African American Museum Revisited

I first visited the African American Museum last Christmas.  Although I’d spent most of my visit in the basement, which goes back in time as one rides the elevator down, I didn’t have enough time nor mental bandwidth to see the upstairs.

As much as I enjoyed and absorbed the information from the theme-inspired floors, I took very few pictures as a result.  I loved that the Funkadelic spaceship had an honored position. This was probably my favorite artifact in the music section although the music room itself, where we could order up a song through an interactive screen embedded into a table, was my favorite interactive.

This album cover spoke to me since I’d begun writing an essay for Veterans Day about how the phrase “We the American People” should be inclusive, yet in common practice, it exclusively means White people. What struck me most about this album cover was as much progress Black people have made, we’re still fighting some of the same battles.

This interactive, geared mostly toward kids, taught some Black Greek step moves.  I’d wanted my nephew to do more than watch his own outline move, but at least he tried it out.

And like my first visit, I was starving by the time we ate. My feeding was delayed because my sister wanted to see the special exhibit before eating: Oprah Winfrey. As if that exhibit was going somewhere! For some reason, she was too anxious to wait. I sucked it up and walked around with a growling stomach, too hungry to take any pictures. Even so, I enjoyed watching some of her earlier clips when she was a mere beat reporter who’d eventually become a self-made billionaire.

As soon as I hit the cafe, I made a beeline to get the gumbo. That was memorably the best dish I’d tasted the last time. I did my foraging quickly around that a la carte style cafeteria, so I could get a table and put the feedbag on. My sister split a brick of cornbread with me after she and my nephew finally arrived at the table.

At the time, my sister wanted me to tell her my favorite part of the visit. I know it sounds too vague to say “all of it” or “the fact that it exists.” Honestly, I enjoyed seeing myself reflected in history and that the torch has been passed on to my generation to continue the challenge of making positive contributions to society and passing the torch of progress to the next generation.

Sexiest Dictionary: New Colors

After nearly two months upon discovering that my set of 84 watercolor crayons didn’t match the picture on the front, I returned to the art store to purchase several browns, nearly black, nearly white and two shades of red. The same woman who’d helped me before, helped me again. She remembered me.  When she asked about how far off the picture on the box was from what was in the box, I replied, “If I only wanted to paint White people, then it would have been fine.” She nodded and said, “I know exactly what you mean.”

Once she finished checking me out at at the register, she then showed me where the watercolor paper was as well as the tracing paper.  I told her that I wanted to get an idea of the prices, so I could budget for it. In the meantime, I’m going to have a ball with my new colors, not just to paint people of color, but also expand hair and eye colors without having to obsess about mixing shades. I’m especially eager to render a dark-skinned Black without them looking unrealistically blue.

I loved how the contouring turned out on her backside and back of her knees.  The water didn’t turn out how I planned–like most of my painting dreams.

Again, I have to be careful not to elongate features. For some inexplicable reason, she looks armless. There’s some detail that I missed in the tracing and even with the picture printed out, I overlooked her arms, which were subtly shown in the original.

I watched a YouTube video on painting with watercolor crayons that stated these paintings will dry and, almost by magic, look so much better. That was certainly true for her face. His face, on the other hand…not enough magic in the world to salvage his face.

For my next challenge, I’m going to have blonds and gingers!

Mom’s Surprise 78th Birthday Party

One of my sisters orchestrated a sneaky-pants surprise birthday party for our mother. She chose to honor Mom’s 78th, versus her 80th, birthday just to throw Mom off the scent. I was in charge of making Mom’s powerpoint.

Mother Nature helped with the surprise. We’d originally planned to have Mom’s surprise party closer to her actual birthday in September, but Hurricane Florence blew that away.  Instead, we held it in November.

Fortunately, I live in a state where early voting is offered because I would’ve curtailed my visit in order to stand in line to vote. The biggest relief is that, taken out of my regular routine, I wasn’t inundated with local campaign ads. Yet, I couldn’t totally separate myself from politics since my family didn’t know about some of the egregious things certain politicians were doing. Yet, even worse than that, two of my friends, both women of color, had told me that they weren’t going to vote! One said that she was a Christian and God would take care of her. The other said she’d be content to let the chips fall where they may.

Of course that didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t go off on them at the time, but I didn’t forget. So, as we were heading down to NC en route to our hotel the day before the surprise birthday party, I asked my brother-in-law to stop so I could take a clear picture of one of the many cotton fields in bloom we’d passed along the way.

I texted this picture to both of my friends with a caption, which read, “Here’s your new workplace since you don’t vote!”

Once we reached the hotel, as anxious as I was to hit the room, I had to pause to take a picture of perhaps the only hotel joke I’ve ever seen.

The next morning, we had a fabulous breakfast and spent a couple of hours decorating the event place. One of the decorations was a deck of playing cards with Mom’s picture on it. As an avid pinochle player, Mom deserved to have her picture grade a deck of playing cards.

Mom arrived, thinking that she and Dad were attending someone else’s birthday party. I’m so happy that I caught her pointing her finger at someone, one of her infamous gestures.  We’d said “surprise” and the DJ played Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday to You” as she circulated around the room.

My sister, who’d masterminded the entire event, maintained such a high level of energy throughout the entire evening. 

Mom then greeted one of her nieces,

one of our godparents,

a cousin-in-law,

her “boyfriend,”

and other family members.

I recommended using Mom’s high school senior portrait, which most people initially thought was my other sister. Dad kept telling people, “I got her when she looked like that!” I didn’t dare tell him that she’d gotten him when he was a young man himself.

Since I’d missed several family reunions in a row on Mom’s side, I wanted to take a picture of some of my cousins.

Then I joined in the group picture, holding Mom’s portrait. When she saw that, Mom had to join in herself.

And of course my sisters and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a picture with Mom’s portrait.

One of the best blessings I have is that my parents are still alive, well and still together.  I love how they both joke that if the other one passes first, they wouldn’t remarry because they’re too old to retrain a new partner!

As we waited for the caterers to set up, different family and friends got on the mic to tell a funny story or even wish her well.

My brother-in-law missed a lot of the festivities because he had to go out and get a birthday cake since there was a miscommunication with the woman who was supposed to be in charge of the original cake.  Nonetheless, we made due with what he bought.

My parents opened the floor, dancing to “My Girl” by The Temptations.

Soon other couples joined them.

Wasn’t too long before all the line dances were played.

Once again, I risked having my “Black” card revoked since I didn’t dance because I don’t like line dances.

I didn’t even join in when they played the Electric Slide, which was the one I knew how to do.

The thing is, when I learned the Electric Slide, that was it for me. For life.

Then we had the requisite pictures: Mom with her grandkids.

Of course, Dad eventually got into the action.

My godparents posed with my parents.

Then I managed to capture a shot of my nieces with their father.

At the end of the party, before taking the gifts to the car, I snapped a picture of her gift table, which was a little deceptive since most of her cards where stored in the decorative box in the back of the table.

In the course of leaving, I discovered my niece’s steampunk hat that she bought at a costume shop when she should have been searching for birthday decorations for her grandmother. I, of course, had to pose with it. And my nephew, of course, had to photobomb.

Back at my parents’ home, Mom read through all her cards, while most of us were only truly interested in how much each card held. Although one of my cousins kept track of how much she collected on paper, I recounted the cash and put the bills in order. After putting it in an envelope, I ordered my mother to put it in a safe place then first thing Monday morning deposit it. Since we’re both Virgos, the conversation wasn’t necessary.

The next morning, we hit the road back to Virginia. While waiting for the others to finish up at the rest stop, we posed for pictures.

Our cousin suggested we get the tourist sign in a shot.

  • Since the tourism motto is “Virginia Is for Lovers,” I got the Love sign as well.

2018 Halloween

Halloween has long been my favorite holiday from childhood to adulthood unlike any other.  So when a friend suggested we go to one of the classic, interactive non-horror Halloween movies at my favorite movie theatre, I readily agreed. The theatre even provided a goodie bag to go along with the movie–very smart move. I wasn’t the least surprised that the goodie bag didn’t contain rice nor fine confetti.  Imagine the clean up!

With a third of my closet dedicated to costumes, I wasn’t the least bit pressed about being a particular character.  I just pulled together most of my Mad Hatter costume with the notable exception of the hat and the functional addition of my slick black raincoat.  Even though the theatre gave us newspapers, they also gave us water guns. I made sure to fill mine up with water since I wasn’t going to enter this water gun fight with a dry gun. That would be un-Texan.

I hadn’t seen this movie in such a long time that it was almost like seeing again for the first time, yet I’d seen it at least twice before. I’d really wanted to do the Time Warp, especially since we sat on the front row and didn’t have to travel far to dance. I got sidelined by my chicken wings that arrived a few minutes prior to that famous scene.

Despite the mostly young crowd, there were some of us who have remained young at heart and knew many of things to shout out at the screen. We’d had a talking to prior to the movie, which basically said don’t squirt or throw anything at the servers and don’t shout out continuously throughout the movie.

I’m so happy everyone participated without getting out of hand and since this was a musical, we sang along throughout the movie. This may become my new Halloween celebration tradition, especially when Halloween falls on a weeknight.

We the American People

“We the People,” “We the American People,” should be an inclusive phrase, but far too often is synonymous with “White People,” but it shouldn’t be an exclusive phrase, according to The Constitution of the United States. Some American People don’t acknowledge or fail to realize that The Constitution is both a historical and living document. It is not written upon stone, but rather hemp. Words written upon stone tablets are set in place. Hemp, however, is a plant product. As anyone with a green thumb can tell you, when you nurture your plants, they will grow and thrive, just like our Constitution, just like our country. The very reason our Constitution has amendments is so it can be changed through thoughtful process as we nurture our country for its continued growth and success.

Founded upon the notion of freedom yet, historically bound by the ties of discrimination by our founding fathers, who were not gods, but merely a reflection of the prejudices of their time. Over time, we’ve held truths to be self-evident that all people, inclusively, are created equal and deserve equal protection under the law.

What have the women and men of the armed forces fought for if not our constitutional rights? When we face injustice, We the American People, inclusively, have a right to protest peacefully, but for People of Color, the dominant narrative doesn’t want us to protest at all. There’s never a good time for us to protest.  It’s always too soon or somehow, ironically, unpatriotic. The American People, exclusively, only want People of Color to protest on our own time, and where no one can see nor hear us.

Even when we’re not protesting, but in the course of doing some everyday activity, People of Color may find ourselves immersed in an impromptu protest when suddenly accosted by a White person who sees the color of their skin as a badge of authority and permission to interrogate a Person of Color whose skin they see as probable cause. I’ll know that the dominant narrative is becoming a little less racist when the media starts questioning why a stranger thinks they have the authority to accost and interrogate any Person of Color who happens to cross their path.

I used to marvel how young people could hold such racist ideas as I would associate with an older person. Then I realized that was just me being an ageist. I also used to have this bias that “cultural inheritance” was this positive thing and that only uncultured people were racist, but that was me using a narrow definition of “culture.” The truth is, Grandma’s secret recipe for apple pie is passed down to the younger generations along with her racism.

One family tradition could be covering up racism like hastily tossing a beautiful thick throw rug over dog shit just before the guests arrive, then pretending that it no longer exists because it’s no longer seen, but the family knows it’s there because they pivot to avoid stepping in it. If a guest or friend, unaware of the family tradition, detects the stench of racism, they family is offended, embarrassed.

Why look at how clean this beautiful throw rug is! How dare you say it stinks. You must be smelling something else.

If the unaware accidently steps in racism, the family denies the experience. Why that’s just the way this throw rug is made. Ya’ll must make your throw rugs differently where you’re from, but why don’t you just stand over here if it’ll make you feel more comfortable?

So, we’re sidestepping shit, covering up shit, politely not talking about shit and surprise, surprise it doesn’t go away. The stench lingers because fresh shit’s applied every day. Growing and nurturing the products of racism with roots so deep, they extend back down to when one’s ancestors were immigrants to this land themselves. Or slaves.

All those multi-colored huddled masses wave after wave, seeking a better life in the land of opportunity. Hungry for a seat at the table, but they don’t come empty handed. They bring the flavors of their grandmother’s secret recipes to the pot luck. Remember back in the day when we used to kid ourselves that We the American People were one big melting pot? As any good cook will tell you, you can’t throw EVERYTHING into the pot and expect it to taste good. Some ingredients will clash.

What you can do is offer a variety of dishes on a buffet, then have a taste of different things. After all, isn’t variety the spice of life? But for every Epicurean, there’s always a meat and potato person who just loathes spicy food.

The question is: which one is more patriotic? The very manner in which you answer that question reveals how you view what it means to be We the American People. For example, on the surface, you may find it ridiculous to argue whether real chili has beans, but while in Texas, I’d advise you to say it doesn’t, which is in agreement with the Texas House Concurrent Resolution No. 18, 65thLegislature, Regular Session in 1977. If you want to go a step further, call it chili con carne, even if that’s the only Spanish you speak because for the ancestral Mexican women who created this dish, the border crossed them, not the other way around.

And yet…some people would become hotter than chili con carne at the mere suggestion that this is a Mexican dish rather than a Texan dish after all everyone knows Texas chili has no beans, which was resolved in legislature. And while we’re at it, let’s throw in a pinch of cultural appropriation and a dash of historical omissions, stir slowly from the bottom as it simmers with unacknowledged racism, sexism and any other –ism the PC detectives uncover because isn’t that the American way? We’re not going to acknowledge anything bad unless the pot boils over, or its contents gives us the shits or the shit hits the fan because that’s also the American way.

We the People, We the American People. Grateful for our freedom and to those who have sworn to defend our Constitution and fight enemies foreign and domestic. The very least We the American People can do to honor our veterans is contribute to and nurture a society worthy of their sacrifice.

Velma Mae’s 78th Birthday Celebration Powerpoint

For my mother’s 78th birthday, one of my sister’s thought it would be a great idea to have a surprise party.  She chose an off year to throw mom off the scent. My one and only role, other than showing up was to create a powerpoint. Of course there was a technology fail and I couldn’t get the laptop and projector to communicate!

Since the file was too big, I couldn’t even email it to people even though I did show it to a much smaller audience at my parents’ house after the surprise party by holding up the laptop. Fortunately, I could embed it into this blog. It may take up to 2 minutes to load because it includes audio files, but once it does, click “enable editing,” then view it in full screen mode to play it.

Enjoy!

Velma’s 78th Birthday Celebration

Sexiest Dictionary: Latest Round

Although I like the blending and contouring in “Contentious,” this guy’s chest remains undefined because the model in the picture was wearing a shirt. I have to develop a technique for painting an attractive man’s chest.

I realized after the fact that his head was too small.  In the picture I used, the guy wore a hat, which I didn’t want, but I inadvertently made his head too small in the process.  Her face was challenging to paint because it was too small for details and I used too much water for the given space.  Once I buy the inexpensive watercolor paper, no faces will be this small.

Her face was almost too small, but I made sure to use a damp brush rather than a wet brush for her face. I’d also traced her hand too large, but I slimmed it down to a more realistic size while painting. Yet, I like her blending and I can do something better with the tub water next time.

I love that this guy actually looks Asian. Too bad I messed up his pecks and the contouring on his lower abs look more like bruises.

The combination of the smallness of the tracing and fact I tried to create another brother without having an actual brown watercolor crayon, propelled me to buy the missing colors. I’ve grown so tired of trying to blend the right combinations of blues and orange, or yellow and purples to make brown. It’s going to be a sheer relief to paint people of color in a more straight forward way.

Alien Technology

If ever I were visited by aliens and they wanted to gift me some advanced technology, I’d ask for a device, which would allow me to unfuck up any situation. I realize that would be a large undertaking, at least to my Earthly intellect, but there are challenges that cannot be solved by 3D printing solutions.

How would that even work? On a very small scale, if you dropped your cell phone, causing the screen to crack, then the alien technology could simply reorder the molecules, restoring the screen back to its original wholeness. According to quantum physics, that could happen spontaneously, but the amount of energy it takes for broken material to become unbroken is so great that it doesn’t happen—outside of this alien technology, that is. Also, spontaneously unbreaking a cell phone screen violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which my fellow science geeks know as Entropy.

Entropy is the reason why it takes so much energy to clean up or organize anything, but making a mess is so easy to do! Some would even argue that you’re being one with the universe when you revel in disorganization since that’s the direction the universe tends toward naturally. Going from highly organized or low entropy to greatly disorganized or high entropy is the way of the universe.

Here’s an easier example. Take a standard 500-piece jigsaw puzzle freshly dumped out of the box.  Just a pile of pieces. Some are stacked on top of the others. Some are facing downward while others are facing upward and some incredible pieces are propped up on their skinny edges by other pieces. This symbolizes the highest entropy because it is the most random and disorganized.

And what do we humans do? Smooth out the pile into a single layer. Ensure all the pieces are turned upward. If we’re really good, we separate out the edges while we’re putting nonedges with similar pictures together. Then we get the edges all together and fill in the rest from the edges inward, more or less. Some of the most satisfying things about putting a jigsaw puzzle together is not merely the thrill of organizing something, but also the comfort of knowing that there’s one solution and we have the skill set to reach the goal. Absolutely no confusion.

Plus, jigsaw puzzle pieces, unlike human beings, don’t refuse to join together because they all look different. If those pieces had existential awareness, they’d know they’re meant to join together and make a picture. And they’d also know that no two pieces look exactly the same and yet they all have value in the solution of creating the overall puzzle.

But even with alien technology where would I begin? Mind control or mind erase? Would unfucking up the world start with taking all the pain that people have caused others and reversing the polarity? Would the world become a better place if all the pain that we caused one another instead directed itself back onto ourselves? Suddenly, the perpetrators would suffer for their own actions rather than their victims. Imagine THAT power dynamic. Valuing mutual cooperation to make the best world we could instead of trying to exclude one another as if we’re not all part of the same puzzle.

From the perspective of the aliens, viewing us from afar, how ridiculous does the Earthly jigsaw puzzle, which actively fights against itself, appear? A picture is never completed by a jigsaw puzzle that destroys other pieces. Would aliens reach out to the most empathetic among us and gift us with humanity-saving technology or would they instead just start by smoothing out the pieces?

Sexiest Dictionary: Contouring & Shading

This week’s painting challenge was to add contouring and shading, so I could possibly cure the facial paralysis my subjects had. I still used non-watercolor journal paper, which made blending rough and it wrinkled. Plus, I still hadn’t bought the watercolor crayon colors I needed: black, red, white, and brown.This was my first attempt at the new skill. I even hedged my bet by printing out the original picture. I was so happy with her expression and hairstyle. Having a visual aid worked so beautifully that I waited a few days to paint the others in order to print out the remaining pictures.

I should have known when I couldn’t attach the whole template file with the images to an email, that saving it to my google drive to print it out where I volunteered wouldn’t work either. I discovered that the hard way. With my printing lesson learned, I stopped being a halfass and divided up the word doc among 9 different email attachments to print in the business office at my apartment complex. In order to save both ink and paper, I printed out 2 pages per sheet. I managed to print out all the email attachments except for one cause there’s always at least one stopper, which in this case turned out to be low ink.

Nonetheless the effort was worth it. Even though this next painting didn’t contain a face, the contouring wouldn’t have looked this good without a visual aid.

Once again, I screwed up when trying to paint a black person. The blending of the crayons looked so good before I added water to it. What I finally learned, thanks to this painting, was that blue needed far more respect for its ability to darken. I’d meant it for shading and contouring, but it just overpowered everything.

Somehow, with all the tracing and visual guidance, I managed to take the sexy out of this nude woman texting on her bed. The foreshortening failed as well as her elongated face. Yet the disaster known as her fingers distracted me more than anything else. Second time around, I’m definitely going to pay more attention to tracing and shading them.

Had I been paying attention, I would of traced the guy first. Her attitude was a little off because instead of focusing the features that would have captured her scowl, I was preoccupied with making her look like a black woman and fixing her nose. I pretty much surrendered and not in the spiritual growth way. His contouring was decent except the trace of her hair appears in his right shoulder.

Now, I got this black man right! Imagine how good he’s going to look when I have actual brown and black watercolor crayons. The dreadlocks need work, but otherwise, I loved how this guy turned out.

This was a terrific way to end the week.

Sexiest Dictionary Paintings: A New Approach

In the latest round of practicing my illustrating technique for the sexiest dictionary, I disassembled my home office. Totally worth the sacrifice.  I had no desire to sit at my work desk on the weekend. Instead, I relocated my work computer and monitor to the living room, so I could paint while the TV entertained me.

Since the monitor couldn’t reach the outlet, I used an extension cord. I doubled the cord and wrapped it up from the middle in order to have the two ends free.  To keep everything in place, I wrapped the bundle with one of the many pieces of cloth that live on the shelf in my closet.

Using a larger and different type of paper, I taped it to the monitor with all the other lights out, and quickly traced the outline. In order to be more efficient, I’m only going to disassemble my work station on the weekends since I’m not going to reassemble it until Sunday night.

As I predicted, better paper improves blending. The paper still wrinkled a little. And as I blended, the paper wore away.At least I didn’t make any holes.

Yet the most glaring critiques are the lack of contour shading and their facial expressions.  Their mouths are either too big or too small as if I don’t want them to speak the truth about their paralyzed faces or other inadequacies of my painting ability in this medium.

I’m going to be more mindful of those things moving forward. Also, as much as I’d like to save paper, I’m going to need to print out the images.  I don’t need them to be full size, but I need to look at the contouring and subtlety of their expressions. I don’t want to fool with signing into my laptop just to see the image.

Part of the excitement of doing projects like this is figuring out the cheapest and most efficient approach.  Since I volunteer at a film school/coworking space, one of the perks is that I have use of their color printer to help move my creative projects forward. I’m so grateful that I can barter my time for both film classes and administrative services.