FrogTown Diva's Open Salon Blog

There's a big difference between a job and a calling

Wed, 23 May 2012 06:05:20 -0400

Leaving for Columbus after the meeting this morning. Haven't packed anything. So I'm up early this morning getting things together. Yesterday sucked me dry.
Had a 47-minute conversation with my supervisor last night who called after I sent her an email detailing my grievances.
As I suspected, my team leader complained that I wasn't getting things in to her on time. The only dates she's given me are the dates when things are due, making me think I have more time to get things done.
We agreed that I need her to tell me when she needs the lessons, not when it's due. Also she complained that I don't give enough detail, but I was writing my lesson according to the way the template was written, with just the name of the activity, and no one told me I needed to spell it out.
I thought all I needed was to attach the activity sheet when the lesson is actually done. Then, on the other hand, I write too much content and don't leave things open to exploration.
Actually, all my activities ar self-instructing with the scientist making sure everyone is understanding the concepts and giving assistance when needed. But they want the teachers to do pre-school activities and have a science professor use them to teach them science concepts.
So, in other words, I suck. Who cares? I won't be working sixty plus hours finding activities and experiments again. I really just want to put in the minimal effort like everyone else, creating simple drivel instead of real curriculum. If that's what they want, that's what they'll get.
It's just a job. The less time I spend creating lessons that are going to be changed,, the more time I'll have for my course work and the writing I do well. Plays.
I have always gotten good feedback from my plays. Always. That's what I do best. So why am I not writing plays for a living? That's a good question.
I'm not depressed, just feeling hopeless, trying to figure out what purpose all of the stuff I'm going through serves. For a moment I felt completely useless until I started remembering…
The standing ovations for "The Race" in Wichita, Kansas. The Kool Achievement Award for B.R.AIDS. The rave reviews a scene from that play and my monologue about Sojourner Truth the dramaturgs gave in their critiques at the Chicago Dramatist Workshop. The children riveted to their seats and my friend, Kelly's effusive praise following the debut of "Moses at Gethsemane" at the Kent Branch Library here in Toledo. And the sight of grown, young, black men crying as newly freed mother and son were reunited at the end of "Juneteenth" at the Toledo Museum of Art's first celebration of the holiday.
And I know I have worth. I create art. I bring characters to life on stage. I make people laugh and cry and think. I may not be able to write a lesson plan to the confusingly nebulous specifications of people that don't know the difference between theater and theatre. But I can write words that when spoken on stage touch people's hearts.
That's all I've ever wanted to do and what God put me here to do. So, why am I not doing it? I want to, but I couldn't pay my bills for three months with the money the theatre has paid me in 38 years of writing, acting, directing, and producing. Theatre is not just art. It's also business. Time for me to start minding my business.
Somehow, some way, before I leave this planet I'm going to do what God sent me here to do.
Otherwise, what was my reason for ever being here?
5/23/2012

If this is "magical thinking" the "magic" works!

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:05:55 -0400

Christians are accused of "magical thinking" in today's technological world where science performs the miracles and far too many people of faith seem to have none. People claiming to be Christians speak hate and far too often disobey Jesus' new commandment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This failure of some Christians to follow Christ's teaching and the lack of faith of others has created what I call "disillusional thinking" in people that forsake religion, God, and spirituality.
Spiritual warfare between those of us who've been labeled "magical thinkers" and those I've labeled "disillusional thinkers" will continue to divide believers from non-believers. So what battle strategy should we use in this war for the souls of humankind? Prayer and peace. We must pray without ceasing for our neighbors and treat them with love, no matter how disillusional their thinking, as Jesus commanded. That's easy enough for Christians to do.
Now comes the hard part.
We must also lay down our weapons and refuse to respond to attacks with counterattacks. Jesus commands us to turn the other cheek. How much do you love humanity and want to see all receive salvation? Beating people over the head with the Bible and condemning them rather than embracing them only pushes people farther into disillusion. Wouldn't you be if those that claim to emulate Jesus who showed no bias in whom He loved spewed hate and venom at those they judge to be sinners?
It's not easy loving people that do terrible things to other people, lie, steal, neglect their children, or practice evil as their religion. But Christians are obligated to do so. I have a dear friend that is an Evangelical Christian who is my role model. Regardless of lifestyle, behavior, or attitude, when we worked together, she never condemned, criticized, or showed hatred toward anyone.
She is so committed to loving others, she went into a crack house in the inner city in the middle of the night when one of the people we served called her pleading for help.
Can you imagine a little white lady with a bun driving up to a crack house in the hood without fear or hesitation because someone needed her help? Why wasn't she afraid? Because she has faith in God and knew He wouldn't allow any harm to come to her. If that's "magical thinking," then the magic worked!
But my friend's faith has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with belief. Belief in "the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." My friend knew no one in that crack house or that neighborhood could harm her and she was right. Her faith was her armor and the only protection she needed.
This friend that lives her Christianity is the kind of believer we all need to be. She is one of several women that are role models for me as I struggle to be Christ-like. Many are ministers, others are friends, some or mentors. But the greatest of all is my mother as she literally walks with God and talks to the angels.
Magical thinking? No, spiritual knowing.

If I get tarred&feathered&runoutatown, you'll know why!

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:05:54 -0400

I attended church with my mother Sunday. It was my Mother's Day present to her. I was also curious to see what her anti-gay pastor would say about President Obama's support of marriage equality. But before he spoke, during prayer ministry a female associate minister mentioned the President indirectly, stating that "it doesn't matter what a President says" in regards to what Christians believe.

Later, the pastor indirectly referred to the President as a sinner, when he inadvertently mentioned gay marriage in a sermon about families. Many ministers focused on Mother's Day Sunday, but others have been very vocal about their disappointment in a man 95% of African-American voters supported in 2008.

Why? Because of their firm belief that homoexuality is a sin. "So are adultery and fornication," I said to my father, a Baptist minister, when he denounced my gay brother. I've never understood why homosexuality was so taboo among so many black church goers when it's quite often gays and lesbians who're responsible for many of those spectacular gospel choirs black churches are known for.

The black church is also known for pretending not to know some members, deacons, and even pastors are closeted gays or bisexuals that usually have wives and children. It's their dirty little secret and the real reason some denounce homosexuality, I suspect, and its the reason Toledo, Ohio, once had the largest number of African-American women per capita with HIV/AIDS.

I address these issues in my full-length play, B.R.AIDS (Black Response to AIDS). An earlier one-act version, directed by my brother, James, won the 1990 Kool Achievement Award for HIV/AIDS education. James used the $10,000 award to go to New York where his historic choreopoem, "Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care" was staged at the Castillo Theatre.

Thanks to a dispute he, his business partner, and I had over B.R.AIDS, resulting in them plagiarizing the play, he finally got the confidence to stage his own work and, wounded and hurt, I rewrote mine.

It took three years for me to forgive James and even longer for me to forgive my parents who went to Louisville, Kentucky, to see my brother get an award for my play after stealing it. My re-writes capture some of that hurt in the main character, an openly gay man that comes home to live with his mother when he contracts AIDS, only to have his sexuality condemned by her and rejected by nearly everyone else.

The lesbian minister of a gay church and her members become the only support system for him and his mother. He's visited by his mother's homophobic pastor and a former lover living on the down-low, both of whom denounce homosexuality. Religious beliefs about this issue are addressed directly in the play.

I talked about B.R.AIDS with local renown playwright, Dr. John Scott, during a discussion at a local bookstore nd he encouraged me to produce it. But it was the 1990s and I told him I wasn't going to be tarred and feathered and run out of town!

However, I was informed yesterday that B.R.AIDS didn't win the political play contest at Castillo with which James connected me, I guess in an effort to make up for taking all of the credit and money for B.RAIDS (Oh, he and his partner did pay me nearly $800 once, but that was the only time I got paid for B.R.AIDS and two other plays I wrote about HIV/AIDS their company produced. They're both dead forgiven now, but the hurt never goes away.)

I'm more frustrated about not winning the contest than sad.

Now that African-Americans have discovered Broadway, there's a real market for black plays. If ever the timing was right to do B.R.AIDS, it's now after the President's historic announcement supporting marriage equality.

The Village Church here in Toledo, which has a transgender outreach, thanks to Pastor Cheri Holridge, might host a production.

I can't think of a black church here that would.

So if you hear I was tarred and feathered and banned from Toledo, you'll know why.

Beating up bullies - my dirty little secret

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:05:35 -0400

Teachers' kids automatically become bully bait. And my grandmother, Mrs. Jefferson, was the dreaded sixth grade teacher at W. D. Spigner.

So, when we were in fifth grade I decided it was time to take care of my main bully, Sylvia Portis, before we got to sixth grade. One day I picked up the tiny but sturdy girl and threw her into the bathroom wall. She never bullied me again and actually came to the rescue when I was attacked three years later. Guess I gained her respect.

My other bully was a boy, Louis Cummings, also small, that I dispatched when we got to seventh grade. One day I just lost it and threw him down on the sidewalk and started banging his head on the cement. I had to be pulled off of him. I don't recall getting in trouble either time.

A Letter to Both of My Mothers, One Living, One Dead

Sun, 13 May 2012 08:05:28 -0400

To The Women Who Nurtured Me:

I was your first born, your most difficult birth with shoulders so wide, Dr. Wade, who made a house to deliver me in the house your built with his own two hands, had to use forceps to pull me out and I still have the dent in the back of my head where he expertly placed the instrument so there wouldn't be any brain damage.
Right away I was taken from you as your mother, a midwife too nervous that day to deliver her own grandchild, bathed me and tried to smooth that dent out of my head.
But I was yours and you nurtured me, teaching me more than anyone ever has,, including how to draw. You gave me my greatest gifts when my brother, John, was born. He'll always be my best friend. Then you gave me the one thing I wanted most in the world, a sister.
Martha Jo died of SIDS, taking a part of all of our hearts with her. Then Ruth was born and I had a sister again. And then James, my fraternal twin, born nine years instead of nine minutes after me. Then, Joseph, who's always been brilliant, and, finally, Deborah, your namesake and your most fragile child who's now your strongest.
You were always the most beautiful woman in the world to me. Always. And Daddy was the handsomest man, well, after Joseph, and I always wanted to be as pretty as you and meet a man like Daddy.
But I was taken from you again when Grandpa died and Grandma wanted me to come live with her. And I got a second mother.
Not as gentle as my first mother, you saved me from myself, insisting that I look people in the eyes when I talked to them, instinctively knowing that was an indicator of an impairment (turns out it's an early sign of autism) and you wouldn't let me sequester myself with my books and withdraw from human contact which I so longed to do. You actually moved my small bed into your room so I would never have the chance to escape contact. And you made me study once you learned I had above average (only slightly) intelligence.
In our little "colored school," our teachers were so good several of my classes tested high in standardized tests with my scores always being the highest (98 percentile) in everything but math.
Then you were my sixth grade teacher and I went from being a bored "C" student to being an involved "B" student. But that wasn't good enough for you. You pushed me all through junior high until I was making more As than Bs.
I had my own school at home with a slide projector, microscope, and dissecting kit,, creating a life-long love of science. And when I got to high school, I got a sewing machine for home ec and a typewriter for typing class.
Everything to be the A student you wanted me to be. I was the second student in the history of W. D. Spigner High School to graduate with all As and was Valedictorian of my class.
I knew you wanted me to follow family tradition and be a teacher (Dr. Wade advised me to be a dentisst), but I wanted to break tradition and that included attending college somewhere other than the one everyone in the family attended. I had a tuition scholarship to attend any school in Texas and Texas A&M was less than thirty miles away. But I went to its black counterpart like the rest of the family.
There I rebelled becoming a student activist, following in my civil rights activists parents' footsteps. When I became editor-in-chief of the heavily censored school paper, I started an underground one and was eventually expelled and went to Oklahoma to live with my parents the second semester of my sophomore year.
I know I broke your heart, but I earned your respect when after gtting a degree in English (after majoring in biology for three years) and not being able to get a job writing for a newspaper, I went back to school and got a masters degree in education and became a teacher.
Once again you were proud of me.
Now, my first mother is in decline and gives me messages from my second mother who died December 19, 1998, because wanted everyone home for Christmas. I am blessed to have been nurtured by these two women who taught me so much and even more blessed to have my first mother still with me.
My heart goes out to all who've lost a mother, because I lost one, too. But God was kind enough to give me two.