Ode to Oprah – her humanness shines through

collage
2003

Recently I began watching the final episodes of Oprah, out of boredom. My love for Oprah had waned.  I used to love, love, love her magazine, but when it changed I didn’t love it. 

The backstory:  Ten years ago, I had a subscription and gave my friends’ subscriptions to O the magazine.  I couldn’t wait each month for the magazine to arrive in my mailbox.  I salivated over all of the columns and loved the “My Favorite Things pages”.

I loved the monthly calendar that was thematic with profound quotes from different authors related to the theme of the magazine.  I loved the colorful layouts.  I found Jo Malone perfume through the magazine, now one of my favorites.  There was also a photo of a beautiful place in the world.  I would use some of the magazine for collaging and making gifts for my friends.

I also enjoyed the magazine’s What I know for sure page. For me at that time in my life, it was like a little bit of therapy: helping me along on my path.

collage
2003

Then, there was a call for teachers for makeovers.  This excited me because I am a teacher.  But, I didn’t make it past the first email interview.  Maybe it was the dimensions of my body.  But it turned me off.  It felt personal to me, because I had been through such a hard time.  I needed to be acknowledged or better yet, pampered for a minute.  I care for people all day, everyday.  I am a caregiver personality.

I was surviving: the loss of my stepson’s mother, separating from his father with two young boys, getting on my feet financially, keeping the roof over our heads and a challenging work environment.

After that, the magazine changed, I didn’t like the changes and I stopped reading.  And I was no longer an Oprah fan. I just looked at the covers of her magazines in the grocery store, occasionally picking one up and glancing through one but that was it.

What I found when I watched the final episodes of Oprah was a moving portrait of a woman who showed her vulnerability, brilliance, humor and caring.  I was not prepared for how much my heart warmed toward her and her staff. 

Seeing the final episodes shows brought me an awareness of how some things are taken for granted, for example: The time – the hours and days, organization and preparation that went into making something be special and wonderful like her  TV show. She has an amazing staff that has cared about her and helped make her vision a reality. 

Watching right now, I saw something different, I saw this woman that I liked and that I would like to be friends with and have deep conversations about everything under the sun.

 I saw a woman who had worked hard, made sacrifices and was human and vulnerable. I fell in love with her.  It didn’t matter to me anymore about whether I liked her magazine or her show.  It mattered that she was a phenomenal woman.  She had a career that spanned 25 years and she was smart and shrewd enough to know when to stop. 

So to you Oprah:

You are a phenomenal woman, a brilliant caring person, I wish you well on your journey. I wish you some carefree relaxed days, unwinding and enjoying the beauty of the sunrise, sunset, the sweet scent of roses and the delicious twinkling of night skies. 

collage
2003

Thank you for all the inspiration you gave me in my life, all the pages of your magazine I tore out, collaged and used as daily reminders to get me through some tough spots.  Thank you and thank all the people on your staff that made inspiration available to me and lots of other women.

Schiapparelli, Haskell, Hollycraft – who doesn’t love vintage jewelry

A little silver and blue bug
20's? a beginning

It all started when I was a little girl, I am sure.  I was sometimes a girly girl.  I loved dresses, and frilly socks and purses and of course lipstick.  Still love the dresses and lipstick.

Among the many things I am: mother, teacher, artist, gym rat, funny, vintage connoisseur, poet -  a lover of jewelry is one of them.  I love old stuff.

I collect vintage pearl necklaces.  I like to buy them for a dollar in the second hand stores or flea markets.

I love old dresses, especially forties.  Although some fifties are good too.  I like the feel of the fabrics: the rayon’s, the cottons, and the cashmere sweaters. I like how worn and soft the fabrics are because they have been worn in.

In my twenties, I began collecting vintage pieces of jewelry from this shop in the Haight Asbury in San Francisco.  The woman who owned the shop was absolutely delightful, she chatted about each piece of jewelry(she loved the jewelry as well).  It started with a little silver and blue bug pin.  I asked did she do layaway and of course she did.  So every two weeks for over a year I paid her for pieces of jewelry.  It began with the silver pin and moved on to Schiapparelli earrings, Hollycraft earrings and more.

two Hollycraft bracelets
circa 1950's

  I was in heaven.  It was the highlight of my week to go into her shop and hang out with her and give her money toward my purchases.

 Then one weekend when I was in Los Angeles, I went into a dress shop in Beverly Hills looking around and found another very interesting woman selling vintage jewelry.  She had a Miriam Haskell necklace that is my favorite to this day.  It has big pearls and a brooch type shape in the middle with a rhinestone. 

I got this idea that maybe one day I would have a collection that could be shown in museum.  That hasn’t happened - yet.

The most delightful thing about these women was the information they knew about the vintage jewelry they sold and I could tell it was their passion.  I learned so much from them, details about the jewelry makers.  I learned about how Schiapparelli’s costume jewelry pre -ww2 was made by Schlumberger, the diamond jewelry guy.  Miriam Haskell made a lot of costume jewelry for movies. 

After having children, my vintage jewelry collecting took a backseat to collecting children’s books and toys and sports equipment. Actually, I kind of forgot about my jewelry collection for a long, long time. 

Recently, just for fun, I googled Schiapparelli and a necklace that looks like a necklace I owned popped up.  And I had to go into my jewelry box and look at my stuff and find the picture of me in the 1980's wearing the necklace on Christmas day.  

Me & my Schiapparelli necklace
1980's
Christmas Day

What I love are the colors, especially of the Hollycraft pieces. They look like candy. And to my artist's eye they are a feast of pinks and blues and violets and purples. 

I think what appeals to me about vintage jewelry is how elegant a piece can be. It reminds me of a more romantic time.

My new goal for myself is to pull out all that candy colored confection and bling when I can and wear it again.  Some of it is really delicate and I have to be careful, but some of it can take a little more wearing.

The Help – what is this really about?(my perspective)

Papillion -
butterfly of change
acrylic on wood
2008

This spring I read the new book by Kathryn Stockett titled the Help. About black maids and the white women they worked for.  The time of this story is sixties and in the south. 

A very emotionally charged time in history in the United States with civil rights action happening everywhere.

While I did not grow up in the south, my father’s family is from Louisiana.  My great grandmother worked as a domestic worker.  Reading the book felt painful to me.

Revisiting the treatment of black people in the south: the brutality, disrespect and horribleness – too much for me.

It made me want to cry. It still does. 

Back to the Help.  The story begins around the premise of putting a separate toilet outside, for the maid to use in the house she works.

I was prepared to not like the story.  I was prepared for the hatred the white women had for their black maids and the mean way they would treat them, even though they needed them to help with their children and their homes.

Then the main heroine character appeared (the journalist).  I recognized her as some of the women I went to college with. Open minded, idealistic, aware of the plight of other races of people, she returned home from college aware that the small town she came from was full of inequity. And saw how her friends were treating the people that came into their homes (to make it better for them by cleaning, and caring for them) badly.  And thus a bargain was struck between the maid and the journalist. To tell the story of what being a domestic worker was like in the sixties in the south.

I guess my question is this: Why is this a pertinent story to tell? Again? Haven’t their been enough stories about race, racism, inequality, and class.  Will America ever move on from this? There are so many brilliant, black American women that have raised themselves up from abject poverty, fought against racism – where are their stories?  Where is Condoleeza Rice’s story, Rosa Parks story, where is Oprah’s story, where is the Johnson family story (Ebony magazine, Essence, Jet)? What about all of the successful writers, poets, painters, teachers, doctors, lawyers and business moguls?

My concern is that the Help perpetuates the stereotype of black women for a whole new class of women coming of age. 

I am curious to see how this movie is going to pan out. I am curious to see what response this movie will get from the masses.  What would be great would be if this could be used as a jumping point for conversations, open conversations about the inequity and inhumane treatment of people of color.

I don’t understand inhumane treatment of people, any people.  The holocaust, the wiping out of Native American people, slavery.  I actually don’t ever want to try to understand how one person could treat/injure or inflict an emotional or physical pain on another human being in the act of thinking they are better than them based on visual cues or religion or  (skin color, etc.).

In the end, this movie gives us another starting point for looking at ourselves. Seeing where our weakness is and healing it.  The Hollywood machine/entertainment industry machinations see this as a story worth telling.  Why? Besides making money what do they hope to get from this retelling of this aspect of American history? A period of time that was demoralizing, denigrating and heartbreaking.  Emmett Till comes to mind.  The people hosed by water for standing up for their rights to sit where they wanted, the people who had dogs turned on them, the bombings of the black churches.  The backdrop, the backstory to the Help overpowers it for me.  I see all of the other things that were going on at that time in history and I get dizzy and feel sick.

I am curious about other people's responses.

I have a dream that my four little children

 will one day live in a nation

where they will not be judged by

the color of their skin,

 but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Two Hundred and Six days - Clean eating, working out, livin' the life

When future archaeologists dig up

 the remains of California, they're going to find all 

of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment, 

and they're going to assume 

that we were a culture obsessed with torture.

- Doug Coupland

It has been 206 days since I began my journey to clean up my eating habits. 206 days. That’s a lot. It’s more than half a year. I am amazed. I just counted out the days, I have been lax, just moving forward, maintaining the plan, even though this is my favorite time of year to eat.

I love the fresh summer fruits and would eat them all day long if I could. Ripe peaches, lots of them, they smell so good, and plums as well. I love summer fruit and would begin my day with a piece and end my day with one.

 And popsicles. I love strawberry popsicles.  And can eat a whole box.

So I have learned restraint. I only have fruit or popsicles until 2 o’clock.  Then I am cut off. Actually I once got up at six in the morning to eat a popsicle. It was a little different so early in the morning, not sure I liked it.

I think my clothes fit differently now. I think my body feels differently now. I have been following rules to help it be healthy.

And working out a lot. I am feeling muscles in places I don’t think I had before.

Five pound weights are too light for me.  I am working with fifteens now. The twenty pound bar is too light for me, now I am accustomed to picking up a thirty or fourty pound bar.

The one thing I think I have found, discovered and hope to never let go off is my new found discipline. I want to roll it over to other areas of my life.

As with anything, beginning is easy, it is romantic and like a honeymoon.  Then the reality sets in, that a change or whatever it is must be continued to maintain progress. 

And then there are dog days, days when one really wants a pint of rice dream or a vegan cupcake or anything salty or some gummie bears.  I have learned to understand my food cravings and think about what I really am wanting.

I have used food for comfort.  To cover up emotions in situations where I didn’t feel strong enough to express my point of view. The physical sensation of over eating is powerful. It side tracks one from the emotional feelings.

I am grateful that I got this part of myself together.  This particular part of the journey hasn’t been fun for me. Two hundred and six days ago,  I looked in the mirror and realized what I saw didn’t reflect who I am.  Now I have to work on the part of me that let it be okay to be so out of shape and eat poorly.  I am going to start loving that part of myself.  I am going to start making sure I treat myself well.

~ If you don't do what's best for your body, 

you're the one who comes up on the short end. ~

Julius Irving

Caring About Babies and Families: LA Diaper Drive

"The road to success is not crowded. Because while most are looking for ways to take, the truly successful people are finding ways to give. With a giving attitude, every situation is an opportunity for success." 
- Unknown


I remember being 5 or 6 years old, living in Taiwan and seeing little half naked barefooted children, dirty, running around in the streets in packs.  I was on a bus, clean, fed, well dressed, shoes on my feet and headed to school. That memory has stayed with me my whole life. I was a young child. Our memories from when we are little stay with us stored in our brain. Some of these memories are stronger than others because they create a deep feeling in us.  Or we see something out of the ordinary for what our own personal experience is.

My adult life I have spent teaching children. Loving them, caring about the development of the students in my care.

I have raised my own two sons. Dedicated my time and energy to them growing and giving them all I could give.

Now that I have mostly accomplished that goal, my eyes began to turn to what I could do next.

I read an article about a woman Caroline Kunitz, a parent at my school, who with a partner had started LA Diaper Drive. Caroline and a friend started the LA Diaper drive to collect diapers and distribute them to organizations that support low income families.

I learned that women on public assistance cannot use food stamps to buy diapers for their babies and that these babies sometimes stay in the same diaper all day.

That broke my heart. These babies didn’t deserve that kind of beginning to their life here on this planet. No baby does.

And yet the system set up to support them (public assistance) was neglecting an important facet of having a very small child. Keeping their bottom clean. 

I couldn’t imagine not being able to buy diapers for my sons or anything else they required for their growth and development.  Not that they had silver spoons in their mouths or got everything they wanted. They didn’t.  But they were kept clean and fed everyday.

It should be a right not a luxury for every incoming human on this planet to have this basic care. For children to be well fed and kept clean.  To have diapers, medical care, dental care, vision care.  Children in my opinion should never be turned away from any doctor’s office.  And their mothers should have access to basic necessities for their children, diapers, clothing, food.

We can help each other. I donate some of my time to helping

other people less fortunate than myself ( I don’t have that much, but I have a heart and care).   I care about babies. 

 If we all do a little, it adds up to a lot.

Check out this:  diaperdrive.com

The Heart
watercolor on watercolor paper
2011

Someone asked the anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978), "What is the first sign you look for, to tell you of an ancient civilization?" The interviewer had in mind a tool or article of clothing. Ms. Mead surprised him by answering, a "healed femur". When someone breaks a femur, they can't survive to hunt, fish  or escape enemies unless they have help from someone else. Thus, a healed femur indicates that someone else helped that person, rather than abandoning them and saving themselves. Isn't that what we in philanthropy are all about? Healing femurs of one sort or another?


Art I am digging right now

Heart
recycled soda cans
2011

In June, I drove up to Palo Alto to pick up my son from his first year of college.  A feat in and of it’s self.  He returns home a young man. I have to fight the urge to restore life to what it was before he left, with me running around doing all the taking care of him.  He is in charge of his life now. And I really, really, really want to respect that. No mama’s boy here. 

When I go up there I always make time to visit the campus art museum.

At the Cantor Art Center, they had a show of contemporary

California artists:  Bob Arneson, Janet Fish, Nathan Olivera, Viola Frey, Alice Neel, Wayne Thiebaud and many more, Frank Stella. George Segal, Calder, Manuel Neri (my sculpture teacher at Davis),Roland Peterson (my painting teacher at Davis).

 For a few of the artists, there was a dvd that you could press to hear either the artist or someone talking about their work.

One such was on Alice Neel.  The person sharing about her work was someone who had sat for a portrait by her.  Their words struck me as profound.

She spoke of entering into a nonverbal dialogue with her subject.  One where for Alice the first brush stroke was the hardest, akin to where to begin.  And also about how the subject has agreed to let her probe, the subject has agreed to let her see what she is going to see.

 Because I have never done portraits where someone sits for me, I was intrigued by the idea of how it goes down.  What the process is like from the point of view of the painter.  Each painter has a style and way they think. Which is reflected in the outcome of the painting. 

I have always been envious of realistic painters.  The ones that can make their paintings look almost real and of painters that paint realistic portraits.  What skill, focus, technique and ability to use representational colors.  I couldn’t do it.  Wait.

I could do it if I wanted to.  But I don’t.  I like Jawlensky’s work, the colors, the craziness. 

What I like about painting with acrylic is if you don’t like it you just paint over it. And over it, until you like it. 

Back to the Alice Neel.  Being probed, choosing to let the painter see what they are going to see.  It’s like being naked.

Except you are not, but baring yourself for all of who you are to be seen, there is a vulnerableness.  But also the painter has a point of view of what they are thinking when they begin the work.

It so impresses me that I took notes to remember this.

When I paint, I paint what I am thinking about.  I am vulnerable.  I open myself to be understood or misunderstood. Definitely I am responding to the stimuli of my environment.  One day I may try my hand at representational painting, for now I will enjoy looking at it.

For copyright purposes, I could not put any images in this post of the afore mentioned artists, but google them.

What I know for sure - my version

Quan Yin statue
Ojai Foundation
 Goddess of Mercy and Compassion
Protector of woman and children

At the end of every issue of O by Oprah, she writes an article entitled What I know for sure. For me it was always thought provoking and deep, well thought out and well written.  It would inspire me to make it through another day sometimes when I was down.   She has discoursed about relationships, self, food, working out, listening, etc.

Today when I was driving to my summer job, which I just love, I realized I have things that I know for sure.

That I love children, and working with them, even when it’s hard.  That I love my son’s, even when they make me crazy.

That I love my life, even when it’s hard and I want to cry like a little girl.  That I love my life when it’s good and when it’s not good.

More so than not I try to make good choices, even when the good choices are hard.

For instance, 4 months ago or so, I made a change in my eating habits. Now I consider it my life style. It was hard in the beginning, I felt wobbly, unsure when I was just going to buckle to my food desires. I really want a cupcake still. But I stick with it.

I know for sure that the more organized I am in my life, the more smoothly things flow, so I get up earlier and prepare my meals for the day. I always stayed a step ahead of what was happening. 

I know for sure that I am a go the distance girl.  I don’t give in, even when the going is tough, but know when to surrender to a uncompromising situation.

Somehow I survived years of financial struggling. I don’t know how I did it, how I kept gas in my car, and food on the table on a nursery school teachers salary. Let alone the roof over our heads.  I wore a lot of flip flops and men’s white t-shirts.

I know that when I am calm, even when the waters are stormy and I am sure I am going to sink it turns out okay.

One thing I do to calm myself is go to the gym. Moving my body helps me get out of my head. I have a gym membership I can afford and it’s less expensive than therapy or physical therapy.

I know for sure I am a good person. When I get the rewards back on my staples card, I always give the portion I didn’t use to the next person in line. Why not!

Even when I disliked my son’s father I never denied him access to his children. Why! Our problems were with each other, not our children.  I decided to let them get old enough to decide on their relationship with him.

I dislike him less now, time has a way of eroding that which is no longer needed in the human heart and soul.

I have come to the realization that one thing I know for sure is that life is full of ups and downs. 

People have let me down, people have really helped me out, people have talked about me, people have given me accolades. Sometimes I feel unfocused and unsure.  I am afraid. But what I know for sure is that I am always going to help someone out, love a child that I have in any class I teach, value them for who they are, value the people in my life for who they are and hopefully laugh, a lot. 

A lot, a lot, a lot. 

It’s what gets me through when nothing else does.