I do believe this blog will address either directly or indirectly...

---Photography. I have been taking pictures for a very long time, and in the last couple of years have begun taking wedding pics and portraits and soccer pix and landscape pix for people who give me money when I give them my pictures. I. Am. Having. The. Time. Of. My. Life with this newly developing creative expression. Every blog post will include at least one of my pictures, usually more, i.e., as many as I can tastefully cram onto the page.

---Writing. My kids once asked me if I had to choose between writing and photography, which would I choose. I refuse/d to answer. I have been writing as a way of expressing myself since I was 7. I have been a newspaper reporter, a columnist, a blogger and a wanna-be memoirist. I believe every time I put my fingers on the keyboard that an opportunity is before me. I not only love the craft, but the study of it.


---Food. My Lebanese great grandmother had two ovens and two fridges in her kitchen. I ate a lotta grape leaves and raw kibbeh in that kitchen. Add to this: New Orleans. Somewhere along the way, we left SC, where I was born, and we moved to New Orleans. What this means: I love to eat okra in my gumbo and plain yogurt on my fried chicken. And I love to cook it. And take pictures of it.

----Daily miracles. I'm not talking about fishes and loaves. I'm talking about saying yes to a bike ride because your husband asked you, even though your middle-aged knees hurt from yesterday's Latin dance class. And on this bike ride that you didn't really want to take, you encounter on either side of the breeze-blown springtime path, incredible, other-worldly wildflowers you didn't know existed on the planet. I'm talking about everyday daily miracles.

----The human connection. Besides dancing, I believe this, right here, is why we're here. This is what we're put here on Earth for, to say "Good morning" with special vigor to the grocery store clerk who looks like she's having a bad day; to give a piece of jewelry to a stranger because she's just told you she likes it; to stay on the cell phone, long distance, with a Blood Sister while she's having a uterine biopsy. Speaking of women:

----The Sisterhood. By this, I mean women and body image, women and the desire to break out of routine and long-standing rote, women and the power they hold if only they knew how much power. Specifically, I will very often address the aforementioned Blood Sisterhood (BS -- my three sisters, who were all borne of my wild-child Mama, who is an entry all on her own and who taught us about Soul Power way before we ever got to the City of New Orleans. Yeah, you rite:

----New Orleans. Music, food, culture, fire, flood, power and lack of power, people, love, birth and The Rebirth Jazz Band. "Ain't no party like a rebirth party, 'cause a rebirth party don't stop. Unh." This is the city where the aforementioned Mama moved us, when I was 17, from the South Carolina hills (where Mr. James Brown was born). This is the city and state I left when I was 26 after graduating from LSU. This is the city I return to at least once, sometimes four times, a year, because this is where I am most me.

----Motherhood, and the healing power of circular love.

----Therapy and living in the present while integrating a complicated past.

----Theology, philosophy and the never-ending search for Truth, post 60s-Catholic upbringing.

----Death and dying.


I'd like to say I will post daily. That's what the blogger gurus say you SHOULD do. You SHOULD post every day so that people get used to looking you up every day. Should? Should? I hate shoulds. But hm.

No such thing as coincidence

The last Thurs of every April, including this one in 2010, is Pay It Forward Day. The idea is that one person does a random nice thing for a stranger around noon EST on that day. The person tells the stranger: "Pay it forward," which means the stranger does something nice for somebody else. Pretty soon the planet is swarming with a bunch of really nice people.

I knew PIF Day was coming. But I forgot.

Meanwhile: Susan and I were driving up one street and down the other looking for a parking space near Jazz Fest on PIF day at noon. Up one street. Down the other. Up and down. Up and down. No parking spaces anywhere.

Suddenly, a man and his little boy appear in my peripheral vision outside my passenger window. "We're leaving this parking space here if you want it. Circle around the block. We won't move out of the spot til we see you wait."

I felt sure he was going to hold out his hand for money once we got around the block. But he just waved. We pulled in. Susan and I were euphoric. "I love it when stuff like that happens Don't you just love human beings?" We were both screaming.

So we get out of the car, and I have to go the bathroom before we head to the fest. We're in a poor part of town. JF is 15 minutes away. I spy this tiny medical clinic with, like, herpes information on the outside. I walk into this little space with my jazz fest dress and my bling all over, feeling richy-rich and entitled: It's Thursday, midweek, and these poor people can't go to the rich people's jazz fest.

"I'm sorry," I say sheepishly. "But is there any way I can use your restroom?" They wave me back. I go to the bathroom, then skulk back to the front to leave. Except one of the women motions me over. I thought, uh-oh, she's going to ask for money. Instead, "I love your ankle bracelet," she says. "Where'd you get it? Did it cost much?" I tell her I got it at Jazz Fest and that it didn't cost much at at all. Now this ankle bracelet is very special to me. I wear it to Afrian drumming gigs. I wore it to drumming when Brian, my friend and drum teacher who died six months ago was alive. And I wear it to my beloved JF. It has little bells on it and jingles when I walk. It's very bling-y. It's very meaningful.

I leaned down and took off the ankle bracelet and said, "Here. You have it." She was dumbfounded. Her mouth fell open. "No..., I can't." "Nope," I said. "You have it." I turned away, feeling like I was the one who was gifted. I walked outside and that's when I realized it was the hour of Pay It Forward. A whole bunch of us participated right there on that little half block in New Orleans, and we didn't even know it. That's the best kind of kindness of all.