In July 2007, my husband and I were exploring communities for relocation. We lived in Lee's Summit, Missouri, and settled in Kirkwood, Missouri.
When we were evaluating places to live, a loft on Washington Avenue, for instance, versus a sprawling home in O'Fallon, Missouri that was in a community similar to our Lee's Summit community, the issue of schools was paramount in the conversation.
One son was a 2007 high school graduate so the family lived on both sides of the state until he was safely off to Naval basic training in July. We thought of living in two spaces, three-and-one-half hours apart, but realized the strain on the family was too much.
It was at almost the 11th hour that we found a fairly nice 3bedroom, 1.5 bath to rent on a sprawling corner lot on a tree lined street in a quaint suburb. We chose the suburb first, known for the high academic standards we had come to expect with an added bonus of full support of the visual and performing arts, we chose Kirkwood to be our new hometown. The other thing that we highly valued was the diversity, at that time it was twenty-five-percent. We didn't want our children to be the only ones of color.
2007 Kirkwood is a very different place than 2016 Kirkwood.
In those short nine years, we still value academics and the visual and performing arts, but something dark has surfaced in the suburb we chose to call home.
It is one thing that I was barely unpacked when the deep racial divide (unbeknowst to us) erupted a cold February night with a black man's final straw broken into gunfire at City Hall. It was another thing to uncover an educational betrayal that can no longer hide under stellar test scores.
There were and continue to be decisions made by the Kirkwood School Board that are not all in the best interests of the almost 5900 students that now walk through the halls.
The black students were complaining about mistreatment and exclusion at the high school. I was determined it wouldn't happen to my youngest son, one who started in Kirkwood at 8th grde. It was my mission to make sure that they knew not to mess with this black boy and that he had highly involved parents. It was something I also tried to have others do to advocate for their own children.
Bully mentality is what comes to mind, the perception that blacks and other children of color were less deserving or less able, except for the monied few. The transfer kids and the Meacham Park kids were notoriously lumped into that refrain of the achievement gap. I sat in one PTO meeting where the MAP test scores were discussed and one parent blatantly blurted out, "well, just send them back," in reference to the few black transfer students who were enrolled in the district. The behavior and mentality is disturbing.
It felt like we stepped into quicksand.
Every year since I lived here, there was a school board election and some "issue" on the ballot that seemed of utmost importance. All the things were athletic related.
It was in 2012 that a lot of cracks started to surface. This was a couple years after the new superintendent, Dr. Tom Williams, was at the helm with some noticeable decisions made. The diversity was drastically cut with his grandfathering out the long-held transfer program that brought city kids (note, black) to this suburban district. One of the commitments Kirkwood had was that it would not eliminate the program, that it wanted diversity in the schools and that if that wasn't coming residentially, having students from south St. Louis neighborhoods coming to Kirkwood added a multicultural educational opportunity for everyone.
Somewhere this all went away and even with the Riverview Gardens students, the diversity was less than 11%.
In 2012, there was also the huge issue with the unexpected termination of a very effective and much loved grade level principal. It was completely against the usual model of the senior class principal becoming the following year's freshman class principal. It was all personal and the entire senior class, commnity, and supporters let the school board, superintendent, and public know that they were not happy with this decision made by the new high school principal.
In 2013, I ran for office.
I was among others who were asking the questions about decisions made like forcing iPad Minis when even high school students were saying it made more sense to give everyone laptos. Questions about the new athletic field, press box, and swanky turf all rose up against the backdrop of the common core, the "black" student achievement problem, the budget issues that were barely discussed with the public, and of course, the neoptism and highest paid superintendent in one of the smallest districts in the metro area. People were wondering what gives.
Two other people were voted into office and immediately, the vote for the new swimming pool was completed, despite the public vote being no. They found private money to have the pool built, competed in the summer of 2015.
Add that in between these times were the continuious handwring of the district in not being able to find black teachers but found as many LGBTQ and husband/wife combinations that they could come up with.
There was the construction of all the elementary schools and the state-of-the-art journalism wing and the ATLAS program literally at a Mason-Dixon line in the high school.
Yet, the Kirkwood mystic was continuing of it being one of the top districts and that Dr. Williams deserved his $300,000 package because of the high graduation rates, the scholars noted, the ACT scores, etc.
But under the surface, something else was happening.
The district conveneyed a task force to discuss the "African American Achievement Gap." It all ended up being a bunch of white teachers and administrators justifying why they didn't have black teachers at the high school, why they didn't have culturally relevant literature or history lessons, and why they just couldn't seem to educate "those " children. It was a lot of talk and still no teeth. Full disclosure, this writer was one of the members who was quite vocal about what resources would be put to closing the gap and math and reading. What other assessments of success were being used because of the well known and documented MAP testing bias. We are all still waiting, after the budget woes, we do not expect to have any focus placed on the black students in Kirkwood.
Against the backdrop of all this was brewing a financial crisis that the district was less than transparent in fully communicating with the public.
Kirkwood is a small town in every sense of the word. Generational in its quaintness, like the station plaza and vibrant downtown, Kirkwood had pride in its ability to be one place where its young people wanted to come back and settle after college. The mid-sized homes were what brought outsiders here with a vast array of ages, classes, and enough racial diversity to not feel isolated.
We wondered what changed?
It is mentioned that the infill housing had a part to play where a bungalow was torn down with a builder replacing it with a Chesterfield/O'Fallon mini mansion blocking out the sun of a tiny one story This was happening in several parts of the nine square miles (fifteen if the Meacham Park neighborhood is included). Clearly the city fathers wanted to be like Town & Country or their lust to be like Clayton was getting to them.
Kirkwood 2035 posters were going up and open meetings were being held against the backdrop of this PropA tax increase. Both things were meaning seniors were being taxed out of their homes and young families would not be able to afford a $700,000 home, despite the slick marketing of this being a "Destination District." The school and the city liked to say they were separate, but one person running for mayor was once president of the school board until he termed out. The two are intwined, and missed in all of it was the effect their illusions of grandeur were having on the public.
Kirkwood has grown, yes, but not bursting at the seams like they wanted everyone to believe.
The 15:1 classroom ratio they touted in marketing campaigns is now being treatened as double that in size and the scare tactics happened before the ink was dry.
The November ballot issue, the only thing Kirkwood came out to vote on, was soundly defeated. It's 60% no vote was a referendeum on the district's spending and the school board's inept actions.
At issue was not so much the need to pay more, we all understand that a highly valued education costs, that taxes are our price for living in a society. It is why my husband and I chose public school despite some of our similarily educated colleagues advocating for private schools like CBS, Burroughs, or MICDS.
The thing that happened here was a breakdown of trust.
Dr. Tom Williams is one of the two highest paid superintendents in the state.
Someone told me why was I focusing on his salary and compensation package.
In my comment in the 2013 election, I mentioned that if there were to be administrative cuts, it made sense to start there. We were a smaller district then and on a per-student-basis, he was not delivering performance that warranted that much money. My former district, Lee's Summit, had three high schools, three middle schools, five elementary schools, an alternative school and an academy and the superintendent then in 2007 did not make as much as Dr. Williams. Even here in the St. Louis area, he was making more than Clayton's superintendent who was delivering results higher than Kirkwood. He was making more than St. Louis Public's superintendent whose Metro was consistently higher ranked than Kirkwood. It just didn't add up, even more affluent LaDue was not paying its superintendent as much as Kirkwood.
I also stated that one household should not be bringing in close to $300,000 of Kirkwood taxpayer money.
Kirkwood has husbands and wives as administrators, teachers, and otherwise highly paid individuals in the school district. There are mothers and daughters, aunts and nephews, so much nepotism that it is dripping with it .
My stance was unpopular to say the least and probably why my application to be a marketing and advertising teacher was sent to the Special School District, despite having taught at three universities and the MBA being a semi-terminal degree.
This school district is also top heavy in teachers with Master's and Doctoral degrees. That is to be applauded. But, those degrees are paid for by the public. Now, that is a great employment perk, but it is at a great expense if those teachers are already making top dollar.
The questions I had, though, didn't even center on the teachers, we want good teachers, as much as it centered on the top heavy administration. It was a stance that no one on the current or former boards was willing to take.
Now, they have to.
And in true form, they are punishing the public to coerce an action in what I believe will be a future tax vote.
I put this topic aside for a while to keep talking to people in the community. They are concerned. Teachers have showed up at school board meetings to tell them they were not informed the cuts would be so immediate and deep. Budgets were slashed 20% almost immediately after the vote. 25 teachers with their wealth of knowledge and contribution to the district have been told they will not be back. Some are retiring, others are simply being let go, along with 3 administrators, that is part of the concern, making the teachers pay for fiscal irresponsibility that didn't just happen in November 2015.
Mehlville and other mostly white suburban districts that cut funding was talked about as something that is in Kirkwood's future. Some retirees are trying to move out as the infill housing and is making it impossible to live in a place they once called home for decades. Thoughts of Florissant, that has a higher property tax than Kirkwood, also swirled around. What is going to happen?
The local paper has had something about the vote in it every week since the November ballot issue. The school board president, E.J. Miller, has been in the paper a few times chastizing the public about the dire constraint and that we "willfully ignored what the defeat of Prop A would mean."
Bullying and blaming tactics are continuing. It is to the point of exhaustion. Teachers morale is plummeting and students, particularly those at the high school, are bearing the emotional brunt of this decision that didn't just show up with this school year.
I mentioned that I ran for office in 2013 and the issue of school finances was brought up back then.
One of the things I said was that I would not cut the teachers. I would start with the top, Dr. Williams, and work my way down. His salary and benefit package, as well as that of the top administrators, the dual family incomes (meaning two working in the district from the same immediate family) are all things I would consider. I would have also looked at the funding of the althletic departments over the academic departments. That is an unpopular stance to take in a town that values bringing home the Turkey Day Bell, but it is a stance that needed to be considered. I would have also listened to the seniors being assessed out of their homes and the new families that can't afford to move here. Then I would have asked exactly what are we saying when they kept saying we are "destination district?"
The status of Kirkwood and conversation about it is beyond the nine square miles that make up this town, well, fifteen with the acquisition of Meacham Park.
People of color are barely here, so whether we voted or not, we were not the totality of the 60% of no voters who turned out to defeat Prop A. We will, however, bear some of the brunt of the decision. We know it means that the high school with zero black academic teachers (not counting the Orchestra director) for my daughter's freshman year. That there won't be any efforts to recruit or promote black teachers, and forget all the fancy talk about closing the "achievement gap." All that will be thrown out the window.
It was the citizenry who felt both bamboozled and betrayed. Those who remembered the no vote on the proposition to redo the athletic field and the board "finding the resources" to do it anyway. We have a swanky field, press box, concession stand, and amenities that rival the junior colleges. The field was barely stepped on before they broke ground for the new natatorium. Now, it is the stuff that colleges and universities would love to feature in their recruitment videos. That pool is olympic class, for a cadre of swim athletics that barely fill the overstuff clasrooms they keep threatening will happen. Why wasn't an effort used to get that same family to donate the $10MM to boosting the academic budget? This along with construction decisions, the Ipad Mini's and a host of other fiscal disregard caused the public to vote a referendum on the district.
I wonder if they will take notice.
2013 had two new school board members elected after a contentious election with five candidates, myself included.
2014 had two write-ins that no one knew anything about because they did not have to speak to the public.
2015 had two new school board members in a three member race with the jury still out on their performance.
2016 has just announced two school board positions that will not be an election because the two who won in 2013 are the only two who filed in 2016.
It makes me think that nothing will change, that the boys's (and a few girls') club will continue to do what they want without regard to the public impact, and will put the brunt of the impact on the students and teachers.
The smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors. Will this be a community wide eye opening that causes the roughly 23,000 adults in Kirkwood to ask what do they really need and want? Do they have the backbone to collectively hold the city fathers and school administrators accountable to decisions they make or let them operate with impunity? There is a lot of handwring, letters to the editors, coffee shop conversations, and anger to go around.
I'm watching, waiting for the dust to settle, and see what we deem is important.
In the meantime, putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first, I've already started making plans for my daughters, I think other parents have also. Some are considering moving out, that it is not worth it, the inflated real estate, the bloated image, and the bullying tactics.
This is going to be an interesting year.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Belonging...Or Not
I am very rare.
We all tend to think that about ourselves.
There is a scripture in the Hebrew Bible that says we are "fearfully and wonderfully made."
It makes one feel special, great, unique.
Truly one-of-a-kind.
So, yes, I am very rare.
Even more rare than the uniqueness of everyone else is my personality type.
They say that just 3% of the population is on the Myers-Briggs INFJ Personality Scale.
The company is almost exclusive.
President Jimmy Carter shares my personality type. So does one of the younger writers I've met in the past year. We almost need a support group so we can sit together quietly intuining with each other the world we encounter with our keen emotional intelligence and perception.
The pain of belonging or not can show up all over our face.
Like when one is dismissed or disregarded because we are so busy helping and serving others instead of touting how brilliant we are to a bunch of captive middle schoolers.
Should we even try to belong?
Can we just exist as our individual selves,collectively being the conscious of a nation that sometimes forgets to be concerned about the least of things?
Would we ever truly distance ourselves from the people we seek to help because it is ingrained in our DNA?
It is why Jimmy Carter, with a cancer diagnosis, and an octogenarian, still showed up to teach Sunday School on the morning after one of his grandsons died.
Compelled, perhaps that is the word, we are compelled to shine a light on those thing that are wrong and try to use the miniscule extroverted part of us to rally other people to feel an ounce of compassion for someone else.
Maybe that is why we may appear either aloof or too busy to notice, our sleeves rolled up and our noses to the grindstone.
I often wonder what it would be like if I could be cold and callous, not caring that I pass over someone who has been there working all the time for a friend who just showed up and is suddenly in charge. Could I do something like that with a straight face?
Belonging is something that is underneath conversations of my middle school daughter and her friends who try to navigate cliques, circles,and clichés.
Do we really want to be in space and place with someone else who could care less about the light we are shining on the world problems? Is our insightfulness overwhelming to them who simply want to have an espresso and drone on through their day?
I am curious. Intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. I am never without a book, a journal, and a pen. I seek to understand what is happening around me and process it so that I can make a difference in the world where I exist. I wonder about those on the other side of the globe who are navigating through ancient customs clashing with modern technology. I wonder about fellow mothers and writers and poets and artists.
It is in being curous that I keep trying to learn more about what makes me tick.
Facebook is notorious for these tests popping up on our timeline. A friend of mine said she thinks the government is experimenting on all of us. Maybe, like a dystopian world waiting to happen, wonder if we will be categorized into zones, like the Divergent Series, and people like me, us INFJs, would be the Divergent ones who they will seek to eliminate. Anyway, I started to look at some of these "what does your favorite color say about you" or "this is what your personality says you will do in five years" tests as part of both curiousity and distraction.
One that I just took almost mirroed one I took in 2013 as part of a consultancy training.
I am indeed a rare bird.
This one said I am a Blue, like a true blue.
What did that even mean? I have an affinity to blue, I mean I was in a sorority auxillary in college and the colors were Royal Blue and Pure White, did that count? My youngest daughter loves blue, wonder if that was it? My college colors were Blue. Could it just be a fluke?
No, the test is pretty accurate.
When I finished the test and thought about the results, I decided that not belonging is not such a bad thing. I do belong to a select group of people, us Blues, us INFJs, who have a special purpose of existing. We are the heart, the pulse, the light shining, the conscious at times, to have everyone else stop and consider the implications of things we do.
Do we really need to own everything when we die and can't take any of it with us?
Is there really enough for everyone that Park Avenue doesn't have to horde resources or make people walk in a blizzard to deliver them pizza because they don't want to cook?
Should we stop using bottled water in Missouri so it can be sent to Flint, Michigan and not pollute our three rivers?
Can we have quality education for all if we normalized funding away from property values and just made it an equal opportunity system?
Would race matters go away if we just celebrated everyone as a "fearfully and wonderfully made" creation that has a special purpose of existing?
Thoughts and questions of life swirling around my mind day-and-night as I try to decide how much this introverted intuitive person can take of other people in one moment.
Belonging or not, the questions remains unanswered.
We all tend to think that about ourselves.
There is a scripture in the Hebrew Bible that says we are "fearfully and wonderfully made."
It makes one feel special, great, unique.
Truly one-of-a-kind.
So, yes, I am very rare.
Even more rare than the uniqueness of everyone else is my personality type.
They say that just 3% of the population is on the Myers-Briggs INFJ Personality Scale.
The company is almost exclusive.
President Jimmy Carter shares my personality type. So does one of the younger writers I've met in the past year. We almost need a support group so we can sit together quietly intuining with each other the world we encounter with our keen emotional intelligence and perception.
The pain of belonging or not can show up all over our face.
Like when one is dismissed or disregarded because we are so busy helping and serving others instead of touting how brilliant we are to a bunch of captive middle schoolers.
Should we even try to belong?
Can we just exist as our individual selves,collectively being the conscious of a nation that sometimes forgets to be concerned about the least of things?
Would we ever truly distance ourselves from the people we seek to help because it is ingrained in our DNA?
It is why Jimmy Carter, with a cancer diagnosis, and an octogenarian, still showed up to teach Sunday School on the morning after one of his grandsons died.
Compelled, perhaps that is the word, we are compelled to shine a light on those thing that are wrong and try to use the miniscule extroverted part of us to rally other people to feel an ounce of compassion for someone else.
Maybe that is why we may appear either aloof or too busy to notice, our sleeves rolled up and our noses to the grindstone.
I often wonder what it would be like if I could be cold and callous, not caring that I pass over someone who has been there working all the time for a friend who just showed up and is suddenly in charge. Could I do something like that with a straight face?
Belonging is something that is underneath conversations of my middle school daughter and her friends who try to navigate cliques, circles,and clichés.
Do we really want to be in space and place with someone else who could care less about the light we are shining on the world problems? Is our insightfulness overwhelming to them who simply want to have an espresso and drone on through their day?
I am curious. Intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. I am never without a book, a journal, and a pen. I seek to understand what is happening around me and process it so that I can make a difference in the world where I exist. I wonder about those on the other side of the globe who are navigating through ancient customs clashing with modern technology. I wonder about fellow mothers and writers and poets and artists.
It is in being curous that I keep trying to learn more about what makes me tick.
Facebook is notorious for these tests popping up on our timeline. A friend of mine said she thinks the government is experimenting on all of us. Maybe, like a dystopian world waiting to happen, wonder if we will be categorized into zones, like the Divergent Series, and people like me, us INFJs, would be the Divergent ones who they will seek to eliminate. Anyway, I started to look at some of these "what does your favorite color say about you" or "this is what your personality says you will do in five years" tests as part of both curiousity and distraction.
One that I just took almost mirroed one I took in 2013 as part of a consultancy training.
I am indeed a rare bird.
This one said I am a Blue, like a true blue.
What did that even mean? I have an affinity to blue, I mean I was in a sorority auxillary in college and the colors were Royal Blue and Pure White, did that count? My youngest daughter loves blue, wonder if that was it? My college colors were Blue. Could it just be a fluke?
No, the test is pretty accurate.
You belong to the blue color family! The color psychology quiz tells us that like those blue colors that you subconsciously most relate to, you're deep, comforting, emotional and naturally intuitive. You've always had a sixth sense or gut feeling that never leads you astray. Rely on your intuition; it will never fail you! But, you probably already know that. Others may perceive you as overly emotional, and you may even have a reputation for being a bit sensitive or touchy, but you actually just have an incredibly high emotional intelligence. You can be a bit melancholy at times, and you need time and space to recharge your emotional energies.
When I finished the test and thought about the results, I decided that not belonging is not such a bad thing. I do belong to a select group of people, us Blues, us INFJs, who have a special purpose of existing. We are the heart, the pulse, the light shining, the conscious at times, to have everyone else stop and consider the implications of things we do.
Do we really need to own everything when we die and can't take any of it with us?
Is there really enough for everyone that Park Avenue doesn't have to horde resources or make people walk in a blizzard to deliver them pizza because they don't want to cook?
Should we stop using bottled water in Missouri so it can be sent to Flint, Michigan and not pollute our three rivers?
Can we have quality education for all if we normalized funding away from property values and just made it an equal opportunity system?
Would race matters go away if we just celebrated everyone as a "fearfully and wonderfully made" creation that has a special purpose of existing?
Thoughts and questions of life swirling around my mind day-and-night as I try to decide how much this introverted intuitive person can take of other people in one moment.
Belonging or not, the questions remains unanswered.
©2008-2016 by Tayé Foster Bradshaw.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Winter of Sorrows
In the latest editions of it can't get any crazier, we went to bed last night with the news reports that dumb has endorsed narcissist and the papers are having a field day.
My daughters are in middle school. They and their friends have all said they will move if Donald Trump is elected President. I posted that if there was anyone on my Facebook page who supported him, they can kindly leave my existence.
Trump is more than dangerous because of his racist rhetoric, he has incited violence against Muslims, blacks, Latinos, and LGBTQ. There was a focus group of his supporters who liked that he "tells it like it is" - meaning they really want to spew off the most vile pile of doggie dung from their mouths and do so without ever being called on it.
Trump's base pandering of everything, even being seen with a Bible for those conservative Christian Republicans, is worse than anything I ever imagined in politics.
Granted, a lot of white folks are and have been living in a GOP/Tea Party created fear since 2007, but this is beyond the pale (pun intended). They are as white with fear as the snow that has my middle schoolers at home today hiding out under blankets. It is all just so irrational.
If the news across the national stage wasn't bad enough, we have Governor Snyder poisoning people in Flint with the city water department sending resident bills for the orange lead-filled water. The water shut off in Detroit and news of water poisoning in Louisiana, area all hitting the news that it is "not just Flint" where there seems to be a deliberate GOP attempt at environmental genocide.
President Obama vetoed the Republican led bill to kill the Clean Water Act.
They only see profit, save a few dollars, that was the motive of businessman Snyder and his appointee who is not the Emergency Manager of Detroit Public Schools, the same schools with black mold and science-experiment-mushroom-fungi growing out of the walls.
This is not a new issue. Michael Moore did a documentary about his hometown of Flint and the deliberate economic destruction of that blue collar town. It is on the east side of the Great Lakes State, a bit landlocked from the fresh water, dependent on Detroit for access to that precious commodity. The Governor, to save a few pennies, used the dirty rusty Flint River, the same river the car makers would not use because it corroded its parts. No concern about the corrosion of human lives. Such is capitalism in 2016.
Water was at the issue after Hurricane Katrina when thousands of mostly poor black people were cut off from the basic need of live, despite being surrounded by the flood waters. They were deemed thugs for going into waterlogged stores to get bottled water for babies, but their fellow white Hurricane victims were deemed heroes for foraging for their families. Double standards.
Black Lives Matter environmental protesters have been paying attention and calling notice to the issues in Detroit for some time. Their marches and activism has been against the city that shut down the water of people with even a small due balance. Literally cutting them off from a life source that their city sits on.
Other people in different parts of the country have been fined for collecting their own rainwater, deemed illegal, even jailed. Nestle has been buying up waterworks across the country, the CEO announcing that water is not a human right.
These are things that the so-called good christian missionaries go to third world countries to rectify, why the Shoeman gets our old shoes to trade for clean water systems in Haiti, still ravaged after the Earthquake. It is something that seems absolutely crazy that we are still discussing the need for clean water in a world that has plenty of it.
Flint is only one of many places that will see this crisis. Missourians got a small taste when Valley Park and Eureuka were told to not drink the water after the waste plant was flooded during the Meramec River overflowing its banks during the last two days of 2015. It is a frightening thing to not have the thing the human body can not go without. You can live without food for forty days, but water? Three days, some can stretch it to eight-to-ten. Our human bodies are 60% water, the organs will shut down without it, nothing works without being hydrated. Now, think about that for a little child, the ten people who have died from the water in Flint, the children presenting with irreversible lead poisoning. This is genocide.
It makes one stop and wonder, through the year and almost two that people have been protesting, acting, and organizing around Black Lives Matter, if it will be the deliberate poisoning of a town that will finally get the so-called good people to pay attention.
This seems to be the winter of sorrows and it has just begun. Stay tuned.
Tayé Foster Bradshaw lives with her family, lattes, pens, and books along the Meramec River in Kirkwood, MO and has fond memories of growing up with her father's relatives along Lake Michigan in Benton Harbor/Benton Township. "The lake, river, and ocean literally feed my soul. I can't imagine a world without being able to walk along the beach, it makes me wonder why it is not protected as much as it should be." TFB.
©, 2008-2016. Antona Smith. Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group.All Rights Reserved.
My daughters are in middle school. They and their friends have all said they will move if Donald Trump is elected President. I posted that if there was anyone on my Facebook page who supported him, they can kindly leave my existence.
Trump is more than dangerous because of his racist rhetoric, he has incited violence against Muslims, blacks, Latinos, and LGBTQ. There was a focus group of his supporters who liked that he "tells it like it is" - meaning they really want to spew off the most vile pile of doggie dung from their mouths and do so without ever being called on it.
Trump's base pandering of everything, even being seen with a Bible for those conservative Christian Republicans, is worse than anything I ever imagined in politics.
Granted, a lot of white folks are and have been living in a GOP/Tea Party created fear since 2007, but this is beyond the pale (pun intended). They are as white with fear as the snow that has my middle schoolers at home today hiding out under blankets. It is all just so irrational.
If the news across the national stage wasn't bad enough, we have Governor Snyder poisoning people in Flint with the city water department sending resident bills for the orange lead-filled water. The water shut off in Detroit and news of water poisoning in Louisiana, area all hitting the news that it is "not just Flint" where there seems to be a deliberate GOP attempt at environmental genocide.
President Obama vetoed the Republican led bill to kill the Clean Water Act.
They only see profit, save a few dollars, that was the motive of businessman Snyder and his appointee who is not the Emergency Manager of Detroit Public Schools, the same schools with black mold and science-experiment-mushroom-fungi growing out of the walls.
This is not a new issue. Michael Moore did a documentary about his hometown of Flint and the deliberate economic destruction of that blue collar town. It is on the east side of the Great Lakes State, a bit landlocked from the fresh water, dependent on Detroit for access to that precious commodity. The Governor, to save a few pennies, used the dirty rusty Flint River, the same river the car makers would not use because it corroded its parts. No concern about the corrosion of human lives. Such is capitalism in 2016.
Water was at the issue after Hurricane Katrina when thousands of mostly poor black people were cut off from the basic need of live, despite being surrounded by the flood waters. They were deemed thugs for going into waterlogged stores to get bottled water for babies, but their fellow white Hurricane victims were deemed heroes for foraging for their families. Double standards.
Black Lives Matter environmental protesters have been paying attention and calling notice to the issues in Detroit for some time. Their marches and activism has been against the city that shut down the water of people with even a small due balance. Literally cutting them off from a life source that their city sits on.
Other people in different parts of the country have been fined for collecting their own rainwater, deemed illegal, even jailed. Nestle has been buying up waterworks across the country, the CEO announcing that water is not a human right.
These are things that the so-called good christian missionaries go to third world countries to rectify, why the Shoeman gets our old shoes to trade for clean water systems in Haiti, still ravaged after the Earthquake. It is something that seems absolutely crazy that we are still discussing the need for clean water in a world that has plenty of it.
Flint is only one of many places that will see this crisis. Missourians got a small taste when Valley Park and Eureuka were told to not drink the water after the waste plant was flooded during the Meramec River overflowing its banks during the last two days of 2015. It is a frightening thing to not have the thing the human body can not go without. You can live without food for forty days, but water? Three days, some can stretch it to eight-to-ten. Our human bodies are 60% water, the organs will shut down without it, nothing works without being hydrated. Now, think about that for a little child, the ten people who have died from the water in Flint, the children presenting with irreversible lead poisoning. This is genocide.
It makes one stop and wonder, through the year and almost two that people have been protesting, acting, and organizing around Black Lives Matter, if it will be the deliberate poisoning of a town that will finally get the so-called good people to pay attention.
This seems to be the winter of sorrows and it has just begun. Stay tuned.
Tayé Foster Bradshaw lives with her family, lattes, pens, and books along the Meramec River in Kirkwood, MO and has fond memories of growing up with her father's relatives along Lake Michigan in Benton Harbor/Benton Township. "The lake, river, and ocean literally feed my soul. I can't imagine a world without being able to walk along the beach, it makes me wonder why it is not protected as much as it should be." TFB.
©, 2008-2016. Antona Smith. Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group.All Rights Reserved.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
A Week of Black Girl Amazing
In a week that could have shaken confidence, we paused to celebrate the already amazingness of black women,
It is all connected to remind the collective black girl that she doesn't need a hashtag to remind her of her excellence. She is a survivor, an innovator, an entrepreneur, an educator, and a thriver. She, the collect black American girl, has had to stand strong in herself despite arrows thrown at her from every end.
So it is in that spirit that there are a few black girl moments that I celebrate this week:
The classy beauty of Mrs. Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States who has exhibited the most elegance in the eight years at the White House. She has shown continued support of her husband and her daughters. There hasn't been a First Lady like her in a very long time. None of the Republican candidates' wives can hold a candle to her.
Another celebatory moment was the appointment of the twin black women as judges in Birmingham, Alabama.
Then there was the cover of Essence magazine featuring a young woman who raised her voice for not only black lives, but that the voice and presence of black women be heard in the movement that started in Ferguson.
Educated black women have always been a presence and in one week, three organizations that have had almost three hundred years of service that effects lives, all celebrated Founders' Days.
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., founded in 1913, has always been involved in social justice and using the laws to move the penduleum for black lives. They marched for Women's Sufferage and have stood for black lives in Baltimore, they are Presidential candidates (Shirley Chisholm) and Senators (Carol Mosley Braun) and otherwise involved in the work of service for mankind.
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc, founded in 1908, opened wide the door of collegiate sisterhood by becoming the first black Greek sorority in the country. At a time when black women were entering college at higher numbers, elevating education as a high cause, and finding that the connections of a sorority were denied them, these women did not let it stop them. They created the first for women of color and are filled with amazing women including one of my favorite writers, the late Dr. Maya Angelou, the elegant late Mrs. Coretta Scott King.
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., founded in 1920, is celebrating her Founders' Day today with 96 years of gracious scholarship, service, sisterhood, and finer womanhood. The only sorority that is constitutionally bound to a fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc, they exhibited collegiate family and connection for many young women across the country. They have quietly gone about their work, most notably in decreasing premature births and helping children have a healthy start in life. One of my favorite writers, the late Zora Neale Hurston, the late actress, Esther Rolle, and my son's performing arts dean at Alabama State University, Dr. Tonea Stewart, are all dovely women who are committed to making the world better.
Black girls are already amazing. I'm raising two of them, one a future Marine Biologist and another a future Fashion Director/Trend Strategist. They are both holding report cards received this week that are well above a 3.5GPA for their middle school studies. Each one is going to Carnegie Hall in March and have other friends who are thriving in their excellence, seeing their beautiful selves as amazing, without need to qualify or apologize.
We keep striving, stepping over obstacles, climbing mountains, and not looking back at those who said we couldn't.
It is all connected to remind the collective black girl that she doesn't need a hashtag to remind her of her excellence. She is a survivor, an innovator, an entrepreneur, an educator, and a thriver. She, the collect black American girl, has had to stand strong in herself despite arrows thrown at her from every end.
So it is in that spirit that there are a few black girl moments that I celebrate this week:
The classy beauty of Mrs. Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States who has exhibited the most elegance in the eight years at the White House. She has shown continued support of her husband and her daughters. There hasn't been a First Lady like her in a very long time. None of the Republican candidates' wives can hold a candle to her.
Another celebatory moment was the appointment of the twin black women as judges in Birmingham, Alabama.
Then there was the cover of Essence magazine featuring a young woman who raised her voice for not only black lives, but that the voice and presence of black women be heard in the movement that started in Ferguson.
Educated black women have always been a presence and in one week, three organizations that have had almost three hundred years of service that effects lives, all celebrated Founders' Days.
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., founded in 1913, has always been involved in social justice and using the laws to move the penduleum for black lives. They marched for Women's Sufferage and have stood for black lives in Baltimore, they are Presidential candidates (Shirley Chisholm) and Senators (Carol Mosley Braun) and otherwise involved in the work of service for mankind.
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc, founded in 1908, opened wide the door of collegiate sisterhood by becoming the first black Greek sorority in the country. At a time when black women were entering college at higher numbers, elevating education as a high cause, and finding that the connections of a sorority were denied them, these women did not let it stop them. They created the first for women of color and are filled with amazing women including one of my favorite writers, the late Dr. Maya Angelou, the elegant late Mrs. Coretta Scott King.
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., founded in 1920, is celebrating her Founders' Day today with 96 years of gracious scholarship, service, sisterhood, and finer womanhood. The only sorority that is constitutionally bound to a fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc, they exhibited collegiate family and connection for many young women across the country. They have quietly gone about their work, most notably in decreasing premature births and helping children have a healthy start in life. One of my favorite writers, the late Zora Neale Hurston, the late actress, Esther Rolle, and my son's performing arts dean at Alabama State University, Dr. Tonea Stewart, are all dovely women who are committed to making the world better.
Black girls are already amazing. I'm raising two of them, one a future Marine Biologist and another a future Fashion Director/Trend Strategist. They are both holding report cards received this week that are well above a 3.5GPA for their middle school studies. Each one is going to Carnegie Hall in March and have other friends who are thriving in their excellence, seeing their beautiful selves as amazing, without need to qualify or apologize.
We keep striving, stepping over obstacles, climbing mountains, and not looking back at those who said we couldn't.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
The Redemption of a Worthless Whore
There are times when something happens and one has to pause, inhale, exhale, and examine what happened.
Someone cherished and deeply loved went through a painful event and held that event in the heart until it became a cancerous tumor. That tumor spread to the soul and exploded out of the mouth with some most vile things said to a room full of women, some young girls in the hearing, mothers and grandmothers in the hearing.
When spewing the geyser of misognistic rhetoric enough to rival any rap video session, the instinct is to deflect or defend or deny, to protect. But one reaches beyond instinct to know that that spewing is from a place of deep darkness, a hell that seems impenetrable.
But there is light through that, a redemption, even of a worthless whore, one of the comments made
Let me get a bit theological for a moment.
ln the past year or so, many, many things have been said, written, and uttered in the presence of women, particularly black women. Our existence and choices in life, whether we were teen mothers, married to the same man who fathered our children, or married-had children-divorced-rinse and repeat cycle, it doesn't matter. To some men, clergyfolk, familyfolk, whitefolk, legislativefolk, musicfolk, we black women are at the gutteral bottom of the heap to be thought of , representated as, and treated as the lowest of the low. It is like Sojourner Truth's utterance that "Ain't I a Woman, Too?" falls on deaf ears when it is a black woman.
A white woman can get married and married and married, can have an abortion so she only has two kids, and is still held in high esteem. She can be like Elizabeth Turner with seven marriages and divorces or like Kim Kardashian who is literally famous for making a sex tape, and still be celebrated as honorable, wholesome, someone better than a black woman.
It is why black women rapes are ignored, as a local Pastor talked about on her facebook page, she received literally thousands of messages in light of a post about Bill Cosby and after a reporter challenged R Kelley on his underage sexual assault charges. Women (and some men) opened up about the most painful episodes of their childhood, releasing the waters of pain that washed over the banks, much like the flooded Meramec River.
But this, in my faith belief, I do know, there is some redemption of that worthless whore.
In both the Old and New Testament, the place of the woman, the woman of color, is held, central, despite custom or expectation that she would be unseen, unspoken, unheart, unloved.
Rahab was a whore, so was Mary Magdalene, forget about what they called Tamar after her brother brutally raped her and her father cast her out, forget the woman "caught in the act of adultery" ready to be stoned while the man still zipping up his pants walks away, nevermind about the woman who washed Jesus' feet with his hair, forget Gomer or the woman at the well at the heat of the day, all these women in the Bible were "whores." American black enslaved women were used for body parts - hands, breasts, vagina, womb, Saarjite Baartman was put on display for her breasts, enlarged labia, and buttocks to only be literally used for sex until disease killed her physical body what shame, humiliation, and separation had already done ot her soul.
To the men, to the world, there is no redemption of the whore, she is worthless, as one said, of no value, of no use. But that is what they want you to believe, what they want her to believe, why they utter those phrases like bitch, whore, cunt, slut, all those vile things that they try to use to demean the heart and soul of a woman, especially a black woman since our virtue and existence is always suspect from the time our breasts first start to bud.
Redeem indeed is what happens, despite the smelly pile of words written, sung, uttered, or thrown like arrows.
The black woman was the first one in existence. Her DNA runs through the veins of more Americans than care to admit their blackness. She fed children and kept alive a culture while the men were scared or ran off. Or in modern times while the weight of trying to fight their way up the ladder to take care of family and community became too great, the men left for either white women or other men or some thing to fill the hole in their heart left by a society that is afraid of their presence.
When people fear, they lash out. Even at the one they love the most.
But even in that there is redemption.
In my theological, if I were standing behind the pulpit moment, I would preach that Jesus surrounded himself with the worthless, the useless, the nothingness of society. He did much like the young new minister did at his new church, he came in ragged, dirty, and was cast off, unsightly among the gentry. He found comrades among the harlots and prostitutes, the gambler and hustlers, the ones who knew what pain felt like.
That is the redemption, as Rev. Emanuel Cleaver II spoke tonight at a Missouri Statewide Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Kickoff Celebration, black people know what hurting is, what pain feels like so we are most able to identify it and stand up for someone else.
Such again is the harlot.
Remember, in the faith tradition of the Bible, God uses Rahab to help the spies escape and her name is listed in the geneology of the one we call Christ the Savior. The woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and wiped it with her hair, her story is still uttered about his love and acceptance, of his forgiveness and forgetfulness. What about Mary Magdalene and the other women, likely the harlots and worthless whores, who walked to dress his body after his crucification? The risen Christ appeared to them first, according to scriptures, He didn't appear to the men. The women, the cast offs, the ones who had lost something, who had been hurt, they didn't have to be shown proof before they believed, their faith was already there to believe.
Such is the black woman.
Since 1619 when the first black woman set foot on these foreign shores, we have believed in the possible, in the one day, in being awake, as Rev. Cleaver spoke tonight. We have not stopped hoping and not stopped walking in our dream that one day, our daughters would not be used as parts and sold to the highest bidders, that our sons would not be cut down in the streets and left in the hot son to rot while his mother is kept away. We hold on and continue to reach.
That redemption is that she holds the earth.
The black woman.
In her womb that some consider worth nothing, her carrying worlds, nursing generations, feeding millions with what she stretches with her hands. She has stood firm like the palm tree against the hurricanes of accusations that she wasn't teaching her children enough or wasn't smart enough for the position or wasn't professional enough with her hair, she stood firm with her roots sinking deep down into the soil of the earth, gaining strength to one day sway back at the gale force winds of accusation.
She whips her sky growing crown back and forth, gaining strength, knowing that without her presence, none of it would exist. Call her whatever they want, she is still standing.
The black woman.
Like the beautiful six black women who are 2015 medical school graduates, Or making history in research labs winning million dollar grants. Or even representing a man accused of rape, black women are reaching beyond the body parts or stereotyped monikers assigned by the larger society, and moving on with their work making a difference that benefits even those who consider them less than.
The redemption song and possibility of tomorrow. The promise is still there, still attainable, anything is possible, even for a ...
Someone cherished and deeply loved went through a painful event and held that event in the heart until it became a cancerous tumor. That tumor spread to the soul and exploded out of the mouth with some most vile things said to a room full of women, some young girls in the hearing, mothers and grandmothers in the hearing.
When spewing the geyser of misognistic rhetoric enough to rival any rap video session, the instinct is to deflect or defend or deny, to protect. But one reaches beyond instinct to know that that spewing is from a place of deep darkness, a hell that seems impenetrable.
But there is light through that, a redemption, even of a worthless whore, one of the comments made
Let me get a bit theological for a moment.
ln the past year or so, many, many things have been said, written, and uttered in the presence of women, particularly black women. Our existence and choices in life, whether we were teen mothers, married to the same man who fathered our children, or married-had children-divorced-rinse and repeat cycle, it doesn't matter. To some men, clergyfolk, familyfolk, whitefolk, legislativefolk, musicfolk, we black women are at the gutteral bottom of the heap to be thought of , representated as, and treated as the lowest of the low. It is like Sojourner Truth's utterance that "Ain't I a Woman, Too?" falls on deaf ears when it is a black woman.
A white woman can get married and married and married, can have an abortion so she only has two kids, and is still held in high esteem. She can be like Elizabeth Turner with seven marriages and divorces or like Kim Kardashian who is literally famous for making a sex tape, and still be celebrated as honorable, wholesome, someone better than a black woman.
It is why black women rapes are ignored, as a local Pastor talked about on her facebook page, she received literally thousands of messages in light of a post about Bill Cosby and after a reporter challenged R Kelley on his underage sexual assault charges. Women (and some men) opened up about the most painful episodes of their childhood, releasing the waters of pain that washed over the banks, much like the flooded Meramec River.
But this, in my faith belief, I do know, there is some redemption of that worthless whore.
In both the Old and New Testament, the place of the woman, the woman of color, is held, central, despite custom or expectation that she would be unseen, unspoken, unheart, unloved.
Rahab was a whore, so was Mary Magdalene, forget about what they called Tamar after her brother brutally raped her and her father cast her out, forget the woman "caught in the act of adultery" ready to be stoned while the man still zipping up his pants walks away, nevermind about the woman who washed Jesus' feet with his hair, forget Gomer or the woman at the well at the heat of the day, all these women in the Bible were "whores." American black enslaved women were used for body parts - hands, breasts, vagina, womb, Saarjite Baartman was put on display for her breasts, enlarged labia, and buttocks to only be literally used for sex until disease killed her physical body what shame, humiliation, and separation had already done ot her soul.
To the men, to the world, there is no redemption of the whore, she is worthless, as one said, of no value, of no use. But that is what they want you to believe, what they want her to believe, why they utter those phrases like bitch, whore, cunt, slut, all those vile things that they try to use to demean the heart and soul of a woman, especially a black woman since our virtue and existence is always suspect from the time our breasts first start to bud.
Redeem indeed is what happens, despite the smelly pile of words written, sung, uttered, or thrown like arrows.
The black woman was the first one in existence. Her DNA runs through the veins of more Americans than care to admit their blackness. She fed children and kept alive a culture while the men were scared or ran off. Or in modern times while the weight of trying to fight their way up the ladder to take care of family and community became too great, the men left for either white women or other men or some thing to fill the hole in their heart left by a society that is afraid of their presence.
When people fear, they lash out. Even at the one they love the most.
But even in that there is redemption.
In my theological, if I were standing behind the pulpit moment, I would preach that Jesus surrounded himself with the worthless, the useless, the nothingness of society. He did much like the young new minister did at his new church, he came in ragged, dirty, and was cast off, unsightly among the gentry. He found comrades among the harlots and prostitutes, the gambler and hustlers, the ones who knew what pain felt like.
That is the redemption, as Rev. Emanuel Cleaver II spoke tonight at a Missouri Statewide Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Kickoff Celebration, black people know what hurting is, what pain feels like so we are most able to identify it and stand up for someone else.
Such again is the harlot.
Remember, in the faith tradition of the Bible, God uses Rahab to help the spies escape and her name is listed in the geneology of the one we call Christ the Savior. The woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and wiped it with her hair, her story is still uttered about his love and acceptance, of his forgiveness and forgetfulness. What about Mary Magdalene and the other women, likely the harlots and worthless whores, who walked to dress his body after his crucification? The risen Christ appeared to them first, according to scriptures, He didn't appear to the men. The women, the cast offs, the ones who had lost something, who had been hurt, they didn't have to be shown proof before they believed, their faith was already there to believe.
Such is the black woman.
Since 1619 when the first black woman set foot on these foreign shores, we have believed in the possible, in the one day, in being awake, as Rev. Cleaver spoke tonight. We have not stopped hoping and not stopped walking in our dream that one day, our daughters would not be used as parts and sold to the highest bidders, that our sons would not be cut down in the streets and left in the hot son to rot while his mother is kept away. We hold on and continue to reach.
That redemption is that she holds the earth.
The black woman.
In her womb that some consider worth nothing, her carrying worlds, nursing generations, feeding millions with what she stretches with her hands. She has stood firm like the palm tree against the hurricanes of accusations that she wasn't teaching her children enough or wasn't smart enough for the position or wasn't professional enough with her hair, she stood firm with her roots sinking deep down into the soil of the earth, gaining strength to one day sway back at the gale force winds of accusation.
She whips her sky growing crown back and forth, gaining strength, knowing that without her presence, none of it would exist. Call her whatever they want, she is still standing.
The black woman.
Like the beautiful six black women who are 2015 medical school graduates, Or making history in research labs winning million dollar grants. Or even representing a man accused of rape, black women are reaching beyond the body parts or stereotyped monikers assigned by the larger society, and moving on with their work making a difference that benefits even those who consider them less than.
The redemption song and possibility of tomorrow. The promise is still there, still attainable, anything is possible, even for a ...
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Timing of Expectations and Disappointments
I was preparing my day when I stopped in the middle of my morning to ponder things that have recently occurred.
In the months before the winter break, I tried to make a conscious decision to be less outwardly focused and more inwardly focused. That seems like a strange thing for me, an introvert with a few extrovert tendencies, to not be strictly developing my own goals and aspirations.
When I decided to pull back, not completely logged off, I also decided to evaluate my own level of expectations and disappointments over the past two years that I was "on" so much.
One of the first personal disappointments and reminders to be patient centered on my thoughts of obtaining my doctorate.
I was only a few were chosen to attend, all expenses covered. It was at that conference that the unquenching thirst for knowledge and teaching filled me with optimism. I even aspirationally posted a photo of myself as Dr. and pondered if my then-forty-something age would prevent me from seeking this goal.
The years that followed found me studying for the GRE, my old GMAT scores were outdated and despite my still-un-framed MBA was well earned, it was not good enough to get me into a doctoral program. It was also at that same time that I decided that I needed to take some classes. Coursera came to me at just the right time to consider my life in liberal arts versus marketing or advertising.
Time has a funny way of not waiting for one to be finished with whatever one is doing.
Children also have a hilarious way of demanding our time and attention for the eighteen years of hand-on parenting needed to develop fully actuallized adults.
Both seemed to flip my calendar pages to include my youngest son now being a senior in college, my middle son a married man and father, my oldest son a writer, producer, and artist, and my two daughters now in middle school.
I stopped and looked around my home office, glanced at the photos on the wall, the books on the shelf, and wondered if there was still time for me to do what I wanted to do and still guide the girls to their fullness.
The funny thing about my pondering is that it doesn't seem all that unique to me, a now Jubilee plus one woman that was told they only wanted those "fresh out of undergraduate so we can groom them" doctoral candidates. What was I possibly thinking about getting another degree? Did I even need one to be relevant, accepted, or considered for my contribution?
When I pulled back from social commentary about all things Black Lives Matter, I pulled into what I was doing to make lives matter within my St. Louis suburban sphere of influence.
As a perpetual educator, I'm preparing for my third summer of a youth literary circle, I've started a parent educational support group, and while not active in Ferguson as much, am still consulted about things related to parent advocacy and education. I served on a community task force examining the flaws of majority dominated educational paradigms as it relates to minority students in suburban districts. I was asked again to run for office and declined. There was a board request and a committee appointment to add to my already full calendar, and of course, there was the issue of my writing.
I am a Jones Generation woman and wondered if that put me at odds with the Baby Boomers and Millennials who are vying for attention. Were we voices squeezed out of conversations on equity, inclusion, diversity, access, and lives? Did it matter that I was a middle-aged, well educated black woman of mixed bag heritage that was not ready to go sit in a rocking chair? Would I have to make one more change to my résumé to go to work full-time in my field or would another client seek out my advice but not want to hire me because they couldn't afford my rate? Do men of my age experience the same questions or is it expected that gray on a man indicates wisdom?
My pondering of place and purpose led me to just pull back and embrace the disappointments of time and place.
There is absolutely nothing I can do about the last few years that shifted expectations and increased doubt. There was some consolation in speaking with other black women in my age range who shared the same frustrations, dashed hopes, and diminishing expectations as the slowing recover seems to leave us standing there with unwanted résumés, We gathered together to lament and strategize and ponder what we may need to "do it ourselves."
A group of "iron sharpening iron" cheerleaders was just what I needed and in the past few months, sought to be and give.
We encouraged each other on adventures, decided we were not too old to write that book, go back to school, travel abroad, or even pack up and leave a place where comfort began to wane. We decided we were worth the focus and the challenge.
What I learned in personally accepting that disappointments will happen, the calendar pages will turn, and expectations will still keep me hopeful, is that it is part of the life journey. In my uniqueness, I am also not that unique in wanting to fill my dash with challenges and contributions. I decided it was still possible.
The timing of exectations and disappointments will never come when we want, much like the snow that has yet to come or the flood waters that damaged communities this winter, we know that in the unexpected, we can sometimes step back and evaluate what matters most.
© 2008-2016, TFBG
Tayé Foster Bradshaw is a writer,latte lover, and avid wooden pen user who lives and works with her husband and last two children in a St. Louis suburb.
In the months before the winter break, I tried to make a conscious decision to be less outwardly focused and more inwardly focused. That seems like a strange thing for me, an introvert with a few extrovert tendencies, to not be strictly developing my own goals and aspirations.
When I decided to pull back, not completely logged off, I also decided to evaluate my own level of expectations and disappointments over the past two years that I was "on" so much.
One of the first personal disappointments and reminders to be patient centered on my thoughts of obtaining my doctorate.
I was only a few were chosen to attend, all expenses covered. It was at that conference that the unquenching thirst for knowledge and teaching filled me with optimism. I even aspirationally posted a photo of myself as Dr. and pondered if my then-forty-something age would prevent me from seeking this goal.
The years that followed found me studying for the GRE, my old GMAT scores were outdated and despite my still-un-framed MBA was well earned, it was not good enough to get me into a doctoral program. It was also at that same time that I decided that I needed to take some classes. Coursera came to me at just the right time to consider my life in liberal arts versus marketing or advertising.
Time has a funny way of not waiting for one to be finished with whatever one is doing.
Children also have a hilarious way of demanding our time and attention for the eighteen years of hand-on parenting needed to develop fully actuallized adults.
Both seemed to flip my calendar pages to include my youngest son now being a senior in college, my middle son a married man and father, my oldest son a writer, producer, and artist, and my two daughters now in middle school.
I stopped and looked around my home office, glanced at the photos on the wall, the books on the shelf, and wondered if there was still time for me to do what I wanted to do and still guide the girls to their fullness.
The funny thing about my pondering is that it doesn't seem all that unique to me, a now Jubilee plus one woman that was told they only wanted those "fresh out of undergraduate so we can groom them" doctoral candidates. What was I possibly thinking about getting another degree? Did I even need one to be relevant, accepted, or considered for my contribution?
When I pulled back from social commentary about all things Black Lives Matter, I pulled into what I was doing to make lives matter within my St. Louis suburban sphere of influence.
As a perpetual educator, I'm preparing for my third summer of a youth literary circle, I've started a parent educational support group, and while not active in Ferguson as much, am still consulted about things related to parent advocacy and education. I served on a community task force examining the flaws of majority dominated educational paradigms as it relates to minority students in suburban districts. I was asked again to run for office and declined. There was a board request and a committee appointment to add to my already full calendar, and of course, there was the issue of my writing.
I am a Jones Generation woman and wondered if that put me at odds with the Baby Boomers and Millennials who are vying for attention. Were we voices squeezed out of conversations on equity, inclusion, diversity, access, and lives? Did it matter that I was a middle-aged, well educated black woman of mixed bag heritage that was not ready to go sit in a rocking chair? Would I have to make one more change to my résumé to go to work full-time in my field or would another client seek out my advice but not want to hire me because they couldn't afford my rate? Do men of my age experience the same questions or is it expected that gray on a man indicates wisdom?
My pondering of place and purpose led me to just pull back and embrace the disappointments of time and place.
There is absolutely nothing I can do about the last few years that shifted expectations and increased doubt. There was some consolation in speaking with other black women in my age range who shared the same frustrations, dashed hopes, and diminishing expectations as the slowing recover seems to leave us standing there with unwanted résumés, We gathered together to lament and strategize and ponder what we may need to "do it ourselves."A group of "iron sharpening iron" cheerleaders was just what I needed and in the past few months, sought to be and give.
We encouraged each other on adventures, decided we were not too old to write that book, go back to school, travel abroad, or even pack up and leave a place where comfort began to wane. We decided we were worth the focus and the challenge.
What I learned in personally accepting that disappointments will happen, the calendar pages will turn, and expectations will still keep me hopeful, is that it is part of the life journey. In my uniqueness, I am also not that unique in wanting to fill my dash with challenges and contributions. I decided it was still possible.
The timing of exectations and disappointments will never come when we want, much like the snow that has yet to come or the flood waters that damaged communities this winter, we know that in the unexpected, we can sometimes step back and evaluate what matters most.
© 2008-2016, TFBG
Tayé Foster Bradshaw is a writer,latte lover, and avid wooden pen user who lives and works with her husband and last two children in a St. Louis suburb.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Happy New Year - 2016!
by Tayé Foster Bradshaw
One of the things I decided when I opened my eyes this morning was that this year would be full of promise and opportunity and hope and dreams.
Of course, so many of us make resolutions and decide that this year will be the year that we...
I am so full of euphoria, fresh breath, and optimism for 2016.
Perhaps it is because it is a new page, like a new piece of paper or the new journals I received or the fresh doodles I made.
The prompt that made me decide to start the new year and new morning off a little differently was that we often believe that how we start a thing is how it will be.
So I started it by making coffee - nothing new under that sun for me - and then I did something else. I didn't check messages or social media or even clean the glasses left from the kids' last night's water runs.
The bag filled with markers and colored pencils begged me to step away from my trepidation to reach inside, rediscovering the creative child in me, and start, just start, on the blank page.
My coffee was steaming and my hand was shaking, at first, then, with my first Copic black sketch pen, I started drawing. The result was my brief vision for the new year, filled with dreams and promises and assurances.
Every new year, like every new day is one where we can nurture our passion, feed our gifts, and color outside the lines.
I am resolving to let myself find moments of calm and respite, to quench my thirst for words on paper, and to see something breathtaking in every second.
What will you do in 2016?
Copyright, 2008-2016. Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group
Tayé Foster Bradshaw is an avid writer, latte lover, and bibliophile She and her family reside in St.Louis and she aspires to color something new every day.
One of the things I decided when I opened my eyes this morning was that this year would be full of promise and opportunity and hope and dreams.
Of course, so many of us make resolutions and decide that this year will be the year that we...
I am so full of euphoria, fresh breath, and optimism for 2016.
Perhaps it is because it is a new page, like a new piece of paper or the new journals I received or the fresh doodles I made.
The prompt that made me decide to start the new year and new morning off a little differently was that we often believe that how we start a thing is how it will be.
So I started it by making coffee - nothing new under that sun for me - and then I did something else. I didn't check messages or social media or even clean the glasses left from the kids' last night's water runs.
The bag filled with markers and colored pencils begged me to step away from my trepidation to reach inside, rediscovering the creative child in me, and start, just start, on the blank page.
My coffee was steaming and my hand was shaking, at first, then, with my first Copic black sketch pen, I started drawing. The result was my brief vision for the new year, filled with dreams and promises and assurances.
Every new year, like every new day is one where we can nurture our passion, feed our gifts, and color outside the lines.I am resolving to let myself find moments of calm and respite, to quench my thirst for words on paper, and to see something breathtaking in every second.
What will you do in 2016?
Copyright, 2008-2016. Tayé Foster Bradshaw Group
Tayé Foster Bradshaw is an avid writer, latte lover, and bibliophile She and her family reside in St.Louis and she aspires to color something new every day.
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