My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.

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Being Still

by on ·Holidays, Lifestyle and Culture, Opinion

“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

The other day I took time to relax. What’s unusual about that, some will ask. It’s unusual for me because it’s something I rarely do. Perhaps it was mental fatigue that led me to stop scurrying around and be still for a moment.

Being still is difficult for me. I’m a little bit hyper. I feel compelled to always be doing something because doing nothing seems like a waste of precious time.

When I am at home and not out and about, typically I am undertaking several tasks simultaneously. Doing laundry and house cleaning. Cooking and reading. Taking online classes, researching something on the web, or composing essays while listening to the TV – generally a political talk program – always on in the background. I know that so much busyness isn’t conducive to flawless productivity. So, I decided to take a break. Give it all a rest. Do nothing, but be still, sit back in my recliner and relax for a while. Some would equate that to meditating.

But it wasn’t working.

Feeling determined, yet antsy, I decided to add some music. I closed the blinds and turned on an all-music station. Appropriate for the season, they were playing Christmas songs.

Most of the tunes were popular during my childhood and early adult years. Christmas oldies, I call them, though those songs never get old. Music stations play them annually. Sometimes they combine the old school Yuletide hits with contemporary Christmas music by Fantasia, Taylor Swift, John Legend, Mariah Carey, and others of a younger, hipper generation. In my opinion, there is no comparison. Ask any boomer, and they will tell you that our generation had the best music.

I remember as a child hearing Eartha Kitt seductively purring Santa Baby, and Bing Crosby croon about dreaming of a White Christmas (Do the PC police now consider that phrase politically incorrect?) Kitt and Crosby were great artists in their time. However, their songs don’t compare to Darlene Love belting out Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). I love having Luther entertain me with At Christmas Time, but nothing beats a melody of hits from The Temptations’ Give Love at Christmas album. And how can I not tap my foot and sing along to Donnie Hathaway’s version of This Christmas? When Gladys Knight and the Pips sing, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” I whisper, “Oh yeah. I  hear it.” My blissful mood continues as Carla Thomas exclaims Gee Whiz, It’s Christmas. There is no better way to relax than to be serenaded by old school R&B Christmas hits and slow jams.

My self-imposed, quiet times don’t last long. I suppose it’s nervous energy that compels me to constantly move around, do something, keep busy. I think (too much) about the chaotic state of the world and I need a distraction to help take my mind off of it.

I was a child of the sixties. I am a boomer. And as bad as some of my fellow boomers may think that our formative years were, given a choice, I prefer the sixties decade over the current era.

Back then, time seemed to move at a pace slower than an impeachment hearing. Sure, there was social unrest. People were protesting and fighting for civil rights, women’s rights, and anti-war, while politicians were posturing just like they do today. Wars abroad, crime and discrimination in the states, and the assassination of prominent leaders; for the generation of my youth, that was our normal. Mass shootings in schools and a cocktail of other “new norms” were not.

When Charles Dickens wrote his book, A Tale of Two Cities in the Nineteenth Century, he was recounting the period leading to the French Revolution. I don’t know how many times I find myself thinking that he could well have been describing the present. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness . . . it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.”

These days it looks like we are cursed to live under a spell of Darkness ruled by the Dark One. The tranquility that many of us relish is quelled by irreligion and ungodliness. If we are wise, we will bring God back into our society instead of trying to erase Him. Perhaps then, we will survive our “winter of despair” to see the “spring of hope.”

My readers, I thank you for continuing to read me and support this blog.

I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Feliz Navidad, Joyeux Noël, whatever your preferred greeting. May your holidays sparkle with peace, love, laughter, goodwill, and light, and may the year ahead be full of happiness.

Now turn up the volume on your speakers and enjoy this, my Christmas gift to you.

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Reminiscing Thanksgiving Holidays Past

by on ·Gratitude, Holidays, Lifestyle and Culture, Nostalgia, Opinion

Thanksgiving is a traditional American holiday. Not everybody celebrates it, and if you are one of those bodies who don’t, that’s okay. It’s your prerogative.

But tradition is ingrained in my soul, and every year around this time, nostalgia embraces me like a Snuggie blanket. As I write this, Thanksgiving Day is slightly more than 72 hours away. And I remember.

I remember when I was a very young child, Thanksgiving was the time when our family would often kiss the city goodbye and head south to visit our relatives in the Tar Heel State. Usually, we stayed with our maternal grandmother at her farmhouse. Some of grandma’s other grown children would arrive with their families, and we would reunite with our numerous cousins and other relatives, those who arrived for the holiday weekend, and those who lived in the small town near grandma’s farm.

During the years when my family did not go to grandma’s house for the holiday, Mother would sometimes prepare the Thanksgiving meal and we would pitch in to help. As her children grew older and we had families of our own, we’d sometimes bring a dish that we prepared at home; creating sort of a pot luck Thanksgiving dinner.

I remember one year when I volunteered to bring the collard greens. What I did not realize after cooking what I thought would be a chef-d’oeuvre, not only were the greens undercooked, they were poorly seasoned. I had failed to add any of the staples for making a delicious pot of southern-style greens. No ham hocks or fatback or smoked neckbones. Minus those cholesterol clogging meats I should have seasoned the greens with table salt, but I didn’t think to do that. Can you say bland?

I don’t remember anyone complaining about the greens during the meal, although some of the suddenly wide-eyed expressions by folks when they began eating them should have been a giveaway. One forkful and everyone around the table knew that those were not my mother’s collard greens. Mother was born and raised in North Carolina, and back in those days, if southern women learned nothing else, they surely learned how to cook. And when it came to cooking collard greens, my mother could burn. She put her foot in it. If you are not familiar with the vernacular, those latter expressions are compliments, meaning mother’s greens were supreme.

After dinner, mother pulled me aside and trying to spare me from hurt feelings; she gently told me, “The greens were okay, but you should have cooked them a little bit longer and added some seasoning.”

That was my first attempt at cooking fresh collards. (Canned and frozen greens were the norm for this busy working mom.) Lesson learned. Do not volunteer to prepare a dish that you’ve never cooked for a family holiday dinner. Since then, thank God, I’ve learned to properly cook and season greens.

Sometimes, after our holiday dinner, we would clear the table, cleaned-up, and enjoy playing Bid Whist. (A note for the uninitiated — Bid Whist, is a card game where bidding partners strive to earn high points to win).

My younger brother was often my partner. Sometimes mom and dad played against us or my sister would be mother’s partner. If other whist-playing relatives, like my Aunt Sarah and Uncle James, were visiting, they would be partners. When there were enough people playing we would play rise and fly. That’s when you lose, and if there are other folks waiting to play, the losing partners get up, and another couple sits down to play.

I cherish those good times.

Unfortunately, as unavoidable as it is, things change, and so do people. Our family Thanksgiving holiday gatherings at my parents’ home ended way too soon. I’ve tried to maintain the tradition with my immediate family including grandchildren with the hope that after I’m dead they will have as many treasurable memories of family holiday gatherings as I have, and the tradition will become part of the family legacy for them as it did for me.

Due in part to PC and sometimes to religious beliefs, Thanksgiving Day, like Christmas and so many other festive occasions, has become a cause célèbre. I see the day as a time for gathering, to be with friends and family. If the history and origins of celebrating Thanksgiving Day bother you, then don’t think of the day as celebrating Thanksgiving. Think of it merely as an opportunity to get together with family and friends, some of whom you may not have seen for years (except at a funeral) and enjoy a good meal. It certainly is a convenient time to have the family gathering on a day when a lot of working people have the time off.

Life is short. IMHO sometimes, we need to temporarily set aside our convictions and seize the opportunity to enjoy spending time with those we love because opportunities don’t last. We never know if a loved one that we spend time with today may be gone tomorrow. A missed opportunity can sometimes be a huge regret.

I don’t wait for a particular day to acknowledge things for which I am thankful. I am thankful every minute of every day. I am thankful for my family and friends, including my blog and Facebook friends. Some of my online friends are people who I’ve known for much of my life. Perhaps we met in grade school or grew up together in the old neighborhood. We were friends long before there was social media. And some of the friends who I’ve met online, I’ve known them long enough now to consider them to be genuine friends. They are friends with whom I occasionally talk on the phone, and sometimes exchange birthday cards, email messages, or notes. I am thankful for real friends and also for good neighbors.

I am thankful for good health. I am thankful every day of my life.

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Giving Forethought to Never Saying Never

by on ·Law and Order, Lifestyle and Culture, The Way I See It

“Nothing like that ever happens in this neighborhood.” How often do we hear someone being interviewed during a TV news segment say that?  The thoughtless statement always makes me shake my head in dismay. Don’t folks know that there is a first time for everything?

I’ve lived in the same neighborhood for 43 years. (Obviously, I like the place.) During that time, I have never seen so much as a fistfight in our complex, not even among the children when they were growing up here. (Correction, I do recall one fight among two sisters.) Overall, ours has been a sedate place, where neighbors feel like family and look out for each other. The milieu changed yesterday.

It was around 10:15 a.m. I was doing what I normally do, sitting at my computer, zoned-out in my literary domain, composing essays that I hope would bring me extra bucks like they sometimes do. Suddenly, a deep male voice yells “Get your hands up!” And I nearly fall off my chair.

I had been so focused on what I was writing that the first time I heard the order I thought it was coming from the TV since the set was turned on. But the volume was low. Had the volume suddenly jumped up? I wondered. That thought got nixed when I looked over my shoulder at the screen to see an animated bear shaking its rear and singing about a clean hinny. Then, I heard the booming voice again. Shouting twice. “Get your hands up! I won’t say it again.”

In temporary bewilderment, I almost raised my hands, until it dawned on me that I was home alone, and my door was chain locked. That’s when my frayed nerves relaxed, and I realized that the voice was coming from outside my window. I got up from my chair and looked through the Venetian blinds. What appeared to be a platoon of police officers was standing strategically all over the yard and on the sidewalk outside the gate that surrounds our complex.

I backed away from the window, turned, and hurried downstairs. I opened the door, a few inches at first, in case shooting started, forcing me to retreat inside. After a few seconds, I summoned the courage and went outside on the porch. Some of my neighbors also began coming out. Cops were everywhere. Some of them guardedly glanced at us.

A young man who looked to be Hispanic and was wearing all black, including a black hoodie that partially covered his head was pinned face down on the ground beneath my window. One officer was handcuffing him while others stood vigilantly nearby. A second Hispanic man similarly attired, was being led through the courtyard. He, too, was handcuffed and flanked by a trio of officers. Both men appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties.

The commotion of what could have been filming for an episode of Cops was over in about 10 minutes, although some officers stayed around for at least an hour searching the grounds. During that time, a truck with “Investigation Unit” printed on its side arrived on the scene. I never found out what the two suspected lawbreakers did that led the cops to chase them onto our property, but I later learned from one of my neighbors that the cops found a gun near the trash bin. One of the two fugitives had accidentally dropped or purposely ditched the weapon after jumping the fence during the chase.

Yesterday’s event was the most attention-grabbing incident to occur in our neighborhood since one afternoon, in 1988, when a homeless advocate affiliated with Mitch Snyder’s CCNV climbed the 761-foot transmission tower (that is higher than the Washington monument) and hung a banner from it that read, “Housing Now.” We stood outside for a few hours, until sundown, as did police until the tower climber was eventually persuaded to climb down. He was promptly arrested.

Unfortunately, the state of this world provides no safe haven. Whether you live in a gated suburban community or an upscale urban neighborhood, you should never say never. Due to factors over which we have no control, none of us can predict what will happen from one minute to the next.

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Cracking the Nickname Code, It’s Ludicrous

by on ·General, Lifestyle and Culture

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)

Honey. Sugar Pie. Dork. Nicknames. That substitute moniker is sometimes assigned to people, places, or things instead of their given name. The habit of nicknaming people has been around for centuries, and those nicknames are popularly used. A nickname is acquired at any age, and often there is no code to crack. Some people get nicknames in childhood and retain them for life. Others eagerly shed them when they become adults.

My mother’s nickname for me was Lo. When I was in high school my best friend called me Retsie. Don’t ask, because I don’t know how my friend came up with that, but it was unique.

Do you have a nickname? What’s yours?

I’ve compiled a list of nicknames of some of my family members and friends. Some of them I easily recall. Others were reluctantly shared with me with the promise that I would not reveal their identity.  We have:  Andre, Bay-Bay, Big Bro, Boot, Bootsey, Buddy, Butch, Chico, Cookie, Crutches, Froggy, Jo-Jo, June Bug, Kip, Kippy, Little Bro, Min-gin, Moose, Nita, Peanut, Pickles, Po boy,  Pooche, Rai Rye, Sain, Skeet, Skip, Toot, and Whimpey. Initials as nicknames are also popular. AJ, CJ, DJ, JD, JJ, JR and RJ immediately come to mind. Raise your hand if you recognize your nickname. Don’t be shy; no one can see you through the screen.

Nicknames are so commonly used that sometimes a person’s given name is unknown. Even family members who have for a lifetime heard a relative called by a nickname might not know the person’s first name. For instance, when my son was born, I named him Kyle. I didn’t know until days later when my mother said to me, “You know that’s your cousin’s name.” “Which cousin?” I asked. “Your cousin, Kip’s name, is Kyle.” Who knew? I surely didn’t because throughout my life I had only know him as Kip.  One day, I was discussing my name blunder with Kip’s mother, my Aunt Ida. “I just liked the name,” I told her. “So do I,” she said before telling me that she was thrilled that I had chosen that name.

Nicknames are often given to denote familiarity, kindness, or to show affection. Take “Boo” for instance. It is usually a term of endearment that signifies love. It is also one of the most common nicknames bestowed on anyone from a loving companion, to a dear child, to a BFF (best friend forever).

Sometimes nicknames substitute for traditional titles. Like grandmother. I know people whose grandchildren call them, Nana, Ditt, Gram, Grammy, and G-Mom. I’ve always preferred the standard “grandma” but grew used to my grands when they were toddlers calling me GeGe (pronounce as if you were saying GoGo, only substitute the o with an e). Occasionally, one of them still refers to me as GeGe. And I love it!

Many people are stuck with nicknames given by family, friends, or frenemies. Some people are fond of their nicknames. Other’s detest them. One of my childhood playmates was nicknamed Weegee (pronounced like Ouija Board). Her family and all of the neighbors called her that. Although she answered to it, I always felt that she didn’t like the handle. I never did learn her real name.

Colors are popular nicknames. Most of us have known people whose nicknames are Black, Blue, Red, Rose, Pink, and Whitey.

Famous and infamous people have strange and sometimes embarrassing nicknames. Caryn Elaine Johnson has an interesting story about how she flatulently gained the nickname, Whoopi. The man we call Tiger Wood’s birth name is Eldrick Tont Woods. And who doesn’t refer to Jennifer Lynn Lopez as J.Lo? Many Baby Boomers remember comedians John Elroy Sanford as Redd Foxx, Loretta Mary Aiken was Moms Mabley, and Durham, North Carolina native Dewey Markham whose fans affectionately remember him as Pigmeat Markham. Perhaps most prominent among this group of well-known people was the man whose birth name was Malcolm Little. He had several nicknames over his lifetime:  Red, Detroit Redd, El-Shabazz, El-Hajj Malik , but he was widely known as Malcolm X.

Back in the day, Al Capone’s moniker was ‘Scarface.’ Mobster Benny Siegel was called ‘Bugsy.’

Even presidents are not spared nicknames. Some of his activities as a young man, a circuit lawyer, and eventually president of the U.S. earned Abraham Lincoln the nickname Honest Abe. Richard Nixon, infamous for Watergate, carried Tricky Dick to his grave. Beloved President Barack Obama was bestowed the name Barry O’Bomber by his high school basketball teammates. I am prudently self-censoring the nicknames for the current president.

By the way, Ludicrous is the nickname and stage name of the rapper/actor whose real name is Christopher Brian Bridges.

Whether you hold on to and cherish a nickname or shed it, remember William Claude Dukenfied aka W.C. Fields said, “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”

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Thank a Mother – Revisited Again

by on ·Family, Lifestyle and Culture, The Way I See It
A message for women who have a good man. What many Boomers know and some Gen Xers and Millenials have yet to learn.

If you are in a relationship with — or married to — a man who you love because he respects you, provides for you, and treats you like his queen – thank his mother. Listen up women, while nothing is set in stone, there is much truth to the adage that the way a man treats his mother reflects on how he will treat you.

We’ve all heard conversations on TV talk shows and among women who we know personally, where the subject is mother bashing — not their mother, but his. I am talking about women who are filled with resentment or envy because they begrudge the relationship between their man and his mother.

I discount the myth that sons who are close to their mothers are mama’s boys, in every sense of the words, though in some cases it is true. I’ve known a couple of mama’s boys in my lifetime, who could not cut that apron string. Bye-bye baby. However, the closeness between a mother and her son could indicate that he is a loving man, who knows how to treat a woman because he learned from his mother how a good woman deserves to be treated. He’s the kind of man that most women want.

Whether a son is raised by a strong, determined mother in a wholesome, nuclear family unit, or in the home of a struggling, yet well-grounded, single mother, if he has the guidance and the mindset to do so — that boy will grow up to be a well-adjusted, independent man. And ask just about any woman what qualities she desires in a loving relationship with her man and many will tell you that – aside from the essentials like respect, love, trust, and accountability — affection is high on her list of desirable traits.

From the time my two children were born I constantly showered them with hugs and kisses. Such affection is the norm in our family. When divorce forced me to become a single working parent and to assume the roles of both father and mother, the bond between my children and I grew even stronger.

I groomed my daughter and son to be responsible, compassionate, and affectionate adults. Both of them are now grown and married with families of their own. And I proudly boast to anyone in earshot – that in spite of the many challenges our young family faced years ago in our single-parent household — my daughter now writes poetry and my son is a successful entrepreneur. But this post is intended to be about sons more than daughters, so let me get back to the point.

According to William Pollack, Ph.D., “Far from making boys weaker, the love of a mother can and does actually make boys stronger, emotionally and psychologically. Far from making boys dependent, the base of safety a loving mother can create – a connection that her son can rely on all of his life – provides a boy with the courage to explore the outside world . . . a loving mother actually plays an integral role in helping a boy develop his masculinity.”

There is always an exception to every rule, but more often than not a good man was molded by his mother.

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