Brown Sugar January 15, 2008

In my aim to highlight the positive, I can’t but help but shine a light on West Oakland’s newest business, as in, open today, Brown Sugar Kitchen.  Saturday was my second chance to hang out with the chef/owner.  My first was completely random as I saw a party going on late one week night as I was driving by and decided to pop my head in.  I do these things because I always expect everything will turn out well. In this case I was right and I was welcomed like an old friend and sent home with the fixins.

It’s cross posted at Novometro, the website that everybody in Oakland is reading.

I’m an optimist January 11, 2008

but also a realist as well. So when the SF Chronicle came calling I said this. 

in requiem January 8, 2008

 

When Death Comes

       by Mary Oliver

When its over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. 

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.

 

 I learned that Steven Jimenez died in a simply worded email from Peggy Moore that said just that.

I’m not sure how the phone came to my ear and the ring to the receiver but there I was leaving her a frantic call me message.  Is this some kind of sick joke I thought? I mean the man was 52 and had you told me he was in his 40s I would have believed you.   It just didn’t make any sense.

A month ago he stood inches, not feet, inches from where I sit now, engaged in passionate political discourse with Kathy & Ritchie in this very spot and looking up with some of my spinach artichoke dip on bread in his hand saying “hey you’re a pretty good cook man” and then continuing his dialogue.  I knew he was a man of the world, engaged in a number of activities beyond our Rainbow Chamber to include the Jack London District Association, the Alameda County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Portabello Homeowner’s Association, in addition to being the managing partner of his law firm’s Oakland office.  

But wow.  That was just a part of who he was.  He was involved in so, so, so much that as someone who can hardly keep my head above water with my few activities, I am in awe.  

The speakers, thankfully noted his kids.  He always began a conversation with a “I was talking to my son, he’s…” or “well I was just talking to my daughter and…”  He was divorced from their mother and living about 100 miles from them and gay and super busy and I can’t assume his relationship with them but damn, I find it hard enough to be present on the phone for my round the country family, whom I cherish, and my boyfriend but this guy knew so much about what was going on in their lives.  And the church, the church was filled with people of all ethnicities.  It was beautiful.  And his best friend from the 9th grade is the Mayor of Antioch spoke with tears and truth, the founder of his firm spoke, on behalf of the Bar of the State of California another law partner spoke, the Chief of Staff from Senator Torlakson spoke while introducing the resolution about how she too knew him and his passionate advocacy and our own Peggy from Oakland spoke.  

In addition to the Mayor’s proclamation, she spoke about him being her “homie”, her “dawg” and that they talked every day and how they were going to take over the world.  It was very authentic, heartfelt.  It was very Oaklandish and I was proud.

Steven’s loss leaves Peggy & I and a disparate few to take up the mantle of the Rainbow Chamber.  Myself, I am unprepared and overwhelmed.  I am aware though, that I am the right path, at least with my life.

It is a path blazed by Steve Jimenez. When it ended he was wedded to amazement.  

He did not simply visit this world.

 

Wrapping our Wings Around Him January 7, 2008

 

“Take a look at this story about my kid,” I said as I tossed him page F3 from today’s Style Section. 

 

“Your kid?” my favorite San Antonian asked. 

 

“Yeah, Yeah, they’re all my kids” I replied. 

 

“This rapper from Oakland? What are you doing with rappers?” he asked incredulously just as he had when this childless adult said “my kid.” 

 

“Read the story,” I said. And you know the whole thing makes me beam just as a proud parent would beam.  I mean more than seeing my own mug on TV or picture in the paper, I really was so proud to see this young man blossom and get some recognition as well as re-styling.  I mean its never one thing in changing someone’s life and its never one person that makes it happen.  It really does take a village to raise a child and when your a kid of six being raised by a single parent in Oakland the prospects of “the village” getting involved haven’t looked that great. 

 

So D.Nok is doing it. And along the way, this kid who was a really rough youngster when he walked in the door, has had “wings wrapped around him, found a community that was a bit more dependable than his “pardners” on the street and really has grown into someone we can be proud of.   In addition to winning awards at NARAS, which is beyond phenomenal, I mean these are the people that produce the Grammys, you realize, D.Nok is now working at Juvenile Hall teaching other kids like him, where he was, about music in Juvenile Hall .He is taking his life’s example back juvenile hall so that kids learn new ways of living, new skills and make connections to real programs they re-enter society.

 

 This is a HUGE step because all too often young people from juvvie recycle back into “the system” because nothing on the inside has prepared them for a better way on the outside and so all they know, as shown to them by those on the street, is a way back into jail.  And in the process someone else has gotten ripped off/punkd/hurt/assaulted/killed.  If we can get these services to youth before they leave and D.Nok, not I, not Nancy Nadel, not Mayor Dellums, is doing it, then we can make great headway in losing these kids to being perpetrators or victims in the homicide statistics.

 

Additionally, D.Nok is an intern at CovRecords teaching other kids who haven’t gone that juvvie route and are filling their afternoon with something positive like making a CD of their own to hold as a point of pride. And leading the Village that wraps their wings around D.Nok, is Galen who hides in the background of it all but is really the leader in saving young lives from the street and helping the roll onto something quite larger, something like a makeover by Macy’s and acknowledgement by the National Recording Arts and Sciences Academy and a major piece in the Sunday Style section of the SF Chronicle.  Yeah, its work like this that makes it easy to get out of bed every day and provides the sustenance in knowing that you are part of a village that is changing lives one Oakland kid at a time.

 

Resolutions January 7, 2008

In the same vein as my resolutions, this post  sounds like another example of a good idea.

Good News abounds in Oakland January 4, 2008

I was so happy to see one of my collaborators and a great friend to the work of Covenant House Novometro get some attention in the local press. It’s ironic that a story in the Oakland Tribune sums it up that most newspapers have been cutting their local coverage and leaving people without information. It’s also telling that they say most newspapers are putting more stories online. Um, not to be mean or anything but there have been many a day I’ve missed their print version ”top story” because it doesn’t even make it in their online version.For more information go here.

Leadership January 3, 2008

The most recent issue of the Oakland Globe is out with my article on the front page.You can check it out here.

Happiness in the New Year January 2, 2008

And so here we are in the 2008!Happy New Year!I find the beginnings of the year to be particularly auspicious times even if the change is a human creation.  I’m not one for resolutions by I am one for personal resolve. Last year I made a commitment to write down what I ate and increase my exercise and I lost 30 pounds from January 1 to early April.  That was about ten pounds a month. Add on to that 2 marathons in ‘07, a new building for homeless kids in Oakland’s luxurious Jack London Square and dozens of mentions in the local press about my various efforts and I realized that truly anything is possible if you set an intention to it. The word Intention has been bandied about a bit more in recent years. PBS fixture and self help guru Dr. Wayne Dyer even wrote a book about it and its themes resonate in his work.    I’m a big Dyer fan.Somehow, this Dr./counselor unlike other popular “doctors” on TV doesn’t feel the need to yell at you and tell you how your “screwing up yer darn life” like other refugees from Oprah’s show. He is actually interested in healing and inspiring.I became an even bigger fan when I learned he was abandoned as a child and grew up in orphanages and foster care. Having dedicated my life to working with abandoned youth seeing how he has transformed his life is motivating to me when I see what he uses his life to do. And really, while a change in the calendar can be the motivating force for re-creating what one does with their life, it needn’t be the only thing. You can decide at any point that “this is it” and “this is what I will do now”.So it’s with this spirit that I am looking forward to 2008. For those inclined towards resolutions I’m partial to this list over at the Huffington Post. 

Mourning this Morning December 27, 2007

I want this site to be a retreat from “the awfulness” of the world but I must admit, I myself am having a hard time letting go of this one.  Benjamin Scott, a fellow Oakland community advocate drove me to see Benazir Bhutto speak in San Jose in 2003.  Bhutto was speaking to the annual lucncheon of the YWCA.  She was a mesmerizing force.  I had long been a fan since my geeky teenage days when I thought that everyone should start high school with a subscription to TIME magazine. I am just heartsick over her assasination. I was delighted to see her return to Pakistan this summer and with such pluck and determination as seen in this article.

Have yourself… December 27, 2007