The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

The terrorists have won, that is my opinion. Americans, mostly white, paranoid, and scared, have allowed their human rights to be stripped away through the mental abuse suffered for eight years of the previous administration.  Scared of everyone and everything that is not white, middle class, protestant, male, and midwestern.  Scared enough to allow sexual abuse during the holidays. I, like many, have watched in horror and disgust at the too-many-to-count reportings of TSA officials (used loosely) who are abusing customers, yes, paying customers, of the nation's airports.  They cup the breasts of women, fondle the "junk" of men, and touch children in ways that up-until-November 1st - only parents and doctors had.  All because fear has been allowed to rule the skys. It is bad enough that you have to pack light, be charged for a bag if in a longer trip, can't take make-up, lotion, or even certain amounts of medicine, and all for the right to pay a high fee, sit i...

This time of year seems to turn on the reflecting button. I posted my notes to a younger self earlier this week and was going to post more, but changed my mind and decided to write about relationships, marriage, men and women, divorce, remarriage, and the rest. When I was younger, I didn't think much about guys.  I was too busy reading and surviving my step-mother.  I already wrote about my first encounters with men.  I do remember my first kiss, that was endearing because it was when I was about 11 and he was a fellow minister's kid.  Just a little peck on the lips and that was the end of my romantic endeavors. As I got older and once I encountered men in the sexual way, I understood something very profound about them - they lose their minds over what is between a woman's legs.  It doesn't matter who they are, men are very visual and sexual beings.  For that matter, women are also.  And since sex is like chocolate, as I taught the teenagers, onc...

I am not sure if it is November, Ntozake Shange's choreopoem made into a movie, or simply watching my daughters that had me thinking about this, but think I did, so here it goes. My notes to a younger self or notes from an older woman. 1.  Trust your gut, that burning in your stomach that says something is wrong, trust that, it can save your life 2.  Guys lie when it comes to sex, they just do, they want it and will say just about anything to get it, do not believe them, save it for the one you want to be with 3.  Speaking of guys lying, girls lie also so watch your friends if they are more into your destruction than into your destiny 4.  Parents are not perfect, they make mistakes, forgive them and learn 5.  If you decide to have sex, make sure you use protection and get on the pill - and never sleep with a guy who won't wear a condom, he won't be that good anyway and don't trust him 6.  Always, always, always love yourself first - if you do ...

Writers, artists, singers, poets, spoken word artists, songwriters - we get to take back the stories, be the voice of the silenced, we get to express the painful, the memorable, the unforgettable.  We are the muse, the emotion, the communicator. We often come from experience, from places we have lived.  Especially the poets, the spoken word artists, the turf poets, the essayists, the memoirists, they take back the emotion and give validity to a life lived. There was a time when I was given the pen, the knowledge that writing is in my blood.  I was about nine years old.  I wrote stories, up-to-then, I hadn't processed the life events that had already happened (I barely had memory of them) or the storm unfurling around me. Then I became a teenager and had lived through four of the most horrific years of my young life. And my voice was taken away. I had stopped writing stories and started writing a diary, a place to chronicle my life.  I kept it hidden on...

Okay, is it just me or does it seem awfully balmy outside?  We are in Missouri, this is usually long sleeve, at least a sweater and jacket weather, maybe a hat on some mornings...but today, I'm running around in a t-shirt and sweat pants that feel too hot. I know there are some people who do not believe in global warming or that our climate is being harmed by all the emissions from our ever-growing consumer world, but come one, even the naysayers have to say there is definitely something going on. Now, mind you, it means we have bright sunshine days and my girls get to run around without a coat when they go to afternoon recess, so we are enjoying this extension into fall, however, there must be a price to pay for all this.  It just can't continue the way we, the collective we, have been living and not make it a questionable future for my daughters when they grow up. We need to all do our part to cut down on our carbon footprint, to not emit so many harmful gases, and to ...

It is funny how one thing can trigger a lot of thoughts and memories. I was making some lunch - grilled sandwich with sourdough bread, swiss cheese, heirloom tomatoes, organic mixes greens, veggie bacon and pomegranate herbal tea - when I thought about love, life, and using the good mugs. It is no secret that I really enjoy a great cup of coffee.  I've waxed poetic and mused a lot about my desire to one day take myself on a journey to the coffee producing lands of my favorite blend and sip to my heart's content, that and write while I am doing it.  It is also not secret that I greatly enjoy this morning libation in unique mugs or antique cup and saucer.  I have a collection of mugs from places I have traveled or that my husband and sons have brought back from me.  I also have ones that I have picked up from artists at the many fairs that populate my fair city in the spring and summer.  And I have some antique, dainty, gold rimmed cup and saucer sets that I h...

I was sitting at this lovely little store/coffeeshop/eatery on Delmar last weekend.  My girlfriends and I meet once-a-month to talk about a piece of black female literature.  We also spend the time exploring great little getaway spots in the metro area to give us a respite from our normal lives on a Saturday morning. Through the course of discovering the great blueberry pancakes at Winslow's Home and meandering through the complicated story of Browngirl/Brownstones by Paule Marshall, I stumbled upon the courage to share an element of my past with these women.  I had never really shared the details, the feeling and raw emotion behind what happened to my son.  Perhaps it was timely because it was the exact calendar day and date, twenty eight years later, that my life began to unravel. I told them about when Cory died and what happened.  I did not know there was an audience, someone listening and enraptured by the story that is so personal. "I'm sorry to in...

For Colored Girls struck a nerve with me. My girlfriends and I went to see it at the movies tonight. I read the book first for my book club and did a review of it.  There were images of these women in my head and I saw them dancing on stage. Perhaps, like others, I wonder if filmmaker, maybe loosely applied for his previous works, Tyler Perry, would be the right one to make the choreopoem flow on screen the way it flowed in my heart when I read it the last couple days. This was no ordinary book-to-movie.  This epic has been performed and critically acclaimed and award winning and resonating with an entire generation of black women who finally felt their experiences, voices, pain, and redemption was given validity on the stage.  It is not a series of poems about any particular woman, as in the her book, the women are only identified by colors of the rainbow, it is not a stereotype of the black women, it is the humanity of us and the fact that the us, while black ...

Many people work up this morning...or never went to bed last night...with a tremendous sense of doom and dark clouds hanging overhead. The Tea Party/GOP won.  Some would say it was a necessary rebalancing of power and bringing the legislation back to the middle.  I say it was the result of corporate money and deep seated national hatred of anyone who is not white, anglosaxon, protestant, male, and over sixty-five. If my dad were alive, he would be deeply angry.  Not that Republicans won, he worked with Republicans like Kit Bond back in the day, who were sane and for the entire country.  No, he would be upset at the setback this tea party movement did for the civil rights of not just black people, but all people. I have to give it to the GOP/Tea Party, though, they are master as message.  As an adjunct professor of marketing, I wish I was teaching the political marketing course I co-wrote.  There would have been a lot of material for discussion on how ...

 The delicate balance we walk through life,  and then a shattering of the soul.   The  heart was severed, ripped in two and  the glass is shattered beyond repair. There are not enough flowers to fix the unprovoked and the unnecessary and the recycled.  As if waiting to unleash so they could exhale - get high from it - even though... The universe shifted, there is a crack in the foundation, and nothing can fix it. Too much broken glass in the daisies.