The Y&R Generation

It was the first news article on my timeline the other day, and sadly because the source was TMZ, I feared it was not a hoax. And just as soon as I confirmed the news from another site, I posted an article along with my quick commentary about it being such a shock, then friends began to weigh in with their memories of having watched the actor Kristoff St. John on The Young and the Restless.

And I think I would have just left it alone with that Facebook post, but then I saw all of the mentions later on Twitter that lamented his loss only with respect to Y&R. Which, on the one hand, makes sense as he had been a fixture on that show since 1991. But on the other hand, St. John had been someone whose work I had known since my childhood. In fact, since our childhood because he literally grew up with my generation on camera.

Thus, the shock of his death feels personal, like we've lost a cousin that we used to play with when we were kids, hung out with as teenagers and maybe even as young adults, but once we got to that stage when paths diverge to make way for careers, children, and other pursuits, we only saw each other on special occasions. Like on those days when we're home from work and the channel just happens to be tuned around noon to Y&R.

Before I address the magnitude of his nearly 30 year role on that iconic show, I need to emphasize the point that St. John had a career before he joined that cast. He was a child actor whose first credited role was on That's My Mama in 1975. My first recollection of him was on Roots: The Next Generation as a young Alex Haley. He had other roles in TV movies and shows, including guest appearances on The Cosby Show and A Different World. By the time he starred on Generations, a short-lived but ground-breaking interracial soap opera, he was a show biz veteran.

Come to think of it, with the exception of Janet Jackson and Kim Fields (and maybe a few others), I don't recall that there have been too many well-known Black actors who successfully made the transition from childhood to adulthood on screen without serious issues. As far as I know, until the tragedy of his son's death a few years ago, St. John avoided the pitfalls of drug use and fast living. He was as straight an arrow as the character he portrayed on Y&R, Neil Winters.

As I read through the various tributes on social media, everyone recalled getting hooked on the soaps with their grandmothers, aunts, or older babysitters (for me it was my grandmother). Back then there were only three networks that aired soaps during the day, typically after the midday news and before the afternoon talk shows. Dedicated soap fans typically watched all of the shows that aired on one network, and my grandmother was a CBS fan, so that meant Y&R, As The World Turns, and Guiding Light. There were also at least two half-hour shows that I remember before The Bold and the Beautiful occupied that slot: Search for Tomorrow and Capitol. Over the years, I maintained my dedication to Grandma's shows, with some deviations, until I gave them up for good about fifteen years ago.

In one significant deviation, I began watching the ABC soaps (All My Children in particular) the summer that my older cousin babysat for us. That also happened to be the in the midst of the Angie and Jessie storyline, who were the first Black super couple on daytime TV. I eventually made my way back to Y&R, just in time for college and the introduction of a Black storyline that centered on a young man named Neil Winters. However, before Neil, there was Adam Marshall on Generations.

For anyone who watched these shows prior to the premier of Generations (with the aforementioned exception of Angie and Jessie), there were very few Black characters of significance on any show. Our grandmothers watched them faithfully, even when the only Black characters who appeared on screen were in the background or were the maids...which is typically how those younger Black characters were introduced. Generations was the first show to have a Black family prominently featured, even though my recollection and ultimate frustration with that show was its limited run and the Marshall family's very marginalized story.

Enter Neil Winters, who arrived in lily white Genoa City for a corporate job. And in 1991, with the paradox of companies being called upon to diversify their workplaces, while affirmative action in education and hiring was being litigated, his appearance was a big deal. He wasn't the mail clerk or the local street guy turned cop (like Nathan Hastings) being given a chance at redemption. He was a college educated Black man with an executive J-O-B...and he was fine!

Nowadays, Black characters are a dime a dozen on whatever soaps are left. Times have changed, with a range of daytime television options and a generation of kids whose grandmothers probably aren't available during the day anymore. Kristoff St. John was a pioneer, not just for that particular character, but for the era his character ushered in with respect to representation on television. Thus, his death is personal, because it isn't just Neil Winters who died (and I am sure the show will find a respectable way to deal with this, which means I may have to tune in for the next few days).

As I stated earlier, St. John was my contemporary, so the realities he dealt with in his personal life parallel where my peers and I are in life--marriages, children, career inertia, and tragedy, we can relate to it all. He managed to keep most of those personal struggles off camera until the loss of his grown son to suicide a few years ago. And that is perhaps the point where this catches me without the ability to adequately communicate just how unnerving the news of his death has been. For some of us, there might be that moment when the world becomes too much to bear...

Not too long ago, a friend and I were talking about the Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial, and she thought the moonwalking kid was Kristoff St. John (when it was really another former child actor contemporary of ours, Alfonso Ribeiro). She sent me this clip of St. John on a sketch segment from the Tony Orlando and Dawn Rainbow Hour called Lou Effy and Moreen and it became a great walk down memory lane. And that is how I need to remember him and us--in a simpler world and time when we still watched corny sketch shows and soap operas with Grandma.

Whose Child Is This?

This tweet appeared on my timeline and agitated my soul.

Whose child is this? To what ring of Hell has our society descended when someone's 22 year old daughter with no credit history thinks her opinion matters with respect to paying taxes and how that translates into someone else's salary? Some girl whose apparent job is to talk shit on social media believes she has more worth than the person whose job it is to prevent bombs from boarding airplanes with your emotional support animals. And then had the audacity to tweet that nonsense...while posing in that damn red hat.

That hat. The one that proclaims the exact opposite of what it states. Last week it was worn by that child at the Lincoln Memorial who insisted on his right to stare down a Native American Marine veteran. Then he convinces a national audience to sympathize with him because his class trip got ruined, so now he gets to return and visit the White House. Let my child touch a makeup display, and y'all get extra, but let some kid in that red hat goad folks into a needless confrontation and they will get a lawyer and a PR firm to justify their behavior.

Who do these insolent children think they are?

But this isn't just about those hats (even though that only intensifies my disgust). Nor is this another Black Mama rant about how my child would never be afforded the benefit of the doubt. Pointing out the double and triple standards of systematic inequality is an exercise in futility. Yet, I am going to say what I have to say anyway, because it must be said (even if it isn't heard):

YOU ARE RAISING YOUR CHILDREN TO BE ASSHOLES. 

ENTITLED, SELF-IMPORTANT, REMORSELESS ASSHOLES.

While the impact of the government shutdown was felt across the economic spectrum of the Washington area, the face of that disruption became the Black workers who were standing on food lines, not the white workers who were dipping into their IRA accounts. Both situations were frustrating examples of how people's real-life hardships had very little influence on lawmakers and Administration officials. Those visuals were all the more uncomfortable when it became clear that there was almost no sympathy for the people who were being forced to work without pay.

So the very idea that Little Miss MAGA felt entitled to suggest that anybody's job was to bow and scrape to the likes of her just stirred up all the antebellum rage I could contain. A similar kind of ire was provoked by Little Mr. MAGA, who wanted us to believe that he would have the right to stare down his Vietnam vet grandfather or great-uncle with that smug smirk. (And I know, Nathan Phillips was a problematic victim; I read the article and I'm sensitive to his misrepresentation issues. But he sure was swiftly and conveniently discredited...)

Maybe it is because we've seen this behavior before. We've seen the smug faces, the sense of entitlement, the disdain for the other. The indifference some people have expressed over children being separated from their parents at the border is the same indifference shown to slave families on the auction block. The same self-satisfied visage has been captured on the face of every lynch mob participant gathered around a smoldering body. Taunting crowds similarly harassed children who sought to integrate schools. So no Miss MAGA, we are not amused by your attempt to diminish TSA workers the same way people used to refer to all Pullman Porters as George.

These aren't kids being kids when they blatantly disrespect people of color with impunity. These are your bad eggs. God help you when those chickens come home to roost.

Fried Chicken Wednesday: The Oprah Turns 65!

I should know this date on general principle, and I should be ashamed that I was caught unprepared, but January 29 is a BBW National Holiday. The Oprah, our High Priestess/Fairy Godmother/BFF4L celebrates a milestone birthday and in honor of this auspicious occasion, I decided to provide a top ten list of favorite Oprah moments on the Facebook page. Then as an impulse, I decided to share this list here on the blog, just in time for a revival of our favorite midweek indulgence of fried chicken. In keeping with that theme, here are ten momentous events of her career--boneless chicken fingers served with a special sauce that only the Oprah can serve. 

1. You Get a Car!
Now that the federal government shutdown has been temporarily suspended...I decided to announce the details of my upcoming Busy Black Woman Gift Away (coming in February), so it seemed fitting to highlight this Oprah moment. Because this was Oprah at her Oprest--when she gave every member of her audience a car, for no reason other than their mere presence in the studio that day, and the fact that she was the Oprah:

2. The Wagon of Fat

Oprah's fluctuating weight was one of those constant topics that was integral to the success of her show. It made her seem like an every woman--someone who despite the appearance of success, had regular struggles. It was inconceivable that a public figure could gain weight without it having a negative impact on their career, except Oprah. It only seemed to endear her to her audience. So when she wheeled out that wagon of fat in her Calvin Klein jeans, it was a moment. Then when she gained it all back, we could all relate. Unfortunately, it became the fodder used against her by her detractors, like this skit on In Living Color (for which Kim Wayans later apologized). Her weight issues also contributed to the narrative that she was a modern-day Mammy figure.

While I don't have the capacity to unpack that historical baggage or to confront the sexism implicit in the ridicule Oprah has faced over her weight, let me just return to my initial point. Weight loss and self-esteem are ongoing struggles for most women, which makes her human.

3. The Legends Ball
I am eagerly awaiting the day when Oprah announces a Regular People Ball, but I guess that was the entire point of her talk show. Since I missed that, maybe I will get blessed with a chance to Live My Best Life one of these days, or better yet, maybe I'll get invited to her next Legends Ball instead.

4. Oprah adopts a Village of African Girls
In fact, Oprah did not adopt a village, but she did open a school in South Africa. But honestly, what's the difference?

 

5. Oprah adopts a College of African American Men
Again, Oprah did not adopt the entire student body, but Morehouse College has been the beneficiary of her philanthropy for 30 years. Here is the tribute the 415 scholars organized in her honor during the final season of her talk show (and I happen to know a couple of those brothers, so this makes me ugly cry too). #Payitforward #HBCUJustGive

6. Auntie Oprah at the Royal Wedding
Meghan Markle may have only had her mother, Doria Ragland, to represent her American family, but Auntie Oprah was there, so it all worked out.

7. Oprah's Theme Song
Depending on how old you were when the Oprah Winfrey Show aired, this was the Oprah music that you came home to. Later there was the saxophone version of I'm Every Woman, a Paul Simon 10th anniversary version, and then the Patti LaBelle version which were all perfectly fine. But then she got it in her head to sing her own song (with a video too)! My DC peeps should recognize this version, a cover by go-go royalty Rare Essence (you hit the big time whenever there is a go-go cover of your song.)

8. Beloved
If no one did it better than the Oprah, no one did it worst than her either. During the initial era of her book club, Oprah often introduced audiences to authors that were not in the mainstream, including such names as Pearl Cleage, Wally Lamb, Barbara Kingsolver, and James Frey. (And in a moment that could stand alone as one of the most painful, here is Frey, forever remembered as the author who had to publicly apologize to the Oprah for fabricating his memoir on her show).

Author Toni Morrison was a particular Oprah favorite, even though she was not an unknown and had won every major literature prize, including the Nobel. Nevertheless, the Oprah had decided to bring Morrison's Beloved to audiences in a film in 1998. In which she would star and produce and hand-select all of the cast. Now maybe that is an exaggeration, but it is true that the movie flopped.

So I have a few confessions to make about this book and movie, beginning with the fact that I, English major in college and daughter of a self-proclaimed Toni Morrison scholar, COULD NOT FINISH THIS BOOK. I haven't even tried since my first three or four attempts. I only saw this film once, and probably will never try again. Those are not necessarily statements about the book or the movie, but perhaps about me. So Please Oprah, don't make me apologize in front of an audience for not living up to your standards.

9. Gayle and Stedman

Oprah's success has meant that we have to tolerate her best friend, Gayle
King. It has meant that we got to tag along with them when they visited Colonial House. It has meant that we learned more about their relationship than we ever needed to know when they traveled across the country together. It has meant that we get treated to a monthly column of Gayle's favorite things in the magazine. Sigh.

In the alternative, we hardly know anything more about her beau, Stedman Graham, than we knew when they were engaged. So we have questions...and other than the occasional red carpet appearance or random detail that Oprah shares about their life together, we get nothing. Where Gayle has been TMI, Stedman has been MIA. This confounds me.

10. Oprah in Baltimore
I actually started this list on January 29, but I got busy doing what I do, and by midnight I was tired and hadn't actually decided on a tenth Oprah Moment. So I went to bed. This morning, as if the Oprah had herself come to me in a dream, I decided that my ultimate Oprah Moment was to be found in the era before she became The Oprah, which was her time in Baltimore.

I was a kid when Oprah Winfrey was on the local news in a city just up the road. Back in those days before cable, we could get Baltimore TV stations here in DC, but other than to see a repeat of a program that we may have missed, I don't actually know why we would have watched their local news. But we did, and in my memory, Oprah was the morning weather lady who later got a gig on a locally produced show called People Are Talking. Then at some point, she left for Chicago and the rest is history.

I have since learned that my memories were slightly off with respect to Oprah being the weather anchor. She was the cut-in reporter during the mornings, which is the person who provides local news updates during breaks from Today Show and Good Morning America. I was right about the talk show although I did not remember that she had a co-anchor. I feel as if we watched it because it was a Black woman on the air back in an era when that was a big deal. In DC, that person was Carol Randolph, who also had her own local talk show. (But in another instance of relying on my childhood memories, Randolph's show was cancelled and replaced by, wait for it--the original syndicated Oprah Winfrey Show!)

And that, Busy Black Folks is a wrap on this list, but I have one more Oprah Moment to share and it comes from the archives of this very blog. The year was 2011 and the Oprah Winfrey Show was winding down its 25th and final season. That was also the first year that I began writing this blog. In particular, there was this piece I wrote the week her show was about to end, which was the same week that my domain name went live. And then there was the recap of the final Oprah sermon which I forgot about...

Before I ramble on too much longer down this memory lane of past writings, (because surprise, I already did a version of this list back in 2011) the great thing about revisiting those old pieces and all of these Oprah Moments is the fact that I am still learning, evolving, and building this Busy Black Woman empire. To think that I almost gave up a few years ago, but here I am. And maybe there you are reading this in anticipation of what is next.

BBW Tea Party: Kamala Harris

"The perfect is the enemy of the good. The perfect is the enemy of the good. The perfect is the enemy of the good."

Say this mantra to yourself every morning after all of your other prayers and affirmations until Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Then turn on the news/read the paper/check your social media feed for any amount of time, absorb whatever nonsense has been unleashed by this POTUS, breathe slowly, and then repeat:

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Look (and I realize I am jumping in with both feet here by saying this in January 2019, but here goes everything): I am all in for Kamala Harris. PERIOD. I am comfortable putting that out into the universe until such time as the need arises for me to cast a ballot for someone else. But since we are speaking about a vote that I would presumably cast in June 2020, I am the Busy Black Woman and I approve this message.

I believe she is formidable. I believe she is well-qualified. I am inspired by her. I am ready to see this happen while my daughter is still young so that her earliest memory of a President is someone other than the Joker.

I don't have any issues with her record as a prosecutor.
I don't have any issues with her past with Willie Brown.
I don't have any issues with her being an AKA.
I don't have any issues with her non-Black husband.
I don't have any issues with her music playlists or viral dancing to Cardi B.
I don't have any issues with her not completing her first term as a Senator.
I don't have any issues with Kamala Harris running for President.

A Black woman who graduated from law school in the late 80s/early 90s had very specific job tracts. She was either going to work as a prosecutor, as some kind of government bureaucrat, or as a civil rights do-gooder. I went to law school in the mid-90s so just take my word for it. Clearly, she was a woman with ambition, so it is no surprise that Kamala Harris chose to become a prosecutor and excelled at it. We can argue about her record, but it was her JOB to be tough on crime in California during the era of three-strikes. For that, you need to blame the legislature, not her. Once she ascended to higher office and sought to institute systematic reforms (incremental, yes), she continued to excel, which is why we are discussing her as a serious candidate instead of as a person who is running a symbolic campaign to raise issues.

As for her personal life, let's address all of it in this paragraph and then let it be. She dated former California Assembly leader and two-term Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown while he was married. They both admit to that, and while you are free to clutch your pearls over the morality of that choice, they were consenting adults. She is married now to a man named Douglas Emhoff and that is all I have to say about that. She is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc...but we've already established that nobody is perfect (oop-skee, in case someone thought I was serious).

And although I did not mention this in my list, I am NOT acknowledging any nonsensical ashy hotepian complaints about the authenticity of her Black experience.

But I did mention that Cardi B video and that music mood list that somehow included Purple Rain and Lady Gaga in A Star is Born, which has me looking at her in some kind of way. However, I am granting her a reprieve because we already know that her staff put this list together (just like Obama's millennials did for him).

Finally, I am willing to admit that my initial reaction before the official announcement was to question the wisdom of potentially giving up her historic Senate seat. She is only the second Black woman to be elected to that body, and I definitely watched her performance during the Kavanaugh hearings with an eye towards seeing her wield the gavel one day as the Senate Judiciary Chair. But that is my dream, not hers. And with all due respect to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have also announced their candidacies, perhaps Harris is trying to avoid the baggage that comes from tenure. If she's hearing the buzz and has that itch, better to scratch it now than to wait (which is what Barack Obama did). At worst, she stays in the Senate anyway because her seat goes up for re-election in 2022.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Seriously, I just need to re-emphasize my opening statement, which is we don't need to bake ourselves into this idea of perfection in a political candidate. Ideological purity, emails, and Russian bots convinced a bunch of folks to stay home in 2016 or to vote for Jill Stein (or Ralph Nader if you want to revisit 2000). Candidates have deficiencies and have made compromises that absolutely deserve to be examined, and where appropriate, for which they must be held accountable. If you prefer to vote for Julian Castro, that's cool. But please, for the love of God and country, do not allow a meme or a bunch of ratchet tweets or an edited soundbite or even a well-written blog influence your decision.

Because none of that swayed the voters who are happy with the current Administration...

Till Death Us Do Part

Let's talk about Dan Gasby and B. Smith and his girlfriend. Not in a gossipy way (because that ain't none of our business), but in a real talk way. Like in a who-do-we-think-we-are, weighing in on this family's life with Alzheimer's disease?

I became a fan of B. Smith's after I read about her in Essence magazine, and by the late 90s when I was out of law school, I emulated her as I tried to refine a side hustle as an event planner. Sure, there was Martha Stewart who had cookbooks, a magazine, and her own TV show, but B. Smith was a Black woman managing events like Black woman do. And B. Smith had been a supermodel. And B. Smith owned the restaurant that occupied prime real estate in a tony corner of Union Station. A true Busy Black Woman.

My mother has B. Smith's first cookbook, and it is actually sitting above my head on the shelf in her kitchen where I am writing this. My mother, who is in another room, has Alzheimer's and so does B. Smith. In this particular moment, it is one of those sad ironies of life--women that I idolize, stricken by the same fucking illness in the prime of their lives.

So when Smith appeared on the Today Show with her husband Dan Gasby to share the grim news, I was heartbroken. When B went missing from Sag Harbor, but was found in New York City, it reminded me of that hellacious night my Mom walked from a Georgetown restaurant to a dormitory at Howard University. When I saw B's short gray fro in a recent photo, it recalled the conversation I had with my mother's friend when she suggested shearing off Mom's hair as an alternative to paying to get it done every few weeks at the salon. When Dan and B released a book on this phase of their lives, it made me fantasize about that day when somebody might stumble upon my musings.

But when he posted that picture with his girlfriend...and quoted whackass 50 Cent...and she's white?!?!

I have been understanding. Sympathetic. Protective even. Because while I cannot relate (and as far as I know, neither can my Daddy), I think folks are jumping to all the wrong conclusions about what is happening in their marriage. This will not be a loud defense of Dan Gasby, who is fully capable of speaking for himself (and he's got a much larger platform than mine for doing so). In fact, here is a recent Washington Post article that allows him just that privilege, as well as his podcast, so really there isn't much more I can add to what he has already said. Except, y'all need to leave the man alone.

Recently, someone well-known posted her opinion about Gasby and his girlfriend, to which a lot of her followers offered their sentiments ranging from calling him trash to demanding that he just pack it up with his white woman to leave B her dignity. One brave sister pushed back, and I chimed in with my two cents of agreement. There was more commentary on both sides after that, but one post in particular challenged our assessment of the situation, including the off-handed assumption that everyone who has lived long enough has dealt with Alzheimer's at some point. And that's what hit my raw nerve.

Her assumption is dead wrong. Because until my mother was diagnosed with this fucking disease, I thought I had lived long enough to understand a lot of things. But I hadn't because living with Alzheimer's is not someone telling me about how an Aunt or a grandparent had it. Living with this fucking disease is the perspective offered by a caregiver who can talk about how it completely upends every aspect of his/her life while watching it wreak havoc on and kill their loved one. And once you can relate to that sad reality, then you already know not to judge Dan Gasby.

From my perspective as a daughter, taking care of a parent or grandparent is not the same as caring for a spouse. At some point it was my expectation to care for one or both of my parents because that is the natural order of things. And while it is both sexist and presumptuous to say aloud, that responsibility falls to me as both the eldest child and as the only daughter. What I did not expect was to assume such a daunting undertaking before I reached 40, at a moment when I was trying to figure out my own life.

Alternatively, my Dad never expected to become a caregiver again (after he and my Mom took care of his parents thirty years ago). He has said this many times throughout the course of my Mom's journey. His assumption was that they would grow older, and that if he got sick, she would care for him. It never occurred to him that anything could happen to her, so when it became undeniable and inescapable that the roles would be reversed... Thus looking at how my Dad struggles and manages to get by, I am keenly aware of what Dan Gasby (and his daughter Dana) might be experiencing.

Now sympathy for the man is not the same as assenting to his choices, so let me say a word about how as recent as last week, I thought that Gasby should show more discretion. He is exposing both his wife and his girlfriend to unnecessary scrutiny. However, I've had a change of heart. This fucking disease forces people to live with a lot of guilt and undeserved shame. Caregivers feel guilty about almost every choice and project shame as the outcome from having to make those decisions. And in the long term, neither one of those emotions resolve anything (ask me how I know, better yet, wait for the book).

The most outspoken critics of his choices have been women, because caregiving is typically our domain. We can applaud the man for caring for his wife as long as he denies himself in the process, but once he admits that he has needs and publicly attends to them, we call him trash. And we justify our emotions by telling a faithful Big Mama story, because she was selfless and never complained and did everything without anyone's help and that is exactly why none of us has a damn clue what she went through and how she felt about it!

In his own way, Dan Gasby is fulfilling his vows by taking care of his wife in their home with their money (they were partners in building that empire). We are not privy or entitled to opine about the internal workings of a relationship that no longer exists. We should be outraged that fucking Alzheimer's stole B. Smith from Dan Gasby and will claim millions more as Baby Boomers live longer and get older. His girlfriend is not the affront to B. Smith's legacy, fucking Alzheimer's disease is.

She Plays Chess

It is no secret that I love and admire powerful women. The defining characteristic is not always the position that a particular woman holds, but it is in the way she wields her influence--how she uses her powers for good, if you will. This admiration is typically nonpartisan and definitely not specific to Black women--in the past I have even gone so far as to allow some non-Black women to be addressed with honorary Busy Black status.

I won't offer an exhaustive list of names, but this week has been a great week for Busy Black Women in Washington. There is Nancy Pelosi, an expert mover and shaker, who deftly handled our Petulant President this week and then there is Kamala Harris, a rising star who has set her sights on relieving him of his Oval Office occupancy in 2020.

I am here for it. 

This is my giddy face.

Of course, I am also keenly aware that my excitement is not universally shared by the rest of the world. I need only turn to social media to see that for every power move these women make, there are beer mugs filling up with the salty tears of men who are feeling some kind of way about having the world change in their lifetime. Men who are fighting back against the injustice of not being able to hear their favorite Christmas song on the radio in Cleveland. Men who are upset that a certain R&B singer has to answer for decades of sexual abuse against young women. Grown ass men who are upset over a razor commercial.

Men who don't like to be out-maneuvered by a woman who has the Constitutional prerogative to decide whether to give the President of the United States the platform to speak in her House. Men who believe it is part of their job to demand that a woman prove her legitimacy for higher office.

Sure, Busy Black Women in positions of great power can and will make costly mistakes that might be their undoing. Theresa May will probably be remembered as the woman who negotiated the world's most disastrous divorce settlement in a botched Brexit. It is ironic when you realize that Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, lauded for her courage as the face of democratic resistance in Myanmar, is now presiding over a genocide. What can I say, we fail bigly too. But that comes with the territory.

For the record, this isn't a gloat because as the title suggests, there are more moves on the board. The game never ends, it stalls and sometimes has to be suspended, but this is just my way of informing the uninitiated that Busy Black Women are serious. The game is chess, not checkers and we play to win. Because anything men can do women can do too--backwards and in heels.

Hard Times, Hard Choices

This government shutdown has gone on for a full month and judging from the rhetoric, it's foolhardy to make any predictions. Last week when I started to write this piece, it was because I felt a little guilty about going to the nail salon...

The last time I got my nails done was in early December on my birthday, but when the shutdown started, I decided to wait until everything was resolved. Then two weeks became three, then four and even though I knew that it was neither urgent or necessary, I walked into the salon last week. Then I walked down to the Sephora and bought some new eyeliner. And since I'm in the mood for confessing, I have also bought four pairs of pantyhose, a new bra, lipstick, brunch, and a cocktail when it wasn't Happy Hour.

My rationale excuse for all of that non-essential spending has been that small and local businesses are also adversely impacted by the shutdown, so my modest patronage is a form of support. Thus, I am helping to keep the local economy pumping (and the nail technicians from remaining idle in an empty salon). My makeup purchases are just a demonstration of the lipstick effect. But let's not discuss what is going on with my hair...

However, at the end of week five with no end in sight, my guilt returns. Not because I've spent money on little extras but because the situation for others has gotten more serious, dire even. Eviction notices are going out next week. Mortgage and tuition payments are overdue. Gas money is light, but some people still have to commute to jobs without receiving pay. Yet the Secretary of Commerce wonders aloud why people just don't apply for loans at their credit unions instead of going to the local food bank. This Administration's chief economic advisor commends his staff for their volunteer efforts. The President believes that grocery stores allow customers to run tabs and his daughter-in-law says that this is all for a worthy cause.

The Speaker of the House refers to furloughed federal employees as hostages, which is a great analogy on one hand, but the visual image that conjures up doesn't appear to move the needle much. Her colleagues on the Senate side voted down two bills that would have opened the government. On social media, opinions reflect the polarization of the electorate while the job approval polls reflect the public's growing anxiety. Sympathetic stories have been broadcast everywhere, but nothing has changed.

Next week those idle nail technicians, the hair stylist, the retail salesperson, the lunch counter server, the bank teller, the delivery guy, the bartender, the waitress, the car mechanic, and all of the other people who don't work for the government have bills that will come due. Maybe they'll be okay for a while, because surely those people don't live paycheck to paycheck and they recognize that this is all for the greater good, but what happens later on in the month when their bosses feel the pinch? What then?

What happens when the food banks and the diaper banks and all of the organizations that usually rely on the generosity of federal employees to help others are forced to ration because their resources are stretched beyond capacity? What happens when this shutdown goes into its seventh or eighth week and heating bills, medical bills, and credit card bills begin to pile up? What happens when parents can't afford daycare and the daycare can't afford to stay open because too many parents can't pay?

For people who live in other parts of the country where this pain is familiar (because anyone who lives in company towns surely knows the ripple effect that can occur when that company closes shop), please tell us what happens next in month three, and then what happens when month six comes. Tell us how to make the hard choices that come from just trying to live.