Friends
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Saturday 8:34am 3Mar07

Isn't it fun when you bring friends together from different areas of your life, sit back, and watch? That was my March 1st. It was a trek of love, given that getting to the restaurant was fraught with icy danger, streetcars that may never arrive and winds of snow cutting vision. It was all good, everyone showed up much to my huge gratitude.

And laugh! OMG!

I realize that my friends are just as quirky, eccentric and crazy funny as I think I am. ha ha! There was name calling and tickling and inside jokes being developed (keeping stupid people at Yonge and Bay). And my new birthday ritual, loot bags!

There is a reason why I've always valued friendship above sexual relationships. They have watched me in all incarnations of Shelley. They have laughed with me, bitched with me, cried with me and got drunk with me. And when I've finally taken the chance to organize something, because I never do those kinds of things, showing up for me!

Friends are our chosen family. Hug a friend today!

EY

Bebe Moore Campbell
Topic: Writers in the News
Saturday 3Mar07 8:19am

Once again it was an awards show (NAACP awards) that told me that someone passed away. Black american writer, Bebe Moore Campbell. A beautiful writer that never got the acclaim that Terri Macmillan received. Her writing quality was far more deserving. Very very sad...
EY

Bebe Moore Campbell

November 28, 2006

Bebe Moore Campbell, Novelist of Black Lives, Dies at 56
By MARGALIT FOX


Bebe Moore Campbell, a best-selling novelist known for her empathetic treatment of the difficult, intertwined and occasionally surprising relationship between the races, died yesterday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 56.

The cause was complications of brain cancer, said Linda Wharton-Boyd, a longtime friend.

Along with writers like Terry McMillan, Ms. Campbell was part of the first wave of black novelists who made the lives of upwardly mobile black people a routine subject for popular fiction. Straddling the divide between literary and mass-market novels, Ms. Campbell’s work explored not only the turbulent dance between blacks and whites but also the equally fraught relationship between men and women.

Throughout her work, Ms. Campbell sought to counter prevailing stereotypes of black people as socially and economically marginal. Though critics occasionally faulted her characters as two-dimensional, her novels were known for their crossover appeal, read by blacks and whites alike.

Often called on by the news media to discuss race relations, Ms. Campbell was for years a familiar presence on television and radio. With the publication of her most recent novel, “72 Hour Hold” (Knopf, 2005), she also became a visible spokeswoman on mental-health issues. The novel, about bipolar disorder, was inspired by the experience of a family member, Ms. Campbell said.

Originally a schoolteacher and later a journalist, Ms. Campbell made her mark as a writer of fiction with her first novel, “Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine” (Putnam), published in 1992. Rooted in the story of Emmett Till, the book tells of a black Chicago youth killed by a white man in Mississippi in 1955. After the murderer is acquitted at trial, the narrative follows his increasing dissolution.

“I wanted to give racism a face,” Ms. Campbell said in an interview with The New York Times Book Review in 1992. “African-Americans know about racism, but I don’t think we really know the causes. I decided it’s first of all a family problem.”

Reviewing the novel in The Book Review, Clyde Edgerton wrote: “By showing lives lived, and not explaining ideas, Ms. Campbell does what good storytellers do — she puts in by leaving out.”

Ms. Campbell’s other novels, all published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, are “Brothers and Sisters” (1994), written in the wake of the Los Angeles riots of 1992; “Singing in the Comeback Choir” (1998), about a black television producer feeling cut off from her roots; and “What You Owe Me” (2001), about the friendship between two women, one African-American, the other a Jewish Holocaust survivor, in the 1940’s.

Elizabeth Bebe Moore was born in Philadelphia on Feb. 18, 1950, to parents who divorced when she was very young. Bebe spent each school year in Philadelphia with her mother, grandmother and aunt — strong, upright women she collectively called “the Bosoms” — who set her on a course of study, discipline and staunch middle-class respectability.

She spent summers in North Carolina with her father, who had been paralyzed in an automobile accident. There, she was enveloped in a heady world of beer, laughter and cigar smoke. She documented her contrasting lives in her memoir, “Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad” (Putnam, 1989).

After earning a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Pittsburgh in 1971, Ms. Campbell taught school in Atlanta for several years before embarking on a career as a freelance journalist. Her first book was a work of nonfiction, “Successful Women, Angry Men: Backlash in the Two-Career Marriage” (Random House, 1986).

She also wrote two picture books for children, “Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry” (Putnam, 2003; illustrated by E. B. Lewis); and “Stompin’ at the Savoy” (Philomel, 2006; illustrated by Richard Yarde).

Ms. Campbell’s first marriage, to Tiko Campbell, ended in divorce. She is survived by her husband, Ellis Gordon Jr., whom she married in 1984; her mother, Doris Moore of Los Angeles; a daughter from her first marriage, Maia Campbell of Los Angeles; a stepson, Ellis Gordon III of Mitchellville, Md.; and two grandchildren.

Despite the subject matter of her books, Ms. Campbell expressed hope about the future of American race relations. In an interview with The New York Times in 1995, she described her motivation for writing “Brothers and Sisters,” the story of the friendship between a black banker and her white colleague.

“It was my attempt to bridge a racial gap,” Ms. Campbell said. “That’s the story that never gets told: how many of us really like each other, respect each other.”


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Lesbian or Stupid?
Topic: Another Entry
Tuesday 9:36pm 27Feb07

When I was meeting a friend's parents for the first time she forewarned me, "My father thinks that black women who shave their heads are either lesbians or stupid."

"Hmm, I'm not gay so I guess that means I'm stupid!"

There was a big article in the Toronto Star today about hair. Seems the world can't get enough of Britney shaving hers off. Although Jen Gerson touched on the fact that our hair is energy and that women will change their appearance when they've made a big decision like dumping a man, she missed the portion of non lesbian, non cancer surviving, non losing our hair, non crazy cross section of women... Some of us shave our heads because we like it. It is not a form of self destruction that I choose to shave my hair, it's a style option just like having dreads, wearing my hair in braids, straightening my hair or getting a curly perm.

I spend no time on my hair. I like not having to braid my hair every single night or curl it with a curling iron every morning or some other time consuming up keep that I could better use writing or sleeping.

In a world that values long flowing hair down your back and super thin models, shouldn't we be looking at the alternatives to all that noise?

And Jen forgot to mention how gorgeous so many women look when they shave their heads, like Natalie Portman and Erykah Badu and Sigourney Weaver, all either mentioned or pictured in the sidebar to the original print article ... I'm just saying.

EY

I include the article below... Distressed


RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
Nico Liberio cut off his dreadlocks three years ago and keeps them as a reminder of who he was.

disTRESSed

Hair has symbolized love, strength and beauty through the years

Cutting off one's locks is seen as both a cry for help and a sign of renewal
Feb 27, 2007 04:30 AM
Jen Gerson

Most clients who come for cuts at Nico Liberio's Queen St. W. salon are oblivious to the dreadlocks he keeps hidden behind a silver curtain in a yellow No Frills bag.

Yet the 10-inch dreads, the width of two fingers twined together, are the remnants of a rite of passage for the hairstylist and operator of Purple Hearts Inc.

They are stiff and soft and clean to the touch.

"I still feel them sometimes," admits Liberio, 33, who now sports curls that stand about 3 inches off his head. "Hair carries a lot of energy."

Liberio hacked it off three years ago, shortly after the birth of his son.

"I needed a change. I needed a passageway. Cutting the dreads was an excuse," he says. "I say that they have bad energy, I'm not saying it's an evil energy. I just didn't need them any more."

He keeps them around as a reminder of the person he once was.

As Liberio knows, our identity is locked into our hair.

Who we are, the jobs we do, our age, how much money we make, the cultures and subcultures we're affiliated with, and our personalities all can be read in the language of length, cut and colour.

We change our style to welcome new seasons. We mark break-ups and new relationships with dyes and gels. And in some cases – when the trauma or change is great – we get drastic. Britney Spears is only the latest and most public figure to shear her locks.

A major change in style can be a symbol of letting go of the past and entering a new phase of life.

When Liberio looks at his hair, he feels a weird, third-person detachment. "Like, that was him. This is me now."

A hairstylist for about a decade, Liberio has acted as a priest of sorts, as well as a participant in the ritual of hair-cutting and personal change.

"People are more likely to make the biggest changes in their hair when they're going through the biggest change in their life," he says. Though he's careful. "I won't do something drastic unless I feel they're ready for a change like that."

No tears here.

When Sharon Blynn, 35, discovered she had ovarian cancer in 2000, she first feared dying, then losing her hair.

"I had really long hair and was very connected to who I thought I was," she says. "I saw women with cancer who had a harder time losing their hair than they did with the cancer, or losing their breasts."

She thought this a skewed idea of identity and beauty and founded Bald is Beautiful, an organization that teaches women losing their hair that beauty emanates from within (baldisbeautiful.org).

Blynn, who is based in Los Angeles, continued shaving her hair after completing her cancer treatments. Now she also works as a bald model. She has appeared in Glamour and Marie Claire magazines. She also does runway in small fashion shows in New York.

For women who lose their hair to disease, heredity or stress, it's "very distressing," says David Kingsley, a trichologist – someone who studies hair loss's biological and psychological components. About 80 per cent of the people who visit him are women.

"During post-partum periods and menopause, women are more likely to get hair loss," he says. "It's actually quite rare for a woman to shave her head. Unless it's for chemotherapy or something like that. It's a form of self-destruction ... It's such a destructive act. It is a cry for help."

The bald female is a dark archetype associated with madness. But baldness is also a mark of identity for people who have sacrificed themselves to higher powers such as God and the military.

Catholic nuns and monks used to shave their heads when they took vows – a practice still observed by Buddhist monks. In the case of both religions, a shaved head marked the beginning of a commitment to an ascetic lifestyle.

New army recruits' heads are shaved, to homogenize the soldiers, to sacrifice their identity to the abstract notions of duty and patriotism.

In Hindu culture, babies go through the Mundan ceremony.

"For the first 31 days (of life) a baby can't come into the temple," says Skantha Sivakadachaiyer, the operations manager for the Sri Durka Hindu Temple in Toronto. After that first month, the baby's head is shaved.

"It's his initiation into a spiritual life," Sivakadachaiyer says. "It signifies his first step."

A shaved head has also been appropriated as a symbol of sexuality. Lesbians who shaved their heads were seen as rebelling against patriarchy and vanity.

Yet, going against these traditional viewpoints, Blynn feels as beautiful now as she did when she had long hair.

"I'm truly tapping in to where my beauty emanates from. (Going bald) put me in touch with myself," Blynn says.

"I don't want to become as attached to being bald as I was to my hair."

Frustration turns to Creativity
Topic: Writing to Live
Tuesday 5:43pm 27Feb07

Yesterday I started the day off with a giggle thinking how relaxing my morning at work was going to be. Well, at least it started that way. Then it turned into a beat down session with me being the one beat down. I answered the phone with exasperation more times than not.

When I got home last night I was sure that I was going to dive into bed head first. I certainly couldn't blog. No one wants to read about that shit. I didn't even have the energy to go to the liquor store for a bottle of wine. The thought of standing in line sweating in my layers was akin to some kind of Japanese water torture.

I didn't think I was going to write at all. I started my journal, 'Today the wrath of Mercury retrograde reared its angry head in my direction.' Heck, I was the bullseye! The day was all about communication, miscommunication, hostile communication, Mercury's domain.

Somehow I figured out that sleeping and/or drinking wasn't the answer. So I wrote. I wrote my 1 hour mind cleanse for 30 minutes. I wrote my freeflow for my novel and I worked out. In the midst of working out I realized that frustration and anger motivate me.

I wrote in my journal, 'What a great thing sometimes frustration can be because it stops me and gets me to ask the question, what do I most need to focus on for my sanity and my future? I need to be able to ask that question when I'm not frustrated or angry. I want to feel good. I don't want to be ruled by a life of roller coaster emotions in order to create because that's the kind of person I am, the one who loves to create.'

Through the midst of all that I also decided that since I've got all my novel notes and drafts and scratchings in one place, I'm going to read everything I have and plug the pieces into appropriate chapters of my novel.

In my journal I wrote, 'It makes sense to go through all my pieces of writing to throw them all into White Wishes chapters. Read through it, mark up the page and type it into my novel that I'm working on now. Add the daily freeflow stuff that I'm doing for each chapter as well. Just keep adding and reading and reorganizing until I get there. And when I have read through every last bit of paper and have a whole novel then sculpt it like clay into what I want it to be.

I, today, February 26th 2007, feel like I can complete White Wishes and it's the best feeling ever. I can really do this. How wonderful is that? It's been a long time coming and there is still more work to do but I finally genuinely feel like I've got the right focus. I really need to have that feeling of creating out of thin air (freeflow/ stream of consciousness writing) because I love that feeling but, as well, I can plop the finished pieces together and read them and sculpt the scenes. It's really really good, this love of what I do.'

Some how I transformed the frustration and channeled it. I've been working toward harnessing my energy instead of turning it into depression for years, yesterday I nailed it.

EY

Fresh White Snow
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Tuesday 5pm 27Feb07

I love fresh white snow. The sticky fluffy stuff. I love to wear my geeky winter boots, the same kind you wore when you were a kid, the ones that you can step into deep slush with confidence, and kick the snow in my path. I love the sight of marshmallow white trees with their spongy snowy branches like three dimensional paintings. My heart giggles. I am a child again. I am the little sister following my big brother doing whatever he does.

My brother was an adventurer to me, when I was little. If he found me remotely interesting it was a good day in my books.

I excelled physically because I wanted to impress my brother. I wanted him to notice me as an equal. I wanted him to recognize my value. When I was ten, I could out run any of his friends. I impressed him once, when one of the neighbourhood boys called me a nigger and I chased him. He was on his bike and I ran him down, pulled him off the back of his bike by his hair and kicked the shit out of him.
" I guess you won't call her that again," my brother said smugly.

At ten, I wanted to keep up with my brother. I climbed moving trains with him and went everywhere he did. At ten, I discovered my limitations in comparison to my brother and made decisions/choices about who I wanted to be if I couldn't be as good as him.

I wish we remained close. But he decided on distance and I obediently listened to his request.

But when it's snowy outside. When it's white and fresh and spongy. When I wear my geeky winter boots that women look at with that judgemental fashion faux pas air. When it's that certain kind of mild winter air. I forget about everyone around me as if my eyes are closed and I walk and kick that white time machine and I remember those moments of my innocence when the biggest person in my world was my big brother. And I giggle.

EY