Light-skinned-ed Girl

Feeling Nostalgic

This has nothing to do with anything except for the fact that I'm feeling nostaligic.  Like the Slumdog Millionaire crew, my brothers and I were called the Three Musketeers by my dad.  I don't think we were the ones who claimed it for ourselves.  So the source of the nostalgia: the google sidebar widget on my new computer scrolls through a bunch of photos but seems to keep coming back to this one.  And with it come a flood of memories.  You can see even in the photo how different we were in our focus.  But still, we couldn't imagine a world without each other. 

Merry Christmas!

It's been a lovely, slow Christmas day.  Ate some aebleskiver and bacon.  Opened presents.  Now, it's nap time.  Hope you have all had a wonderful day too!

List Your Self

At the end of the year, I pull out this little book called List Your Self.  It's a book of lists you make about yourself.  I fill out a few and write down the date.  Today, I chuckled when I read the list for this entry:

List all the qualities you love about being human.

foot rubs

kisses

warm drinks in tummy

reading

thumb opposition

baths

family

not being eaten

holiday celebrations

dated: December 19, 2000

A Rant on Gentrification

I saw Danny Hoch's show Taking Over the other day and LOVED it.  It's a one-man show in which Danny Hoch plays a number of different Williamsburg, Brooklyn residents talking about how the neighborhood has changed as a result of gentrification.  It's about how the residents who have lived there for years --through the crack epidemic--are becoming displaced and essentially invisible in their own community.

Hoch is a great actor.  He portrayed a tall black woman as truthfully as his young white Wisconsin student. 

The show reminded me so much of what has happened to my home neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.  Northeast Portland was--during the 1980s--the center of the city's gang activity and the crack epidemic.  All of the gang shootings  (including a drive-by done by a shooter on a bike) happened within a ten-block radius of my house.  My mom was once robbed in front of our house by a guy with a sawed-off shotgun.  Prostitutes walked Union Avenue (now MLK Blvd.) making it unsafe to walk home from school -- if you were female and on the street even in twilight you were likely to be approached -- I know, it happened to me.  Drug dealers sold their stuff quite openly across the street from where I lived.  Now, there is a doggy day care there; and tons of cafe's and chic restaurants and a food co-op.  The area even has a name: the Alberta Arts District.  Of course, I'm glad that the area has become nice and safer.  But why didn't it happen before?  Why didn't we--the long-time  residents--deserve better?

Thanksgiving Day Gratitude

This is the time of year I usually start a good old-fashioned game of Dysfunctional Family Bingo to get through the holidays sanely.  But today I'm not feeling so stressed by the family gatherings (oh, to be sure there will be dysfunction, but I feel like I don't have to be anxious about it--it is what it is).  And really I'm just feeling so thankful for my family, by birth and by marriage.  I am thankful for my husband and friends.  I am thankful for mostly being free from fear and being able to do what I love.  I am thankful for my health and the good health for those I love.  I am thankful for each new day, but in particular this one, this day, here, now.

Good Mail Day

It was a banner mail day!  Not one but three goodies greeted me:
1) my absentee ballot!;
2) a copy of the newest issue of Callaloo in which my review of Norton's Critical Edition of Nella Larsen's Passing ed. by Carla Kaplan appears;
and drumroll for . . .
3) my first advance check for the novel!  Whoo-hoo!  It's for real; it's for real.   I imagine I will go through many more of these I -am-becoming-a -real-writer moments like when I turn in the final revisions (in just a few weeks-egad!), when I see the book cover, when I get the galleys, when I get the final product in my hot little hands.  I will be shouting from the rooftops with glee at each of these steps and more.  Bear with me.  This feeling real thing is new to me and I'm going to enjoy the ride!

Please Help a Homeless Girl Break the Cycle

It is a difficult time to ask for donations I know, but I hope you can help—this is a problem that together we can actually solve! 

I am hoping to help raise $600 to pay for the participation of a 12-year-old Portland homeless girl in a youth theatre program, the Portland Theatre Brigade. It’s the same kind of theatre program that changed my life when I was that age.

My dear friend Adrienne Flagg serves as head of the non-profit program, this is what she told me:

The girl is a bright, funny, smart 12-year-old Latina.  Her mother is homeless and can’t afford the Brigade.  Her mother lives in a shelter on Burnside, gets up every morning to ride the bus to her kid’s in foster care on SE 68th.  Then she rides the bus with them to school (Ockley Green).  They go to SEI ( Tony Hopson’s Program) in the afternoon while she is doing day labor.  Her mother was going to leave on the parent orientation night and I stopped her and told her I would not let her daughter down.  I promised to find a sponsor for the $600. I don't want whatever decision the mom made in her past to impact this girl.  Her mother broke down in tears and was so thankful.  She is willing to volunteer time and do anything she can to make it up to us. 
I have dealt with disadvantaged and homeless kids before.  This one is different.  She has everything it takes to make it out of her mother's cycle.  And her mother, despite everything, is really supportive and present.  So there it is my friend.  I know these are hard times- especially for folks who have been investing their funds but if there is any way you can help me find a sponsor for this girl- it would mean the world to her and I know it would mark a turning point in this little girl’s life. 

Would you please send just $5—it will add up!  Your donation is tax-deductible and is just one click away.  http://www.theatrebrigade.org/support/donate.html
You will make a huge difference in someone’s life.
Thank you,
Heidi

Coloring

When you can't think good, it's fun.

Best Job I Ever Had Was as a Baby's Mama

For close to seven years, I worked as a professional athlete's baby's mama, girlfriend, wife, and eventually mother.

I was part of a troupe of actors who worked for a sports consulting firm that offered Life Skills workshops to professional athletes (NFL and NBA) through role-playing.  In a scripted scene with another actor, I would play the woman in the professional athlete's life who wanted more money, more attention or more respect.  These scenes always ended poorly--There was yelling, or a hand-raised in anger, or awful distant silence.  We'd freeze the scene and do a Q&A with the players.  What happened there?  What did he want?  What did she want?  How could he have handled the situation differently?  What might he have said differently?  Armed with these group answers, a player would come up on stage and role-play the scene with me.  Mostly, they did well--sometimes they did miserably.  Forever memorialized on ESPN is a role-play in which the player called my character by the wrong name.  The audience members gasped (because they had all remembered) --so in the spirit of improv, I threw my water bottle down and screamed at the top of my lungs: WHO IS MELISSA?  I've never seen such a big man so afraid of such a small woman.  He ran around the stage for a minute trying to catch his breath while his peers laughed and laughed.  It was a great lesson--he learned how to calm a hysterical woman while his buddies watched. 

Of course, the job was great cocktail party conversation, but also a rare look on the world of sports and of men.  I was often one of only a handful of women in a training facility or convention hall filled with men.  This was not always a comfortable feeling, folks.  But it was also fascinating. 

All of this comes to mind today because of the publication of Erica Boeke and Chris De Benedetti's book GameFace: The Kick-Ass Guide for Women Who Love Pro Sports in which you'll find an interview with me about my work as a consultant.  The book is a great read.  Check it out.

A Big Wish for My Life is Coming True

Yesterday, the book contract from Algonquin arrived in the mail!  I have an ISBN number for my book!  Whoo-hoo!  It's really true.  Light-skinned-ed Girl (the novel) will be on shelves Fall 2009.  Oh, gosh, you have no idea how happy this makes me!