Don't Let This Day Go To Waste

Another blessed day- it's a lazy Saturday and we are going enjoy it at the Liberty Science Center (I love that place) have lunch and end the day early. Before we begin our day I'm going to work it out at the gym to build my energy up.

To those who will stay in and watch movies- enjoy. Don't let this beautiful day go to waste!

Call Me Crazy-Dairy of a Mad Social Worker

This one women’s show was great-written and performed by Helena D. Lewis. Helena let us into her work of being an overworked and underpaid social worker. It began when she graduated from college with a degree in biology; she landed her first gig at a drug treatment center teaching HIV/AIDS awareness classes. She moved on to working with men with HIV, prostitutes , women in halfway homes, teaching male inmates about HIV and sex education in the New Jersey Correctional Facility – She is as young as 27 and no older than 32. Can you imagine? She had been followed home, called in on her day off to break-up bloody fights, walked to the track to take ladies home and held her tongue due to patient confidentiality to significant others who’s lovers where infected with HIV.
Helena mastered over 25 different characters she met in her line of work. She shook us with laughter and almost brought us to tears. She laced her performance with skits of her bone chilling poetry that left you understanding her plight- she slowly lost her older brother to HIV and her younger brother to drugs and the streets.
Her story was sincere, intimate and real. I gave it 3 snaps and a twist of the head. We’ll definitely see Ms. Helena either on the stage or the big screen.
It was an excellent way to spend time with my sister-friends. The play was at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and we followed it with a great Thai dinner in this wonderful restaurant around the corner.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf

This is a stage play by Ntozake Shange written in 1976 and was performed in California and New York. In 1977 it was published as a book. I read this book when I was ten years old and all I remembered was the women had names of colors like the rainbow, Lady in Purple, Lady in Orange, Lady in Brown, Lady in Green and Lady in Red each one holding a poetic message for the black female experience.

I recently ordered the DVD from Netflix and viewed it with my 15 year old daughter. We laughed, we cried and held silence both of us as our memories or other peoples stories appeared before our eyes. It was a collection of over 20 poems dealing with the issues of rape, abortion, abandonment, domestic abuse, love. Black women trying to find their voices and expressing how the men in their lives treated them.

The final poems was "a laying of hands" that brought all the women together. The Lady in Brown shared with the others and us how she has found God in her and she loves her fiercely. (Deep) The cast was amazing and fabulously beautiful which consisted of Alfe Woodard, Lynn Whitfield and others. The closing song was by Patti Labelle.

Late last year Whoopi Goldberg and others announced Ntozake Shange's play to Broadway and to tour the US for 2 years with Grammy Award winner India Arie in the cast but for reasons unknown as of 11/20/08 the play has been postponed.

We loved it and agreed the issues that was discussed were the same issues women face today. When this wonderful play arrives to Broadway we will be there.