Running Giveth and Running Taketh Away (Maybe)

Running gave me confidence I didn't know I lacked. My body changed internally and externally and I surprised myself by achieving things I had considered out of my league and moreover out of my reach. Then I had a disappointing race experience at the end of a phenomenal training season.  Which led to more disappointing [...]

Monthly Meter: April

fellowship/publication submissions: 1 fellowship/publication acceptances: 0 fellowship/publication rejections: 0 books: 0 Secret Shame: I see Stupid all around me which could very well be arrogance. (Or maybe evidence I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time). Mantra of the Moment: 11 Seconds

What Students Really Need to Hear

Hell. And yes.

Chase Mielke's avatarAFFECTIVE LIVING

It’s 4 a.m.  I’ve struggled for the last hour to go to sleep.  But, I can’t.  Yet again, I am tossing and turning, unable to shut down my brain.  Why?  Because I am stressed about my students.  Really stressed.  I’m so stressed that I can only think to write down what I really want to say — the real truth I’ve been needing to say — and vow to myself that I will let my students hear what I really think tomorrow.

This is what students really need to hear:

First, you need to know right now that I care about you. In fact, I care about you more than you may care about yourself.  And I care not just about your grades or your test scores, but about you as a person. And, because I care, I need to be honest with you. Do I have permission to be…

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Good Girls

(About Breathing Lesson 101) I was 25 the first time I fully understood. I was navigating the tenuous journey of the Good Girl. At the time I was being courted by an older man who decided out loud and before our first real date that I was a sexual outlier—an adult virgin. The encounter was [...]

Monthly Meter: March

fellowship/publication submissions: 1 fellowship/publication acceptances: 0 fellowship/publication rejections: 3 books: Home - Toni Morrison Secret Shame: I surrender all. Mantra of the Moment: Know when to hold/know when to fold/know when to walk away/know when to run.

Because, and all the other reasons

I don't like titles.  On me, they feel accusatory and restrictive; they never seem to fit or they're itchy; they're always a little uncomfortable. I eat a plant-based diet.  I'm vegan.  This will be a revelation for some of you especially after the Mike and Ikes episode the other day.  It is an unwieldy title [...]

Guilty: Interrogating Cultural Appropriation

I've studied North African/Egyptian dance (also called belly dance) and West African dance since 2007. I've felt uncomfortable in my body sometimes--a lot of times--and sometimes unsure of what I was undertaking in what I call(ed) the study. When I read this article, I understood my uncertainty.  Randa Jarrar writes: Women I have confronted about [...]

The Boss of This Body

Dear Womb, You've noticed: three close friends are becoming parents for their second times. How can I tell?  Because lately You, characteristically quiet and cooperative, have turned (in Your own still fairly quiet way), rebellious. For someone who has claimed and wielded ownership over this body since I took Puberty to task for its lies [...]

My Modeling Gigs

On today in 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway.  Huge fan of the play that I am, I've been thinking in its monologues all day: "My what this new world has wrought," I thought as I was sorting some digital photo files, especially the second one (in light of [...]

Miriam Makeba Makes Her Transition

Happy Birthday Miriam Makeba.
(a post from 2008)

darlene anita scott's avatardarlene anita scott

miriam-makeba

www.myspace.com/darleneanitascott

Miriam Makeba, South African singer/activist/conjure woman, has transitioned at the age of 76.

I’m not anything close to the biggest fan of her music.  I only remember listening to one of her songs songs ad nauseum a couple of years ago—can’t even remember its name—that was especially good for getting it going on the elliptical machine.

But Makeba’s life, more than her music, was an inspiration and challenge to me.

The media can hardly be trusted in the connections it makes or implies.  Nonetheless their reports of her death say that Makeba suffered a heart attack after singing “Pata Pata” (a seriously danceable track I do happen to know) at a benefit concert in Italy for the writer Roberto Saviona.  Saviona’s life had been threatened by the Camorra, (a “mafia-like organization” according to Wikipedia) for taking a stand against the group in his writing.

Perhaps what is most obviously inspiring about the…

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