Zoom: She Will Not Be Muted

Brooklyn & Ahwatukee. May 2020

I was assembling a cherry bourbon pie from Sister Pie when my Mom called me in need of Zoom.  She’s wants Zoom out of spite.  Not to connect with other people.  

The manager of the housing association in Ahwatukee Arizona is an idiot.  Said property manager will not unmute my mother when she uses the dial-in option only so my mother wants Zoom in an attempt to override that constraint.  

The next 10-15 minutes were spent on the phone together moving through together confusion about how to find Zoom and how to download and was it installing. 

Success.  No wait.  It’s gone.  It’s not.  I helped her find the Zoom software and pin it to the Windows taskbar.  

My parents are social distancing though Mom said Dad is bored and so he’s gone to the local YMCA to see if he’s comfortable with the setup enough to go back.  

“Is that okay?” I ask.  

“He mostly just does the treadmill.  He’ll be fine.”  

Will he?  He will.  

Why Ask If You Can Help Me When What You Want is to Scare Me?

Saturday April 5 2020 4:40 PM
165 Spencer Street at the corner of Willoughby in Brooklyn NY


A friend translated it...

    Tent of Leah
    [2nd line is Yiddish slang for women] 

I took this photo while out walking our dog, a cocker spaniel named Honey cause she looks like honey. (I went home and Google translated it.)The entrance doors are opaque mirrored.  A week ago, midday the Hassidic woman and children were picking up boxed meals from a folding table.  I took the photo.  It was Shabbat so it seemed like an okay time to be curious, suspicious.A man came out in full Hassid drag (yarmulke, curled sidelocks, under garment with fringe exposed, black vest, pants) and a face mask. He yelled after me.“HELLO. CAN I HELP YOU? DO YOU NEED SOMETHING?”I walked the dog up Spencer Street. “No I’m fine. Thanks."“IS THERE A PROBLEM?”“No. I’m good. Good. Thanks.”Honey stubbornly stopped to obsessively sniff something. “DO YOU NEED SOMETHING?”I yank the dog to be honest.  “No thank you. I’m fine.” I didn’t look back. Maybe he’s operating out of a protective purpose from his perspective that may have embedded into it centuries of trauma and suspicion.He was still a creep. And a bully!
[From my post walk, Google search: Bnos Square of Williamsburg is a School Based Child Care in BROOKLYN NY. The provider does not participate in a subsidized child care program. Pre-K. Categorized under Synagogues. Our records show it was established in 2006 and incorporated in New York. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of $656,171 and employs a staff of approximately 4.]

New Job / Curious but Good Circumstances

November 2019, NYC NY
I started working for the company(a)  that had a majority interest in the company I used to work for (b) and paid for the acquisition of the company I worked at before that (c).

That feels right.   

Someone Made a Big Mistake. Huge. HUGE.

Sorry I've been absent.  My current company bought the company that laid me off.  So now 85 of my former coworkers are my new coworkers and I'm a hero at my new job for my knowledge of my former job!  If I really stopped to think about it I'd get twisted.

Nap Rooms and Small Acts of Survival

I need to sit down for a bit, I said.

You know there’s a nap room? my friend replied.

Glorious!

I followed my friend thru a door down a short hall. Sharp left.  There is was.  A long and narrow room.  Four bean bags. Lighting not dim but not bright. The base beat from the main room of the club below came up thru the floor.  The brighter disco music from the bar down the halls permeated lightly as well.

Whoozy. I felt whoozy.  It wasn’t as bad as I’d worried it could be.  I laid down on the bean bag.  I thrashed about a bit first like our dog does sometimes before settling into a spot. I’m big. Six foot three and more than 200 pounds.  So the bean bag was disproportionate. I didn’t want to be greedy by taking more than one. 

This felt safe.  Like a place I could be for a while.  My molly was peaking.   Cresting. Overwhelming.  Why doesn’t every club have a nap room?!  I’d thought I’d thought that but I said it out loud.  I said it out loud many times that night.  Any many times after. 

Tonite will be different.  Tonite this whooziness will pass and I’ll stand up and rejoin the party. The party downstairs. Down the hall. Up on the roof.  I just need some time.  Some time in this nap room.

People rotated in a checked on me.  Sat on a corner of the bean bag and talked or just sat.  Other partiers came and went. Mummer mummer prattle tattle bahaha.  I closed my eyes and listened.

Do you want an Adderall?

YES! Please.  

My hope hoped that addy would be like a life preserver tossed out to me on a line.  The addy will pull be back to land and I will be able to stand without the whoosh and the whoozy and rejoin the party. 

And it did.  I did.  I leaned forward off the bean bag and my thighs and quads found my knees and my calves and my feet and I was upright again.  Sturdily standing I put one foot in front of the other and left the nap room.

August Wilson Wrote 10 Plays that Chronicle the 20th Century African-American Experience

This is a short piece I wrote about August Wilson Century Cycle published at Biography.com this week. Wilson wrote ten plays, each set in a different decade to tell collectively thru different stories the 20th century African-American experience in America.

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry's 'A Raisin in the Sun' as Black Activism

The first of my articles for Biography.com was published earlier this week.  The assignment was to 800-100 words on the artist (Lorraine Hansberry) and the work (A Raisin in the Sun) - the cultural and historical context and continuing legacy and relevance.

...The Younger family is waiting for a $10,000 life insurance check resulting from the father’s recent death. The windfall represents a kind of liberation to the family with the central conflict over how to spend the money...