Melba Tolliver, Accidental Anchorwoman: February 2013

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

History On Stage and Off

The 3R's---Race, Radicalism and Romance. It's all there in Dr. DuBois and Miss Ovington.
I watched this two character drama at the Castillo Theatre in Manhattan on Sunday on the cusp of Black History and Women's History Months. A black man, educator, human rights activist. And a white woman, Unitarian, granddaughter of abolitionists. The setting is the office of The Crisis magazine, publication of the NAACP which DuBois and Ovington helped found. The year is 1915.
Like two boxers, using words not fists, they jab and counter-punch, engage in two fights in one arena. They are political radicals, partners fighting for equal rights for all. It is the second more complex fight that puts them at odds. DuBois created The Crisis and insists that he alone should run it, or he will resign. Ovington, ardent admirer of DuBois, understands his resistance---a black man unwilling to answer to white superiors---yet she argues for compromise. Heat smolders between the two firebrands, but never goes beyond mild flirting. DuBois remains at The Crisis, for now.

Director, Gabrielle L. Kurlander and veteran Broadway actors, Peter jay Fernandez and Kathleen Chalfant make the most of playwright Clare Coss's innovative work.

Laura Blackburne, former NYS Supreme Court judge and The Crisis current publisher joined Woodie King, Jr, Black History Month Play Festival producer in a post-performance discussion.

Agnes Green, of WCBS Newradio 88, back in the day, and in the audience on Sunday, reminded me of some work we did together. Serving on the New York Association of Black Journalists (NYABJ) Media Watch Committee, with ABC News' Eric Tait, we created a local media bias survey that saw some light at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Maybe 1993? or '94? There must be a report buried in a file somewhere.

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Making Waves and Riding the Currents
When was the last time you heard a public official talk out loud about trying to make a living while also trying to feel that their work had meaning?

In his foreword to "Making Waves and Riding The Currents," Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration addresses this struggle. The foreword is reason enough to check out this book. Just as it should, Reich's foreword proves to be a perfect set up for author Charles Halpern's story.

A Yale trained lawyer, Halpern strayed from the prestigious law firm path and, with a small band of like-minded colleagues, stepped onto the uncommon road of social entrepreneur. Together, they created the nation's first public interest law firm (Center for Law and Social Policy) and one of the firt public interest law schools (City University of New York Law School).

We often take for granted some things that didn't exist until someone saw a need and invented them. A branch of law practice devoted to public service and social policy is such a thing. It's practitioners take on defense of the environment, challenges to irresponsible corporate behavior and mis-treatment of the mentally ill, among other issues.

I was moved by Halpern's commitment ---not just to this kind of law practice, but also by his thoughtful reflections on wisdom as a practice. It helps that he carefully distinguishes between being smart---that is well educated---and being wise. Wisdom, he writes, entails being grounded, reflective, insightful and compassionate.

Cultivating these qualities as a way of being, he says, is possible for all of us and will make us wiser.

Vibration Cooking
As I recall, Verta Mae's "Vibration Cooking or the travel notes of a geechee girl" was a sensation when it was published in 1970.

Sad to say, I neglected reading it then. But recently I spotted a copy in the most unlikely spot: on a featured reading display in the public library of Easton, PA. Not exactly the kind of place I would have thought amenable to featuring the writings of a Geechee girl! So much for my stereotyped thinking.

"Vibration Cooking"could just as easily have been titled, "The Audacity of a Self-Confident, Adventurous, Rule-Breaking Black Female When Writing a Predictable Recipe Book is Not Enuf."The book cover gives a clue.

Part travelogue, part cookbook, part memoir, "Vibration Cooking" is outrageous in its total disregard of the proper etiquette for cookbook writing. So, don't look for many precise measurements, orderly listings of ingredients, cooking temperatures or other familiar directions. With Verta Mae, you are mostly on your own if you have a taste for bar-b-qued gator tails or lamb loaf, though most dishes do have just enough how-to instructions.

Recipes aside, this book is fun reading. And it's liberating, if you're game and willing to trust your own vibe. After all, according to Verta Mae, who obviously set out to demolish the mystique surrounding the culinary arts, "Food is food. Everybody eats."

Outliers
"Outliers: The Story of Success" is the third fascinating book by Malcolm Gladwell. "Tipping Point" and "Blink" were his earlier ones.

"Outliers" opens with the story of Italian immigrants who come to the United States from Roseto Valfortore in 1882, eventually settle in eastern Pennsylvania and name their new place Roseto after their hometown in the old country.

I happened to have canvassed in Roseto last year for then-candidate Barack Obama in the run up to the general election. And believe me, Obama was a hard-sell in this close-knit community of Italian Catholics. More so, I thought, because when Rosetans answered my knock at their door, I would be there, me, a black woman trying to persuade them to vote for "the black guy", as Obama was often described to me.

Anyhow, in the opening of "Öutliers", Gladwell tells how Rosetans astonished medical researchers when a study found them to have an unusually low incidence of heart disease among their elderly. This in the 1950's when heart attacks were a leading cause of death among older Americans, men especially.

How could this be? Researchers had no answers. It wasn''t diet, or exercise, or genes, or anything they could put their fingers on. Roseto was an outlier, a place that lay outside the usual experience.

Rosetans were extraordinarily healthy, it was finally determined, because of their connections to each other--in short because of their bonds of culture and community. Not because of anything that could be traced to the individual.

In"Öutliers," Gladwell reveals other instances where success, under close examination, can be attributed to factors often overlooked when we simply rely on conventional wisdom. One example is the birth years shared by certain groups of successful people.

There were times, while reading this book, that I had to put it down. I was so filled with food for thought, that I needed time to savor and digest it. It's that kind of book. It will make you think about how we think about success...and more.