Thrill the World. From my friend, Brooke:

On Friday, July 17 at 7:30pm, Joe’s Movement Emporium in Mt. Rainier is holding its inaugural dance class to teach anyone 8 and older the iconic Michael Jackson “Thriller” Dance!

This class is FREE!  ALL AGES ARE WELCOME.  This class is approximately 2 hours long and should be a blast. Please RSVP to here.

Joe’s will be teaching as many students the “Thriller” dance as possible this summer in preparation for the annual worldwide simultaneous dance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, which will be held on Sat. Oct. 24, 2009, 8:30pm ET.  All official Thrill the World events will be included in the numbers for setting and breaking World Records.

Please send this to all the dance and Michael Jackson fans out there!

Thank you,

Brooke Kidd
“Zombie Brooke”
Joe’s Movement Emporium
Mount Rainier, MD 20712

Not to be missed: a “community” rendition of Thriller.

Breakfast this morning: A strawberry-strawberry-cashew smoothie. Very, very nice. Here’s what I used:

• 1 c of frozen strawberries (I freeze them after sugaring them and adding citric acid)
• 1/2 c strawberry kefir
• 6 unsalted raw cashews, soaked

Whirrrrrr in the Vitamix. Done.

Looking for the schedule of the Columbia Association’s lakefront movies for 2009, I typed in to Google a very respectable string of words: “columbia association” lakefront, movies, 2009. Lo, and behold, the Washington Post’s info was the #1 choice.

And, so I clicked.

I’m so dumbfounded that I’m beyond anger. I just skipped the Pissed-Off stage and went straight to: You Should Just Die and Be Gone.

Oh, OK, maybe I dipped my toe in the anger pool … but just a bit. No, really, people, check this out. Click here. Scan it. See if you can find useful information presented in a user-friendly way. Maybe, even if your curiosity strikes you: try adding an event to your calendar. HAH!

Back to the drawing board.

Life and Such had me on a rooftop party in Brooklyn this past weekend. The party was an I’m-going-away-for-two-months-so-I-need-to-have-a-going-away party, which was hosted by a Millennial. Go figure. The host was a student at Pratt, and except for my friend and I, all the attendees were her peers, either at school, or in age range.

One party-going Millennial, with a bit of puffery in his chest, said to me, “It’s so nice to see the other generations represented at this party. So often, I go out, and I just don’t see other generations.”

To which I responded, “That’s because you are a member of a peer-oriented generation, and you and your cohorts tend to clump around your own, and in large numbers. It’s quite natural, actually, that you don’t notice other generations much because you probably don’t  spend much time around them.”

Not sure if he got my point.

But in any case, it kinda cracked me up. I get in a big way that all the generations are shifting roles. I know this, born in ‘63 myself, and an early-wave GenXer, that I’m now in my early years of mid-life. No longer am I “the younger generation” at the rooftop parties. Anyone else feeling this? The shift to a new life phase. It’s interesting. I’m not knocking it: I’m just sometimes knocked askew for a split second by being reminded externally of this new phase of life.

And the beat goes on …

But it’s better if you’re both, blended, integrated and/or bi-racial. See, I was contacted by a young gal looking to interview people/families of Columbia. It’s easier if I let her use her words:

Let me explain a bit about our project. We are part of a consortium of schools looking at different groups of Americans emerging as growing populations according to the Census. According to the 2000 Census and projections for 2010, mixed-race people are the fastest-growing demographic. But what this group (and their families) share in common is difficult to define.

This is our series hub, and this is a link to last year’s projects to give you a sense. Your interviews would be a video component to a print story about Columbia and about multiracial families in America, which would be posted on our program’s Web site.

For the Columbia story, we want to speak with multiracial families (or individuals, of any age) about what drew them to Columbia and how they feel that Rouse’s vision for creating a diverse and engaged community has changed over the years. We are also asking each family a few set questions about their experiences as a multiracial family, and how they feel the experience has informed their social and political outlook on issues (if at all). The interview should take about 30 minutes. We would prefer to interview people in their homes if possible. We would be looking to speak to up to 5 families or individuals.

Again, I know this is very personal, and we are glad to answer any questions to set minds at ease. It actually is a very fun project, and we are getting many different answers to our questions!

We will be in Columbia this Monday and Tuesday, but we can accommodate any time you have free in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks so much for your help!
Shauna Miller

News21 Fellow
University of Maryland
(301) 314-2694

(301) 661-6672 (cell)

Today was my anniversary. I’ve now had a j-o-b for 12 months. 365 days. A whole year. And now, I’m starting my second year there. I like it. I like having a job and being inside a structure. I wrote more about what I like at my six-month mark.

What I find fascinating, thrilling, exciting, frustrating, uplifting, endearing and enticing is the terrain. It’s the terrain of being on the inside. And, I speak no ill of my company or any other when I say this: I like the concept of development inside of contraction. I like the challenge of finding ways to continue to be/d0/have “more” inside an economy that is contracting. Gone are the days for most all American companies where year-after-year of growth was pretty certain. Nope. And yet, inside a contracting economy, who is to say all companies will take the hit evenly? Some may thrive. Excel even. This is what excites me about my job. Those challenges of developing inside an environment where it seems harder than ever.

I like the people inside the company. Our customers. Our partners. The external contacts with whom I work. The global distributors. The local folk. I like walking the halls, seeing people I work with, day after day. Before I even went looking for a job, I wrote a doc called My Ideal Job. And while I knew that exact job probably didn’t exist when I wrote the doc, my sense is that I’m moving toward it each day.

There’s one thing I genuinely don’t like: the air quality of the building where I work. My company execs and various staff, along with the building landlord, have been near-heroic in attempting to solve this problem. But they haven’t been able to, and it just sucks. My lungs hurt somedays. I often feel a physical contraction in my lungs, especially after having been out of the office for a couple days. I want to work out in fresh air, to work anywhere but the office and to have access to air that isn’t the air of the building. We’ll see. Maybe that will come to be more of an option in year two. Fingers crossed.

Thanks again to all the people who’ve been a part of my life at each moment of development. Whether as a client and how I honed so many of my skills learning how to deliver solutions inside of tight budgets, as a colleague, as a friend. In any way, shape or form that I’ve come to stand more solidly on this Earth, thank you. And to my colleagues at my j-o-b, thank you, too. My first year has been quite an experience, and I’m looking forward to Year Two.

This one got mixed reviews. It’s much lighter in texter than my more-typical fruit-dense smoothies, plus I added flavoring well above and beyond just the fruit. Here’s what I mixed –

• 1/2 a cantaloupe
• 10 ice cubes
• 1 inch of ginger, peeled and diced
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1/2 c vanilla kefir
• 2 T honey

Vitamix on low, variable, then high. Cantaloupe is so watery, that it makes for a really different base drink than something pulpier, such as blueberries. Knowing it was going to be really watery,  and knowing I didn’t want to add to many fruits to it, I aimed to add more flavor layers. (Oh, cantaloupe, like all melons, is best eaten away from/distanced from eating other foods. At least, that’s what I’ve heard and adhere to mostly.) The ginger and honey added flavor layers. The ginger seemed almost a bit bitter to me; the lemon, sour, of course. Kefir is a little bit sour, but balanced by the vanilla flavor.

Anyway, I liked it. My sis was so-so on it. My dad and my mom both liked it. If I made it again, I’d halve the amount of ginger I used.

The sibs visiting from out of town are quickly adapting to the nightly smoothie routine. Tonight’s concoction: pineapple, peach and kefir. Here’s what I used -

• 1/3 of a pineapple
• 2 peaches
• 1/2 cup of vanilla kefir
• 5-6 soaked Brazil nuts

Vitamix, first on low and variable. Then high-speed, especially with the Brazil nuts; needed to pulverize them. The pineapple and peaches by themselves were nice and tasty, but too light. Too airy. Not enough dimension to the drink. So I added some vanilla-flavored kefir for the fat from the kefir/yogurt-like drink. Plus the vanilla flavor and slight sour of the yogurt adds dimension. I added Brazil nuts because — well, heck — they’re rather healthy. Plus, they also added some weight and oil to the drink. Very nice end result. Light fruit flavor with the sweet pineapple and peaches, with layers of vanilla, sour and nuts (a smidge, just a smidge bitter).

Back from a long — and hot — day at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, it was time for a smoothie. I had four people total to make it for, so volume was as important as taste. I mixed –

• 2 c frozen peaches (frozen by me last year with citric acid and sugar to sweat them)
• 1.5 c frozen blueberries
• 1 orange, juiced
• 4 Brazil nuts, soaked
• 1/2 c of kefir, vanilla-flavored
• 1 c of fruity-flavored tea
• Some cran-pomnegranate juice (bottled sugar) just because I needed more liquid and a little more sweetness
• Oh, and I added a borage flower (edible) as decoration

Vitamix. Variable, then on high. Served in pretty glasses. Nice. Refreshing. Still thick enough to eat with a spoon.

When I was eight years old, I got my first-ever album. It was by The Jackson Five. Inside, there was a paper sleeve protecting the record. And on this sleeve was printed many fan items for purchase. The heart-shaped stickers with Michael Jackson’s photo in the center I pined for, day in and day out.

I would spend hours looking at the album and the fan items for purchase. It was too complex a process for my eight-year-old self to buy a sticker. And my parents wouldn’t have understood my desire, or thought it charming. This was another era: the beginning of the GenX era of childhood. Millennials, you’ll never understand in any meaningful way … and that’s ok.

My young tweenager’s heart would envision scenario upon scenario of how Michael and I would meet. How he would fall in love with me. And how he would choose me as his true love among all the other girls who loved him. I knew it was our destiny, and I spent much time seeing how it would happen.

I’ve grown up with his music. Watched him struggle. Do strange things. Always caring for him, even in his oddities. Even feeling sadness for his possible/probable pedophilia and how he wasn’t born that way, but made that way by … by who knows what combination of events/people/happenings.

And today, when hearing of his heart failure, my heart hurt for a moment. Deep. While I don’t know the circumstances or (possibly gory) details to emerge around his death, it felt right to me that his heart would give out. Has he known love? To give? To receive? To allow? To forgive? It seems logical and right that his heart would be weak in spirit and in soul.

The radio and twitter were my first feeds on the news, with twitter bringing links of the confirmed death. This evening, I turned on the TV to celebrate his life. Channel after channel of the same story. Lurid. Loving. Tragedy. Gossip. Up. Down. He was great. He was odd.

I already know all that.

I just wanted to listen to his music. Watch his videos. Marvel. Remember. And love him now, as I have always. As someone whose expression of self touched me inside and opened me up. These two videos are from his earlier days. I enjoyed watching them again tonight and share them that you might, too.

Ben

Rockin Robin