christopher Allen Smith turned his truck around, got into a yelling match with my cousin, and, allegedly thinking my cousin had a gun, reached over the passenger side of his truck and across his own seven year-old son and shot my cousin.  Then he sped off, dumped the gun in the river, and rubbed his hands in mud to get rid of the gunshot residue.

Just like Trayvon Martin's murder, the case made no sense.  Initially, the Yolo County District Attorney's Office didn't want to prosecute because they believed my cousin, who did have a criminal record, had a gun that he had thrown in the bushes or disposed of in some way, although searchers never turned up a gun.  Then they didn't think they could prove that it was unreasonable for Christopher Allen Smith to believe that my cousin had a gun, in other words, that his claim of self-defense was imperfect and would support a murder charge.

But it didn't make sense.

My sister argued in a meeting with the Yolo County D.A.'s attorneys and staff, "It doesn't make sense.  If Christopher Allen Smith was in the driver's seat of his truck, and the passenger side was closest to the sidewalk where my cousin was, and if he thought my cousin had a gun, why didn't he just hit the gas and drive away?"  We all reasoned that in the time it would have taken him to reach in his glove compartment, pull out a gun, and shoot across his own child to repel some supposed threat, he could have hit the gas and taken his child to safety.  What person shoots a gun across his own child when he can more easily flee to safety?  And what person who has just been shot in the chest area is able to dispose of a gun or is even thinking of disposing of a gun?  It just didn't make sense.  Until the time that our extended family (which is huge) started meeting with the Yolo County D.A.'s office, the focus was on my cousin's criminal background and their belief that they could not prove imperfect self defense., i.e., that Christopher Allen Smith's belief that my cousin had a gun was unreasonable.  And they had no murder weapon.

It took Gidd's mom and Gidd's fiance, both of whom were strong like Trayvon's parents, and my huge extended family, including Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB) grilling the Yolo County assistant district attorneys and investigators as to why this wasn't being charged as a hate crime and why the FBI had not been involved, to eventually get the FBI involved.  My understanding is that the FBI eventually found the murder weapon, and the Yolo County D.A.'s investigators found the evidence needed to show that Christopher Allen Smith frequented white supremacist websites and had an arsenal of illegal guns.  If it hadn't been for Gidd's mom and his fiancé standing up, relentlessly pursuing justice, and getting the extended family involved in two meetings with the Yolo County D.A.'s office in which we relentlessly questioned them about the evidence, I doubt that Christopher Allen Smith would have been prosecuted, despite his highly implausible claim of self defense.

So as I watch snippets of the Trayvon Martin trial -- I can't bear to watch the defense not only make a mockery of Travyon's murder but make a mockery of the criminal justice system by starting a murder trial with a knock-knock joke -- who does that? -- I am reminded that justice isn't blind.  I am reminded that, when it comes down to a racist's claim of self defense in killing a person of color, unless the victim has his own "historians," the murderer gets to glorify his claim of self-defense.  I am angered that this trial has come down to whether a scared teenager attacked someone who was following him when that follower was clearly instructed by a 911 operator not to confront the teenager and was not in danger at the time he decided to follow the teenager.  I am angered by the defense stating that Trayvon inserted race into the matter by calling Zimmerman "a creepy cracker."  I am angered at the prospect of someone creating a situation where they can confront someone for no reason and, when the situation turns to their disadvantage, they can "stand their ground" and shoot the person they confronted without reason.  I am angered that the defense called for four minutes of silence and said, "That's how long Trayvon had to run," as if running would have saved his life.  This history of black men getting shot in the back for running in this country is long and sordid.

Other than the young woman who was on the phone with Trayvon, Trayvon doesn't have a "historian" to tell his side, allowing the Zimmerman defense team to glorify the hunter, George Zimmerman.

If both Christopher Allen Smith and George Zimmerman had simply driven away, two people would be alive today.

I'm not hopeful for a conviction in this case, and I'm sad for Trayvon's parents because, no matter what, they'll never see their son again.  There is a twist to all this if Zimmerman is acquitted, as BMNB put it:  "If he gets off, he'll be about as safe in America as Trayvon was."

The hunter may well indeed become the lion.  Better have his own historian.

For more on the murder of my cousin, visit here.