Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 35

Still in Rotation: A Donny Hathaway Collection

Still in Rotation is a guest post feature in which talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

I met Taya Dunn Johnson through the Listen To Your Mother Show – besides being a director and producer of the Baltimore show, she’s LTYM’s Diversity & Inclusion Outreach Consultant. That means she makes sure you’re hearing from a diverse set of voices on the topic of motherhood, which makes LTYM extra rich, meaningful, and relatable. Taya’s as welcoming and warm as the show seeks to be – it’s a perfect match.

A Donny Hathaway Collection

by Taya Dunn Johnson

Entering my childhood home in Hempstead, New York, one was almost certain to hear music in the background. My parents were both music lovers; my father played drums for many years in a local band and two of my uncles were DJs. I can recall day- long trips from our home on Long Island into Brooklyn and the Bronx to visit the old school record shops that my father and uncles loved. The smell of thousands of vinyl records in a small space was intoxicating.

Being surrounded by music was the most natural thing in the world to me, and my love for it developed early. My parents got great joy in watching me perform my own dance routines to songs by the Stylistics and the Commodores, and I’d be shocked if any other five year old knew all the lyrics and cadences of songs like, “Baby Workout” by Jackie Wilson.

Family and music were connected in such a way that the Christmas holiday season became that much more magical to me. Each person has “that song” – you know, the one that puts you deep into the holiday spirit from the very first note you hear. I don’t remember the first time I heard “This Christmas” by Donny Hathaway, but I do know that by the age of five, I had all the lyrics memorized and it was “that song” for me. My parents had a small collection of Christmas songs from The Temptations and a few other soul artists. Prior to hearing Donny Hathaway’s contribution, so many Christmas songs didn’t reflect the amount of soul and love that my favorite R&B songs contained. “This Christmas” had it all – deeply melodic voice, catchy and repetitive chorus, tambourines and a grooving bass line. As soon as the song came on, you just had to dance, smile and say, “Ahhh, yes, THIS is Christmas.”

I remained a lover of music my entire life and it’s probably no coincidence that my high school boyfriend-turned-husband played percussion like my father and had my same affinity for good music. During my first year of college, music helped soothe the stress of being an only child away from my parents (and boyfriend) for an extended length of time.

Late one night in early December while studying for finals, I found myself needing a real boost – a taste of home and family to push me through to the finish line. I was surrounded by friends and dorm mates, but everyone was struggling and none of us was having any luck with motivating one another. Donny’s voice popped into my head and I knew what I needed to do. I ran into my room and searched desperately for my cassette tape of “Holiday Jams” that I had recorded from the radio the previous Christmas. I tossed it in the tape deck and instantly the odd three-count drumbeat filled our suite with ENERGY.

My black friends jumped up and started singing and swaying to the beat. My white friends looked intrigued and I knew it was the first time they had ever heard the song. Within a few seconds, Donny grabbed the newly exposed and made them dance too. When the song ended, the questions began: “Who is that?” “What’s that song called?” “I’ve never heard that before! Can I tape it?” and then the one that stopped me cold, “What else does he sing?”

What else does he sing? I simply didn’t know. I had a cassette entitled, “A Donny Hathaway Collection” but I was embarrassed to admit I’d never listened to any other song on it. I felt like I had just failed a major musical test and imagined the disappointment on the faces of my father and uncles.

With a mere eight hours until an astronomy final for which I was ill prepared, I layered myself with winter gear and made the short walk from my dorm to one of the 24-hour computer labs on campus. It was full of stressed-out students attempting to absorb the final nuggets before their exams, and those painfully squeezing out just enough words to hit the page count for required essays. Not an empty computer to be found. Damn. At that moment, my need to know more about HIM was so great that I would not be deterred.

I went back into the cold heading for another lab that was farther away and then it clicked. I was on the grounds of the University of Virginia and we had an amazing music library!! I hustled over to the Peabody Library and could not believe that I hadn’t yet made this magical place like a second home. I dove in and found myself falling down the rabbit hole – microfiche articles, reel to reel and albums recordings, and digital photo images with more information on Donny Hathaway than I ever expected to find.

I was excited, intrigued and saddened by all that I read and heard. Never had I heard and connected with an artist in the way that I connected with Donny Hathaway. The beautiful timbre of his voice was like that of a warm flannel blanket on a bone chilling winter night. It warmed my heart and soul like that of a long lost friend and lover. The loving quality of his voice was wrapped in equal layers of pain and despair. I couldn’t ignore the pain. The raw emotion that was woven through each song caused my tears to flow without warning. That night, I fell in love with Donny Hathaway.

I would go on to read about his musical beginnings, his love and marriage to his college sweetheart, their two daughters, his friendship and musical duets with Roberta Flack, and eventually his death. Reading the hazy details surrounding his death pained me as if I had known and loved him during the course of his life. The official narrative is that he committed suicide, but I’m a stubborn believer that his fall from the 15th floor of the Essex Hotel in New York City was a tragic accident. Although he had suffered from depression in the past, family and friends, specifically Roberta Flack who was with him that very day recording new music, report that he was in great spirits that day and very optimistic about the career developments on the horizon. He was known to remove the screen from hotel windows and sit in them in order to get fresh air and hear the pure sound of his own voice.

From that night in December 1993 until today, Donny Hathaway’s music has occupied a prominent place in the soundtrack to my life. The compilation, “A Donny Hathaway Collection” is my go-to recording when I need a dose of Donny. His catalog is much more extensive than just this collection, but it’s the one that I keep in rotation. He speaks of life, love, heartache, passion, pain, heartbreak, joy, happiness and regret. If one were to just hear, “This Christmas,” they might take him to be a joyful one-hit wonder, but he is so much more than that. He is an artist that wrote to release his soul and he unselfishly shared it with the rest of us.

Many know of Donny only as the male singer on the popular duets that he and Roberta Flack sang together, especially “The Closer I Get To You” and “Where Is the Love.” While I can appreciate those, they are but one small facet of the gifts that Donny left with us. A few of my favorites that stay on repeat are “For All We Know” which speaks to a pair of lovers who have a moment in which to share their love with the idea that they may never have another.

“You Were Meant For Me” which speaks to him loving a woman and vowing not to let anything tarnish their love.

One of his most special recordings, “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” which caused him to cry in the recording studio upon its completion:

My painful favorite is “Giving Up.” It always pushes me to the verge of tears.

Giving up, so hard to do


I’ve tried


But it just ain’t no use


Giving up, so hard to do


I said I’ve tried


But it just ain’t no use


But my light of hope is burning dim


But, But in my heart I pray


That my love and faith in the girl


My love…will bring her back someday


I’m talking ’bout when you really love someone

Donny’s talent was passed to his daughter, Lalah Hathaway. I’ve followed her career closely and I hope to one day be able to tell her just what her father’s music does to my heart and soul. All of his songs move me in different ways, and whenever I need a creative push, I know that this collection will give me what I need.

In late 2008, I was 39 weeks pregnant with our first child, and it became evident that I might not begin labor on my own. My obstetrician decided my husband and I needed to schedule my delivery, so we sat together to look at the calendar for January 2009. She offered me a range of dates between January 7 and January 14. Without a moment of hesitation, I selected January 13, 2009 – 30 years to the day that Donny Hathaway’s musical genius left this planet.

I often wonder what other treasures Donny would have given us had he not passed away at the young age of 33. Yet I am forever grateful and thankful that he shared as much as he did.

  ♪♪♪

Taya Dunn Johnson has been writing as MrsTDJ since 2006 with a focus on everyday life and anecdotal stories about her teenage and young adult years. Upon the sudden death of her husband in 2012, Taya continued writing and allowed her readers to ride the emotional waves as she navigated life as a vulnerable, expressive, humorous and audacious young widowed mother of an toddler with autism.  She’s a writer, blogger, speaker, workshop facilitator and panelist. Taya has been published in the anthology Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now, online at www.xoJane.com, and www.BlackAndMarriedWithKids.com, and contributed to articles on Buzzfeed and Everyday Parent.  Taya is currently the producer and director of the Listen To Your Mother show in Baltimore, MD as well as the Diversity & Inclusion Consultant for the Listen To Your Mother National Team.

www.MrsTDJ.com

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Bay Area Alternative Holiday Names

Here in the Bay Area, we like to do things differently. Whether it’s supporting a precious retail economy in which a store that only sells mushrooms can survive, nay, thrive; holding weekly nudist protests at City Hall that flip out the tourists butt rarely draw attention from elected officials; or call July “summer” even though we’re all wrapped head to toe in fleece, people in this part of NorCal like to keep things hella unique.

So while the rest of you are home from school and work next Monday and eating cannolis for Columbus Day, we’ll be celebrating Indigenous People’s Day. Take that, colonialist pigs, you must love genocide.

via GIPHYI realized that October 12 is only one of the holidays that has entirely different ramifications for us than it may for you. I thought I’d come up with a helpful translation table, in case you ever find yourself stymied in conversation with someone from the 415-510-925 area codes because you said “President’s Day” instead of “The Storm Drains Flooded Again Day.”

You say: Halloween.

We say: High Holy Days of Home Decoration. Sure, you probably have a neighbor or two who do things up right in their yard, with a couple of fake tombstones and a witch hanging on the door. But here, October 1 is the checkered flag for over-the-top spookiness and gourd-positioning. Maybe we love Halloween extra hard because October also brings our best weather and everyone wants to be outside, taking their time to set the fake spiderwebs over the bushes just so. I think the real reason is that cross-dressing is such a normal, everyday sight here; the rest of us just want to get in on the fun once in a while.

You say: Christmas

We say: Ok, Maybe I DO Miss the Snow, a Little. All winter long, we see the news reports of crippling snow accumulation and frigid temperatures in the towns where we grew up and we think, “God, that looks really bad,” before throwing on a pair of flip flops to carry out the trash out to the curb in our short-sleeved shirts. Some people head up to Tahoe to ski, but some of us don’t even miss snow enough to do that.

Except on Christmas Day, when, despite having lived here for 18 years, I still peek out the window hopefully for signs of a light dusting. Raking dead leaves on Christmas Eve just doesn’t have the same magical quality as shoveling a path down the sidewalk and coming inside for a hot chocolate.

You say: New Year’s Day

We say: Have You Melted The Butter For the Crab Yet? One of my favorite holidays in the Bay Area – the opening of Dungeness crab season in winter, and the availability of big juicy cooked crabs at every grocery store in town. Not only is it delicious and absurdly cheap in the first few weeks, there is no cooking involved besides melting the butter. You throw down some newsprint on the table, open up a chilled Chardonnay, tear a baguette into hunks, slap the crabs onto the plates, and the days of Auld Lang Hand Me The Cracker When You’re Done With It are here.

You say: Memorial Day

We say: Break Out the Down. They don’t call it the June Gloom for nothing. From May through August, even with the boost we never asked for from global warming, it’s as likely to be fifty degrees as eighty degrees, depending on where you are in the region and whether Karl the Fog has rolled in. Layering is the only solution, to the extent that most Bay Area residents could do a seductive Dance of the 18 Garments and still be completely covered.

We reached a related, critical developmental milestone with our younger daughter this summer. We informed her that from now on, if we go into San Francisco and she doesn’t remember to bring her down jacket in the car, she can no longer borrow one from her parents, leaving us to turn blue and goosebumpy. Let her shiver her way through Chinatown once, and I bet it never happens again.

That’s how I learned, anyway.

You say: Independence Day

We say: Please Don’t Let My Dipwad Neighbor Set Off Fireworks In The Yard Like He Doesn’t Realize We’re in A Drought and Literally Everything Around Us Is Tinder. No one is more relieved than a Bay Area resident who wakes up on July 5th and hasn’t had his/her house burned down by a roman candle.

You say: Any random day

We say: Earthquake Weather. This one, I can’t explain, and I ridiculed it when I first moved here from the East Coast. Now, I find myself some days in the front yard, sniffing, shaking my head, and saying, “Earthquake weather,” then going to check on my earthquake kit.

I guess this one just defies translation.

                Related StoriesAutumn 2015 EventsIn Loving Memory of My Canine Co-WorkerThere Doesn’t Need To Be An App For That 

In Loving Memory of My Canine Co-Worker

I had the greatest co-worker.

He came with an interesting backstory. He was born in Cyprus, abandoned with two siblings in an empty lot next to the US embassy there, in the 100 plus degree heat. A couple who worked at the State Department adopted all three of them, and eventually brought them to the U.S where, through a series of events, they placed him gently into our care. He had a European passport and frankly, a bit of an accent at first. We had to pronounce his name the Greek way, to get him to pay attention to us. We Americanized him over time, though.

Every morning after the family left for the day, when it was time to hit the paycheck treadmill, I’d say, “Let’s go to work.” The enthusiasm my co-worker showed when it was time to start our workday – jumping to his feet, spinning in a couple of circles, taking the staircase down toward the home office so fast that it was not uncommon for him to simply leap the last six steps and almost crash into the couch – was breathtaking, and inspirational. I love writing, but his job – watching me write – HE LOVED THAT FREAKING JOB.

To a point. And that point was 11 a.m. Thereafter, he needed both of us to be outside hiking, regardless of weather. Particularly in the first five years we worked together, when his energy level was “Lunatic Asylum Escapee.”

It settled down a bit, eventually, but still. By 11 am, he felt we both needed a good dose of nature. He would stare, whine, and finally just sit down next to me like a total creeper until I couldn’t work anyway and agreed to come with him. I benefited from his resolve and the daily dose of fresh air.

He was also, for this humor writer, an unending source of inspiration. Whether it was encounters with wild turkeys, his insistence that I translate for him, or his utter disgust when we instituted new eating rules for him, this guy made sure I always had fresh material to share with you.

He was definitely not perfect. His repeated attempts to steal my food when I had lunch at my desk bordered on workplace harassment. And his penchant for loud chewing, especially when I was on a conference call, was discourteous to say the least. I told him so. We reached a fragile detente on the subject.

But unlike most co-workers, he was the kind of guy you wanted to hang with even in your off hours. He was almost promiscuous in his friendliness, so all my friends were happy when they saw him tagging along. Dogs seemed to like him especially.

But no one, I mean no one, loved him more than my family. They couldn’t wait to see my co-worker every day, greeting him with hugs and affection when they came in the door. Even my husband, who had reason to be standoffish given his wife’s deep affection for the co-worker, was sweet to him.

Yesterday, we lost my co-worker. It was probably the brain tumor that they suspected started his seizures back in April. We were so, so, so lucky because the medicine they gave him back then allowed him to live symptom-free for five extra months. We used that time to be extra present around him and to not take him for granted. When he passed away yesterday, surrounded by his family and on the same bed where he’s worked across from me for for lo these eight years, we took comfort in knowing that he never doubted we loved him. The outpouring of affection, sympathy, and support we are receiving in the wake of his death helps immeasurably and reminds us that he had more love overflowing from him than one family could absorb.

But today, I feel so lost, staring at his empty bed across the office. I don’t want to move it even if it’s breaking my heart. I don’t feel funny. I guess it will come back, but not today. I thought instead I’d share some of his greatest hits from time we worked together, and a song that gets played at the St. Francis Day Blessing of the Beasts service at my church every year.

And now I’m going to take a long hike in the hills. Because my co-worker taught me that it always makes me feel better.

Dog Walking and the Mobius Strip
Developing Dog Fluency
Perfect Dog Training
Canine Agents of Embarrassment
How To Maximize the Drama Inherent in a Wild Turkey Encounter
Slo-Bowl For Sadness
Our New Normal

RIP Achilles Kho

June 2005 – September 2015

Thanks to Element Dog Walks for many of these action shots.

                   
CommentsThis was perfect – you're a humor writer, Nancy, but you also ... by TarjaA beautiful tribute for a beautiful co-worker. by WendiOh, Nancy. I am sitting here at my desk at work in tears. I'm ... by EllenRelated StoriesAutumn 2015 EventsThere Doesn’t Need To Be An App For ThatA Decade of Giving Circle 

Autumn 2015 Events

Fall is always a busy time of year around here and I’m sure you’re swamped too, so let’s get right to it. I’m going to be out and about in the Bay Area in the next few weeks and would love to see you at any or all of the events!

Saturday, September 26 (tomorrow): My husband and I are heading up to Marin to check out CykelScramble, a one-of-a-kind bike relay race plus concert featuring Geographer and Cold War Kids. It’s not often there’s an event that marries his love of bikes with my love of music, so we’re excited to see what this free Free FREE event at the Marin County Fairgrounds in San Rafael is all about. Come on out and join us! And if you can’t, it looks like I may get a chance to chat with the bands on Saturday afternoon so check out Periscope (@midlifemixtape) just in case…

Monday, September 28: I’ll be in conversation with three terrific YA writers at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, at 7 pm. If you’ve ever shopped at GGP, you know that Kathleen and Co. are big supporters of YA lit, and always have their fingers on the pulse of what’s new and great. I’ll be interviewing three writers whose books I’ve devoured in the past few months:

Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Damned
Nina LaCour, Everything Leads to You, The Disenchantments, Hold Still
Tamara Ireland Stone, Every Last Word, Time Between Us, Time After Time

Come join us and bring your underage readers too! Let me know in the comments if there are any questions you’re dying for me to ask them…

Bonus: if you’re into sports, join me in the audience at Great Good Place on Wednesday, October 7 at 7 pm when author Justine Gubar talks about her new book, Fanaticus. Justine is a four-time Emmy award-winning investigative journalist who works as a producer at ESPN, and set out to explore why that idiot next to you at the game is acting like such an idiot. She’s also a writing buddy of mine and I’m thrilled to see her book come to life!

Thursday, October 8: It’s the last Midlife Mixtape Dance Party of 2015, at the Cat Club in San Francisco (1190 Folsom Street) from 7-9 pm! You know you want to come out and dance to the songs of your high school and college years. You also want to go to bed at a reasonable hour. We understand. We are your people. There’s a Facebook invite now to make it easier to invite your FB friends, but there’s no need to RSVP. Everyone’s welcome (everyone bringing an ID and $5 for the cover, anyway.)

I’m going to be giving away a few of my favorite Turn Down the Music and Read books, so bring your friends, get there early and stay late! And by late I mean until maybe 9:10.

Saturday, October 17: Litcrawl! Or more accurately, the pre-game for Litcrawl, the world’s largest literary pub crawl. Plans are still being firmed up, but I’m part of a group of writers who will read between BART stops en route to Litcrawl in the Mission, starting from the West Berkeley station at around 5 pm. By the time we tumble out of BART into the Mission, we will have collected a mass of lit lovers who are bound for glory. I’ll share more details on the Midlife Mixtape Facebook page as they emerge.

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Concert Review: Brandi Carlile

The Band: Brandi Carlile, September 18 2015. Carlile hails from the Seattle area and plays the broad alt-country-rock category, with a catalog ranging from the quietest ballads to windmilling hairshaking rock guitar anthems. Her voice is absolutely unique – husky and mega powerful but with a bit of a yodel on the high end. (My concert companion said, “Make sure to say ‘but it’s a good yodel’.”) I assumed it would be a solo show, not realizing that Carlile has long been backed by twin brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth, whose follically challenged situation is totally offset by Carlile’s Breck Girl locks. When the three of them sing together, it’s like the best Fleetwood Mac song you ever heard.

Much of the material at Friday’s show came from Carlile’s latest studio album, The Firewatcher’s Daughter. Instead of being annoyed when a headliner tries to foist new material upon us, everyone in the crowd already had the words memorized.

The Venue: The Fox Theater, Oakland. Yes, it was a homestand for me. However there’s always something new to learn about my favorite venue. For instance, when I texted some friends to come find us up front where we always stand, “under the right gold elephant,” it was only my friend’s confused text back – “somehow don’t see elephant” – to make me realize after so many shows there that it’s not an elephant. I don’t know what it IS. But it’s not an elephant.

The Company: My oldest daughter aka @KhoKhoPuff. I feel like I am nailing the whole “raising a feminist” thing, because this marked our third Mother/Daughter power female show together at the Fox: Lorde, Jenny Lewis, and now Brandi Carlile. My daughter is a high school senior so this is the last year she and I will be able to go to shows together so easily, but I’m not going to think about that right now because sob sob sob sob. I already warned her that “Wherever Is Your Heart” will automatically make me cry next year, which made her roll her eyes into next Thursday.

The Crowd: I knew a bit of Carlile’s music but not much about her personal life. My daughter and I planned to head out for the 8 pm show at 7:15 as usual. Then at 6:45 I was reading up on Carlile and realized she’s a lesbian, and totally panicked. Because Oakland is where all the cool lesbians live and if Indigo Girls performances are any indication, we were never going to get near the stage unless we left thirty minutes ago. (Assumption, sadly, correct.) KhoKhoPuff felt that there was also statistically significant number of people on crutches. I don’t know how to account for that.

Opening Act: Baskery. A trio of Swedish siblings with country aspirations that, it sounded like from their onstage banter, met cold hard reality during a recent stint in Nashville. Something about trucker-hat-wearing banjo-playing Nashville-sounding Swedish girls felt a little discordant. But their voices were gorgeous and their musicianship was just as good. I like that they’re trying to make the hashtag #3bitchesfromSweden happen.

Age Humiliation Factor?

Brandi gave the Oakland audience a surprise gift – partway through her set she said, “Is it ok if we have a little fun right now? We’re going back to the ‘80s and I’m going to fulfill 12 year old Brandi’s dream.” Then she brought out the Baskery girls and they sang a version of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” so glorious and joyful that it almost cancelled out the past two decades of that song being played to death.

However, I couldn’t turn off the mental calculator. That song came out in 1983. If Brandi was 12, she would have been born in ’71. No way. Look at her. No way.

Came home and checked Wikipedia and she was born in 1981. Yes, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” would have been played in her Mommy and Me music class.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? Abso-brandi-lutely

Between the opener and headliner sets, we chatted with the young woman standing behind us who said she had seen the band more times than she could count, and that she never misses a Bay Area appearance. After the show ended, I could totally see how Brandi Carlile can become habit forming. She and her band combine the sincerity and audience rapport of Lorde with the grrrrrl power musicianship of Jenny Lewis, plus a dollop of vulnerability and honesty in her songwriting that is hers alone. She also writes the hell out of a love song – like this one (There was a huge audience shout-out at the Golden Gate Bridge reference, which is a little weird because I think it’s a thinly veiled suicide threat. Whatever.)

Brandi and the twins covered some Zep, she lauded gay marriage and dedicated the aforementioned song to her wife of three years, she threw guitar picks into the audience after every song, and she encouraged us to attend a free self-defense workshop the next day. Wherever is her next concert, I’ll call home.

Next concert on the calendar: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Golden Gate Park, Oct 3

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There Doesn’t Need To Be An App For That

I got a press release the other day for a new app that was touted as reliable and easy-to-use, ready to help stressed pregnant women all around the world. It is a Contraction Timer, designed to help women in labor measure the intervals between contractions.

I’m trying to think of something that would have made me more stressed when I was in active labor than messing around with an iPhone in those precious moments of relief between labor pains of such intensity that they rendered me cross-eyed and limp-legged.

Wait, I just thought of the thing that would have made me more stressed: my husband messing around with an iPhone in those precious moments. If my husband thought me bellowing, “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO HELP ME BREATHE! DIDN’T YOU PAY ANY ATTENTION IN LAMAZE CLASS? AAAAARGGGGGH” with Daughter #2 was bad, the oratorical heights to which I would have been inspired by the sight of him focusing on his smart phone instead of the mother of his soon-to-be child would have really blown his hair backward.

As I learned back in ’98 and again in ’00, a really good trio of tools for keeping track of those intervals is a pencil, a pad of paper, and a wristwatch. It’s very vintage and locavore, but then I’ve always been retro.

I know our little pocket computers are exciting and engaging, but there are some things that just don’t belong on our smartphones. Beyond the Contraction Timer, here are a few of my (least) favorites:

iHairClipper. “This App imitates a hair clipper. Operate this App and trick him who came with new hair.” I really can’t add anything to that official description, except to say to him who came with new hair, you’re going to leave with the same hair.

Cheating or Not? Anyone who trolled through the Ashley Madison database to see if their beloved had an account (I’m talking to you, Duggar wives): you could have saved considerable time with this handy app. Just place your lover’s thumb on the Cheating Scanner and it will tell you whether you’re heading for divorce court. I assume it works by detecting profuse sweating and a sudden interest in wearing cologne.

iDemocrat and iRepublican. Literally just a single screen with a picture of a donkey or an elephant, respectively, with the words “Proud to Be A” and the name of the party in question. I guess you’re supposed to whip it out at a bar, wave it around, and connect with politically like-minded types. Or you could use it to start a fight with your opponents, though can’t we just relegate the latter practice to Facebook, where it belongs?

Interestingly, there’s no iSocialist or iCrazy apps. Sanders and Trump supporters, this is what’s called a Market Opportunity.

Nails on Chalkboard. If my sister is reading this, she has already dropped to the floor in the fetal position. That’s right, you can now watch a hand scrape across a chalkboard and torture everyone in the immediate vicinity. AND, thank god for technological progress…it’s now in HD!

Poo Keeper, the toilet poop tracker. Nope, not explaining it and not taking a screen shot either. I will tell you that there appear to be about a dozen competitors vying to own the Poop Tracking space.

Kissing Test. You kiss the lips on the iPhone screen and it rates your technique. Includes exercises for improving your game. Ensures that you will not be needing the Contraction Timer anytime soon, because who in their right mind would want to mate with someone who makes out with their smartphone?

 

***Hey! I had two pieces published on other sites this week that you might call “bookends to the college selection process”…hope you’ll click through to check them out!What Not to Say to My High School Senior This Fall – Washington Post “On Parenting”Competing Hopes of Parents and Kids: Freshman Edition  – Grown and Flown

                   
Comments“…the oratorical heights to which I would have been ... by EllenJust think–all this progress in less than 10 years! ... by Les RaffRelated StoriesThings From Which I’d Like to Be Exempt Due To My Religious BeliefsThings for Which I’d Like to Be Exempt Due To My Religious BeliefsA Decade of Giving Circle 

A Decade of Giving Circle

Last week I picked up a giant Chocolate Explosion cake at the market and had them write this (remarkably sloppy and uncentered) sentiment on top.

Hard to believe that it was ten years ago, in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, that some friends and I came together for the first meeting of our Giving Circle. I brought the cake to last week’s meeting and talked about the similarities between then and now. Specifically, in 2005, we were haunted and moved to action by the sight on television of drowned bodies in New Orleans. Ten years later, those drowning victims haunting us are Syrian refugees, another population of helpless civilians caught in the eye of a different kind of storm.

On the face of it, nothing has changed in ten years. If anything, our eyes have been opened to how many organizations out there need support, how wide the gap is between vision and funding.

Except for this: I, and I’d venture to say this on behalf of my fellow GC members, don’t feel so helpless anymore. The simple act of coming together four times a year with a fluid and widening group of friends, to pool our collective -and I assure you, individually modest – contributions has nonetheless made an impact for non-profits that are both local and far-flung.

I just pulled up my spreadsheet of the organizations to whom our Giving Circle has directed our contributions – as well as our volunteer hours – over the years.

Beyond Emancipation


Good Cents for Oakland


Berea College


Bishop Masareka Christian Foundations


St. Marks School Maputoland Fund


Center for Independent Living


Holt International


Oakland Community Pool Program


Hands On Gulf Coast


Wardrobe for Opportunity


Feral Cat Foundation


ARF


George Marks Children’s House


Charity: Water


Selective Mutism


Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation


Sports Sans Frontieres


Beyond Emancipation


St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children


Rebuilding Together Oakland


Project Linus


Horseriders for Health in Lesotho/Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation


Oakland Elizabeth House


826 Valencia


Vida Verde


Ms. Jackson’s classroom at Allendale School, OUSD


City Slickers


Rising Sun Energy Center


UCB Sage Scholars


East Bay Agency for Children


Lighthouse Community Charter School


Camp Reel Stories


First Place for Youth


Breast Cancer Action


New Day for Children


Calico Center


Girls, Inc


Kiva

That’s a lot of good that a small group of friends has managed to pull off in the world. All it took was a commitment to two hours, every couple of months, over wine, dessert, and icebreakers that require Cone of Silence level privacy policies.

The next name to add to this list: The Milligan Foundation. It’s an Oakland based organization that provides transportation and relocation services to people who have been victimized by domestic violence. Established in 2010 by Tracey Milligan, who spoke at our meeting last week (and, I’m not going to give away the icebreaker, but apparently has a lead foot) the Foundation partners with over 300 shelters across the country to provide the most options possible for people who need to escape a life terrorized by domestic violence. Tracey shared some anecdotes of women – and a few men – and their children who have been rescued and transported to safe locations through her foundation. Truly harrowing stories.

Tracey and her foundation are now trying to take the “get safe, stay safe” message and tools worldwide, creating the International Domestic Violence Community (IDVC) to connect providers of resources to combat domestic violence across the globe to share education, resources, best practices, client services, funding opportunities, and emergency service alerts. With help from corporate donors like Salesforce, Twilio, and Forcebrain, the Foundation has raised everything it needs for its launch at the World Conference of Shelters in Netherland in November- minus $30k.

The GC ladies put down the chocolate cake and picked up the checkbooks and wrote out what we could. The next day, I got an email from Tracey. She had just found out that she needed to pay an unexpected software licensing fee for one aspect of the project. Our group contribution covered the fee, and left her $23 extra.

News like that makes Giving Circle seem kind of magical.

If you’d also like to help Tracey and the victims of domestic violence in Oakland and around the world, please consider your own contribution via the brand new GoFundMe page that Tracey set up after some of the GC ladies told her they’d like to share it with friends and family.

If you’re interested in learning about how to set up your own GC, hit me in the comments – I am very happy to share how we did it and how we run it.

Playing us out today: Neil Finn, Benedict Cumberbatch, and a Crowded House rarity, “Help Is Coming.” It was recorded in ’96 as a B-side as the band was breaking up. Neil’s just re-released the song as a fundraiser for Save The Children’s Refugee Crisis Appeal. Check out this video and then please consider downloading it on iTunes to help.

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Music to Remember

“There was a later Springsteen song that held great weight for me, for entirely different reasons. When we brought home ‘The Rising’ in 2002, the first album Springsteen made after 9/11, the title song broke me open when I listened to it play on the living room stereo. In an instant I was back on that sunny September Tuesday ten months earlier, when I leaned against my husband in our family room, an infant in my arms and a toddler at our feet, watching the incomprehensible television news from three thousand miles away. Horror for the victims and their families, guilty gratitude for my own family’s safety, fear of what lay ahead, and hope in the compassion that was visible everywhere that day: with ‘The Rising,’ Bruce wrote a song that brought all those feelings back, the good and the bad, gave me a space to revisit and grieve.

It wasn’t until almost an hour into the concert that the first notes for ‘The Rising’ rang out. For me this song has become a sort of post 9/11 alternative national anthem. It feels like giving it my full attention and allowing those painful memories and emotions to wash over me is a sign of respect to the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families, proof that they haven’t been forgotten while the rest of us move on. In that song, I’m right back there in the fear and the sadness and the desperate search for hope.

The song started off quiet, Bruce singing solo and strumming the guitar, lyrics about being cast adrift in a darkness so thick that it is impossible to see the future or tell how far he’s already come. The band folded in on the first chorus and the intensity grew, as Bruce sang of spirits once here and now gone, of terror and love in the heavens, of blood mixing and arms comforting and of innocent children being born. My eyes brimmed with tears, which, when caused by music, my husband has learned to politely ignore.”

An excerpt from my midlife music crisis memoir,  NOT THE GIRL YOU THINK YOU ARE: A Gen Xer Learns to Rock Midlife, One Concert At a Time

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Next Midlife Mixtape ’80s Dance Party: October 8

Mark your calendars and book those Greyhound tickets and airline flights…we’re heading back to the Cat Club SF (1190 Folsom Street, San Francisco) for one final, blow-out ’80s dance party rager of 2015 on Thursday, October 8 from 7-9 pm. Yeah, that’s right, we do our raging at a civilized hour so we can still be home in bed in time for Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, do you have a problem with that? If you have a yen to dance to “Turning Japanese” (yeah, you saw what I did there) then get your sitters lined up now and don’t take “My mom says I can’t babysit, I have a test the next day” for an answer.

Everyone’s welcome so tell your friends, family, and co-workers. (Nothing says team-building like seeing your supervisor take a turn in the Cat Club cage to a Prince song, you know.)

Our party officially ends at 9, but the ’80s dancing at the Cat Club goes all night so show up whenever you can. Only the first people through the door will get one of those swish buttons you see at the top of the page, though…

Just bring $5 for the cover, your ID, and your song requests. I’ve been in a very Public Image Limited mood lately so here’s my request for DJ Damon…drop yours into the comments section below and we’ll see you October 8!

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Things From Which I’d Like to Be Exempt Due To My Religious Beliefs

 

Thanks, Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis, for showing me that it’s not just possible but admirable to claim the right to not follow the law or custom, due to my personal religious beliefs. Who better to stand in defense of the sanctity of marriage than someone who only needs one more punch on her Frequent Splitter card to score her fifth divorce free? She stands as an unassailable advocate for the importance of the traditional family because she has one, or at least she did after one of her husbands adopted the twins she’d had out of wedlock.

Given the impunity and assurance with which she, a born-again Christian for lo these…um…four years, I figure that I, as a lifelong Episcopal, have been given permission to claim religious liberty for any damn thing I want, using any spin on theology that I can come up with. Here’s my shortlist.

I should not have to do the family laundry anymore. It says in the Bible that I’m not supposed to worry about the speck of dirt in someone else’s eye until I worry about my own eye-speck, which I’m going to take to mean that I only have to wash my own clothes, water conservation and efficiency concerns notwithstanding.
I should not have to wait in line at the post office. Moses parted the Red Sea, and I want to part the long list of people who stand there with 743 questions, a half-filled out form, and never the right size box. They always hit the window just as 50% of the clerks, meaning the bearded dude who’s always in a bad mood, take a break, thereby lengthening my wait to Biblical proportions. No more. I’m charging to the front of the line like Moses and if you stop me, you must hate America.
I should not have to order in Italian at Starbucks. My pet peeve with this American coffee chain is that we are not in Italy, as the sizes “Venti” and “Grande” would seem to imply. If I want a Venti coffee, I will go to Pope Francis’ local Starbucks and order one. Until that day, I will only order Small, Medium, and Large as I stare at the barista, daring him to correct me. Because, something something something Tower of Babel.
I should not have to scoop up dog poop anymore. There’s a parable about mustard seeds needing the right environment in which to grow, and when poop breaks down it’s fertilizer, so by leaving it in my annoying neighbor’s ivy instead of bagging it and carrying it around like this season’s must-not-have purse, I’m just being a good Christian.
I should not have to listen to overproduced, overhyped music anymore. Justin Bieber, Maroon 5, Selena Gomez: I rebuke you. Get out of my airwaves. But first, come here so I can smite you on the forehead with my palm.
I should not have to hear people support a woman who wouldn’t understand the meaning of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” if Jesus himself explained it to her through hand motions and a picture book.

 Sing it, Sister Aretha.

                   
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