Foster Teens, Advocates Address Issue of Aging Out at ‘First-ever’ Youth-led Hearing

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Young Women's Project) Derek Reid, T'Kara Plater and Sarah Oran were among the more than 25 foster youths and advocates who testified on Jan. 22.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Washington Post Columnist Petula Dvorak covered the preparation of this hearing in her column, Normal Teens, Except for their Heartbreaking Circumstances. The article below is a follow-up to that hearing.

While most 18 year olds are preparing for prom or the college experience, Derek Reid is just trying to survive. He’s been in the D.C. foster care system for three years, lives in a group home on Capitol Hill and is on his third social worker.

If that’s not enough, Reid has three years to get his survival strategy together before he ages out and the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) cuts its supports. “I want to live in a nice setting with someone I can depend on and trust. But no one, including my social worker, has helped me find that,” Reid told Council Member Tommy Wells at a hearing Jan. 22 in the John A. Wilson Building. “If I age out of the system without family, I am not sure where I will be or how I will take care of myself.”

That day, Reid joined more than 25 foster youth, community-based organizations and service providers trying to change that.  “Yes Youth Can: Confronting the Challenges of Aging Out,” which boast was the first-ever youth-led hearing, examined the experiences and challenges of older youth in the D.C. foster care system, the effectiveness of programs and services for this group and how to improve their life prospects once they leave the system on their 21st birthday.

Wells, who chairs the Committee on Human Services, turned over power of the nearly-five-hour hearing to 14 youth from the Young Women’s Project, a DC-based nonprofit that builds youth leaders. Last Friday’s hearing focused on three main points: aging out, education and employment, and congregate care.

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Young Women's Project) Council Member Tommy Wells assisted by Brittany Silver and Trey Jones, youth staff from the Young Women's Project.

These issues effect more than 2,260 DC youth in out-of-home care, according to data released by CFSA in May 2009. In three years, Reid will be among the 150-200 youth turning 21 and aging out of the system annually without a permanent legal relationship.

That time will come even sooner for Loretta Singletary, who has only a year to get it together. She’s looking forward to leaving the system. “It gives me a chance to experience the real feeling of being on my own, paying bills, staying on a monthly budget, keeping and having good credit,” said the 20-year-old, who’s been in foster care for six years.

During that time, she bounced between two foster homes before landing in a group home. While at her second foster home, Singletary and her younger sister enjoyed their foster family. But she longed for her mother and set out to find her when she got her mother’s phone number from an old neighbor. “When I told my foster mom I found my mom, she said that she could not call me on her telephone,” said Singletary, who received good grades throughout middle school.

She had problems when she started high school. “I couldn’t focus there because I was still confused about being in the foster care system,” Singletary said. To make matters worse, she and her sister came home from school one day to find their foster mom had washed and packed their clothes. “She told us that she could not keep teenagers and the next day my sister and I were separated,” said the foster youth, who ended up in a group home shortly after.

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Young Women's Project) Foster youth, Loretta Singletary, testifies.

Now, she lives in an Independent Living Program (ILP), where she’s been for the past two years. After dealing with gossiping counselors and not trusting the staff, Singletary’s ready to leave the system and get her own place when she turns 21 on Dec. 12, 2010. “Right now, I continue to save money in my bank account, work towards my high school diploma, research apartments in my budget and look for a part-time job,” said Singletary, who wants to be a Crime Scene Investigator. “When I turn 21 I want to be ready and follow my transition plan.”

But some service providers say that’s easier said than done. “Transitioning into adulthood is not something you…accomplish over six months,” said Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit that provides free legal services to children and families and foster caregivers in the District of Columbia. She added that it’s an ongoing process that requires supportive relationships involving capable adults for a smoother transition.

To hear T’Kara Plater put it, her adult life came sooner than she expected. Before she entered the system two years ago, the 18-year-old was responsible for raising her brothers and sisters. Since then, Plater recalled her experiences in the foster care system as something “one cannot imagine.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Young Women's Project) Foster youth, T'Kara Plater, testifies.

What she didn’t have to imagine were arguments with staff members, having her freedom restricted, her stuff used without permission and her belongings stolen with no effort made to replace them. Her conclusion? “Some staff [members] are not trained properly to work with youth,” Plater said. “Things are hard enough as it is and I am still working around the fact that I am living in places with strangers.”

Having had it hard most of her life, Plater’s convinced she’ll survive once she ages out. But the will, alone, is not enough. Most youth leave the foster care system without the necessary knowledge, skills and supports to be self-sufficient, according to CFSA’s 2008 “Quality Improvement Administration Report.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Young Women's Project) Some advocates boasted that the event was the 'first-ever' youth-led hearing.

While 40 percent have their high school diploma and 10 percent are enrolled in college, the report showed that only 14 percent have all the necessary resources to support themselves once they’re discharged from the system. But Reid was determined not to be among those grim statistics.

After graduating from H.D. Woodson Senior High School last year, he earned a $50,000 scholarship with the help of his educational advocate at the District of Columbia College Access Program. Despite these efforts, Reid’s fall semester at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Md., was a rough one.

He said he spent that semester playing catch up since his social worker wasn’t there to help him when he got his books late. “Social workers are our guardians, and it is important that they stay in contact with us because they can’t support us if they don’t know us,” Reid said, adding that his educational advocate at CFSA has not been in touch with him. After community college, he plans to study art at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in D.C.

Council Member Wells and CFSA’s Executive Director Roque Gerald, Ph.D., tried to wrap their heads around the testimonies.  Addressing Gerald, the councilmember said, “I know that hearing some of these testimonies had to be disappointing to you.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Young Women's Project) Dr. Roque Gerald, executive director of the Child and Family Services Agency, speaks with his staff.

Gerald agreed, especially when he heard another part of Reid’s testimony. After unsuccessfully trying to contact his social worker, Reid forged her signature so he could take part in a college program.

Among the executive director’s list of proposed changes for his agency was an “outcome-practice model” that requires no decision be solely made by social workers.

When youth enter foster care, they have many separations, Wells noted. “They lose their connections to their family, to the community, to their siblings, to the last school they attended,” he continued. “They’ve had so many separations, and then to hear the agency continue with separations that are unplanned and not supported is very disappointing.”

To prevent that from happening in the future, Gerald proposed beefing up CFSA’s youth advisory board to give the agency advice on policies, on structure and ways that CFSA can improve and produce better outcomes.

Wells said they could start with their social workers’ supervisors. “I believe from some weaknesses [within CFSA] we’ve seen before that it’s a continuing indictment on your supervisors,” the councilmember said. “It’s a well-resourced agency, historically.” Wells added, “We have continuing concern about the lack of quality supervision at the agency.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Young Women's Project) Council Member Tommy Wells is assisted by Ravon Stewart and Trey Jones, youth staff of the Young Women's Project.

Sandalow, with the Children’s Law Center, and Holland, with the Sankofa Youth and Family Services, also had suggestions. For starters, CFSA could develop an array of services and supports that can be accessed for teenagers. The agency could also work to strengthen relationships between foster teens and the important adults in their lives.

There’s also the Adoption Reform Amendment Act of 2009, introduced by Councilmembers Wells, Michael Brown and Phil Mendelson, that would increase the financial assistance foster parents receive from the District to help with additional costs of raising a child.

Currently, DC’s adoption assistance ends when the child turns 18, while foster care assistance continues until the child turns 21. Under the new bill, adoption assistance would be extended until the child turns 21.  The bill would also extend assistance for another form of permanent placement known as guardianship, which is a form of legal custody for foster children.

These issues will be further examined at an oversight hearing scheduled for Feb. 17.

Meanwhile, Holland had a way of preventing frustration among foster youth who emancipate. “Youths who are 16 years and older,” she said, “should be taught measurable life skills and social skills to prepare them for moving forward.”

Kobie Nichols: The Wind Rider

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson) Kobie Nichols and his wife, Tyechia Thompson-Nichols

He’s organized film festivals, facilitated panels, got a novel-in-progress and recently staged a live reading of his screenplay while procuring a traveling art show. The 36-year-old’s also a sailor, and has done all those things outside of his day job.

But whether grinding at his nine-to-five or promoting his production company, Kobie Nichols will tell you he’s never off the clock.

In fact, the Richmond, Va.-native has been on the clock since he left his hometown for D.C. more than 10 years ago, after receiving a phone call from Eric Hudson, a childhood friend who had already relocated to the nation’s capital.

Nichols recalled Hudson’s question, “Yo, what you doing?” At the time, Nichols was a year out of school, having graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 1998. He was back in Richmond, working as a graphic designer for a pharmaceutical company. His contract would be up soon. Then afterwards? “Nothing,” Nichols told Hudson, who replied: “Yo, why don’t you move to D.C.”

It sounded like a good idea. Nichols would be closer to his then-3-year-old daughter, who lived with her mother in Maryland. And wasn’t D.C. where he ultimately wanted to live? he wondered. Hadn’t the city stolen his heart those undergrad years, when he watched Chocolate City’s finest strolling A&T’s campus? “We had a lot of Maryland and D.C. girls,” Nichols said, “and all of them were my favorite girls on campus.” So much so that Nichols and his friends had a Fab 5 list of “Maryland Chicks,” similar to Michigan’s Fab 5 list of top college basketball players. With his mind made up, Nichols told Hudson, “Cool!”

(PHOTO: Jefry Wright)

He was 26, when he came to D.C. in 1999. Three years later, he would be on a metro bus going to and from work, when he would pen the first draft of a screenplay about sex in D.C., a story loosely based on his experiences since his arrival. “I went to Bar Nun”—the lounge later called PUR—“a lot,” Nichols recalled. “There were just so many beautiful women around.”

That script, which he wrote the entire first draft of on legal pads, won’t have a title until its second draft. That title will come from Nichols browsing his bookcase and spotting Shel Silverstein’s “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O,” which would influence future versions of the script “Merser Piece Meets O.”

Screenwriting is a passion that goes back to Nichols’s childhood. With his mom working to make ends meet and his father living out-of-state, “TV and movies were my primary baby sitters,” Nichols said. “We always had cable, so HBO and Cinemax were my uncles.” But it wasn’t enough to just be passionate; he also had to learn the industry. In the process of creating an outline for his script in 2002, Nichols enrolled in a workshop at DCTV, a public access television station dedicated to building communities through telecommunications.

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson)

Since 1988, the member-based non-profit has allowed D.C. residents the opportunity to create and telecast their own shows for the local communities on cable television. That’s where Nichols learned TV production, which encompassed scriptwriting and technical skills such as stage lighting and operating a TV control room.

That’s where Nichols found a support group. “A place where I can talk to folks who were interested in the same things I’m doing,” Nichols said. That’s where he got an opportunity to produce a monthly TV show called Hot Topic with Marcus Jones and Krushea Starnes. DCTV also contracted Nichols to do sound for shows like More Room on the Outside, Most TV and YAP TV, where he’s script supervisor.

That collaborative approach is what Kimberly C. Gaines, Nichols’s friend of more than nine years, appreciated when they collaborated a year ago with Hari Jones on the traveling exhibition for the African-American Civil War Museum.

Jones, the curator, compiled the exhibit’s text from his lectures, the  first-hand accounts from military letters, Harper’s weekly, and information from the National Archives, according to a January 2009 post  on Gaines’s blog “Sondai: Tale of a Visual Goddess.” Nichols researched the images and assisted with the layout. “He’s quite the thinker,” she said. “He challenges those around him to do the same.”

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson)

When he enrolled at DCTV in 2002, Nichols founded Fresh Produce Entertainment Group (FPEG), a production company focused on providing “intimate views of urban life” through film, stage, and print media. Not long after, Nichols teamed up with Ayo Okunseinde, co-owner of Dissident Display Gallery in D.C.’s H Street corridor, and began a series of film festivals around D.C. called Fresh Produce Film Festival.

The first one took place in 2003. He and Okunseinde served wine, showed their films and opened the floor for comments and suggestions. Three more events followed at venues around the city including the former Blue Room (now Bourbon) in Adams Morgan. Submissions came from filmmakers in the city, around the country and overseas.  “It grew,” Nichols said. “We showed 12 films.” The last film festival was held at the Visions Bar Noir, an independent movie theater at the crossroads of the city’s Dupont Circle, Kalorama and Adams Morgan neighborhoods.

The theater, a redesign of the old Embassy Theater on Florida Avenue, opened its doors in May 2000. At the time, “We entered a marketplace when there wasn’t anything going on,” Visions president Andrew Frank told the Washington Post in a 2004 article. “We filled that specialty niche and revived it for a while at a time when the city was under-screened.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy of the42bus.blogspot.com)

But in 2002, the two-screen theater faced competition from newer, better-funded theaters that caught on and entered the niche marketplace of independent and art house movies, the Post reported. Among them were Landmark Theatres’ multi-screen Bethesda Row and E Street Cinema, Regal Theaters in Rockville, Loews Cineplex Georgetown, the American Film Institute Silver Theatre and the Avalon. The number of screens within a six-mile radius of Visions jumped from 89, in 2002, to more than 130.

Add to that the mounting debt, and the theater’s owners knew their days were numbered. After Vision’s final event, Nichols moved on to collaborate on other endeavors. His most ambitious among them was the staged reading of his script “Merser Piece Meets O,” inspired by “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O” by Shel Silverstein.

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Harper Collins)

In Silverstein’s story, a circular creature realizes one day it’s missing its wedge-shaped piece. So it sets out on an adventure to find it. Nichols, whose script — loosely based on his life — started out as a story about a guy addicted to sex in D.C., saw the potential for improvements in his script. Nichols saw his main character, Merser, through his sexual escapades, also searching for something to complete him.

But if you ask Nichols who’s the big O or the missing piece he’ll smile, consider your question, and then tell you: “It’s all about perception.” To the women in Mercer’s life, he was the big O only because they were in pieces. But Merser was in pieces too. Oya, the woman Merser chases, is named after the Yoruba goddess for change. She’s Mercer’s big O.

The script, itself, works as a commentary on dating. “The conversation about relationships is interesting,” Nichols said. “A lot of people are looking for something specific in relationships when they need to look for themselves” first.

The script went through several edits, a process that took Nichols seven years to get it to the version staged Nov. 20, 2009, at the Goethe-Intitut/German Cultural Center near downtown Chinatown. Melani N. Douglass saw the entire process. “I feel like I saw sketches of this play go from a thought to a draft to the stage,” said Douglass, Nichols’s friend of more than seven years.

(PHOTO: Pete Taylor)

That process was possible because of sponsors such Carafe Wines in Alexandria, Va., and Universal Flowers. Others included Dr. Eleanor Traylor at Howard University, Lorraine Brown, Diane Brander and Nichols’s mom.

Douglass jumped at the opportunity to play Xi when another woman selected for the role couldn’t do it. The character Xi is one of Mercer’s love interests. Xi also represents energy and is the element for fire. (“Every time she comes into the scene something hot is going on,” Nichols said.) Douglass said, “I love what he did with that character. So I was excited.”

A major edit was when Nichols removed five sections from the first draft. “He keeps working at it,” Douglass said. “As a fellow artist, it was an honor to be a part of one of the stages of completion of this play.”

The night of the reading was a cold one. But that didn’t deter Hadiya Williams from being among the 80 people who packed out the auditorium in the Goethe-Institut. “The reading was excellent!” she posted on his Facebook page the next day. “The readers were great.”

With a review like that, why push the script to go on the big screen instead of a stage? “The energy of D.C. dictates that this be a movie that takes place on the streets of Washington, D.C.,” Nichols said. “That’s why I was specific about locations.” To put it on the stage, he added, would take away from what he wants his audience left with. “When people see it in a different city,” he said, they should “feel Washington, D.C.”

(PHOTO: Pete Taylor) Kobie Nichols with the ladies of his casts.

Williams had to appreciate that. “Thank you for the experience,” she said, “and much success on the next phase”—which includes Nichols introducing the screenplay in other cities through live readings. “One reading per city. I don’t want to over-saturate,” Nichols said. It’s enough if people are talking about it, which he hopes will keep it fresh. “I would rather them talk about it than keep seeing it.”

Nichols is also busy wrapping up a novel-in-progress he started back in Richmond. The story’s a speculative fiction about a guy who has three dimensions of living. The story chronicles the day of the guy’s death, from when he wakes to the time he’s killed. In each dimension, the guy – a prototype of Merser’s character – dies the same way, which alters the course of the character’s life. At the end, the main character remembers a conversation he had with God while in the womb. “We all have a path with God before we’re born,” Nichols said. That path determines “how our life plays out before we die.”

(PHOTO: Pete Taylor)

At the moment, Nichols is more alive than ever, especially after getting his sailor’s license in September 2009. “I have a strange love for water,” Nichols said. “I’ve always liked boats.”

After film, he said his next move is to offer the bed and breakfast experience on water, with boats at various ports around the world. Meanwhile, Nichols will settle for sailing his 19-foot boat, the “Flying Scott,” out at the Belle Haven Marina in Alexandria, Va., when the weather permits. He’s licensed to sail nationwide.

Considering Nichols’s journey to the person he’s become, perhaps his love of the water isn’t so strange after all. “I’m a where-the-wind-blows kind of guy,” he said. “That might be why I like sailing,” which has a rule, he added: “Know where your destination is first, then let the wind take you there.”

Nichols is riding an even bigger wind since that November night at the Goethe-Institut, when he watched his friends bring his characters to life. And to know that seven years worth of sweat equity wasn’t wasted, to see a dream on the verge of coming to fruition, could overwhelm anyone. “I don’t usually show my emotions,” the director said. “But that night, I was moved to tears.”

For updates, visit Kobie’s facebook page, myspace page and http://fpeg.com. Tune into “Hot Topics” on the web at http://youtube.com/hottopicsdc.

My $1,000 Dream

(PHOTO: insultyourbossday.com/howto/index.html)

Editor’s note: YouSayToo is ringing in 2010 by hosting holiday awards for the 10 coolest blog authors. Nine lucky bloggers will receive fun gifts of their choice and the first place winner will be rewarded with a $1,000 holiday dream gift! To enter your blogs in the awards all you need to do is add them to YouSayToo and write a Dream Gift post on them.

Five months ago, my $1,000 Holiday Dream Gift possibilities might have been limited to a laptop, a gift card for the movies, a bookstore or for Best Buy. But something happened one August day that changed everything, even those possibilities.

Prior to that day, I was a reporter at a newspaper in Baltimore for a little more than a year. The job was a stressful one, where I was overworked and underpaid, where I was going through the daily motions waiting for something better to come along. Too bad I didn’t know about YouSayToo’s Awards then. I really could have used a thousand dollars worth of groceries, or a gas card loaded with dough.

(PHOTO: Courtesy of yousaytoo.com)

Even YouSayToo’s fun gifts, like the USB Tulip Hubs, would have come in handy. The blooming garden of plastic tulips might have been enough to lift the mood of an employee that was borderline disgruntled. (One could never have enough high-speed ports.)

That August day, I felt I had won the $1,000 Holiday Dream Gift when I was laid off, collecting unemployment, trying to figure my future out. The process involved me starting a blog. Why should it win? Ask the people I’ve covered: a local woman struggling to become a soul singer, D.C.’s literary advocates imagining their world without books, and a Nigerian artist who shows both the local and national art scenes he’s a force to be reckoned with.

Or better yet just ask the people who visit my blog. “The quality is high and it’s enjoyable to read,” Martin Cameron Smith said in a comment posted on Oct. 24. “I like the young, creative, intellectual slant I’m sensing from the blog.” Kelli Garner, another reader, had this to say: “I enjoy this site; it is worth me coming back.”

Since that August day, I completed a poetry manuscript and participated in a big writing project for a literary journal. I also started considering switching career fields after jumping at an opportunity to teach creative writing in an afterschool program. Now the possibilities are endless, especially with me on my way to grad school. And I think it’s pretty clear how that $1,000 Holiday Dream Gift can be put to good use.

I did my part, writing those essays for grants and scholarships. But a cash award could help me get there, or at least cover the cost of books.

For more information, or to enter you blog in YouSayToo’s Awards, go to http://www.yousaytoo.com/awards?11009.

The B. B. Blues

(PHOTO: jillysblog.com)

At first sight it left me flabbergasted. There I was, 14 years old, examining myself in the full length mirror in my parents’ bedroom — trying to make sense of my body.

I thought only women — well, black women — could have these. So what was I doing with one? I shuddered watching the small of my back slope into a big booty, made even more prominent in the pair of jeans with elastic waistband that I was outgrowing.

Some might call this idle rambling, while others may call it something else. But I guess this is a tale of the Big Booty Blues and how, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the most prominent feature that once set me apart from the pack would become a valued asset. But I was too young to understand that then, and naïve enough to fall for anything.

Just the idea of what passes for manhood is enough to send a teenage boy cowering and calling for his momma to console him through those growing pains. It’s a period that got me to questioning things: How could I come to grips with the idea that my booty may grow to resemble those shaken by bikini-clad women in almost every rap music video? Or what does it mean that my big booty evokes a history of oppression and degradation?

In her essay, “Big Booty Beauty and the New Sexual Aesthetic,” Myra Mendible illustrates this point. “Buttocks have long been a source of cultural capital in the West, serving as emblems of sexual, racial, or ethnic difference,” writes Mendible, who teaches media and culture studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, where she also chairs the Literature and Languages Department.

(PHOTO: www.truthdig.com)

An example of this “cultural capital” was Saartjie ”Sarah” Baartman, who was born in 1789 of the Khoikhoi tribe in South Africa. Perhaps she’s better known as “Hottentot Venus,” who was exhibited as a sideshow attraction around Britain during the 19th century. These “shows” involved her entertaining people by gyrating her nude buttocks, what Europeans thought were highly unusual bodily features.

If that made her unusual, what did it make me? S. Pearl Sharp, whose commentaries and essays have been broadcast on National Public Radio, gave me an idea of the source of my discomfort. In her essay, “A Tail Tale,” she mentioned the European myth of black people — mostly women — having tails as an explanation for our big booties.

This propaganda came in the form of “trade cards” in the late 1800s and early 1900s. “The postcards, which used Black images to sell products, sometimes showed Blacks with tails going about the business of selling thread and gadgets,” Sharp writes. “You can see a tail sticking out of Negroes in drawings on some of the early popular sheet music.”

(PHOTO: img.timeinc.net)

And if this wasn’t enough, another form of irony surfaced as U.S. soldiers went abroad to fight both Nazism and racism during World War II. White soldiers were spreading rumors about their black counterparts having tails “in hopes that it would preclude European women’s natural attraction to the brothers,” Sharp writes. “Didn’t work. The veterans have revealed that some women would put soft pillows on the chairs so that the Black soldier’s tail would be comfortable.”

I was never rumored to have a tail, but like the Red-Nosed Reindeer, my prominent feature made me the subject of ridicule.

Rudolph was Santa’s ninth reindeer who was picked on by others in the pack for having an unusually red-colored nose that gave off its own light. It wasn’t until inclement weather almost threatened Santa’s chimney runs that Rudolph’s nose became significant. The light from his nose was powerful enough to illuminate the team’s path.

(PHOTO: arthur-jacob.com)

It wasn’t until college when my big booty became an asset in getting the attention of some sistas. According to Mendible, there are a range of terms that both affectionately and derogatorily refer to the butt. “’Booty’ holds the promise of illicit pleasures,” she writes. While “’Fanny’ desexualizes the…behind, turning it into a sweet but inconsequential body part.” She continues: “The command to ‘get off your fanny’ is less hostile than ‘get off your ass.’ A ‘tush’ is small and tight, a ‘rump’ is round and fleshy, a ‘can’ is fat and lazy.”

And that’s where I make the switch. While ‘booty’ “holds the promise of illicit pleasures,” I’m not one to boast about his moves in the bedroom. Since what I have is far from a “fanny,” a “tush,” or a “can,” it would be appropriate to say I have a “rump.” It’s what causes a group of women in passing to slow their strut, turn back and admire before giggling and whispering to one another as they go on their merry way. It’s also what’s grabbed in the heat of passion. Lurk the message boards long enough and the conversation is bound to pop up.

“Seriously, I love men who kinda have a big butt,” bobosensei, who describes herself as a 27-year-old woman, says in a post on freetrainers.com. “The guy I am seeing now has a big rear even though he’s in shape…. I love to see a pair of thighs hugging their pants more than a 6 pack on their tummy.”

On a forum at connectingsingles.com, Sommerauer71, of Austria, couldn’t agree more. “I hate bony, skinny arses, that are all flat,” she says in a post. She likes something “neat, looks fab in a pair of jeans and one of those you just want to grab all the time.” When a comment is made about fearing guys with big butts are well endowed in other places, tainogirl, who started the post, reassures her sistas that it could be a good thing. She says, “Can’t the poor man have a little extra junk in his trunk?”

I don’t know how I would have taken that question at 14.

Orphan of Silence: Charles Simic

 

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Philip Simic)

Editor’s Note: This essay was first published in the Fall 2009 issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly (thanks to Dan Vera for the invitation and opportunity to try my hand at an essay).

My first encounter with Charles Simic’s work wasn’t an introduction to the person. Prior to that encounter, his name seemed to be something that breathed and moved on its own—popping up in conversations with other writers, and making its appearances in various journals. It is also emblazoned on the spines of numerous collections of poems.

His first poems were published in 1959, when he was 21. His first full-length collection of poems, What the Grass Says, was published the following year. Since then he has published more than sixty books in the US and abroad, twenty titles of his own poetry among them. His poetry collections include That Little Something (2008), My Noiseless Entourage (2005), and Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), among others.

Simic is a recipient of several honors that include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1990, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1996, a Griffin Prize in 2005, and he was the 15th US Poet Laureate (2007-2008). Charles Simic reading at the National Book Festival. photo credit: Library of Congress I would later learn that Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The 71-year-old is also an essayist, translator, editor and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught for 34 years.

One might think, with Simic being such a prominent literary figure, that I should have come to his work much sooner than 2009. But the late Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Gyoryi defined discovery as an accident meeting a prepared mind. At the time of my accidental meeting with Simic’s work, I was browsing online journals, looking for places to submit my work when I came across Simic’s poem, “Doubles,” and was hooked.

Simic’s “deliberately simple structure and diction in his poems” as a way of presenting difficult subject matter is widely praised by critics. Among them was Librarian of Congress James Billington who described Simic’s work as a collection of “stunning and unusual imagery”: “He handles language with the skill of a master craftsman, yet his poems are easily accessible, often meditative and surprising.”

(PHOTO: http://www.nyu.edu)

In “Doubles,” the idea of humans “inhabited by an inner family of selves,” or having multiple personalities, is made accessible through his use of plain language. Through most of the poem, it’s clear that the speaker and the doubles are separate individuals. What Billington cited as the “flashes of ironic humor” in Simic’s work starts with the fifth line of the second stanza to the end, when the doubles become the speaker’s “many selves”:

The last time anyone saw me alive;
I was either wearing dark glasses
And reading the Bible on the subway,
Or crossing the street and laughing to myself.

Another example of Simic’s “ironic humor” is in his poem, “Eyes Fastened With Pins.” Defying easy categorization, some of his poems offer a surreal and metaphysical reflection while others offer grimly realistic portraits of violence and despair. Vernon Young, a Hudson Review contributor, noted that the common source of Simic’s poetry was memory:

Simic, a graduate of NYU, married and a father in pragmatic America,
turns, when he composes poems, to his unconscious and to earlier pools
of memory. Within microcosmic verses which may be impish, sardonic,
quasirealistic or utterly outrageous, he succinctly implies an historical
montage. His Yugoslavia is a peninsula of the mind…. He speaks by the
fable; his method is to transpose historical actuality into a surreal key
…. [Simic] feels the European yesterday on his pulses.

Simic once said, “Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.” Those experiences include his formative years spent in Belgrade. His family evacuated their home several times to escape indiscriminate bombing. The atmosphere of violence and desperation continued after the war. Simic’s father left the country for work in Italy, and his mother tried several times to follow, only to be turned back by authorities.

In a 1998 interview, Simic told the Cortland Review how those experiences affected his writing:

Being one of the millions of displaced persons made an impression on
me. In addition to my own little story of bad luck, I heard plenty of
others. I’m still amazed by all the vileness and stupidity I witnessed
in my life.

When he turned 15, Simic’s mother arranged for the family to travel to Paris. He spent a year there studying English in night school and attending French public schools during the day. Simic, along with his mother and brother, sailed for America and reunited with his father in the Oak Park suburb of Chicago, where he enrolled in high school. They lived there until 1958. Three years after, he was drafted into the US Army, and in 1966 he earned his Bachelor’s degree from New York University while working at night to cover the costs of tuition.

While Simic feels “the words never quite equal the experience behind them,” Tim Green, editor of Rattle, noted that poetry not only allows the reader to step into the poet’s shoes but also the poet’s body, mind, and moment in time. Green went as far as to define the craft as “an art of ventriloquism.” In that case, Simic and his readers work “symbiotically to create an acoustic and linguistic experience” every time his poems are read.

Eric Williams, an Artful Dodge contributor, observed the narrative thread that binds the images together in Simic’s work. He noted that the readers are hit with “a dazzling series of loosely connected images.” Often times the final line of Simic’s poems connect everything.

The Antioch Review’s Diana Engelmann noted the “dual voice” of Simic’s poetry that speaks both as an American and as an exile:

While it is true that the experiences of Charles Simic, the ‘American
poet,’ provide a uniquely cohesive force in his verse, it is also true that
the voices of the foreign and of the mother tongue memory still echo in
many poems. Simic’s poems convey the characteristic duality of exile:
they are at once authentic statements of the contemporary American
sensibility and vessels of internal translation, offering a passage to
what is silent and foreign.

Simic discussed his creative process in an interview on Artful Dodge:

When you start putting words on the page, an associative process takes over. And, all of a sudden, there are surprises. All of a sudden you say to yourself, ‘My God, how did this come into your head? Why is this on the page?’ I just simply go where it takes me.

Further Reading Online
http://timothy-green.org/blog/2009/06/why-tribute-african-americans/ http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/simic-charles http://www.enotalone.com/article/2256.html http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6290 http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/27 http://www.wooster.edu/ArtfulDodge/interviews/simic.htm

Charles Simic Bibliography
What the Grass Says, 1967
Somewhere Among Us a Stone is Taking Notes, 1969
Dismantling the Silence, 1971
White, 1972
Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk, 1974
Charon’s Cosmology, 1977
School for Dark Thoughts, 1978
Classic Ballroom Dances, 1980
Austerities, 1982
Weather Forecast for Utopia & Vicinity: Poems 1967-1982, 1983
Unending Blues, 1986
The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems, 1989
The Book of Gods and Devils, 1990
Hotel Insomnia, 1992
Dime-Store Alchemy, The Art of Joseph Cornell, 1993
A Wedding in Hell, 1994
Walking the Black Cat, 1996
Jackstraws, 1999
Night Picnic, 2001
A Fly in the Soup: Memoirs, 2002
The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems, 2003
Selected Poems, 1963-2003, 2004
My Noiseless Entourage, 2005
Aunt Lettuce, I want to Peek Under Your Skirt, 2005
Monkey Around, 2006
Sixty Poems, 2008
That Little Something, 2008
Monster Loves His Labyrinth, 2008

JAMA Study: H1N1 Hits Hard at All Ages (Reposted Article)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was sent to me by Sandy Close, executive director of New America Media. She requested that I repost this article, a study on the H1N1 virus, since the information could be beneficial to my readers. The original article was posted here.

JAMA Study: H1N1 Hits Hard at All Ages
New America Media, News Report, Paul Kleyman and Viji Sundaram, Posted: Nov 05, 2009

Evidently, the swine flu upholds an old American tradition, after all: It doesn’t discriminate by age — especially when it comes to death.

Previous reports suggesting that older H1N1 flu victims are less prone to severe outcomes than children and young adults have been called into question by a new report published November 3 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The article states, “In contrast with the common perception that pandemic 2009 influenza A (H1N1) infection causes only mild disease, hospitalization and death occurred at all ages, and up to 30 percent of hospitalized cases were severely ill.”

Although one-third of those hospitalized were ages 18 or younger, the authors write that people age 50 or older have the highest rate of death once hospitalized.

“What our study shows was that once you were hospitalized, if you were elderly, you have a higher risk of dying,” said Janice K. Louie, of the California Department of Public Health, Richmond, Calif. Louie study appears in JAMA.

Louie, and her fellow researchers examined the records of the first 1,088 hospitalized and fatal cases due to the pandemic in California. Although seven percent of this 18 or younger died after hospital admission, the death rate was 18-20 percent — about one in five — for hospitalized adults 50-plus. Overall the death rate was 11%, or one in nine.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the results of Louie’s study matches with one done by his agency. H1N1 affects all age groups, including those over 65.

“If they get it, it can be every bit as severe as seasonal flu, consistent with other data,” Frieden is quoted as saying at a news conference.

To avoid having apparently mild cases escalate into serious illness, Louie and her colleagues advise clinicians to closely monitor those 50 or older, who turn up with an flu-like symptoms regardless of initial results.

Once hospitalized, adults, especially those with potentially aggravated underlying conditions, “should be carefully monitored and treated promptly with antiviral agents.”

Interestingly, the authors noted that besides the usual risk factors, such as asthma, a new one appears evident among those hospitalized — obesity. They call for more study of this finding.

Findings of the new study do not change the CDC’s recommendation for vaccination, which focuses on younger people, those with such chronic conditions as asthma and pregnant women.

What they do suggest is that doctors should not dismiss the risks to older patients, said Frieden.

To contact Louie, call Michael Sicilia at 916-445-2108 or e-mail Michael.Sicilia@cdph.ca.gov.

CDC Encourages Flu Shots, Dispels Fears

(PHOTO: www.hsph.harvard.edu) H1N1 Virus

The copycat illnesses have ruined everything. To hear the health experts tell it, it’s almost impossible now for influenza to stand out in a crowd. A dry cough, a sore throat — even a runny nose — is not enough to get anyone’s attention anymore.

Those other illnesses got influenza down, copying its symptoms so the disease is mistaken for a common cold instead of life-threatening — until it’s too late.

Combined, the seasonal and 2009 H1N1 flu were responsible for thousands of U.S. deaths, while the number of those hospitalized were in the hundred thousands, according to representatives from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

To combat this trend, while encouraging mass vaccinations and debunking rumors about flu shots doing more harm than good, CDC representatives held a briefing  Thursday at D.C.’s Academy of Educational Development (AED) Center for Health Communication on Connecticut Avenue NW.

The briefing came almost a month ahead of National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW), which will take place Dec. 6-12. In its fourth year, NIVW is an annual joint effort among the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC, the National Influenza Vaccine Summit and other immunization partners.

(PHOTO: unknown)

During that week, local health departments, public health partners and providers are encouraged to enhace vaccine availability by scheduling additional clinics, extending clinic hours and facilitating mass vaccination in retail and other locations during NIVW and through the remainder of the influenza season, according to a CDC handout.

Thursday, a dozen reporters engaged in a roundtable discussion organized by New American Media to provide information to ethnic news media outlets. Topics ranged from the current extent of the H1N1 pandemic, to how H1N1 differs from the seasonal flu, to the vulnerable populations that should be vaccinated.“We notice that there continues to be increasing [seasonal and H1N1 flu] activity in the vast majority of the country,” said Dr. Inzune Kim Hwang, a chief preparedness officer for the CDC’s Influenza Division.

The seasonal flu claims an average of 36,000 American lives annually, while more than 200,000 are hospitalized from serious flu-related complications, according to recent data.

And unlike the seasonal flu, the H1N1 flu takes a heavier toll on the vulnerable populations, which consists of children and pregnant women. Since its detection in April 2009, H1N1 was responsible for more than 600 U.S. deaths. Of those fatalities, 60 were children and 28 were pregnant women.

Dr. Tyra Bryant-Stephens, medical director of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), noted that both the seasonal and H1N1 flu hits children in urban areas the hardest, affecting 25 percent of asthmatic youths in those areas. “They’re two to three times more likely to get hospitalized,” she said.

Dr. Hwang noted that more than 97 percent of all the viruses seen in laboratories are of the 2009 H1N1 subtype. But instead of creating a vaccine for those viral strains, the current H1N1 vaccine is for one strain, noted Alan Janssen, a health communication specialist at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Reparatory Diseases (NCIRD) Office of Health Communication.

(PHOTO: Dave Sandford/Getty Images) Quintin Laing #53 of the Washington Capitals enters the rink against the Toronto Maple Leafs during their NHL game at the Air Canada Centre January 23, 2008 in Toronto, Ontario.

There are also anti-viral drugs, such as the one used to treat Washington Capital left wing Quintin Laing. Thursday’s Washington Post reported that Laing’s recent diagnosis of H1N1 virus was confirmed by a team official Wednesday.

He was sent home Tuesday morning upon arriving at the team’s practice facility in Arlington, Va. and missed his first game of the season that night, according to reports.

A team spokesman told the Post that Laing, who’s been isolated from his wife and two infant sons, is taking anti-virus drug Tamiflu and resting. He won’t return to the team until he is symptom-free.

The CDC had posted guidance on how to use anti-viral drugs for treating influenza, noted Dr. Hwang. “The Tamiflu medication itself is a capsule-form,” he said. The treatment usually comes with ten capsules in a pack. “The normal way to treat is to treat one capsule twice a day for five days.”

If the symptoms persist or an individual continues to feel ill even at the end of that course, Dr. Hwange advised that they follow up with their health care provider to prevent the disease from becoming “a secondary bacterial infection,” or worst: some unusual form of influenza.

“The important thing to remember is that it shortens the course of the disease, but it’s not a ‘cure’ for the disease,” Dr. Bryant-Stevens said. “So we do try to use it judiciously.” She said the best course of action is vaccination.

There are about 30 million doses of H1N1 flu vaccine available for order, said Dr. Hwang who added that majority of them have been assigned to different states. “Roughly about 15 million doses have been delivered at this point,” he said.

On the issue of safety, experts said the vaccine is produced the same way as flu vaccines. “If this vaccine had shown up earlier, it probably would have been part of what we use for our seasonal flu shot,” Janssen said.

“It’s important to remember that the flu vaccine, right now, really is our only method of preventing bad outcomes,” Dr. Bryant-Stephens said. “Everywhere you look, there’s someone who would be affected by you getting the vaccine.”

Individuals who should not get the vaccine are those with severe (life-threatening) allergy to eggs, or to any other substance in the vaccine, according to the CDC. Those individuals are advised to inform the person giving the vaccine of any severe allergies.

Others who should not get the vaccine or should wait include:
-children younger than 2 and adults 50 years and older
-pregnant women
-anyone with a weakened immune system
-anyone with a long-term health problem such as heart disease, lung disease, asthma, kidney or liver disease, metabolic disease such as diabetes, anemia and other blood disorders.

For more information, call CDC at 1-800-232-4636. Visit the CDC online at www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu or www.cdc.gov/flu. Visit the web at www.flu.gov.

(PHOTO: www.slvhealth.org)

Green Tea: The Harvest

The scene is nighttime. A woman struts down D.C.’s U Street, ready for a night out on the town. Everything about her exudes feistiness.  Every bit of that spunk and spirit is in her thigh-high dress and wide shiny belt, her fishnet stockings and black leather jacket.

Even her auburn-colored blowout is flared in peacock fashion; her cranberry lipstick makes her mouth seem almost edible. And if this doesn’t entice you, the cameraman slows her strut so that she slides into each movement the way honey slides out a jar.

(PHOTO: Coutesy)

And that’s just the humble side of Takeah Scott, known to her fans as Green Tea. The singer has fellas outside the Chili Bowl snapping their necks. Inside a lounge, she flirts with guys at the bar and has each one, in succession, trying to woo her off a black leather couch. She does all this while singing the theme song, Crazy Feelin’, which seems to trail wherever she goes.

Can Scott’s other persona compete with Green Tea? As an advocate on behalf of D.C.’s youth, Scott seems to think Green Tea’s fire and thunder pales in comparison to her passion as a social worker. “Initially, what drew me [to social work] was I wanted to help families communicate better,” she says.

For almost six years, Scott’s helped adolescents communicate through play therapy, which uses the therapeutic powers of play to help adolescents prevent or resolve psychosocial challenges and enhance their growth and development.

This form of therapy usually involves children, ages 3 through 11, and provides a way for them to express their experiences and feelings through a process that’s natural, self-guided and self-healing. Since a child’s experiences and knowledge are often communicated through play, it becomes an important way for them to know and accept themselves and others, according to child therapy sources.

“I love adolescents. I think they’re the most misunderstood,” Scott says. Overall, “I’m a people person and I love helping people to communicate their thoughts.” She hopes to communicate on a broader platform, when she leaves the profession soon to pursue music full-time.

(PHOTO: Coutesy)

Growing up listening to the Clark Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald and Donny Hathaway, the Southeast D.C.-native recalled being 3 years old – standing on top of tables and singing into a spoon to entertain family members.

The rites of passage for most Black singers start in the church. Scott started out singing at the Blood Redeeming Church of God in D.C. before she set out to make a bigger name for herself locally. Like most artists, her rites of passage involved her hitting up open mikes, or “tilling the ground” as she calls it.

Michael F. Willingham Jr. (known as emcee yU) spotted Scott at an open mike one night nine years ago. It was at a U Street venue formerly known as Bar Nun and currently called Pur. Willingham was impressed. “I thought she had skills after seeing her perform,” the Suitland, Md.-based emcee recalled.

Those skills caught him by surprise. “I like how she’s kind of like a sleeper,” Willingham said, referring to her humility. “I didn’t think such a big presence would come from her.” One night, she stopped her performance to bring up Willingham to flow on a song with her. ”I thought it was generous of her,” he says.

Since that night nine years ago, the emcee says he’s seen a lot of growth in her work. “I never got to tell her face to face that I love the video she did with Roddy Rod,” Willingham says. “I wish her the best in all of her future endeavors.”

Scott continued tilling that ground by doing free shows and jumping at opportunities to sing whenever requested – all of this while working a day job as a social worker and a part-time job as a therapist.

A typical day for Scott is waking up at 6 a.m., going to her full-time job, and then her part-time job in the evenings. If she has a gig, she does it after her part-time job. If not, she hits the studio to record or brainstorm ideas for new songs. On the off days, she’s hanging out with her “superman.”

“It’s also difficult…when you’re trying to do so many things and you’re also in a relationship,” Scott says. “It’s hard work,” she adds, with a laugh. “That’s another job. Add that to the list.”

If there’s a lesson to be learned from her rites of passage, Scott says it’s protecting her brand and reputation. “Your gift can take you into places where your character can’t keep you,” a wise man once told her.

“There are artists who have been out in the game for a long time, but they don’t do well because their attitude,” Scott says. Of the process, she added: “You’re really just tilling the ground and your harvest will eventually come.”

(PHOTO: Coutesy)

Her harvest came with the 2005 release of her first album, Have a Cup of Green Tea Dosage I: Shades of Green. That year, she started singing professionally and met another local artist.

“Takeah is a very talented artist and performer,” says Terrence Cunningham, a singer and musician and songwriter living in Suitland, Md. Cunningham recalled meeting Scott four years ago at a show they were both billed to perform at. “Bright, exuberant” and “great performer” are some adjectives he used to describe Scott. Said Cunningham, “Be sure to look out for her.”

Another harvest came in 2008, when Scott released her second album, Dosage II: Choices. Unlike her first album, Scott says she had a plan this time. Aaron Abernathy, a singer and songwriter and vocal arranger who worked with Scott on the second album, agreed. “She knew what she wanted to do. She was prepared,” says the 26-year-old (known by his performance name “AB“), who recalled meeting Scott in late 2005, while gigging in the D.C. area. “She told me she was working on her second album and was looking for a certain type of feeling,” says Abernathy, now located in Los Angeles. “We just started recording together.”

On Dosages II: Choices, he did most of the vocal arrangements, wrote two songs and did a duet with Scott. “A lot of blood, sweat and tears, but it was a good process,” Abernathy says. On work ethic, he added: “We used to go [into the studio] for three-hour blocks. She would just knock songs out.” They knocked the album out in three months, doing studio sessions only on weekends.

Her plan for the second album was to target the east coast, doing shows in Virginia, D.C. and Baltimore, and build grassroots campaigns in those areas before branching out. So far, she’s performed in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Her plan also includes her working on a mixtape, “Beautiful Weirdos: The Outcast,” due out soon. Her upcoming performances include this Thursday at Peace and Cup of Joe in Baltimore, and Oct. 30 at Spirit of Faith Christian Center in Temple Hills, Md.

(PHOTO: Gypsy Soul Photography)

But tilling those grounds has not been an easy task for Scott as an independent artist. Some of the cons included her exerting time and energy to promote herself, and paying for everything. The task is even more difficult being a woman on the road. There’s the fact that “some people don’t take women seriously,” Scott says. “If you happen to have anything that appeals – you have breasts or a behind – people tend to look at that more so than the craft.”

Since she’s been on the road, Scott has had to deal with harassment from male fans trying to get her phone number after shows. During a performance, some guys even made gestures of holding their hearts and blowing kisses at her. “I’m like, ‘You guys are crazy,’” she recalled. “’Absolutely crazy.’” She’s also dealt with show promoters trying to take her out on dates instead of paying her. “No. You pay me,” Scott recalled saying.

But the pros make it all worthwhile, she says. “The liberty and freedom to be who you are, for you to experiment,” she says. “Your creative freedom…to change direction as you see fit for flexibility is also” worth it. She has her family and friends to help her overcome some of the cons.

Scott’s recent harvest included a performance at Eden’s Lounge in Baltimore and another one at the 4th Annual International Soul Music Summit (ISMS), from Sept. 24 – 27 in Atlanta.

The largest music conference in the world dedicated to the soul genre, the ISMS is a forum for the exchange of information relating to the business of soul music and a showcase for new and emerging Soul artists, according to soulmusicsummit.net.

Since the inaugural summit in 2006, the number of attendees has grown from more than 500 to more than 1,900 in 2008, according to the Web Site. This year’s summit included panels on artists, retail, radio, management, performance and consumers. It also featured live performances and concerts/acoustic jam sessions, a themed networking session, DJ parties, and unsigned artists showcases.

Additionally, the summit featured a fashion show, The Recognition & Homage Awards show, art gallery showcases and exclusive VIP parties with headlining artists. Rashaan Patterson, Dionne Farris, Jaguar Wright, Raphael Saddiq, Van Hunt, N’Dambi and Tony Rich are among the past notable guests who’ve attended the conference.

(PHOTO: Gypsy Soul Photography)

In a video of the Eric Roberson Show at this year’s summit, Scott wins over the crowd with her song, “Soul Connection.” 

Prior to singing that selection, she had a discussion with the crowd. She asked the crowd of mostly women if they’ve ever dated someone, thinking things were going right until the person showed them otherwise. The crowd yelled back: “That’s right!” and “You got it girl!”

Holding up a palm, Scott continued, “You do everything like you’re a couple, but really you’re in that gray area.” Scott paused for effect, then said, “Well, I got tired of being in the gray area.” And the crowd cheered.

A woman yelled out when Scott sang, “You can’t give it to me because we ain’t on the same page spiritually.” And as if the song summed up his experiences too, the cameraman shouted, “Sing it, girl!” The crowd was singing it too when they joined in on the chorus: ”I want a soul connection, connection, not a soul disconnect.”

Of the overall plan, the singer says it’s continuing to promote her albums and her brand anyway she can. ”I’m working hard to just get out there and branch out from the D.C., Baltimore and Virginia area,” Scott says. “I want to be locally known and internationally accepted.”

For more information on Green Tea, visit her online at myspace.com/greenteasoul and at A Diary of an Independent Artists on youtube.com/choctyde. Her CDs are available at cdbaby.com/greenteamusic2, iTunes and her shows.

Literary Advocates Redefine Their World Without Books

 

(PHOTO: www.umich.edu)

Looking up from a paperback, you notice the bookstore’s packed but no one’s reading or buying anything. Not the ladies blocking the aisle to the restrooms, laughing loud and talking to each other over bookcases. And, certainly, not the couple making out over in the poetry section. Those groups leave when a hostess calls them to be seated in the adjoining restaurant. They’re replaced by a group of guys taking their conversation from the bar to the bookstore and bringing their drinks along to be placed on those shelves.

And of all its purposes, one thing’s clear: books may function only as decorations for some people. But what if they ceased to exist, or never existed at all? No bookstores or libraries. No spot — and no way — for book fiends to cop a fix and nod off in literary stupors. That question has some writers, literary activists and advocates in D.C. redefining their world.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) E. Ethelbert Miller

“Without our literary legacy we would have to ‘dream’ a world,” said E. Ethelbert Miller, who chairs and serves on the boards of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and The Writer’s Center, respectively. Since 1974, he has been the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University. “I can’t imagine an educational institution like a college without books,” the poet and author said. Try imagining Islam without the Quran. “Impossible,” he said. Books help shape identity.

They shaped his while growing up in the South Bronx during the late 1950s and early 1960s. That period, known as the post-World War II era, was dominated by the “Beat Generation.” The literary movement formed in New York City around Columbia University and was established later in San Francisco. The term “beat” — according to various sources — “referred to the countercultural rhythm of the Jazz scene” and “to a sense of rebellion regarding the conservative stress of post-war society.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Abdul Ali

During that era, bookstores were popular places for writers and thinkers. Miller recalled spending Saturdays with his brother, hitting up bookstores in Greenwich Village. “We fail to understand that a bookstore is not simply where one goes to purchase a book — it’s also a place of community,” he said. Of the times now, he added, “We are a people in need of new literary guardians. The loss of our literary institutions is a victory of ignorance.”

That victory of ignorance once had people thinking the world was flat. Only through literature were they able to dismiss such a notion, said Abdul Ali, host of Poet’s Corner on WPFW. “Literature offers dimension to our imagination and records the evolution of our intellectual heritage,” he said. It’s also “a record of conversations that authors have with society since the beginning of presses.” Without books, he added, all of that is lost.

So why is something so significant taken for granted? “There are way too many things that compete with literature these days,” Ali said. “We’re seeing the consequences of this across the nation.” Recent data by the National Right to Read Foundation (NRRF), a literary advocacy group, showed that 42 million American adults are illiterate. About 50 million are not reading at fourth or fifth grade levels, and the number of functionally illiterate adults increases by about 2.25 million each year. “Our literate culture is deteriorating,” Ali said. He recalled a time when writers used literature to communicate to large populations. “Nowadays,” Ali added, “writers are just talking to other writers.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Casey Tesfaye

Casey Tesfaye, poet and senior research analyst at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Md., can’t imagine a world without her books. Her appreciation for them came when she went through what she called “a period of detox and transition” after completing a strenuous college program. “I used them as an escape from my thoughts and my life,” Tesfaye said. “At the time, I especially appreciated [Native American writer] Sherman Alexie’s dark novel, ‘Indian Killer.’”

To some folks, literary institutions are seen as “high-minded and made out to be distant or unavailable,” she said. Some people are put off by the idea and attitude of some artists and intellectuals that literature belongs to some and not others. “The word ‘literary,’ alone, evokes wine and slippers,” Tesfaye said. However, “The truth is that there is something out there within the literary world for everyone. There is something that can stir you, no matter who you are.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Brian Gilmore

Brian Gilmore, a public interest lawyer and poet and writer and columnist, has a different take on the idea of a world without books. “I don’t think our world will ever be without a literary legacy, I just think that legacy is evolving into something else based up on our development and our ability to communicate with each other differently now,” Gilmore said. Before books, there was an oral history that often included folklore, myths, songs and stories that were passed down from generations by word of mouth.

Both E. Ethelbert Miller and the poet Joel Dias-Porter (aka DJ Renegade) agreed that without books, the oral history would be one that’s strong and current.  “We might be more communal without the book,” Miller said. Dias-Porter added that people would have better memories. “There would still be stories and poems, they just wouldn’t be written down and would be a little harder to share across cultures,” the poet said. And what’s lost without books? “The ease with which information can be communicated, not just across physical space, but across time,” Dias-Porter said. “We know Chaucer’s work because it was preserved in a written form.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Joel Dias-Porter

And just like those oral histories were recorded in written form and printed inside of books, Gilmore said the way people communicate is ever-changing. Technology, he noted, is already forcing books to become something else. (Books and articles can be downloaded and read off electronic devices; and Google introduced its electronic reader, the Kindle, in 2007.) So, 100 years from now, will parents read to their children? the poet and columnist wonders. Or will that intimacy be lost with e-books and electronic readers? While there’s no way of knowing that, Gilmore said, “These are the kinds of technological issues that are before us that will change us but will also open up enormous possibilities for development and knowledge exchange.”

Randall Dottin: A Filmmaker’s Tale of Perseverance

(PHOTO: Courtesy)

If you asked him 30 years ago what he wanted to be, Randall Dottin would have said, “An actor like Bill Cosby.”

He would have told you he raced home after school every day to catch Cosby in old episodes of I Spy and The Electric Company, and how he even tried to catch him on the silver screen. “I really wanted to be an actor,” the 37-year-old says.

The Cambridge-native didn’t know then fate had a bigger plan for him — one that entailed him being behind a camera instead of in front of one. Dottin thought he was chasing a calling when he played the leading role in an elementary school play that was a version of The Gingerbread Man.

He thought he was chasing that calling in high school, when he traveled and performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland during the summer of 1988. Dottin, who was 15 at the time, didn’t know the open arts festival was the largest one of its kind.

Started in 1947, the festival continues to feature big names in showbiz and street performers, according to edfringe.com. It covers a range of art forms from theater, comedy, children’s shows and dance; to physical theater, musicals and operas; to all genres of music, exhibitions and events. In 2008, hundreds of groups participated in putting on more than 2,000 different shows with a total of more than 31,000 performances in 247 venues.

When Dottin attended that festival as part of a theatre group from St. Sebastian’s High School, he didn’t know it would change his life.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin, left, poses with his friends after their high school graduation in 1990.

At the festival, he saw a one-man show based on Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It was the first time he had heard of the Muslim minister, public speaker and human rights activist. In retrospect, Dottin says, “It’s so funny how a young Black kid” – from the U.S. – “goes to the UK and finally hears about Malcolm X.”

That moment was the second of many Dottin says developed his consciousness. The first was before that trip, when he came across an article on Spike Lee and August Wilson. While reading that article, he was struck by how prominent the two African-American men are in the arts.

With his 1986 film, She’s Gotta Have It, Lee’s credited for leading the new wave of young Black independent filmmakers “armed with audacious visions and fresh perspectives about black life,” writes Greg Braxton in a March 2008 article for the Los Angeles Times. These indie filmmakers included Robert Townsend, the Hughes brothers, Mario Van Peebles, Charles Burnett, Matty Rich and John Singleton. According to Braxton, “They created comedies and dramas barbed with sharp perspectives on race, class, social conditions and politics.”

August Wilson was a playwright, whose literary legacy is the ten-play series, known as The Pittsburgh Cycle. For that series he won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each play is set in a different decade, portraying both the comic and tragic aspects of the African Americans living through the 20th century. Nine of the plays are set in Pittsburgh’s African-American neighborhood, known as the Hill District.

Both Lee and Wilson were unapologetic about using the culture of their people in their works. The way they used it, Dottin recalls, “Was inclusive and not exclusive.” It became clear to him then what his calling was. Dottin wasn’t sure how he would do it but knew he was going to be an indie filmmaker.

His personal and artistic journey that started in the summer of 1988 took him to Dartmouth College, where he majored in film and graduated in 1994. It took him to Columbia University, where he completed his MFA in Film in 2003.

(PHOTO: images.businessweek.com)

At Dartmouth, Dottin won two awards for a play and a short film. He also scored an opportunity that took him to New York City, where he currently lives. Looking back, Dottin’s convinced fate had a hand in making things happen for him. As an undergrad, he was walking the halls of the college’s film department in 1993, when he spotted a billboard posting and jumped at the opportunity to intern at Spike Lee’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule.

Prior to offering the internship, Spike Lee struck a six-picture deal with Universal Studios, which resulted in the director opening a story development department to solicit scripts to be made into feature films. Cirri Nottage, a Dartmouth alum, was hired to head that department. She sent the notice that was posted on the billboard Dottin almost passed up on his way to class. Coming across Dottin’s application in the pile, Nottage read he had won a scriptwriting competition for his play, Hustle.

(PHOTO: Evan Sung for The New York Times) In Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a 1930s firehouse that has been converted into two duplex lofts was leased to Spike Lee and his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks for the past 22 years.

The play, currently being adapted for the screen, is about three generations of street ball players and the struggle to overcome the legacy of betrayal. The idea came out of a conversation Dottin and the play’s producers had about the absence of Black fathers and its effects in urban communities. “These young men are growing up without the guidance…and they’re forced to choose men in their communities to follow that are not really helping them grow and man-up,” Dottin says. They’re “not helping them learn about themselves or how to serve themselves, their families and communities.” In Hustle, the playground is where Black youths seek out their missing fathers. And while they might not find them there, the game, itself, becomes a surrogate with its rules and disciplines. On the court, they learn the game has costs and benefits. “When you play street ball, if you practice the game and become excellent, the game will come back to you,” Dottin says. “People of the community will give you the love that you may not experience at home.”

Impressed by this, Nottage invited Dottin to New York for an interview. He got the gig. It was the summer of 1993. Spike Lee was shooting Crooklyn at the time and was wrapping up the theatrical run of his other movie, Malcolm X.

As an intern, Dottin’s primary duties were to read scripts and run errands to the set of Crooklyn, where he watched daily shoots as a perk of the internship. Because of 40 Acres’ open submission policy, “Everybody was sending in scripts; people were even sending in handwritten scripts in hopes that Spike Lee would produce their movie,” Dottin recalls. There was even an extreme case when a guy called in, claiming to be chased by the mob. “I just need a little office where I can write this script that I know is going to be hot,” Dottin recalls the caller saying. “Do you think you could talk to Spike about getting me an office at 40 Acres and a Mule?’”

It was an experience Dottin enjoyed, and one that taught him a valuable lesson. “I saw a little bit of the pressure that was put on Spike Lee because he was the only African American consistently directing films at the time,” he says. “I saw a glimpse of that pressure and how he worked really hard to keep on making movies despite what the obstacles were.”

(PHOTO: blackclassicmovies.com)

Lee and several others from his generation were heirs to a tradition that predates them. “Race movies” was a film genre that existed in the U.S. between 1915 and 1950. The films were produced for an all-black audience and featured an all-Black casts. “These movies…provided employment for hundreds of underutilized talents languishing in servile roles in mainstream filmmaking,” writes Violet Glaze in a February 2006 article for the Baltimore City Paper. “Directors such as Oscar Micheaux took pains to reflect an African-American life more familiar and optimistic to the newly, or nearly, middle-class Black audience hungry to see their own on screen.”

At 40 Acres and a Mule, Dottin says he saw Lee continue that tradition by fighting for Black teamsters to drive some of the trucks and fighting with unions to make sure there were crew people of color. “I think because we’ve been so successful, we don’t really think about those battles that he fought,” Dottin says. “It’s a legacy that we need to understand lest we forget and things change.”

More than 20 years after Lee kicked down the door for his generation, Tyler Perry has emerged and established himself as a dominant voice. In his LA Times article, Braxton described Perry’s films as a “traditional formula of romantic, family-centered melodrama – spiced with over-the-top, insult-hurling characters.” But Perry’s popularity has sparked debates among Black filmmakers and observers. Among them was D’Angela Steed, one of the heads of Strange Fruit Media, who accused Hollywood of suffering from the Tyler Perry Syndrome. “We want to tell multidimensional stories with in-depth characters,” Steed told the Times. When her company pitched a made-for-TV drama to a cable network, she claimed their response was, “What’s the Tyler Perry version?” Her partner, Nia Hill, told the Times that the images Perry’s characters portray are too stereotypical to be taken lightly.

On the other side of that debate is Dottin. “The people who are really harsh critics of Tyler Perry…need to see the

(PHOTO: Christian Lantry / Corbis Outline) Born into poverty and raised in a household scarred by abuse, Tyler fought from a young age to find the strength, faith and perseverance that would later form the foundations of his much-acclaimed plays, films, books and shows, according to his bio at tylerperry.com.

bigger picture,” he says. “The bigger picture is that we’re focusing on Tyler Perry because Tyler Perry is the only consistent producer of Black films that we have, right now.” Dottin noted that Perry’s films speak to middle-aged, Black, church-going women – an audience Perry learned to connect with through the plays he produced before becoming a filmmaker.

Seeing validity to some of the criticisms, Dottin also challenged filmmakers who don’t like Perry’s films to make their own. To hear him tell it, he doesn’t allow himself to be affected by the so-called Tyler Perry Syndrome in Hollywood. “I realized throughout my study of independent filmmaking and filmmakers that Hollywood has never given anyone a chance,” says Dottin, who knew fate could only take him so far. “You got to go and take that shit.”

It’s that attitude that pushed Dottin to get his Columbia University MFA thesis film, A-ALIKE, out to the public when no one was rushing to give him a deal. A-ALIKE is the story of two brothers from opposite sides of the social spectrum. One brother is a corporate executive and the other brother is an ex-convict. The corporate executive picks up his brother from prison on the day of his release. “They haven’t seen each other in four years,” Dottin says. On their ride home, the story becomes more about the struggle of two brothers trying to reconcile their estrange relationship and to reconcile the choices they made in their lives and how those choices split them apart. “In the climax of the movie,” the filmmaker says, “they realize that despite the facts that they made choices that took them in different directions they realize how alike they are.” Because of that determination, Dottin’s film won numerous awards including the Director’s Guild of America Award for Best African-American Student Filmmaker, Best Short Film at the Roxbury Film Festival and the Gold Medal in the Narrative Category in the 2004 Student Academy. A-ALIKE placed second in the National Board Review of Motion Picture Award and was a finalist in the HBO Short Film Competition at the American Black Film Festival. Additionally, A-ALIKE was screened at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. The film was licensed for a two-year broadcast run by HBO in 2003.

(Flyer: Courtesy)

Columbia News, an online publication of Columbia University’s Office of Communication and Public Affairs, reported that Dottin’s film beat out more than 200 entries nationwide in the highly competitive narrative category at the 31st annual Student Academy Awards. “We are proud of Columbia’s record, which indicates pretty clearly how strong our filmmaking program has become,” Dan Kleinman, chairman of the School of the Arts Film Division, told the news service in 2004. “Congratulations to Randy, who is having a wonderful year and deserves all this recognition.”

That attitude of taking what Hollywood wouldn’t give him also got Dottin recruited by Fox Searchlab in 2004 after being honored by the Director’s Guild of America. The Searchlab is a program for emerging directors who sign a first look deal with Fox Searchlight when they enroll. They have a year to make a short that becomes an audition piece for Fox executives. If the short is successful, the filmmaker enters into a two-picture deal with the studio. Randall’s short film, LIFTED, was completed in the Winter of 2007.

LIFTED is a story of a young mother/dancer who wants to be the greatest dancer ever. She hasn’t had a job in five years since she’s been taking care of her son. One night, she goes out for the biggest audition of her life and fails. She attributes her failure to her raising her son – something she sees as a burden and distraction that hinders her from pursuing her dreams. The night of her failed audition, the mother abandons her son at a pizza shop. What ensues is an encounter between the mother and spiritual guardian on a subway platform. The spiritual guardian sets the mother straight. “The story is all about a woman struggling to regain her worth and to see that all of these experiences and people are in her life for a purpose,” Dottin says. LIFTED premiered at New York’s Schomburg Library for Research in Black Culture.

The filmmaker wasn’t deterred by setbacks he encountered while shooting LIFTED, a film that cost him $80,000 to make. “I built a $25,000 subway set on a soundstage in Connecticut; the same soundstage where they shot Amistad,” Dottin says. “We shot it and we were going to do some re-shooting, and the set burned to the ground.” With $25,000 literally up in smoke, the filmmaker had a choice: he could either fold up his bags and call it quits or rebuild the set and finish shooting. “I had to finish it,” Dottin says. “I had to get my movie done.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin, front left, poses with friends outside of Skywalker Sound before the premiere screening of LIFTED.

The perseverance paid off. LIFTED went on to screen at more than 30 film festivals and won 10 festival awards. The film continues to be requested for several screenings as an educational tool. Dottin has screened the film and led discussions at academic institutions such as Brooks Academy, Phillips Andover Academy and Noble and Greenough School in Massachusetts and Community Works, an arts in education program in New York City.

Dottin is currently at work on INDELIBLE, a story about a Black female scientist who races to find a cure for a rare disease that killed her husband and threatens to kill her son. The lead character has been engaged in a struggle with a corporate pharmaceutical industry to make drugs that save lives and make money. She runs head-on into the struggle when she realizes that her son is getting close to the age when he can contract this disease. The question for her becomes: Does she spend more time in the lab at the sacrifice of spending time with her son? or Does she spend more time with her son at the sacrifice of creating a cure for her son’s disease? “One way or another, when the disease becomes full-blown in her child, the disease will kill him,” says Dottin, who didn’t write the film. Instead, it was written by Mikki Del Monico and produced by Melanie Williams Oram.

The three of them recently won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundations $100,000 feature film grant. This award, given in conjunction with Columbia University will be used as seed money to start production on Dottin’s feature film debut as a director.

As part of his activism, Dottin founded and served as artistic director of Middle Passage Filmworks in 2001. The film production company strives to access and build on the cultural memory of the African Diaspora to create entertaining and empowering stories about people of color. “The best of our art taps both the spirits of our ancestors,” says Dottin, whose West Indian roots are through a grandfather from Barbados and a grandmother from Montserrat. Middle Passage Filmworks aims to join this tradition, using the lense of the African Diaspora to tell stories that touch everyone.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin poses with students, Cheleta Buddo and Sinede Rosales, at their graduation from the New York Film Academy in August.

Dottin currently teaches screenwriting, directing and acting at New York Film Academy. He also teaches for an arts in education program called “Making A Difference” as part of the community works organization. Through that program, he teaches at three New York City high schools – at PS241 in Central Harlem, he teaches digital photography; he teaches film at Mott Haven Village Prep High School in the Bronx and the High School for Math Science and Engineering on the campus of City College of New York. Dottin likened the classroom to a movie set because much like directors on a set, teachers are leaders of their classrooms. He notes that learning is a collaborative effort between teachers and students, just as it is between directors, their actors and crew.

At this point, Dottin’s students could be anyone looking to get into the film industry. His lesson for them? “You cannot take no for an answer…If you take no for an answer, that’s a sign of being mediocre,” says Dottin, whose recent honor by indieWIRE lets him know otherwise. In February, he was listed as one of the top ten new exciting voices in African American Cinema. “This game is hard enough,” Dottin says. “In the world of film, you cannot afford to be average or mediocre.”