We’re inundated by so much irrelevant information and noise it’s as if our minds are in a continual state of sugar overload: Rush-then-Crash, Rush-then-Crash, RushCrash. It’s difficult to quiet down, get straight, and figure out what’s actually important in our own lives and to the life of the local, national, and world community in which we are citizens. I’ve put myself on a strict information diet in order to stop the noise, find a quiet place, and think about who I am now and who I want to be in this new year.  On this diet  I’m not allowed to consume any information:

1.About celebrities or celebrity culture.

2. That will confirm my most negative expectations.

3. That will make me feel powerless

I thought it would be easy coming up with my 5 strengths and 5 area where I could use some work, but no such luck! Both lists change not only day to day, but sometimes hour to hour, making it clear that I should include “Moody/Mercurial” on my list, but raising the question, which one? Below my lists, along with this cautionary note: This list is a work in progress. So am I. Aren’t we all.

5 Strengths: Loyal. Honest. Courageous. Creative. Generous.

5 Aspects I’d Like to Change: Impatient. Judgmental. Impetuous. Petty. Moody/Mercurial.

Have you made a list? If so, would love to see it!

Jill Nelson 2/5/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

My New Year’s Day-January 1 column included a list of things I want to explore in 2010. Not resolutions, which I’ve learned over the years are a set up for backsliding, failure, and recrimination, but aspects of myself and the way I function in the world that I’d like to rethink, change or expand in the coming year. In the last couple of years my thoughts, unbidden and organically, have turned to asking the question, what’s next? A kind of un-summoned, subconscious process of reflection and redefinition has spontaneously occurred.

I initially found this subtle process confusing, frustrating, and a bit frightening, muddled in as it was with a world that’s in deep, deep crisis. Yet as I was able to pull back a bit and separate my internal tumult from external chaos, I realized this process of personal change was to be embraced. I now see the sometimes tumultuous, unpredictable, and scary internal work that – like it or not – I’ve been doing, as building a substantial diving platform, complete with sturdy steps and a lovely springy diving board. Now, I’m at the top of the steps, ready to walk to the end of the board and make that leap into the waters I’ve come to call Chapter 3 in my book of life.  A chapter that will be defined greatly by creativity, joy, self-discovery, self-nurturing. A point of departure in life where looking inward will take precedence. What a difference! What a challenge! What a relief!

Over the next weeks the column, in addition to whatever else comes along,  will examine how we begin the process of fearlessly assessing where we are and defining and embracing new directions, starting from the bottom of that New Year’s Day column when I asked:

1. What are my 5 strengths?  2. What are 5 areas for growth?

I am planning a six day retreat in late summer/early fall on Martha’s Vineyard for women who are interested in focusing their minds, writing skills, bodies, building community, and having a fabulous time as they make the most of Chapter 3. DEtails will be on my web site end of the month. Please email me at talktojill@jillnelson.com if you’d be interested in such a retreat or have any questions.

Jill Nelson 2/3/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

In response to a column on the first day of this New Year, a reader, Rhonda Childress, wrote asking for assistance starting a small business. She has a business plan, has 501C not-for-profit status, which means her business will be tax exempt. Looking good, but what she doesn’t yet have is money or a location, and Ms. Childress asked for help.

My experts suggest she go to the web site of the Small Business Administration at SBA.gov. She should look for the Small Business Development Center closest to her location, contact them, and arrange a meeting. Best of luck, Rhonda! Let us know how it works out and when your business is up and running.

Last night I went to hear the pianist Geri Allen at Winterfest, an event sponsored by Jazzmobile and held at Gospel Uptown, a new restaurant and music venue in Harlem.  Allen was joined by Kenny Davis on bass, Kassa Overall on drums, and tap percussionist Maurice Chestnut. I’ve always enjoyed Geri Allen’s music, but the addition of tap dancer Maurice Chestnut’s percussive feet turned Allen’s trio into a quartet.  It may have been 20 degrees in the Big Apple, but inside, listening to music that was deep, innovative, playful and transcendent, it was smokin’. Find out if Allen and her group are coming to your town, and go hear/see them.

Finally, thanks for all your letter about  the 1/22/10 column about President Obama,”The End of the Affair.” I truly appreciate the feedback, and these are the kinds of discussions/arguments we should be having. We have  both a right, and I think an obligation, to be analytical, critical and pushy in search of the best from ourselves and one another. Let’s stop branding those who fulfill that human obligation “haters.” To do so is useless, mean and ignorant. Life isn’t a spectator sport. It’s not enough to be a symbol. As Mahatma Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world!

Jill Nelson 1/29/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

I plan to listen to President Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight. I’m hoping that the man I thought I voted for will please stand up. I’m prepared to be disappointed.

A year into his presidency it’s clear that while there’s not a whole lotta’ shaking up of the status quo going on, a lot of people have been bamboozled. While I know that group includes those who voted for Obama and for whom having a symbolic and ineffective Black president isn’t enough, I’m not quite sure if Obama is among that group. Either he’s one of the bamboozled or he’s a bamboozler.

What I am sure of is that the president today looks very little like the candidate I voted for. I’d like to think Obama the candidate was real and he’ll be back, but I’ve seen enough science fiction moves, from Day of the Triffids to Night of the Living Dead to Terminator to Avatar to know returning from the dead is make believe. We’re likely stuck with this Obama, the one who after saving the banks, Wall Street, and the auto manufacturers has nothing left for the millions of poor, working and middle class people who actually voted for him. The Obama who days after announcing an escalation of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan at a cost of at least $30 billion and untold lives, held a jobs summit and announced before it even began that the government had no money to create jobs. This in the worst economy since the Depression?

What’s depressing, shocking, and frightening is that Barack Obama seems genuinely disconnected to the apprehension, fear and insecurity about the present and future most Americans are feeling, a malaise and melancholy that permeates the country like cheap air freshener in an unmetered taxi. Even Obama’s eloquence and elegant use of language falls flat when he talks about the crisis facing average Americans, a crisis he’s apparently incapable and unwilling to seriously address.

This at a time when all indicators are that things are bad and getting worse. When everyone I know – hell, everyone I don’t know – who works for a living is worried. About holding on to their home. Or job. About family members. About the price of everything. About their children’s future. About retirement. Worrying if the next unknown bad thing to happen will be the one that knocks them into the abyss. We all live enveloped in a relentless, free floating anxiety that expands every day. What’s frightening is that Barack Obama, scarily like too many of his predecessors, seems to live in a Washington, D.C.induced bubble, not even remotely in touch with the pressures that real people are under. He may have campaigned as the outsider but he’s surrounded himself with so many thick, larded, insulating layers of career policy wonks, former Clinton administration employees, Wall Street titans, corporate capitalists, and tenured, complacent academics, that he couldn’t feel the chill from the real world if his life depended on it, which his political life does.

Leaked previews of some of the proposals Obama will make tonight offer no cause for hope. A 10% cap on the percentage of income that can be used to repay federal student loans? Still exorbitant and more government approved usury by the banks. A tax credit for child care? Too little, too late, and what good does it do if there are no jobs to be had? Financial help for those squeezed by caring for elderly relatives, merely a symbolic drop in the bucket. A spending freeze on domestic programs  - nutrition, education, national parks, air traffic control – to reduce the deficit – barely! – at a time when Americans are desperately in need of these programs? As usual, no freeze on the endless flow of tax dollars to the military-industrial complex.  Why focus on deficit reduction now? The Republicans are the only ones I hear whining about the deficit, and they’re the same idiots who didn’t say a word when George W. Bush turned a Clinton-era surplus into an astronomical deficit. Makes you wonder who Obama’s governing for and brings back that old sinking feeling, but worse. As a friend said before he fled the country a few months ago, “It’s almost worse with Obama, because I’d gotten used to being hopeless with Bush.”

People need  jobs that pay more than a subsistence wage, jobs with benefits. We need an end to bank foreclosures, and an across-the-board reduction in interest rates. We need to put Americans to work rebuilding our infrastructure: roads, bridges, schools, parks, public buildings. We need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and spend those billions here at home, in New Orleans, or abroad, in Haiti, places where it will make a transformative, human, peaceful difference. We need real, comprehensive health reform, not a symbolic spanking of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and then back to business as usual. We need a President of the people, not  the fat cats. What we don’t need are more lofty words, more soaring rhetoric, more hope on a rope. That’s a no-win proposition now that the hope’s slipping away and we’re left holding just enough rope to hang ourselves.

Jill Nelson 1/27/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Disappointing. Awful. Stupid.  Terrifying. Sad. Heart breaking.  Unfortunately, most of us have been there, maybe more than once. That nitty gritty moment in a relationship, after the initial blush of attraction, courtship, exchanging strategically edited biographies and great sex, when it begins to become clear that the idea of the relationship is more satisfying than the reality. Painful and discouraging, yes, but usually a private matter. Not this time, since the relationship that’s hitting the rocks is the collective one between millions of Americans and Barack Obama.

Words can barely describe the week that was. Supreme Court sells out democracy to corporate capitalism. Stock market plummets at the suggestion banks be held accountable. 200,000 estimated earthquake dead in Haiti. Republican wins Senate race in Massachusetts and Democrats lose 60 vote edge. Health care reform endangered. Unemployment continues to rise while no talent Conan O’Brien gets paid $33 million not to work,  and the list goes on and on and on.

We can either read it and weep or stand up, raise our voices and demand the CHANGE we voted – and frankly, with our donations of time and money, paid -  for.  President Obama, time to stop the search for non-existent bipartisanship; unity for the collective good of the American people; banks and Wall Streeters who have any interest but their own rapacious pursuit of money; corporations that care about anything but the bottom line of profit. Face it, they do not exist! Time to stop behaving as if you’re still running for President and start governing as President.

I’d suggest:

1. Firing Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and anyone else whose first loyalty isn’t to the American people but to Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, or corporate capital.

2. Get rid of most of the Clinton-era policy wonks and militarists in your administration. These career cynics function to preserve the status quo, exactly what you said you’d shake up when you ran for office.

3. Get rid of David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and whoever else was central to your campaign and stop behaving as if you’re still running for President. You are president, but if you continue behaving as if you’re running, you won’t be in 2012.

4. Appoint Michelle Obama a Special Advisor to the President. Hey, I’m as concerned about the fat kiddies as the next person – ditto the organic White House garden – but your wife’s intelligence, clarity and strength should not be wasted on these portfolios. You need her right in your ear. Seriously, is there anyone else you trust as much?

5. Understand the enemy. These vicious folks don’t give a damn about democracy, that’s just a rhetorical opiate for the people. For them, it’s all about the benjamins. Appealing to their better angels is a total waste of time – these devils don’t have any.  Time for you to use the bully pulpit and big stick and commence a political beatdown, Barack.

6. Stop underestimating your base. The nearly 70 million of people who voted for you sincerely want profound change. And we’re willing to help bring it on. Let us know what you need us to do, as long as it’s not further tamping down expectations and wooing the opposition.

7. Yes, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. So are you! Be the change you want to see in the world.

Jill Nelson 1/22/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Is anyone seriously surprised, offended, or concerned about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2008 observation that Barack Obama stood a better chance of election because he was “light skinned” and “did not speak with a Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Hell, if we’re honest, we’d admit the truth of Reid’s words, like them or not, and move on to create a more perfect union in which a dark-skinned-Negro-dialect-talking-person can be elected president. Or work on getting health care, jobs, protection from the banks and foreclosures, and a long list of other necessities for all citizens, whatever their skin tone or dialect.

What about the loss last night of the Massachusetts Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy to the Republicans, and with it 60 votes in the Senate?! Scott Brown’s victory puts health care reform and other aspects of the President’s agenda in serious jeopardy. Not to be cold, but it’s not as if Kennedy’s death came as a surprise. Why wasn’t there a better candidate than Martha Coakley – is it asking too much in Red Sox heaven to know who Curt Schilling is? -  vetted, prepped and ready in the wings? Where were the democratic strategists? Who’s responsible for this debacle? Can we please hear the sound of heads rolling?

Where’s the outrage at reports that 2 of the 7 American CIA operatives blown-up by a Jordanian double agent suicide bomber on December 30 in Afghanistan were employees of Blackwater, now known as Xe, the world’s largest – and thanks to the US government and our tax dollars – most lucrative private army? This after assurances that Blackwater employees only perform “security” functions. Enough of this war made easy and virtually invisible, if not cheap. How long do you think the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq would go on if there were no mercenaries to be hired, we admitted the “volunteer army” is nothing but a poverty draft, and reinstated a national draft? As the US military floods into Haiti, no doubt these private security companies are lined up and licking their chops to get into Haiti. Keep your eyes open, and be ready to head them off at the pass.

Congratulations to Sarah Palin, the repressed schoolmarm with the glasses and prim bum from Beginners Porn 101 and saviorette of the Republican Party, on her new gig for Fox News. Regular exposure, even in a Faux News format can’t help but reveal what an uniformed, xenophobic, arrogant bimbo Palin is. If the Republican’s still nominate her for president in 2012 and Americans are stupid enough to vote for her, it’s time for those of us with some sense to head to the airport. Me, I’d rather take my chances with scads of would-be panty bombers.

A report released yesterday by the Pew Research Center, “The New Economics of Marriage: The Rise of Wives,”  reports that women are increasingly better educated than their husbands and earn more money. Is this a revelation? For whom? The report has already spawned several articles and much discussion. Read it, check out the articles in the New York Times and Washington Post. More Friday.

Don’t Forget Haiti!!!

Jill Nelson 1/20/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Looking toward the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday on Monday, January 18, the world demands our attention and reflection. The earthquake in Haiti, the war in Iraq and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the greed and arrogance of the financial institutions that have brought this country to its knees, millions of Americans without health care, millions more losing their homes, hungry, profoundly disillusioned and skeptical. What better moment to read, think, talk about Dr. King’s life. What he lived for. What he died for. The challenges to justice, fairness and peace he levied on himself and us. If we are still interested in becoming the nation we once thought we could.

Monday, take time to read King’s words. Listen to one of his speeches linked to here. Watch a news report on his life. Consider the world both as it is and how it could be. Then figure out what your part is in moving forward.

Do not forget Haiti! Text HAITI 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross. Text Yele 501501 to give $5 to Wyclef Jean’s charity. Check this list for other ways to show your support. Listen to President Obama on American response to the earthquake in Haiti and the idiot who preceeded him on Hurricane Katrina.

Jill Nelson 1/15/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Help Needed in Haiti. Image courtesy Getty Images.

Death, however and whenever  it comes, is an invitation to live. This is true when it is the death of a loved one, a beloved, and when those who die are unknown, taken by war, or famine, or as yesterday, an earthquake in Haiti. The pain in one case may be more visceral and immediate, in the other intellectual and distant, but the words on the invitation are the same. Death barges in and reminds us of the preciousness of life, not only our own but the lives of others, those who survive. We are simultaneously overwhelmed and ache to do something other than grieve. Whoever death takes, whatever the circumstances, there is always much to be done. We help a bereaved spouse or child, contribute to a memorial fund or send money, clothing, medicine, blankets to relief agencies, and in doing so we affirm life. We reach out to others, close by or oceans away, and in giving begin the journey away from grief back to living. We help however we can. (Text Yele 501501 and donate $5 to Haitian musician and activist Wyclef Jean’s charity, or go to www.yele.org. Or text HAITI to 90999 and $10 will go the Red Cross relief efforts. Donations will be reflected on your next phone bill.) We accept death’s invitation to live because nothing else is humanly possible.

Jill Nelson 1/13/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

Maybe it’s part of my molecular memory or a sign of the times, but like dance marathoners from that other depression I’m locked in an improvised jitterbug with the NAACP. The steps? I’m seduced by the history, strain to give the organization the benefit of the doubt, am disappointed, run away vowing never to return, but can’t resist creeping back sooner or later. One year I joined, but had to demand my $100 back when the President’s Medal was awarded to boxing promotor Don King. But hope springs eternal. Recently, I’ve been watching the new young, smart, hopefully not a player like some of his predecessors, Benjamin Todd Jealous, happy with the organization’s activism in stopping the state of Georgia’s plan to execute Troy Davis. My hand was headed toward that checkbook and then…Nominees for this year’s NAACP Image Awards were announced and my fingers – and money – lept back into my pocket.

“Precious” vying with “The Blind Side” and “The Princess and the Frog” for best picture? Are these really the outstanding images of 2009, the year we entered Obamaland? Getouttahere! How about nominating “Judge Mathis” for Outstanding News/Information, Series or Special?! I could go on and on and on, but shooting fish in a barrel’s too easy. I’ll leave you with my favorite nomination, Michael Jackson’s FUNERAL, nominated in the category of “Outstanding Variety” Series or Special!!!! Yeah, I guess death is “special” and unless Michael rises from the tomb Easter Sunday, there’s no chance of his funeral becoming a series. Still, watch out Lazarus. With a talent like MJ, nothing’s impossible.

Next joker of the week? FOX News’ Britt Hume, the phony journalist who’s now apparently ordained himself a right wing Christian theologian, the better to diss Buddhism and preach Christianity as the road to salvation for Tiger Woods.

Speaking of Tiger, and I wish I wasn’t but couldn’t pass this one up, how about the new cover of Vanity Fair, on which a bare chested Tiger is further O.J’d by the same folks who de-raced him in the first place. Thanks to the fabulous Harry Allen and his Media Assassin blog for bringing this to our attention and breaking it down so clearly.

Finally, RIP Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union. Smiley announced Wednesday that after 10 years, it’s over. Does he leave us wanting more? Is enough enough? Whatever, bon voyage, and thanks to The Black Snob for the usual snarky and hilarious coverage. Smiley says he’s shutting SOBU down to work on other projects, including a series of television specials and publishing R. Kelly’s memoir. Yep, you read it right, R. Kelly’s memoir. Now, that’s one black man who’s in a state.

Jill Nelson 1/8/10 – The blog with the musical notes!

On January 4, two days ago, a beloved friend’s body died. Marcia Slacum Greene was 57, wasn’t ready to go, and true to her spirit, commitment and lovingness, fought until the end. On that same day, before I knew she had passed, I woke up feeling slightly down in a not unfamiliar, non-specific way. Could have been the ending of the elongated holiday season. Receiving my end of the year 401K statement that I’m afraid to open. Too much rich and sugary food. Or a whiff of the free floating anxiety that is always in the air these days. Whatever it was or wasn’t it didn’t matter. My worries were nothing, really, just a lazy indulgence in squandering time and wasting brain cells.

Snapping me out of my indulgent malaise was yet another gift from my more than 20-year friend, a quiet, steady, thoughtful woman with a wonderful sense of humor, tremendous insight into people, a professional, intellectual and emotional curiousity and generosity, and an optimism that I often ragged her about but was oddly – and happily – contagious. Once again, Marcia pulled me up short, spun me around and shouted at me how precious, fragile, unexpected, and – whether you live to be 94 like my father or don’t make it to 60 like my friend  – BRIEF life is. There is so little time for the wonders of life, for passion, ecstasy, growth and commitment of all sorts – sexual, political, emotional, spiritual – there is no time to waste with regret, or guilt, or abstract worry. Life must be seized, embraced, relished. Each moment lived as if it is the last. One of those moments will be.

Jill Nelson 1/6/10 – The blog with the musical notes!