MONDAY THOUGHTS: LESSON LEARNED: PRESERVE YOUR PEACE

I woke up feeling positively battered. 

Considering what time I finally went back to sleep, I'm surprised I'm awake at all. 

I dragged myself to the bathroom, and realized I looked exactly the way I felt. 

My very thoughtful daughter was busily making juice. Apples, mangoes, oranges, pears, lemons...

I needed that little glass of juice. 

It was like a shot in the arm. 

I opened my bedroom window. 

Other than vehicles passing, it was quiet. 

I love a morning breeze. 

Suddenly, some loud girl yelled out to someone who had to have been a mile away. 
Yes. There's residue from yesterday. 
Today is going to be a noise-free day.

Yesterday, I put up with the noise from the park longer than I should have. 

That was stupid. 

Instead of complaining, and being annoyed, and pondering whether to call the police, I should have just made a plan, and gone out. 

At the first sound, I should have left home. 

Instead, I tried to deal with it. 

When I considered how ridiculous I looked lying on my bed with earphones on and a pillow over each ear, I should have gotten up and gotten out of here.

Is it okay to amplify profanity-laced music because it's South East, DC? 

Do we not care? 

Is there such a lack of respect for Ward 8 residents that we are not trusted to just read the mailers and other correspondence from candidates of the upcoming primary? 

Do we have to be favored by the loudest, most mushmouthed speakers because we can't relate to, or understand anyone who passed high school English? Are we so disengaged from politics that people feel the only way to dispense information far southeast of the river, is to invade the neighborhood, set up an apparently nuclear powered sound system, and force people out of their homes with the equivalent of musical tear gas? 

Right now, my nerves and ears are meeting to form a mutiny if I overexpose them to unpleasant sound ever again. 

The campaign event bum rushed the neighborhood like a crazed go-go Pied Piper. 

"Come out, come out wherever you are, Black people! This music is going to blast so loud that being inside your home will be like torture! 

Come on out ya'll! Young and old, hear this poor excuse for gangsta rap, go-go, and old school R&B! There's something for everybody! 

You can't hear yourself think, so you might as well come outside! The only way to get your interest is to feed you, and permanently damage your hearing! You'll be shell shocked when it's over, and we'll leave lots of trash behind, but you will definitely know who to cast your vote for in the upcoming primary!"

People who plan events in Oxon Run Park have no idea what an assault the noise is on neighborhood residents who seek to enjoy the comfort of their homes. An argument can be made that it's not every day or night that an event takes place, but one only needs to be battered over the head by a wrecking ball ONE time to know it's not a pleasant experience.

Yesterday, my peace was disturbed, and I did not handle it well. I tried to endure when I should have gone in a different direction. I took too long to take a ride. If the primary had been yesterday, I would have voted for the other guy in the other party.

You know what you can handle. 

Don't compound stressful situations by remaining in them. 

Don't continue complaining as they progress, and hoping that they will change, or miraculously go away as they get worse. 

Every thing is not for you. 

Be kind to your nerves and blood pressure. 

You DO have a choice. 

Don't cry, whine and reduce yourself to a mess. 

It's not about being right, having rights, winning, or principles when your peace of mind is at stake. 

You can have the right of way, and be just as injured.

 Sometimes, you have to let people have their noise and mess, and search for peace.

SUNDAY THOUGHTS: NOISE

From 3PM until 8:03 PM Sunday, a mayoral candidate's rally took place in the park across the street. It was an open air concert with taped and live music, in addition to guest speakers. 

The first song that came tearing through my closed windows and brick walls was "Blame it on the Alcohol". 

I finally got to sleep around 11 PM. 

At 2:35 AM, I was awakened by the sound of sanitation workers emptying dumpsters into their truck. 

Still awake at 2:39 AM, the sound of an ambulance heading up the street, probably awakened others in the neighborhood, too. 

At 3:00 AM, some random driver blew his car horn 7 times. Yes. I counted. 

I'm irritated. 

I suppose if noise is the worst of my problems, I should be grateful.

I woke up and wrote:

Some stuff has residue
Traces left over, after the real thing has gone
That you just can't get over soon
Can't seem to recover from
Some stuff has residue
It's designed that way
To leave you weak and confused
Feeling there is no way

Just ain’t no way

It's 3:57 right now. 

I feel as if I've been wrestling. 

I'm tired. 

My headache, as a result of the bass booming for hours, has subsided. I am now convinced that unwanted noise is a health hazard. Right now someone is sitting at the red light, and I can hear the music from their car speakers. Maybe it's to keep them awake. I don't know. 

I had been looking forward to a peaceful Sunday afternoon at home. The noise from the rally sent me rushing to the car to get out of my own home and neighborhood. 

I pushed in the CD that was in the deck. Anita Baker asked, "What's wrong with you?" I wondered that myself, Ms. Baker.

I was so irritated, and on the verge of tears over noise.

I drove downtown near the Tidal Basin, then past the National Gallery of Art, then to 4th Street into SW, and back across the South Capitol Street Bridge. I kept going south on the freeway, and took the National Harbor exit. I stopped for gas, visited with my Dad briefly, then headed home around 7PM—thinking that the noise in my neighborhood would be over. It wasn't. 

A speaker was on a very good microphone, telling "all ya'll round here" why we should vote for a certain candidate. Then he announced the next act to perform. 

I couldn't find a parking space, so I drove around the block again. Fortunately, one opened up right in front of the gate by the time I returned. 

Once inside, I grabbed some headphones and found some white noise videos on Youtube. At one point I had the headphones on, and a pillow over each ear. There was no escaping the banging, and booming and screaming. There was nothing musical about any of it. Even some of my favorite songs were played, and they may as well have been the sound of a jackhammer on concrete. The noise was inconsiderate and intrusive. It was so loud, the event may as well have been taking place in my living room.

Yes. People have rights to do all sorts of things that other people are left to endure. I suppose I could have called the police, but there was police presence on the grounds of the rally. It was all perfectly legal. 

I don't think people realize that what they do outside affects someone's atmosphere inside. There was no buffer; no way to abate it. I was forced to hear what I neither chose, nor would have chosen to hear. It was forced upon me and every other person in the neighborhood, whether we wanted to hear it or not. 
The floor and windows vibrated for a little over 5 hours. 

I feel like I'm in recovery. 

It's 4:28. I'm going to try this sleep thing one more time. 

I do believe I'm getting old. I used to hear elderly relatives talking about their bad nerves, and what their nerves were too bad to endure. 
I get it...

SATURDAY THOUGHTS: BAG TAX

I don't think I'll ever get used to it. 

I put all of my purchases on the counter. 

The cashier rings them up. Then there's a pause. 

I'm waiting. 

The cashier is staring. 

I stare back dumbfounded. The cashier is smiling. 

I smile back.
Has the next step been forgotten? 

Has the cashier fallen asleep standing up? 

Am I in some weird Twilight Zone time warp? 

Has the world stopped spinning? 

Am I on Candid Camera? Am I being punked?
"Ma'am, do you need a bag?"
HUH? 

Duh? 

Of COURSE I need a bag! Do you SEE all of this stuff you just rang up? Am I supposed to carry it out of here in my skirt? Can I borrow a cart? (I say all of that in my head of course. Mommy always said, "Be polite" and it kinda stuck.) 

Is the cashier REALLY asking me if I need a bag?
Oh. My bad.

I live in DC. 

Bags cost 5 cents. 

I will probably need more than one. 

There are never any large bags that will preclude me from looking like I need a hand. 

"Uh, yes. Yes. I need bags. Thank you. I totally forgot where I lived. All of that shopping in Maryland and Virginia, where a bag just goes along with the shopping experience, has me spoiled."

That Potomac and Chesapeake Bay had better start looking like the Caribbean very soon.

WAKING THOUGHTS

Some people won't interact with you-- not because of anything you've done, but because of what they've been told and chose to believe. It's so great to see craftily engineered misunderstandings and divisions blown out of the water by the truth. It's also great to witness friendships, and business relationships restored and thriving in spite of the enemy's mission to destroy them. 
Don't be anxious. Don't manufacture new partnerships out of frustration or spite. Don't be a pest or succumb to desperation. Be still. Keep your mouth shut. Resist the inclination to defend, complain and protest. Just wait and watch God work it all out.

RECONCILING WITH BEETS

There are beets in my refrigerator. 

I still can't believe it. 

I'm sure that, as a child, I vowed I would never eat them again. 

Beets have been on my "not fit for human consumption" list since 1968. 

I wanted no part of them. 

As a child the routine at the dinner table generally went like this: "Just try it. How do you know you don't like it if you don't try it? Just eat a little, and if you don't want it, then put it aside". 

My twisted face and tears weren't enough to get me out of having to taste the beets. I took a big bite--an entire rubbery slice. 

My little body shook like Lucy Ricardo's when she took her first taste of Vitameatavegemin. 

I concluded years ago that beets were horrible, and I would not forget it. 

I didn't care HOW they were prepared, nor who prepared them. 

I didn't care if they were a cure for everything that ailed me. 

But, if I was ever going to get out of seeing them on my plate again, I had to show my parents that I at least made an effort to try them. 

In our house, food was not to be thrown away. 

Daddy had too many stories about all of the things that my grandmother put into a pot. 

"We had to eat whatever was running," he often said. 

(My Dad has a very particular palate to this day.) 

Throwing away food was tantamount to a criminal offense when I was young. There were too many starving children in Africa, I was told. 

I now know there are too many starving children in America, too, but neither pronouncement made me want to be a friend of beets.

Fast forward to 2010. 

I'm creeping up on 50 very quickly. 

I have found myself eating things I used to decline. 

Yogurt. 

Broccoli. 

Cauliflower. 

Cabbage. 

Tomato Juice. 

I'm finding myself more and more interested, lately, in what my body needs, while not totally depriving myself of what my taste buds want.

The Jack LaLanne juicer has started something wonderful. 

(I recall watching him when I was a little girl at my maternal grandmother's home in Addis, Louisiana. 

He's still around, and still preaching the gospel of good health.) 

There are a lot more varieties of fruits and vegetables in the kitchen, now. Every day is like an experiment to see what goes well with what. I still can't believe I have consumed a beet. 

The juice is beautiful in color. That's what beets were good for as far as I was concerned--color. 

They were art supplies, not food.

My daughter juiced eggplant (we know now not to do that again), sweet potato, spinach, squash, apple, and orange. 

It wasn't Coca Cola, but it gave us the distinct feeling that our bodies were grateful. The pulp that the fruit and veggies yielded just seemed too abundant to throw away. I'd kept the pulp from the lemon, orange, apple, strawberries, grapefruit experiment we did one day, and used some of it when I prepared salmon.

As I stared at the pulp that included the beets, for the first time in my life I was excited about the prospect of a veggie burger. 

I don't know if it was the redness of the pulverized beet that made me think of ground meat, or not. All I know, is that I put half of the pulp in a bowl, and seasoned it with onion, rosemary, celery seed, seasoned salt. I cracked 2 eggs, and made bread crumbs from 2 hamburger buns that had been languishing in the refrigerator. 

The more I mixed, the more my brain believed it was meat. 

My taste buds would be the judge, though. 

I formed the patties, heated a pan, got the vegetable oil and was pleased by the aroma. When they were done, I toasted some wheat bread, topped the burger with mustard and a little barbecue sauce, cut the sandwich in half and tried it. it wasn't an Angus burger, but it really wasn't bad! 

I mixed the rest of the pulp with tomato paste, and the spaghetti I made on another day was good, too. 

Am I considering becoming a vegetarian? Probably not. 

But I am happy with the notion that days aren't going by without my feeding myself something fresh and chock full of nutrients.

This afternoon, I opened the refrigerator and looked at the lone, remaining beet. 

I STILL can't believe there is a beet in my home on purpose! 

There was a generous bunch of greens, and the stems from the other 3 that we juiced a few days ago. 

I'd asked my daughter to save the skins from the sweet potato and the squash thinking that I would fry them. 

Instead, I checked online to see if beet greens were edible. 

Maybe that's something that I was already supposed to know, but my aversion to beets kept me from wanting to know anything at all about them. 

Egglesscooking.com had a good article, and gave me the go ahead. 

I still wasn't ready to cook them as if they were collards, mustards, or kale, though. Maybe another day. 

I chopped up the beet greens, stems, and the skins and prepared it all for another round of veggie burgers. 

I still don't like beets, but they're fine all tangled up with a lot of something else, and that wonderful, rich color is something that I can't bring myself to hate. 

I even considered saving some of the beet juice and dyeing my tennis shoes. I can't seem to get rid of the yellowish stain where the rubber meets the canvas. I'm sure there's something on the internet for that, too.

It has actually been fun-- this aim to get the recommended daily requirement of fruit and vegetables. 
I like my new habit. 

Maybe by NEXT summer, I'll really appreciate the effort...: )

POWER

I had a nice time today at Woodrow Wilson Plaza. It was wonderful to sing out in the open air. The atmosphere was powerful. A homeless man danced throughout the entire event. A man in a wheelchair lifted his hands and spun in his chair. Government employees left their offices, filled the plaza, and sang along. The weather was great. Not a rain cloud in the sky.


A lady walked up to me after the concert, reintroduced herself and told me that Mother Glass, an elderly woman I met at a local church, had passed away. I remember that Mother Glass was very spry and always impeccably dressed. She walked with her head high and didn't mince words. I'll never forget what she said to me one day when I got an unexpected phone call. She asked me if I had any anointing oil. I told her that I did. She asked, "Well do you use it?" She sensed that I was being bullied, and not putting up much of a fight. She told me to keep the oil in my purse.
"Don't you worry about the devil, and don't you let him run you.", she said. "People get scared when they see me going in my pocketbook, Baby, 'cause they know they gonna be hittin' the floor. They gonna have to send ALL their clothes to the cleaners! You got oil, Baby? Well, use it! Sometimes you gotta have thick skin. If the devil knows he can scare you, he'll be running you the rest of your life. I don't let him run me. HE got to go..."

God rest her soul. I'm glad to have met her. She was warning me of the dangers of not being alert, and not knowing the power that is available to you. I suppose it is nice to get to the place where nothing bothers you, because you're prepared for whatever comes.

The afternoon was passing smoothly, and all of a sudden at 6:04 the power went out. The TV went black not long after "Peter Gunn" ended. The ceiling fan slowed to a stop and my computer quickly let me know that my internet connection was a no-show. Not knowing how long it would be before the power was restored, I went to the kitchen and put the milk and butter in the freezer and put some ice packs near the fruit. Fortunately, the AC had been on. I'm glad that I hadn't been cooking or ironing. I'm glad that the power outage didn't pose any real problem other than I missed an episode of "I Spy". I imagine that somewhere, someone was in the middle of a task that required electricity. There's been a lot of anger toward PEPCO, especially in cases like today where there was no storm, no thunder or lightening, no rain, yet the power failed. PEPCO had just been a topic on the news. Apparently they know their service hasn't been up to par and their national ranking among power companies isn't favorable. The bottom line is, whether their service is poor or outstanding, customers have to depend upon them. That's not reassuring, but now that we know there's a problem, it would be wise to have a contingency plan in place.

You really can be going along, minding your business and without provocation, lose power. It makes sense to be prepared--whether the loss of power is physical or spiritual. It's good to recognize that it's out, and when you do, don't get all frazzled and worried. Don't be gripped by fear. Don't think things are hopeless. Just wait. Occupy the time, know your options, stay alert, stay in control. Know that the source has infinite power and will restore it to you. Just ask.

WEDNESDAY THOUGHTS: THE SAD SIDE OF "KEEPING IT REAL"

I took a walk last week, and on the way back, I was a short distance behind a group of teenagers. 

They frequently stopped, which brought me within ear shot of their conversation. 

One young woman's cursing was so intense, I couldn't take it any more. 

"Baby, Baby", I said. "Stop. Please. Let me talk to you for a minute". 

When she turned around, her clothing, demeanor and words betrayed her beautiful face. 

She said that she was sorry, and called me "Ma'am", which told me that at some point in her life, someone had taught her manners. 

On the sidewalk however, she'd forgotten them all. Every other word was laced in her speech as if it was second nature. 

The harsh way that she spoke to her friends, made me wonder why they were friends at all. 

She was loud, and seemed to want to be heard. 

I didn't know what her reaction would be, but I just wanted her to know that there was another way. 

I wanted her to consider how much value she had. 

I wanted the beauty of her face to match her words.

We all learned the "Sticks and stones" rhyme when we were children. As adults we learn that words do hurt. They have much more power than we like to admit, and reveal so much about what's going on inside us. 

Our hearts are being exposed daily. 

We enjoy freedom of speech, but sometimes that freedom does more personal harm to ourselves than to others. 

The words we use to affect others have a way of returning to our own doorsteps, and indicting our own character.

Every time I log on to twitter or facebook, there are comments that are clearly intended to shock. 

There are others that are a little sad. 

Wow. 

It's like there's no filter, no discretion, no sensitivity.
That thing between the brain and mouth that's supposed to kick in when something ignorant, hurtful, inappropriate or stupid comes to mind, is malfunctioning, and that malfunction carries over to the index finger and causes it to click "send", "enter", "tweet", "share"--without regarding how words will negatively affect others, or cast an ugly light on oneself. 

It's been blamed on a mishandled philosophy called "Keeping It Real". 

The true culprits are "Lack of Wisdom", "No Discernment", and the brilliant notion that "Hurt people, hurt people". 

"This is just me! That's just the way I am!", is the arrogant, often bragged excuse that's made. Unfortunately it is soon followed by the realization that people are keeping their distance, not returning calls, choosing or hiring alternatives, declining invitations, ignoring e-mails...hiding and deleting. Reading the Book of James might help...or a muzzle.

Don't let "doing you" do you in. 

Don't let "Keeping it real" keep you avoided.

You kinda have to wonder when your turn is coming. Listening to someone just spouting off indiscriminately; shooting barbs every time they speak, makes you wonder when your turn is coming. It's not hard to see through it all to the pain. 

Maybe that's the time to pray--when you stop being appalled long enough to consider that at one time, they weren't so mean, critical and harsh. 

What's real, is that people who never had a platform before, have one now, and are teetering and diving head first off of it, as a result of their own words.