Low-maintenance fabulousness.

I’ve written more than once about my hair, even wrote out the saga that ended with my short-short afro so many years ago.  Nowadays, my afro, when I wear it, is Cleopatra Jones , not old-school Rashumba  .  (Couldn’t resist this photo of her with the eternally-gorgeous Beverly Johnson.)

When I wrote out my hair story, I had wanted to post pics, but my scanner wasn’t cooperating.  But now I’ve solved the problem of the scanner (thanks to wanting to put Koh’s postcard into yesterday’s post), so …

You can look at the “Hey” page to see what I look like most days.  Here’s what I looked like before I cut off my relaxed hair and went for the short afro:

(I mean, ok, I didn’t usually look so wide-eyed and stiff, but you get the idea.)  I look about twelve in this photo, but I think I was actually 22.  I had lots of hair (it was just below my shoulders by the time I decided to cut it all off), but the straightening was so high-maintenance … to say nothing of the fact that it was bad for my hair.

But then I went under the shears.  Here are a couple of photos from a reading I gave at the Cornelia Street Cafe:

I still look pretty shockingly young to my current middle-aged-lady eyes.  I was 29 here.  I had such a good time that night … after Fox calmed my rampaging nerves by walking me to the front of the restaurant and telling the bar tender to give me a double shot of tequila!  It bypassed my empty stomach and went straight to my head.  Suddenly, I wasn’t so nervous any more!  Obviously, the first picture is during the reading.  The second picture, as must surely be clear from my much bigger, more relaxed smile, is after the reading.  That’s the one and only David Lawrence, guitarist extraordinaire in the second photo.

Aside from the fact that my scanner is working now, I was thinking of my short hair because it was so easy.  So easy and so excellent.  I loved that short cut.  It went with all my clothes and was totally wash and wear.  Not in any way like the hair I wear now.  Today I wanted the Cleo J hair because I was off to a big conference and sometimes the fierce hair just feels more appropriate.  But it’s so labor intensive.  Messing with it this morning really made me miss my old look.

The perks of friendship.

What was I up to tonight?  I was here:

Koh is friends with my friend CJ (my partner in crime during last summer’s trip to Mexico), and because of that, he was kind enough to leave two tickets for me to tonight’s concert.  And while I don’t need any perks to be friends with CJ, this was a lovely one to get all the same.

I went with a friend who doesn’t listen to classical music and doesn’t know much (anything?) about it.  I was worried that she wouldn’t enjoy it, but she did.  It was cool to see someone experience a concert like that for the first time.  And the concert was great.  In the first half we had a soprano solist and two wonderful flutists.  After the intermission, it was all Koh and The Four Seasons.

All in all, an excellent evening.  Thanks, CJ!

Disappointment, Anger, Impatience

My family has twice vacationed in Maine.  Two of my favorite childhood vacations, in fact.  I have friends who are from Maine, who are some of the loveliest people I know.  I drink Poland Spring water.  Ok, that’s neither here nor there, but it’s true all the same.

My point is that, in my mind, Maine is good.  Maine is a place I have warm, positive feelings about.

But Tuesday night I came home from class and found that a lot of people in Maine had set my warm, positive feelings alight, razed them to the ground with their bigotry.

Why do we think it makes sense to put issues involving people’s rights to a popular vote?  We used to think that was ok, but then we saw how it never quite worked out that the majority would willingly vote for the rights of the minority, so we threw that foolish plan out the window and turned to our legislators, the ones who should have been doing the voting in the first place.  (Not that they have always handled these matters skillfully, but they’ve done far better than the so-called common man at the ballot box.)  How have we gone back to the decision that it’s ok for one group of people to decide how another group of people should be allowed to live?

These kinds of decisions are exactly the kind we have to leave to legislation.  We really do know this already.  We’ve learned this.  If, forty-five years ago, civil rights had been put to a popular, state-by-state vote, would those laws have passed?  Please.  There would be maybe five states where I’d have a reasonable number of the rights I currently enjoy … and I question whether ‘five’ is an overly generous estimate.   And, while we’re at it, can you say ERA?  Yeah, the popular vote just isn’t the place where human rights should be decided.

But this is where we are with same-sex marriage.  We have decided that it’s ok to let a whole lot of people who are small and ignorant enough to be terrified of homosexuality be the ones to decide whether or not gay people should get to have the same rights as people who aren’t gay.  Because that would never be a bad plan, right?  People would always set aside their personal biases and think about what’s right … right?

Yeah.  Right.

I am painfully disappointed in the people who voted to repeal the same-sex marriage law in Maine on Tuesday.  How dare they think they have the right to deny anyone even a single of our inalienable rights?  How dare they?   The only thing endangered by legal same-sex marriage is fear.  Oh, and homophobia.  Come on, people.  We need to do this.  We need to do this.  It’s two-thousand-fucking-nine already.  What are we waiting for?

One day soon …

… I’ll stop posting pictures from my trip.  But that day isn’t today. 

No plants today.  Today is all for the birds.  I felt so lucky to catch that doctor bird at the house, but I was having so much trouble getting photos of any other  kind of bird.  Along ‘my’ beach — the one closest to the house — I got to see lots of birds, but most made my work hard.  I’m not sufficiently skilled to know how to catch good shots of birds in flight, and the birds insisted on flying all the time.  Ther nerve!

I did get a few mostly-in-focus shots of some flyers, however:

And then, on my last day on the beach, I got lucky.  First there was this guy:

 

My little bit of research tells me that this is a Royal Tern.  He sat out there for quite a while letting me take his picture again and again.  And then he decided to phone a friend to share the photo op.

 

The last of my feathered friends swooped past my perch on the steps and landed in the shade under a tree nearby.

I don’t know what this one is.  I made a lucky guess with the royal tern and Google Images confirmed it.  Anyone have an idea what kind of bird this is?  I like her fawn-like spots.  I also like that she stayed near me for so long.  She didn’t seem to be paying me the least bit of attention.  She hung out in the shade for a while, then went strolling along the shoreline.

Maybe next time I’ll catch that little humming bird I found eating the cactus fruit!

Achin’ for Acres

No more elders passin’
without my kids askin’ –
“Papa, whose tombstones are those in the yard?”
Family gotta stay close,
all us gotta stay close …

– Arrested Development, Achin’ for Acres

The first time I heard this Arrested Development song, I thought: tombstones in the yard?  Really?  I don’t think so!  But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve, well … thought about it, and thought about how much this makes sense.  Why wouldn’t you want to bury your dead close to you?  And as the song makes plain, you can’t do that if you don’t own the land you live on.  My landlords are lovely people, but I can’t imagine they’d have been too thrilled if I had suggested digging up the back garden so I could keep my aunt close.

When I went to Jamaica, I started seeing small sections on people’s property sectioned off in some way or other and then noticed that these sectioned-off bits were personal cemeteries.  At first I was a little taken aback, but no more.  I actually find something warm and comforting in this idea.  Why should you have to pay crazy amounts of money to have your loved ones buried among strangers?  Why should you have to follow someone else’s timetable in order to visit a gravesite?  And cemeteries are rarely conveniently located.  Why should I have to travel for hours to sit with my father, his parents, Mildred, her mother?

This particular burial place was a surprise to me.  It’s at the edge of a beach and doesn’t immediately seem connected to anyone’s home.  My guess is that this bit of land, which is at the base of a hill, sits below the family home.

This is a gorgeous place to rest.  Shaded by several kinds of flowering trees (including Lignum Vitae, the national tree of Jamaica), facing a quiet beach and the open sea.

Every time I’m in Jamaica, I think of Achin’ for Acres, think about the meaning of family land, of having your own piece of earth and being able to pass that on to the family that comes after you. 

Got land to stand on,
then you can stand up,
stand up for your rights as a woman, as a man.
Man, oh man, my choices expand.
Ain’t got me no money, but I got me some land.