of late, i've been spending time with four of my 11 grand children, ages 15 - 19, who are working with me on a project that began before summer arrived.
it’s been a gas, as we used to say back in the day. and intense. but,seeing them interact with one another in a group effort, which has required them to problem solve and systems think is an amazing experience for me and them as well.
i hear the music they listen to as they work. sometimes a lyric jumps out at me affronts my senses, or the stinging verbiage of profanity might do this as well, causing me to completely lose my cool. particularly when i hear a reference to a female's body part that totally misses the mark of her actual anatomy. this level of ignorance causes me to think about the miseducation of young people in america, to the point i to want to puke, as my rebuttal to the wholesale dumb leading thee blind syndrome is pandemic in our society.
i am a bonified elder 'cause i've been around the block more times then i can remember and i do cuss at times. at the same time, i don't think i 'm a poster child for the older person, chomping down on a wad of tobacco and rolling it around in my toothless mouth with my tongue and waiting for the next day to come and go. actually i consider myself to be quite youthful and liberal and hip and open minded and inspired about life for someone my age. and so with my grand kids, we talk about everything from sex to economics to politics and the wars. we cover the gamut of rap music and revolutions. we also dither over our questions about strife and storms occurring all over in the world these days, and then moving onward to religion and upward to god or billions of people's idea of 'a god' and the quandary this still imposes on human beings leading to bloodshed and annihilation in the name of god.
my grandchildren are all smart and wise and good looking and talented and creative. i love learning from them. for example the symbolism of the Buddha’s' long ears that often appears in statues of him, or how political polls are created from samples of imaginary groups of people and not actual people who we are led to believe just happen to be standing on the corner of main street or wall street when a pollster appears from out of nowhere and starts counting. i worry about some of the stuff they take into their senses and pores from society on a daily basis , such as genetically reorganized food, petroleum in tooth paste, corn syrup that the human body has no idea how to digest; the terror of cell phones and the damage they are doing to their brains. or the games they play incessantly on the internet and their pads; or the disembodied social networking that has done away with true human connections (as i am guilty of doing right now).
further, i am concerned about the more far-reaching dangers that lurk about in the dark minds of men who run/ruin the world, all of which has given me an opportunity to chime in with the kids some story or political view point i might share with them or an historical reference that somehow is stored in my brain, as if i were a lending library and suddenly a hidden memory or piece of information i learned ages ago, presents itself as a thesis for our conversations. whew, was that a long run on sentence or what?
any way, recently, i heard about the danger of listening to music through ear phones. i shutter at the thought that the next generation will be hard to hear folks, which will include my grandchildren. Humm
also in our talks, while we work, my grandkids and i might cruise along the road about safe sex, or the recently passed gay marriage law, and then suddenly jump over the divide and talk about visual art, or skate boarding as a sport or theater and then we might switch over to the opposite lane going against traffic, where i tell them stories about my childhood and the simple games i once played growing up in harlem, and how my friends and i would get so excited when one person in the neighborhood got a television set or when the watermelon man, who drove a horse drawn-wagon, laden with ice and melons that used to have seeds! and that people who had telephones used a party line (to mean that your neighbors could listen to the person on the other line gossiping about them), and most people didn't have phones because they were a luxury item back in the day.
it’s been a gas, as we used to say back in the day. and intense. but,seeing them interact with one another in a group effort, which has required them to problem solve and systems think is an amazing experience for me and them as well.
i hear the music they listen to as they work. sometimes a lyric jumps out at me affronts my senses, or the stinging verbiage of profanity might do this as well, causing me to completely lose my cool. particularly when i hear a reference to a female's body part that totally misses the mark of her actual anatomy. this level of ignorance causes me to think about the miseducation of young people in america, to the point i to want to puke, as my rebuttal to the wholesale dumb leading thee blind syndrome is pandemic in our society.
i am a bonified elder 'cause i've been around the block more times then i can remember and i do cuss at times. at the same time, i don't think i 'm a poster child for the older person, chomping down on a wad of tobacco and rolling it around in my toothless mouth with my tongue and waiting for the next day to come and go. actually i consider myself to be quite youthful and liberal and hip and open minded and inspired about life for someone my age. and so with my grand kids, we talk about everything from sex to economics to politics and the wars. we cover the gamut of rap music and revolutions. we also dither over our questions about strife and storms occurring all over in the world these days, and then moving onward to religion and upward to god or billions of people's idea of 'a god' and the quandary this still imposes on human beings leading to bloodshed and annihilation in the name of god.
my grandchildren are all smart and wise and good looking and talented and creative. i love learning from them. for example the symbolism of the Buddha’s' long ears that often appears in statues of him, or how political polls are created from samples of imaginary groups of people and not actual people who we are led to believe just happen to be standing on the corner of main street or wall street when a pollster appears from out of nowhere and starts counting. i worry about some of the stuff they take into their senses and pores from society on a daily basis , such as genetically reorganized food, petroleum in tooth paste, corn syrup that the human body has no idea how to digest; the terror of cell phones and the damage they are doing to their brains. or the games they play incessantly on the internet and their pads; or the disembodied social networking that has done away with true human connections (as i am guilty of doing right now).
further, i am concerned about the more far-reaching dangers that lurk about in the dark minds of men who run/ruin the world, all of which has given me an opportunity to chime in with the kids some story or political view point i might share with them or an historical reference that somehow is stored in my brain, as if i were a lending library and suddenly a hidden memory or piece of information i learned ages ago, presents itself as a thesis for our conversations. whew, was that a long run on sentence or what?
any way, recently, i heard about the danger of listening to music through ear phones. i shutter at the thought that the next generation will be hard to hear folks, which will include my grandchildren. Humm
also in our talks, while we work, my grandkids and i might cruise along the road about safe sex, or the recently passed gay marriage law, and then suddenly jump over the divide and talk about visual art, or skate boarding as a sport or theater and then we might switch over to the opposite lane going against traffic, where i tell them stories about my childhood and the simple games i once played growing up in harlem, and how my friends and i would get so excited when one person in the neighborhood got a television set or when the watermelon man, who drove a horse drawn-wagon, laden with ice and melons that used to have seeds! and that people who had telephones used a party line (to mean that your neighbors could listen to the person on the other line gossiping about them), and most people didn't have phones because they were a luxury item back in the day.
or i might tell them a story about the night i spent in the great pyramid in egypt in more recent years, which inspires them to want to travel, or i might retell them a story my mother told to me when i was a girl, that has stayed with me all my life.
so the kids know stuff about racial segregation and martin luther king, jr's d march on washington and about slavery ,which they are taught in school. to them this information is somewhat of an abstraction, which causes me to understand that they live in the world now, and to speak about these things of the past , might make me seemed dated to them! but i know when they are older they, like me, will look back to this moment in their lives and might recall what we shared this summer.
to this, it was two summers ago that one of my younger granddaughters, whose bi-racial, came to visit me at my home in brooklyn precisely to learn about my side of the family. oh, before i go further, the kids are color blind when it comes to 'others'.
anyway, my granddaughter took notes as i told my stories to her! she also shared with me what her great grandmother, whose of spanish and caribbean indian decent on her mother's side, had told her about her past. that my granddaughter. then age 11, had the mind to inquire about her history on her own volition amazed me!. I was esthetic to be able to share with her what my mother had passed down to me about the our family.
at times i think back to my youth and when my mother would say to me, "jazz what's that noise? you call that music?" well i try not to asked this question of my grandchildren in the same way or tone in which my mother spoke to me. but if rock music is being played on my bose, as it was the other day while they were here working, i offered, "you see kids the difference between the artists of today and back in the day, musicians and singers knew how to read music, and play a real instrument. and they sang not yelled; and did you know that rock used to be called rock and roll and that white people stole this music from us?....blah, blah, blah. sharing this really put me in my place as an elder. i think.
at times i think back to my youth and when my mother would say to me, "jazz what's that noise? you call that music?" well i try not to asked this question of my grandchildren in the same way or tone in which my mother spoke to me. but if rock music is being played on my bose, as it was the other day while they were here working, i offered, "you see kids the difference between the artists of today and back in the day, musicians and singers knew how to read music, and play a real instrument. and they sang not yelled; and did you know that rock used to be called rock and roll and that white people stole this music from us?....blah, blah, blah. sharing this really put me in my place as an elder. i think.
i also feel though that my grandkids and I , meet somewhere in the middle. we are standing on a common ground of intergenerational diversity, and as i offer them stories about the past, they school me about the present. together we are all moving toward the future in our own time and rhythm. with our own reasons for being here at this time in the human story we all share.
moi,
Mahmoudah
moi,
Mahmoudah
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