Another Cautionary Tale Unheeded

Whitney Houston was so popular when I was a teenager, and I could always see why. She had an amazingly clear, beautiful voice that sang songs of love and personal ambition. If the songs were somewhat bland, as her critics charged, they were nonthreatening and spoke to a wide variety of people. In magazine interviews she always came off as gracious and humbly grateful for her success. She was never vulgar, never showed off, didn't trash other artists. Sounds different from most people in the public eye, doesn't she? She was.

Prior to becoming a famous singer, Ms. Houston was a moderately successful model. I used to see her all the time in the teen magazines that I read in those days, and she photographed very well.

She had some success as an actress, too. With her talent it seemed like the sky was the limit.

Her family connections must have been very helpful, too. They say she was discovered in a night club, but I believe that is only a small part of the story. Her own mother was a well-known singer who sang backup for Elvis at one time, and she had a successful nightclub act where Whitney practiced her singing and stage presence. Mama Houston also directed the choir at their church and Whitney doubtlessly got practice and stage time (altar time? lol)there, too. In addition, Dionne Warwick was apparently a blood relative, and Aretha Franklin was Ms. Houston's godmother.

I actually saw Ms. Houston in person in 1988, when I was 17 years old, and working in food service. This was a small bakery in West Hollywood and Ms. Houston had come in to place a large order. I didn't recognize her at first--as is common with models she photographed a bit better than she looked in person--she was very tall and quite masculine. She was accompanied by a very pretty blond. While both women were polite, I somehow got the sense that perhaps not all was as it seemed. I sensed that Ms. Houston had a bit of a wild streak. Nothing I could really put my finger on, but that was my impression of her.

Still, I was surprised that she got involved with former New Edition front man Bobby Brown, whom she married in 1992. We can guess what he saw in her--besides her wealth, she was very famous and no doubt Mr. Brown loved the spotlight. She was pretty and probably nice, too.

But what did she see in him? Perhaps she saw that he would fulfill her need to be rebellious. To say and do the things she wished to, but was too restrained to do.

Their marriage lasted 15 years and produced a daughter, Bobbi Kristina. How much different might Ms. Houston's (and Bobbi Kristina's)life had been if she'd never gotten involved with Mr. Brown. Or if she'd said, sometime early in the marriage, "Bob--thank you for giving me Bobbi Kristina, but I've had enough of this drama. This is where we go our separate ways."

But she didn't. She stuck it out for years. It was over these years that Ms. Houston lost her beautiful voice, her fresh, lovely appearance, her wealth, and her mind, apparently. She became Bobby Brown's female counterpart--sweaty, blousy, disheveled and disoriented. Old beyond her years, with a raspy voice, she stumbled around behaving inappropriately at seemingly every turn. Her vacant eyes were no longer windows to her soul, but the blank orbs of a drug addict.

If there is a lesson to be learned by all of this perhaps it is to show us how deeply we are influenced by our companions.

Could Ms. Houston ever have said that Bobby Brown brought out the best in her? No! Or, "Hell to the no!" as she would say in her later years. She got aggressive and unladylike as her life spiraled downhill, Bobby Brown leading the way.

Everyone seems to be offering his or her condolences and opinions in sound bites on tv, but this all seems like some kind of inauthentic public group therapy to me.

The one who has really lost in this horrible tragedy of Ms. Houston's life is her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who has had drug problems of her own. Her "friends" blasted images of her on the Internet while she used cocaine. Well, I can see how this happened--her own mother continually trusted the wrong person and made poor decisions. That bum of a husband of hers really brought her down, and she paid with her life. Bobbi Kristina is paying, too, for the rest of her life. I wish her well, but I know what a difficult road she has ahead of her.

Best Wishes,


Jen :)

Blessed be Seynte Valentine

We are a week away from Valentine's Day. I heard on the radio this morning that February is the "month of romance." Well, it is also Black History Month, and I prefer to reflect on the contributions of this significant minority to our country rather than focusing on the elusive concept of romance. But that's just me....

Anyway, I appreciate romantic love, don't get me wrong. After all, it is romance, plus the cooperation of the birds and the bees, that has brought me my two beautiful children, and this third one who is on the way.

There is a reason that Valentine's Day is associated with romance--it has an interesting history. Traditionally, spring begins on St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14), and it was thought in medieval Europe to be the very day on which birds chose their mates.

We will probably never know the true identity of St. Valentine, but dating back to the middle ages, the 14th Century, this Christian feast day had become definitively associated with romantic love. According to UCLA medieval scholar, Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine, it was Chaucer who first linked St. Valentine's Day with romance. Well, Chaucer was a genius, wasn't he? I love his writings. They are so clever, yet not a bit contrived.

Nevertheless, there are problems with making romantic love the main focus of our lives, or even making it the focus of the month of February. While no one can deny that our choice of a life partner can contribute more to our happiness or unhappiness than anything or anyone else, if romance (and sex) were legitimately the things that brought true and lasting happiness into our lives, all the world would be a Happy Valley. Instead, sometimes I think I'm living in the Valley of the Dolls! So many people I know are on Prozac or other anti-depressants, helping them to deal with life's disappointments, mostly failed relationships. There is much unhappiness, disappointment, and exploitation in the name of romantic love.

Still, hope springs eternal, and I want my kids to be positive about marriage and the birds and the bees. I must have grandchildren someday! We will celebrate St. Valentine's Day by baking cookies and perhaps painting pink and red hearts on the windows with tempera paints.

Best Wishes,


Jen :)

Girls' Names

I'm having a baby! And it's a girl. My husband desperately wanted another boy. Who can deny that it's a man's world? I hope I'm up to the challenge of raising a girl in a society where girls and women are devalued in so many subtle ways--especially by other women and girls. But it is a girl, so I guess I'll be passing on my mitochondrial DNA anyway! lol If it had been another boy I would have named him Robert, and I would have called him "mein lieber Robert." My brother, Daniel, who was murdered last year, always thought the name Robert was ideal for boys. Incidentally, we had a great-grandfather named Robert, who was known to be very good-looking but somewhat unstable. Somehow, learning the German language later in life has made me filter everything through a Germanic lens. So here are some names that are definitely out: Victoria--very negative sexual connotation in the German language; Stacy---sounds too much like Stasi, the DDR secret police; Astrid---if you speak German you'll know why this one is out. Instead, I have tentatively decided to name "New Baby," as my little boys call her, Manuela. It is a Spanish or Portuguese name, but it is surprisingly very popular in Germany, for whatever reasons. The nickname is Manu. Several non-German speakers have told me that this sounds waaay too Mexican, but I don't care. "Honey, you can't name her that! It sounds like a fieldhand in the San Joaquin Valley!" said one well-meaning friend. However, to me, "Manuela" conjures up a more mentally stable and less-vampish version of Marlene Dietrich. All of my German-speaking friends like the name. It has a good--and very German--connotation to them, too. Interestingly, Manuela is due on May 23, which was my late brother's birthday. I hope she'll actually be born that day. One never knows...but one can always hope! Best Wishes, Jennifer :)

The Serenity Prayer

Perhaps you have heard of the Serenity Prayer that is so dear to the hearts of members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs? Here is the best-known form: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. This was written in the early 20th Century, by Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologin of German descent. Bet you guessed that he was German by that name, right? lol Here is the prayer in German, which a German website claims is the original form of the prayer, which was later translated into English: Gott, gib mir die Gelassenheit, Dinge hinzunehmen, die ich nicht aendern kann, den Mut, Dinge zu aendern, die ich aendern kann, und die Weisheit, das eine vom anderen zu unterscheiden. There is some question of whether Reinhold Niebuhr actually wrote the Serenity Prayer. It appears that he did, but of course, the idea has has been expressed by others before. There is actually a Mother Goose rhyme (1695) expressing a similar sentiment: For every ailment under the sun There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it. In everyone's life there are problems and situations that are not of our choosing, and not to our liking. Sometimes there is nothing to be done, and we have to accept no for an answer. But other times we don't have to take no for an answer. We don't have to take it lying down! If we have enough guts (courage) we can sometimes make our own choices, and expand our possibilities, even if our options remain severely limited. Sometimes hard work and daring can turn a flat refusal or seeming impossibility into a definite yes, or at least a possible maybe! But if not, well, best to let it go and focus our efforts on other more important things. Best Wishes, Jen :)

It Didn't Get Better For Them....

In September of 2011, Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old Buffalo, New York junior high school student committed suicide. He had made a video for "It Gets Better," a project created to provide moral support for bullied gay teens. Just last week, yet another young person, Eric James Borge, who had also made a video for "It Gets Better," committed suicide, too. Perhaps making such a public announcement of their sexuality did not help their lives get better. Perhaps the videos the young men made led to more bullying, not less. Perhaps what alienated young people need is more privacy, more understanding. But this kind of support is not forthcoming from the adults who run "It Gets Better." I was recently reading a book by the late Dutch Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen, called "Turn My Mourning Into Dancing," and he had written about activism, and what a failure it is. (see pages 72-75 of the above book) Here he quotes another Catholic, Thomas Merton:

"Writes Merton, 'He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give to others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions...his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.'

And Father Nouwen went on to comment about Merton's above statement:

"Here lies the center of Merton's critique of our activism, the second way in which we try to manage others or love with conditions. We end up doing things for others for the sake of doing, for the sake of ourselves. This kind of activism gathers merit badges. It is motivated by guilt, by the feeling of being indebted, by the sense of having to earn righteousness or favor--from God or others. Activism ultimately places our own unmet longings at the center of our efforts. It therefore does not help others in a wholesome way."

Well, Amen to that, Brothers and Sisters! I think of the people who have tried to influence me, only to alienate me further. I am thinking particularly of one law professor I had who tried to mold me into her vision of an ideal Mexican-American woman. Well, that didn't work! I don't want any middle class white women telling me how I should vote, or that I should only date Hispanic men. Besides, my father's family was originally from Spain, and were descended from Marranos (Spanish Jews.) I was raised by my German/Dutch/Swiss mother, so I always wondered what that pushy law professor was talking about with her pro-Mexican agenda. I wish I'd had the guts at the time to tell her to buzz off! I actually learned Spanish in school, by the way. I am not a native speaker, despite my Spanish last name. Anyway, Father Nouwen goes on to write,

"Think about the people who have most influenced you. When I remember them I am always surprised to discover that these are people who did not try to influence me, who did not need my response. Instead they radiated a certain inner freedom. They made me asaware taht they were intouch swith more than themselves. They pointed to a reality greater than themselves from which and in whom their freedom grew. This centeredness, this inner freedom, this spiritual independence had a mysterious contagiousness."

What an insightful thing to write! There was actually a law professor whom I really liked who influenced me tremendously, though he wasn't trying to do so. His name was Jesse Dukeminier. He was a homosexual, and he was more feminine than the aggressive female law professors who strode around the halls purposefully in their Birkenstocks. He wasn't trying to be macho, or cool, or part of the same generation as his students. He wasn't trying to be something he was not. He had a nice life, an art collection, and he was a model for self-acceptance. God (and life itself) had made him what he was, and he accepted it. Every time I was in his presence, I felt somehow relieved. He had that mysterious contagiousness, what can I say? Professor Dukeminier is no longer with us, but I feel that he is still with us in spirit. I hope that all people who are alienated, unhappy, and struggling with their identity can meet more people who model self-acceptance (and acceptance of the way the world is) rather than being urged to try to aggressively (and futilely) change everyone and everything else. I am deeply sorry for young people like Jamey Rodemeyer and Eric James Borge who didn't live long enough to make better lives for themselves. People can go on and on about bigotry, and indeed it exists, but activism can be harmful, too. May these poor young suicides rest in peace of a kind they never found here on earth. Best Wishes, Jen :)

Litigation & the Aggressive Handshake

I dislike litigation, which is, in part, why I became a consumer bankruptcy attorney. There is little conflict in my field. Still, as an attorney, sometimes I do have to go to court. It's almost never pleasant. I went last week, for example. The opposing party had told me, "My attorney is an ugly le*@$!n who can't wait to knock you down a peg!" I didn't really believe him. I was sure that his attorney would play fair and not be one of these women who will fight to the death in a status competition with another woman. After all, she seemed so congenial on her website. Let me tell you, folks, I was wrong. She grabbed my hand in a really aggressive handshake, and my hand is still very sore. She was as strong as a man! I bruise easily, and especially more so now that I am four months pregnant. And she wants me to cooperate with her? Uh, I don't feel so cooperative anymore. My hand just feels really sore. I am actually typing this with one hand. I found something on the Internet about aggressive handshakes, though. Apparently I'm not the only one to be injured by a hostile handshaker. "Funny as it may sound, handshaking is a common source of people having sore hands," says Dr. Leon Benson, professor of orthopedic surgery at Northwestern University School of Medicine. "There are people, in the name of giving a strong handshake, who squeeze in a way that's pretty uncomfortable." He himself remembers having a sore hand for three days after an aggressive handshake. Well, there it is. Straight from the Internet. I think I'll skip the handshake with this aggressive broad next time around. Merry Christmas! I am looking forward to a few days rest for my sore hand. Best Wishes, Jen :)

Little Charles at School

I can't believe my baby is growing up so soon. Next month, he'll be four years old, and he's already going to start kindergarten, on the day of his fourth birthday, no less. I had my doubts about moving him up to another grade so soon (most kids start kindergarten when they are five) but his teacher and the school administrator say he's ready. I guess I'll take their word for it. They were really nice about addressing my concerns--mainly, that Little Charles would turn into a precocious brat with intellectual pretentions. But they assured me that he would stay modest, and more interested in learning than bragging about how smart he is. My husband and I had noticed that he was quite sharp. I think he gets this from my husband. Not me! LOL Both of our kids are so sweet. I feel so lucky to be their mom! Best Wishes, Jen :)

Our Hero

Look at this sweet little boy! Joey, who is 19 months old, is our family's hero. He saved my little dog, Chacha, from drowning in the fish pond. Chacha is usually super careful around water, but she fell in one day last week and Joey, who was watching from the window, sounded the alarm. He called to his babysitter, "Reyna, Reyna, Chachi water!" Isn't that amazing? I mean, in Lassie, it was Lassie who saved Timmy when Timmy fell in the well, not the other way around! Anyway, Reyna ran outside to the pond and rescued Chacha. I was so proud of my little boy, and so happy that Chacha is still with the living. I love my kids (and my dogs!) so much. Best Wishes, Jen :)