I have loved you and your music since we first met through "Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1" in 2000. I've been jamming to your magnificence ever since. And you just keep getting better. Your new album, The Light of The Sun, is divine. And "Shame," the song and especially the video, is a new anthem for strong women everywhere. Thank you for what you bring to the world.
With love and respect, Your loyal fan
I can 'fend on my own, I'm magnificent
I'm a Queen on my throne, I'm magnificent
I'm the magnificent (SAY WHAT! SAY WHAT!)
I'm the magnificent (SAY WHAT! SAY WHAT!)
P.S. If you don't have this CD yet, buy it, don't bootleg it. Support talented artists!
29,000 children under the age of five died from the famine in Somalia in the last 90 days. Over 800,000 more children are at risk to starve to death. Please read that again, slowly, and let it sink it. Imagine your children, your family. Make this personal. It is.
Something is very wrong with our collective humanity that there is not more global outrage and heartbreak over what is happening in Somalia and across the Horn of Africa. Where is the constant media coverage, the relief concerts, the major challenge grants for donations? In my social media streams I see mostly Somali and other East Africans focused on this. Why is not everyone doing everything they can?
Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in North America. Our neighbors, literally. The people of Somalia are our global neighbors, literally and figuratively. Make it personal. It is.
Help be the change.
Here are three things you can do now to educate yourself, send money, and increase awareness of this crisis:
1. Listen to an archived on-air discussion with young Somali American leaders about the famine in Somalia: An amazing coalition of young Somali American professionals from across the country came together on the Aug. 7 edition of the Somali Community Link radio program on KFAI radio to discuss this crisis and what can be done. An archive of the one-hour broadcast can be found here.
More information about the discussion:
Many Somali communities in Unites States have been mobilizing to raise awareness and funds for the severe drought ravaging half of Somalia’s population and millions of more people in the Horn of Africa. The energy behind many of these efforts has been from young professionals who are volunteering their time, skills and tapping into their networks for help.
A group of these dynamic young leaders from around the United States came together in an on-air radio discussion about what they’ve been doing in their communities and how the general public can help. Representatives from communities in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Virginia, Ohio, California, Texas were part of the discussion:
Nimo Farah, Minnesota (facilitator) Ifrah Esse, Minnesota
Amal Hussein, Massachusetts
Hibak Kaflan, Virginia
Mohamed Ali, Ohio
Awil Egal, California
Sh. Mohamed Shakib Abqari, Texas
2. Send money
Send what money you can to help the relief efforts and encourage others to do the same. Nimo Farah of Minneapolis recommends this: Donate to Somali led organizations that use funds $1 for $1 and have volunteers on the ground with quick turn around time - The African Future and Welcome Amoud Foundation. If you prefer more mainstream organizations, a list of organizations can be found here.
3. Further educate yourself and become an advocate.
...The drought currently plaguing the region is considered to be the worst in the Horn of Africa since the 1950s. This is a region long plagued by cyclical drought, but what used to be a ten-year cycle is now occurring every other year. In Somalia, the combined 2 effects of consecutive seasons of failed or poor rainfall coupled with conflict, have resulted in rising inflation, crop failure, livestock mortality, population displacement, food insecurity, and significant acute malnutrition rates in Somalia.
In January 2011, FSNAU [Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit] estimated that 2.4 million people in Somalia were in crisis. Their latest data indicate there are at least 2.85 million people in Somalia in need of life-saving assistance, a 19 percent increase in six months. That means that, of the estimated 9.9 million people living in Somalia, one in four is now in need of international aid to survive...
Background on the historical and political issues contributing to the crisis can be found in this recent CBS News article. Be sure to click on the links. Continuing coverage of the crisis can also be found on Al Jazeera English.
Once you have educated yourself, then spread the word about the severity of the crisis and the need for awareness and a global relief effort through your social media networks. Insist that the world take notice and do more!
One last thing, listen to this beautiful, haunting poem, somalia:nevermind, by Amir Sulaiman, which captures both the beauty and pain that is Somalia and the heartbreak of the global back-turning on its starvation.
I've been listening to "Valerie" by Amy Winehouse ever since learning of her passing yesterday. So young, talented, and troubled. In listening to this song, a playlist started emerging in my head. A summer mix, heart open, heartfelt. A playlist where the artists connect only through the flow of my own feelings, in this season of the sun and light, of love and loss. But I think it works so I'm sharing it with you.
Oh Valerie, In Summertime
1. Valerie, Amy Winehouse
2. To Know Him Is to Love Him (Live), Amy Winehouse
For a very thought provoking, moving article about the death of Amy Winehouse, addiction, and depression, read On The Death of Amy Winehouse, by Max Sparber
To be a Somali or East African youth in Minneapolis these days involves running a gauntlet of suspicion and strife. In their schools there are cultural frictions with white and African-American students and even among Somali, Ethiopian and Oromo themselves. In their homes there is the impossibly wide straddle between the controlling fears and expectations of their parents and other elders and the need to find and forge a sustainable identity in 21st-century society. In their need for employment they are facing one of the most inhospitable work environments in American history. And a small but significant number of their brethren have been mysteriously recruited to go fight and die in the civil war of their native country, intensifying their exposure to the already magnified socio-religious passions and bureaucratic apparatus that fuels America’s “war on terror.”
But the resilience of immigrant youth is an abiding “feel good” part of our collective American experience, and rich fuel for our artistic narratives. Which is why “Ku soo Dhawaada Xaafadeena,” or “Welcome to our Neighborhood,” a play by, for, with and about the East African youth in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, running the next two weekends at the Cedar Cultural Center, seems especially well-timed…”
Lots of people think that Minnesota is frozen tundra 365 days a year. It's not. Our summers can be hot and humid, and occasionally, like right now, unbearably hot and humid. Our heat indexes have been surpassing those even in the most tropical parts of the world. Check out this comparison.
I'm grateful for my old window air conditioner and the relief it provides from this heatwave. The last time I remember heat and humidity this high for this long, my kids were babies and we lived in a small house in Powderhorn Park with no air conditioning. I remember the indoor temperatures were well into the 80s.
My daughter, now 25, was a tough baby who cried for hours on end, whose little soul was inconsolable no matter how much love I offered. Last night sitting on my hot, humid front porch, feeling the thick, sticky, still night air, my ceiling fan whirling, I remembered this old piece of writing about that time. About heat, humidity, a ceiling fan, a crying baby, and how Sade saved us from ourselves:
1986
It's the nights that are the longest. She is such a hard baby. Crying all the time. Never napping. I think she is reacting to her adoption, to being yanked from one life to another. And it's been unbearably hot and humid. She is so tiny, so fierce. But we are finding a way to each others hearts. I hope the worst is over. Last night was a turning point.
My toddler son was already asleep. It was just me, the baby, the heat, the night, the whirl of the ceiling fan, her sobs. She wouldn't stop crying. I put on some music, Sade, to help me keep it together. It was music I thought was made for lovers, but last night it was music for a desperate mother and an inconsolable daughter.
For hours we slow danced.
I always hope that you remember/What we have is strong and tender/In the middle of the madness/Hold on/It's about faith /It's about trust...
Barefoot on the wood floor, my sticky skin pressed close to her little body, as the music swirled and the fan whirled through the night air, her cries slowly, surely subsided and even more slowly, she let herself fall into my skin, allowed her head to slide down on my shoulder, her damp curly hair to rest softly against my sweaty neck. I let the record play over and over and we rocked and turned and swayed and sighed and sweated and slowly, so slowly, deep into the night, she finally fell asleep.
Nothing can come/Nothing can come/Nothing can come between us.
