Impatience is a hard thing

There is within us a sense of impatience when we want to see something done. It is not just for us but for those we take an interest in and care about. It fills the gap between now and the thing we want to happen. And when what we expect is thwarted, we feel a sense of loss with a keenness in direct proportion to the hope we held.

I cried when I heard of Whitney Houston's death last night - great, gulping sobs. Why did I cry? She was not my friend, she was not even an acquaintance. What she was to me was an inspiration - a face that I can put with every single turning point of my life and with early inspiration. Whitney and her songs were there with me when I was a pre-teen singing The Greatest Love of All and that line that I would sing over and over - no matter what they take from me - they can't take away my dignity! and Heartbreak Hotel the first time my heart was truly broken and I will always love you when I hoped for the first time for love. And My love is your love when I came face to face with my mortality. These songs shaped me, inspired me and the last one was the most powerful - I love the Lord, He heard my cry and pitied every groan. Long as I live, when troubles rise, I'll hasten to His call (I may have messed up the words but my deepest of hearts knows them). That song and that song alone ushered me into adulthood when I held so much hope and fear and wonder at my dreams and if I dared hope for them to come through. And when some died, that song cleansed me to see new hope born again by the grace of God. Her voice bore them all.

And my hope had been for her - that she would stay on the right track - that she would triumph again. I get when my friend, April says she is pissed. I think those tears were of anger and sorrow both - she never did rise again, not to the mountain she once stood tall on. A candle may burn twice but it never gives the same light both times. The same can be said of MJ. It seems to me that what I will take from this is not that life is short but opportunity knocks but once and then we make the most of it. And we soar then because we may never soar again. Life is a series of undulating waves that builds up to a crescendo and once we reach that highest of heights it recedes and ebbs. But glory does not end there - those waves become the shoulders on which others may stand as we pass on our knowledge, our wisdom, our hopes, our very drive to those that come after. That is a life fulfilled, that is a life complete.

Whitney came full circle - she got Bobbi Kristina to adulthood, she regained her passion for life, she left a destructive path and breathed free again - who are we to say she failed or fell short? She will always be my hero - for who she was, for who she became, for what she overcome and for what she left behind.

And to her I say, Thank you.

R.I.P Whitney Houston

Thorn in the flesh

So I read a devotion this morning on the thorn in the flesh chapter (2 Cor 12: 2-10) and it was interesting what Rick or is it Tony Warren said that throughout the bible when the word in Greek was used for thorn as a metaphor, it was usually for people who persecuted others. Interesting. I know this but still interesting. So that I might not be exalted for all the wondrous things revealed to me........interesting.
I did my PhD - people definitely kept me in my place. The JH's and ES's of this world were the constant thorns then the ones who steadily changed any initial opinion of me - the recruited thorns. I still feel the scars of the looks and the silent and not so silent accusations, of the undermining and ridiculing and palpable resentment. Someone once said when there is a common factor in different situations, that common factor must be me. And I think O gosh is it my personality - am I the one inviting this pain, this ostracization, this treatment. But a messenger of Satan - okay a little heavy for the blog but that is what Paul in Corinthians called it and I am using that analogy. A person for some reason that I cannot determine does not like me, does not trust me and impels others to do the same. Why?
Does it matter why? How do I respond?
So my work for my dissertation was on how the interaction of race and gender with our cortisol reactivity can produce increased weight gain one year later. So race and genger aggravate a person's cortisol response and most likely causes that person to gain more weight than they otherwise would have. Oh and this is especially in aggressive persons. Now I did not confirm this in my research but aggressive persons are usually the products of aggression. Someone hurts you so you hurt others. Where am I going with this? I want to broadcast my research. No seriously, I want to make a point and my point is this. I am a black woman. This alone has ramifications in this fine country. In the minds of one race which shall remain nameless, I am a second-class citizen. I am not to be trusted. So when I am questioned on my time sheets and my expense reports, and in one case I am outrightly accused of fudging my time and that there is no way someone can work that much overtime and that person is still skeptical even after explaining that yes I do work quite a bit of overtime that person is still of the opinion I did something wrong. SO I go to my boss and she somehow does not understand why I am coming to her about an issue that is so clearly not on her radar. Then there is the fact that no matter what work I do there is something wrong with it until management changes the project so much that it does not even resemble what I started working on. And then there is the fact that it is not often a question of if you did not explain it adequately but that it is I who do not understand what you said and then I think I must have stumbled into a bramble bush and I am covered in thorns.
God said My grace is sufficient for thee. God has given me the grace to deal with all this. He did it in grad school and He will do it here. And I will be glad in the fact that I know that no matter what happens, I will be blessed. Exactly when I need to be.
P.S. I was going to change the background color as I have been told it is oppressive but not today. Today I feel like my background - oppressed. Do a vote if you want it changed. I'm listening.

Maybe I shudda be a professor

Yes.......maybe I should have been a professor.......but then would I have these lovely experiences in the corporate world? It seems that no matter where you go, jobs are stressful. And I do not understand why.......I have come to the conclusion that people are the varying factor. This is not about lay-offs or pay cuts or wage freezes. Working is about people. Working is about working with people and to be successful in any job I believe we should all learn a little bit of psychology. Because psychology helps us to understand where people are coming from and why they act the way they do. Your best friend could be your boss but when they are at work with you all rules of friendship fly out the door. Why? Because they made need to impress somebody and that somebody ain't you.
Some days I come to work and I have a productive day and I ace my projects and everyone is happy and I look over the river and downtown Manhattan and I take a deep breath and I say ahhhh, I chose well. And some days I come to work and have a semi-productive day but a day in which I am yelled at and condescended to and clients call and act like (maybe I should not say that here) so I will be polite and say clients are demanding and then I wonder what the hell am I doing.
But I think I am having too much fun and I want to see this ride through and I still want to see if I am successful in this.....so I grin and bear it but empathy balanced with common sense still goes a long way. Oh and definitely using your head and praying a lot and staying calm. That is the key. I don't like to be pushed around but sometimes we have to live with the pushing and the shaking until one day we can push back and stand on the top of the heap and maybe then, just maybe, make the environment that you want to make for yourself in your job.
Or maybe just leave it all and live on a beach somewhere catching your own fish and picking fruit from your own fruit trees.................and being with your family.

Leaf on the Wind

I watched that movie Serenity - in one of the last scenes, the pilot charater is under extreme stress and fire and he keeps saying 'I am a leaf on the wind'. He lands safely and then something else kills him. But I choose to take away the positive - so that's my new mantra - I'm a leaf on the wind.
What a week! I hate going into a new week feeling alright I got this and then, bam - reality hits and hits hard. Why do we ever feel as if we are in control. We're never in control. All we can do is be a leaf in a wind and when faced with challenges become the tree that carries the leaf. So maybe I should correct myself. I am a tree. I bend in the wind but I never move. I am rooted. And I grow. (Hey I never claimed to be a philosopher - only a PhD) :-)
So this swine flu thing - hmmm. I don't know if it is media hype but I feel a little trepidation (read worried). I am a little worried that it attacks ppl in their prime and the immune system has a hyper-response to it - sounds like a pretty smart virus actually. I am a little worried about what I read today - that the true issue is that a more virulent strain can come along in a few months and be a whole lot more dangerous. The government is taking it seriously - probably more seriously than SARS and avian flu. That speaks volumes. Maybe they know something we don't.....either way, I am finally using hand sanitizer (I hate hand sanitizer - dries my hands and as a microbiologist - in the past anyway - I know that alcohol kills a lot of microbes that should be there on your hands and leaves you vulnerable until they take their sweet time to repopulate my hands). Ah well, one way or another, we gonna die but until that time comes, I will take precautions for me and my fellow man.
I thought I had a whole lot to say but apparently not.........so I'm out......maybe Saturday I will have some brain room to think enough for the blog. Until .......
I am a leaf on the wind!!!!!!! :-D

The Ivory Tower has cracks

No pun intended.......
So I decide to see what academia is saying about this professor and I come away with 3 WTF and 1 I'm not surprised. :-S
Here is the link so that you can see for yourself: http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=59810.0
Approximately 1/3 of the post express sympathies for the those involved. Of this one-third, 1/12 is purely sympathetic. The other 11/12 are mixed in with how does this look for academia. Of the 2/3 majority there is also an overwhelming how does this look for academia and concerns about how Fox News will portray academics. There is some snippiness about his endowment and a wonder of how his ACADEMIC background could have contributed. Therein lies my WTF. How about he was human and this was a human response. How about he had underlying psychological issues exacerbated by the stress of living up to an image every darn day? How about his wife actually dared cheat on him - how could she - after all I am an endowed professor - this must be punished. How about........dude was a marketing professor with a flair for the theatric - if I go down, I will go down big! How about it had absolutely nothing to do with academics and absolutely everything to do with a damn inflated sense of ego???
Dr.K's prayers and condolences and thoughts and sympathies go out to those two young children who will forever have to live with the stigma of seeing their father fall from the Ivory Tower like a flaming fire (cue Lord of the Rings: Return of the King) and to be motherless. May God send someone into their lives that will bring love stability and empathy so that they may recognize that this is not and never will be is or has been their fault.

The ivory tower does not equal Euphoria. UG Professor kills wife commentary

So on to this thing sticking in my craw - So by now everyone has heard of the University of Georgia professor that as CNN reported it.....shot his wife and prominent attorney; and a 63 year old guy....thus suggesting the possiblility of an affair between said attorney and wife then hinting the next day that the couple was having problems (the professor and wife). I was not at all surprised. Then someone on Facebook today makes the outrageous comment as to how could he have done that. He was an endowed professor, with an OUTSTANDING curriculum vitae. What happened? What happened my friend is that to become an endowed professor you have to forsake family and home. What happened is that the stress of becoming an endowed professor may have fed into disruption of his marriage. Seriously, how many happily married endowed professors are they except the ones who married their secretaries/students and other lap dogs who continue to look up at them like they are gods. There. I said it. I liken the Ivory tower to the Tower of Babel. It is yet another means of achieving god-like status. Nothing wrong with learning. In fact, I love learning. But learning narrowly to achieve high status is like not learning at all. A PhD is a degree of philosophy. A degree that is awarded when you learn to think. Not on just your subject but on life in itself. Galileo and Newton and all the other endowed professors of the past knew this but sadly it has been forgotton. So that a professor went off the deep end and killed his wife (purely objective - but she was probably cheating - men are territorial) and then has been smart enough to evade the police til now - that I attribute to his OUTSTANDING CV - dude has learned to think effectively. As to if his OUTSTANDING CV has anything to do with the fact that he killed his wife - yes. Dude obviously was arrogant enough to think he could get away with it. Why? Well he was an endowed professor and forever, ppl have been telling him how smart how great how wonderful how OUTSTANDING he is. Dude prolly believed the hype. Enough to awaken his inner psychopath. Maybe, just maybe, if we knocked down the damn Ivory Tower and stop putting these academics up on pedestals, we would stop judging them by their OUTSTANDING CV and instead see them as humans capable of falling and of failing. And now my craw is clean.

Follow-up on Funeral

I was planning on spending this day in quiet reflection and staying away from the blogging thing but someone said something that stick in my craw and have me itching to comment........
But first - the funeral was draining, as funerals of loved ones go.......I made a tribute to Sondra and I am glad I did - so I got to say goodbye......When I woke up this morning it was with tears in my eyes - I thought of Sondra and of course my mother was not far behind. For Sondra, I cannot believe she is gone and I miss her so much. I think since Mom died, I saw Sondra as one of those links - a person who knew what Mom stood for and what she was like and who was like her. I admit our correspondence in the last year was sketchy at best but when I was about to pack up and go home, i sought Sondra out in Brooklyn - it was early November and I was so discouraged because no one wanted to hire an immigrant like me. I was ready to face packing up and going home. Although I did not want to.......I always thought that Sondra was there when I needed her most, it was like that in grad school and now again with this very trying time. She sat me down and reminded me of my professional value, of my personality and how it would be welcome in any business. Most of all she said not to give up, that God had plans for me. Then she testified about He had been watching out for her. And I knew times were hard for her. Then we went to Norstrand in search of pudding and souse - I found cou-cou and she found oxtail. We were both happy. It was a good day. I will keep that day in mind because that day was essential Sondra, tempered by life and full of wisdom. I just pray that I can stand on the shoulders of these giants, my mother and Sondra, and be half the woman either of them became. As the priest said last night, it is not the quantity but the quality of years that we live. As Mommy used to say, no man knows the hour that he will be taken from this earth, all that is up to us is how we live up to that time. Moms and Sondra were true examples of that and I will follow on in the same vein.........