Kissing and Telling: My Valentine's Day program was a public display of affection

On Valentine's Day, USPS representative Tony Musso and actor-radio host Steve Pal (nee Stephen Plaushin) joined the WVOX engineers, listeners and me for a lovely show. There was something for everyone, whether looking for love or in love, lovelorn or about to tie the knot, distant lovers or chocolate lovers. Content included kissing and call-ins, telling of tales and history, serenading and songs, advice and confessions.

Steve, by the way, is starring in Welcome to Norway this Saturday, February 17 at 3:00 PM and invites one and all to come. The play, by writer-director Robin Anne Joseph, is being presented in Series F of the Riant Theater's Strawberry One-Act Festival.NYC. In the play, "a woman [played by Laura Maggie Kramer] discovers a powerful lesson about life's destinations and how to accept it." - source: the Riant Theater Website

Now, about the Valentine's Day Lisa Tolliver Show. The broadcast included:

MUSIC

We played...

• "Can't Hide Love" (from Earth, Wind & Fire's The Eternal Dance, Volume II)
• "Dedicated to the One I Love" (The Shirelles)
• "I Love My Daddy" (from Hubert Laws' track on the CD 101.9 Presents Columbia & Sony Jazz Collection CD) - which I dedicated to my late father
• "Love You to the Letter" (from Anita Bakers' Compositions CD)
• "On the Radio" (from Donna Summers' Endless Summer: Donna Summer's Greatest Hits CD)

We serenaded listeners with selections from:

• "Take a Letter, Maria" (R. B. Greaves)
  
• "I Just Called to Say I Love You" (Stevie Wonder)

We discussed relationship songs mentioning letters, stamps and mail, such ...

• "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" (by Fred E. Ahlert and Joe Young and sung by many artists)
  
• "The Letter" (Box Tops)
• "Love Letters in the Sand" (written by J. Fred Coots, Nick Kenny and Charles Kenny and performed by various artists)
• "Please Mr. Postman" (Marvelettes)
• "Return to Sender" (Elvis Presley)
• "Sealed With a Kiss" (by Peter Udell and Gary Geld and recorded by various artists)
• "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours" (Stevie Wonder)
• "Twistin' Postman" (Marvelettes)
• "Yesterday's Letter" (98 Degrees)
• "You Send Me" (Sam Cooke)

TALK:

Love at the USPS...

• Love Stamps and other romantic trinkets at the USPS Store
• The Valentine's Day Re-Mailing Program at the USPS Post Office in Loveland, USA, which Crew's Nest Holidays reports:"creates a special and one-of-a-kind cancellation stamp every year in order to celebrate Valentine's Day and the romantic name of Loveland, Colorado."
• The Love and Kisses campaign (offering sweepstakes and other sweet somethings) sponsored by USPS and Hershey (commemorating the 100th anniversary of Hershey's Kisses)

Information and advice, such as...

• Valentine's Day history and facts, courtesy of Crew's Nest Holidays (which provided the image, above right) and History.com.
• Love-themed libations, such as those tagged "bride," "honey," "kiss," "lip," "love," "romance," "sex," "sweet," "Valentine," and "wedding" at DrinkNation.com.
• How to write a love letter.
• Many lovers get married on Valetine's Day (and other holidays), but divorce divas say, "don't do that." (If the relationship sours, the holiday will forever serve as a painful reminder). On the flip side, many vengeful spouses also file or serve divorce papers on Valentine's Day.
  
• Why, on holidays, it's better receive than to give engagement rings.

WHAT WE DIDN'T GET TO:

I'd be insulted if anyone ever sang or dedicated either of these popular songs to me:

• "I Love You Just the Way You Are" (Billy Joel) - specifically:

I don't want clever conversation
I don't want to work that hard.
I just want someone to talk to
I want you just the way you are.

• "My Funny Valentine" (Rodgers and Hart) - :

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable.
Yet, you're my favorite work of art.
Is your figure less than Greek ?
Is your mouth a little weak ?
When you open it to speak, are you smart ?
But don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me.

I love you for listening! SWAK

It's official: Faust is first at Harvard

It's official. Harvard's decision makers have spoken. The final pronouncement, on Sunday, simultaneously broke new ground and answered the question: "Is Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust to be (or not to be) the first female president of Harvard?"

Dr. Faust, a noted scholar of the American South and currently Dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, will assume the position on July 1, 2007. That is the answer.

"This is a great day, and a historic day, for Harvard," said James R. Houghton, chairman of the presidential search committee.

Faust has spoken, too. "I hope that my own appointment can be one symbol of an opening of opportunities that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago," she announced at a media conference on campus. She emphasized, "I'm not the woman president of Harvard, I'm the president of Harvard."

[Read the new president's prepared remarks in Harvard Gazette:Harvard Presidential Announcement:Remarks by President-Elect Drew Gilpin Faust.]

Helen Reddy might say: "She is woman. Hear her roar!"

However, you can't please all of the people all of the time.As Associated Press writer, Jesse Harlan Aldermand reports:

Some professors have quietly groused that -- despite the growing centrality of scientific research to Harvard's budget -- the 371-year-old university is appointing a fifth consecutive president who is not a scientist. No scientist has had the top job since James Bryant Conant retired in 1953; its last four have come the fields of classics, law, literature and economics.

Moreover, observes Aldermand (who did not specify whether or not this was a point of contention):

Faust is the first Harvard president who did not receive an undergraduate or graduate degree from the university since Charles Chauncy, an alumnus of Cambridge University in England, whoh died in office in 1672. She attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also a professor of history.

Bryn Mawr by the way, like Radcliffe, is a Seven Sisters College and the University of Pennsylvania, like Harvard, is Ivy League.

Fashion as a power tool: What do you watch and wear that makes you feel powerful?

Look at the time! I couldn't sleep and had tons to do before joining some sisters to see Treemonisha, so I got online and got busy. I don't want to miss a minute of the Black History Month activities I have scheduled today.

As RottenTomatoes.com describes: "Scott Joplin's only opera, 'Treemonisha' [sic] tells the proud story of the educated daughter of former slaves, who rises to greatness in the postbellum 1800s." My mother's talented and fashionable friend, Mollie Jackson (who wears a beautifully braided up-do), will be singing in the pit chorus.

[The public domain photo of Scott Joplin, right, is from About.com]

What has any of this to do with power tools and clothing?

While I mentally scanned my wardrobe to decide what to wear today, I digitally scanned the World Wide Web to find resources relevant to my cultural/arts projects. In the course of that work, I came across the following description of "Trappings." That project, by Two Girls Working, gave me pause and I thought it was worth pointing out:

In Two Girls Working, the collaborative team of artists [sic] Tiffany Ludwig and Renee Piechocki, position themselves as assets to civic action and dialogue. Our project Trappings activates dialogue about the complicated landscape of power and its relationship to personal identity by asking women to respond to the question: what do you wear that makes you feel powerful?

Good question. I believe the answer is contextual. What makes one feel powerful (or sometimes more importantly, conveys to his or her target audience power or competence, credibility or taste, appropriateness or class) can vary as drastically as the situations one might find oneself in.

What Two Girls Working had in mind, when they launched "Trappings," was to challenge "the preconceived set of ideas individuals create based on other’s personal appearance" and to offer "a platform for viewers and participants to explore their relationship to power and investigate how they present themselves." Through the project, which "is founded upon the necessity to work, engage, and create based on a vision of inclusive feminism and social action," the originators encourage women from a diversity of backgrounds to collaborate in an open exploration of "the relationship of women to power within the construction of personal identity."

That's a call I'm moved to answer. However, as an African American Woman, I can't help but respond on two levels, the first socio-historical, the second personal.

Firstly, I am sure the costumes in Treemonisha will illustrate this socio-historical fact: garments, accessories and color schemes often telegraph or obfuscate one's socio-economic status. Trappings may also be used to communicate important messages, affiliations and roles.

Consider the secret codes used by underground railroad participants to communicate fluently with total strangers; the colors worn by undercover cops and gang members to tacitly self-identify; the color and positioning of bridal garments to connote virginity and the transition from maiden to wife; the readily identifiable uniforms adopted by various groups to identify members; and the everyday and ceremonial attire and insignia worn by such people as soldiers, clergy persons and university graduates when they want to specify their organizational affiliations and ranks.

[The public domain image of the Treemonisha opera bill, above left, is from Wikipedia.]

Secondly, in my personal life, I wear several hats. A typical Wednesday might include an early morning lecture or client consultation (which calls for a business suit or business casual attire), followed by a radio broadcast seen only by the studio crew (who could care less what I wore), and then an athletic workout, capped off by another lecture or meeting, dinner date, event or all of the above.

What makes me feel powerful, in each case, is wearing something that comfortably fits, at once, the dress code, practical realities, and my personality. To accomplish that, I keep an athletic bag, cosmetics kit and change of clothes in my car. Sometimes I start out wearing sensible shoes that let my "dogs" breathe, then slip into sneakers that let me run faster, jump higher, and later squeeze into high-heels that are not meant for walking but look great with dressy clothes. Whatever the situation, my busy schedule and aversion to fuss require adherence to the KISS principle for hair and makeup: Keep It Simple, Sister.

As casual observation can reveal, individual definitions of "appropriate" attire can be subjective. For example, one of my girlfriends validates the phrase, "We've come a long way, maybe." She disapproves of braids and twists and can't manage au naturelle, so she still punishes her hair with perms and is enslaved to curling irons. To each her own. I sport my twists proudly, and unlike her, can take my wash-n-wear tresses, relatively hassle-free, from seaside to supper, and without much fuss from the bedroom to the boardroom.

In another example, my chic and stylish, but somewhat conservative, mother loved the charcoal gray and teal suit that I wore to my father's wake (where my "target audience" was family and friends). However, she disapproved of the "beautiful" but "inappropriate" "party dress" (as she termed it) that I donned for the funeral. Indeed, the black silk number was a cocktail dress, but I paired it with a demure, long-sleeved designer jacket, the skirt had no slits, the neckline did not plunge and the hem height was appropriate for a sacred ceremony. It suited its purpose.

Here's what Mom missed: Dad would have loved that dress, and it was he whom I dressed for that day. Additionally, sporting that dress to send my father off in style imparted a sense of empowerment. My father (who knew he was dying) had made it clear: he wanted his loved ones to celebrate his memory. That we did, and although powerless to prolong Dad's life, my brother and I seized control where we could. That included dictating the details and trappings of my father's homegoing, such as what the three of us, and my young nephews, wore.

Dad would also have enjoyed attending Treemonisha; he was a strong supporter of black art and culture. Certainly, if he could see me, he would approve of the black suede skirt, wine-colored silk twin sweater set, and coordinated accessories that I'll wear to today's Black History Month event.