The Train Chronicles #2 -the crying baby

At BEST babies are unpredictable. I'll grant you that. I have a toddler at home and she will be very independent and self sufficient one day and then on another day, will be a clingy, crying mess! So I understand that on a day you do everything you're supposed to, your child will "act da fool" in public.

My issue is with what YOU do when that happens. When I was growing up, if I felt like the store, the mall or the park was an appropriate place for me to "show my ass", my mother AND my grandmother would snatch me up and, through clenched teeth, remind me that I eventually had to go home where a weathered belt or pot spoon was anxiously awaiting my arrival! You can rest assured that I straightened up quickly and desisted from my temporary course of madness!

So I'm sitting on the train and at the end of the car there is a toddler in FULL TANTRUM mode: flailing arms, screaming (not crying), kicking, writhing uncontrollably, the whole nine! And what was the mother/guardian doing, you ask (because you should be asking)? Simply trying to hold onto her and not get punched. Meanwhile, my fellow passengers and I are trying to have a peaceful ride home after a long day. At no point did this woman even attempt to discipline or even quiet the child. I can only assume that if this was a train car that child would have been rolling all over the floor!

Am I wrong for feeling that you have to be the one in charge as the adult in that relationship? A child shouldn't get to reek havoc for 5 stops on the express train without the adult once attempting to correct the behavior, right? Am I crazy for thinking this people? I hope not!

These are my thoughts...what are yours?

Revisionist History

This country is leaps and bounds away from properly dealing with the sensitive subject of race. That is not to say that we haven’t made strides in inter cultural relations but there is still a long way to go. One of the areas that is still murky and causes contention is how we describe the history of our country. My friends and I often joke that years from now, history will show that slavery happened, it was a bad thing, everyone came to a mutual understanding of such, it was abolished, and the next year they elected Obama to the presidency! History is written from the view point of the author. That’s human nature. America’s history reads differently in the South than it does in the North because of who was building the monuments and retelling the stories. Which brings me to the point of my blog today…

Every time my wife and I watch a Martin Scorsese movie, we have an issue with the way he portrays Black people. More importantly, I take umbrage with what he decides to portray. He seems to relish the opportunity to use the N-word in his scripts and is derogatory to Black people in his films and now, television shows. Now Scorsese does a lot of period pieces so that’s the way his characters spoke at that time. But increasingly so, the references to Black people are not germane to the plot and seem to be ‘thrown’ in for shock value under the guise of authenticity. Or is he depicting the scene as accurately as believes it occurred? That’s one question. Another is, do we get to pick and choose how we’re depicted in slave time and in the post emancipation era?

Friends of mine have gone to plantation tours in the South and one of the irritating things for them is that the tours never mentioned the slaves that worked on the plantation. They don’t ever go out to the slave quarters and seem to suggest that the cotton and tobacco field were worked by free market labour as opposed to the free labour that toiled on those crops. When I have visited Colonial Williamsburg, I was shocked by the lack of depiction of African slaves and when I did see them, that they were portrayed as poor but happy town folk. It seemed like pandering. But what did I want to see? Did I want to have slaves being whipped in the streets while children enjoyed their funnel cake? Should there have been a public auction next to the roller coaster? Or better yet, should there been a habitual nightly rape scene acted out after the blacksmithing demonstration? Clearly, that not what I’m advocating for.

But therein lies the quandary: how do we properly recreate and represent a horrible time in the country’s past without shoving the actual horror of it in people’s face? Can I be mad at Scorsese when he opens a scene with a Black man shining the shoes of a character in Boardwalk Empire when it has NOTHING to do with the plot or should I compliment him for being one of the few people who aren’t afraid to show how this society really functioned in our past? These are my thoughts…what are yours?

The Love Exhibit

Hey everyone. My photos part of a gallery show. Here is the video from the opening. My pieces are at the :32 and 1:42 marks. The exhibit is at

The Gallery at Harlem PoP

2037 5th Avenue at 126th street

New York, NY

http://www.societyhae.com/

Here is the video 

Make  sure you check it out.

The Blessed Pork Chop

There are a few things that make you remember a city: its people, its natural beauty, its architecture. But few thing truly leave a mark like the food you eat there. Whether it's eating the best gelato you have ever had in Pisa or and out of this world cheesesteak in Philadelphia, food defines a town. Nowhere is this more true than in New Orleans. So imagine my surprise that in a town famous for it's po'

boys, crawfish, etouffees, gumbo, and truly Cajun fare, I would be blogging about a PORK CHOP. My friends this was no ordinary pork chop though! Follow me to this epicure's excellent experience.

On the last night of our visit to the Big Easy, we decided to go to Emeril's, his original restaurant. I had been to Dixie many time but I had never eaten there so I figure it was a first that I could share with my family. The menu is revamped but some of the favorites are still on the list. I selected the Double Cut Pork Chop with a Tamarind and a Chili Mole Sauce. My friends, you're going to want to remember that if you ever get to N'awlins. It will make your entire trip worthwhile. It was like nothing I have ever tasted before. Previous to this gastronomical delight, the best pork chop I had ever had was at a restaurant called Fire Lake in Minneapolis. Well there is a NEW champion! It's important to note that I don't eat pork chops very often and I HATE mole sauce. Or at least I did...

The chop itself was enormous. The term 'double cut' doesn't do it justice. I had to include a picture just so you would understand the girth of the meat. There is a knife in the picture to give you a sense of size. The chili sauce with the ribbons of mole was artistically presented, so much so that I almost didn't want to cut into the chop.

Thank goodness I came to my senses, made my first slice, and took a bite. Food can transport you to places (a good, warm, gooey, sweet pecan pie takes me back to Maryland where I had my first one) and that first bite put on a first class flight to The Land of Good Food. It was almost a religious experience and, at the risk of compromising my manhood, I nearly cried. The meat was cooked delightfully and was succulent. It sat on sweet potato cubes that played a worthy second fiddle to the masterful leading player. The each flavor on the pork chop layered on top of the other: the tamarind's tang hits you first, followed by the bittersweet of the mole, completed with the subtle heat of the chili. It was as perfect as one could prepare this heavy cut of pork. The flavors kept the meat meat light and juicy.

I hope you make it New Orleans for various other reasons. However, once you find yourself there, make a trip to Emeril's and get this pork chop. You'll thank me later.

Alice in Wonderland

So I just read Alice in Wonderland for the first time and it made me remember one of the curiosities of getting older. Every now and again, as adult we reminisce and go read something form our childhood, or watch something from our youth. Normally we laugh and wonder why we even found the thing interesting. Once in a while, we're a little disturbed that we were exposed to something at such a young age. Lately, since I now have a child, I've been turning a critical eye towards nursery rhymes and how really sick THEY are. But those are all topics for another day.

My concern with Alice in Wonderland doesn't fall into any of those categories. While I was reading this book I found myself getting more and more confused with each turned page...and I'm an adult! My confusion derives from a genuine inability to understand how the book became a CLASSIC! The writing is erratic, at best, and the descriptors are clunky and full of adult references. What kid picks up this book and enjoys reading its complex prose?

So here is my question for people: have you ever actually READ Alice in Wonderland or is the Disney movie your point of reference. I think that a lot of people haven't actually read the book. I didn't until today and I'm 41! The Disney movie (as is normal) is far more kid friendly than the original manuscript and i think most people think that it's a direct translation. I wonder if the Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' was considered a classic and Disney decided to animate it or someone at Disney thought that it would make a good movie and popularized an obscure book. I'm just really confused because I would never read the book that I just read to my daughter! It would cause too many questions!

So how did Alice in Wonderland become such a big part of our culture? Someone PLEASE tell me as I begin to read "Through The Looking Glass"....

26 hour day

Ever wish there were 26 hours in the day so you could get more things done? Concurrently have you ever settled in for the night and FELT like you just put in 26 hours of work in one day? Today has been that kind of day for me. The answers to the question "what did you do today?" for this day is long, varied and exhausting just to recant! I am sooooooo looking forward to New Orleans!

Drugs and discord...

Chelsea Handler is a drunk. Ke$ha is a drug abuser. And Lindsey Lohan has made a career out of her trips to rehab. So what? Generally I wouldn't care if these weren't clear examples of the hypocrisy of the media and at the way it looks at drug use.

I was listening to Ryan Seacrest during his weekly top forty show. One of his guests was Ke$ha and he was congratulating her nominations for an upcoming award show. In his description of his relationship with here and in his interview, he spoke as if she was an upstanding member of our community. Ke$ha is an admitted drug user. Something our society is supposed to frown upon right? But Seacrest and most people think that she is soooo cute.

Chelsea Handler hosted this year's MTV video awards and she is not shy about constantly telling people how much she drinks. In fact, on the show, she mentioned how high she was. Alcoholics and drug users aren't supposed to be lauded in our society right? And then she had a cameo from Lindsey Lohan who seems to have more chances than a cat has lives.

I don't want to come across as a right wing conservative here. I don't care about you getting high and drinking your liver into oblivion. What I do care about is that the same network that runs anti drug adds is the same one that celebrates all of these people and their drug abuse. As an educator, it is EXTREMELY challenging to keep our messages straight when people who are delivering their message can't seem to keep their focus straight. I believe that the family needs to raise our children but their job becomes harder when there is clear inability of the media as to who they want people to associate with.

But I'm just rambling....

The Train Chronicles #1

Why does the train make people so crazy and abandon all common sense? There are some very simple rules of courtesy that seem to get completely disregarded just because we're on a train. If we were all standing in a room together, regardless of how crowded it was, we don't violate people's personal space the way we do on the subway. Furthermore, if there is an open area, we tend to gravitate toward THAT as opposed to be scrunched up next to complete strangers. Somehow those rules don't apply to the train.

Just this morning, a woman with long wet hair got on the train in front of another woman who was standing by the door. I'm going to go ahead and say, to some degree, they were both wrong. The long haired woman didn't have any space to stand between the other woman and the door and began to point out that there was space in the middle of the car (side note: there is ALWAYS space in the middle of the car! Step in people!). The other woman didn't move because rightfully so, the long haired woman could have easily stepped inside herself. She didn't and instead decided to jam herself in the space between the other woman and the door. To add insult to injury, she turned her back to the woman and now her long, WET hair was in the other woman's face. They both seemed to want that exact spot. Why? Where else in our society is this acceptable?

I'm just sayin'....

Whatchugotdere

So I spend an inordinate amount of time on what I consider to be the most vile method of transportation known to man: the subway! A lot of my posts will be about my trials and trails on the train. It's bad enough that there are dozens of humans crammed together in a small cabin speeding underground, all breathing recirculated funk and fragrances, but on top of that there are are soooo many violations of subway etiquette that it makes it unbearable.

The latest thing that I have had to deal with is an overbearing curiosity for my iPad. I get it: it's new and everyone wants to figure out whether they want to spend money on one. The annoying part comes from the passive aggressive, looking-but-not-looking, over my shoulder glances that I get. Or worse, when you see me CLEARLY working, asking me a bunch of questions about it and stopping the obvious flow that I had.  But I LOVE LOVE LOVE the people scope me out the entire ride and then, just as they're getting off the train, ask me "so how do you like the iPad?" Now they expect me to formulate a full answer before they get off the train. Those people get the thumbs up and I keep it moving!  Then there are the people who want a full demonstration like this is a mobile Best Buy booth and I'm doing product demos for Apple.

The true issue is something I, as well as others, have noted: in this city and especially on the train, we all create our own bubbles until we get to our destinations. Our iPods, laptops, PSPs, Kindles, and the rare walkman help us to zone everyone out and create our little worlds complete with sound tracks. We used to have to stare at subway ads or wear shades to avoid eye contact with the 'crazies'. Now electronics provide the escape. I am guilty of seeking that escape and using the ride home as my decompression chamber which explains why the inquiries bother me.

But serious folks...stop asking me about the iPad! Do your research on someone else! LOL

Which way did he go?

I've got lots of crazy ideas floating around in my head. That same head wears a bunch of hats that don't always relate to each other. To put it simply, I have a LOT of stuff going on. My wife would tell you that I have TOO much stuff going on! There are days that I agree with her.

But here is the major quandary: if I pick just one thing and stick it, how do I know that I picked 'the right thing' ?

The secondary quandary is how MUCH can I do WELL at once?

On any given day I can be either a family man, educator, novelist, childrens book author, poet, photographer, or a very involved fraternity man. People have made entire careers out of just ONE of those things! I haven't even added in hobbies yet! It would so easy if I didn't feel passionate about it all.

So in the end this is not an attempt to figure out which one I should emphasise. This is more about understanding my quest for the 30 hour day or for the perfection of human cloning. I hope you stick around for the ride. I like to think it's pretty interesting!