Wanted: Black Women and Black Men To Build A Nation!

As of late I've engaged in heated debates with other black women who are ready, willing and able to date men of other races out of frustration with how many black men mistreat, neglect, disrespect or abandon them. I, on the other hand, still value nothing higher than the black family. I also have a high opinion of black men still. It's perpetual. My love spans over 200,000, when Lucy was my mother, ya dig? Enough metaphysics. I say all that to say that Black Love dates back to an unfathomable antiquity. 500 years of Maafa, The African Holocaust, cannot wreck that for me. This is why I love films like "The Wiz" (with that great opening scene of Auntie and Diana Ross Dorothy around the dining table, 20 deep; talking, laughing and connecting), Maya Angelou's only Hollywood directing gig, "Down on the Delta," Diane Carroll's "Claudine," etc. Listen to this smart, young sistah breakdown The African Diaspora's dire situation and how badly we need to come together to strengthening the black family for the good of our communities around the world.

Calling All Foodies!-- Celebrity Chef Brian Stansberry Says, “It’s About the Food”

Vallejo-Bred Celebrity Chef Brian Stansberry Says, “It’s About the Food!”

By Andrea N. Jones

Brian Stansberry, 44, Executive Chef of the well-esteemed Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota and owner of High End Catering, is responsible for providing 11,000 students, along with faculty, breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day. With 43 employees to supervise at the school, he manages a $2.8 million operation. Stansberry has carved out the time to be a celebrity chef to boot with big plans to take his high end food on the road with his brand new venture, Flavor Face! Food Truck, with which healthy, locally produced ingredients and American comfort-classic gnoshes he plans to fill bellies big and small, up and down the California Coast.

Keen on cooking green, Stansberry wants African Americans and everyone else to know that they can eat healthy food and it can still be good to their taste buds.  He will tell you that he is all about preparing the freshest of foods, grown locally, to create food fare so appetizing that his reputation has come to precede him. He has been tapped to cook delectable meals for celebrities such as Snoop Dogg and E-40 as well as dignitary like Rev. Jessie Jackson and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Stansberry’s cuisine is not just for the “Who’s Who.” In fact, the Culinarian from Vallejo has every intention of taking America’s newest food revolution to the people.

              
Taking a note out of the playbook of conventional wisdom, he states his motto about cooking, “I believe the best way to a person’s heart is through their stomach.” At 18, while working  his first kitchen job he started at first just to pay the  bills, Stansberry fell in love with food. At San Francisco’s world-famous Drake Hotel, he was assigned to line setup which involved cleaning 100 pounds of squid, daily. Not everyone could contend with such a demanding task, but Stansberry took it in stride. At 21, Stansberry moved on to Seattle where he was the youngest staff member at the acclaimed Metropolitan Grill steak house. Assigned the broiler, he worked over an 800degree stove and got a taste for high end cooking—the place where fine ingredients, perfectly-timed preparation and skillful presentation meet.

              
Eventually he settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After working at the Radissons Hotel for five years perfecting his craft as sous chef he was offered a position in Uptown Minneapolis at the Green Mill Restaurant and Bar that he had dreamed of, Executive Chef. “I learned the culture of Minnesota. The food they like.” His most popular dishes were the parmesan encrusted Wall-eye, bacon-wrapped jalapeño poppers and tomato-basil soup. While there, he implemented policies that turned a $1 million business into a $3.5 million enterprise in just three years. Stansberry said he made that happen by working closely with his staff, telling them, “It’s not about us, it’s about the food.” Eventually he would move on to Executive Chef at the 4-star Crowne Plaza in the twin cities.

From working at the Crowne Plaza he received an advantageous offer to partner in the opening of a wireless internet coffee shop/deli, wine bar and mid to upscale restaurant, located on the foot of St. Olaf College, the Ole Store Cafe. The accolades began pouring in. Within one year, Brian was in two featured items in the Star Tribune, Minnesota’s top newspaper, a special segment on Minnesota’s CBS affiliate WCCO-Channel 4 and received “Best Restaurant Worth the Drive” honors from Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine.

So, it’s no wonder why Stansberry was called upon one night to prepare a meal for Snoop Dogg when he came through the Twin Cities. “Snoop wanted friend chicken, rice & gravy and macaroni & cheese,” recalls Stansberry. “People think fried chicken is the easiest thing to cook, but it’s not.” Stansberry hesitated at first as to whether he wanted the undertaking. Could he pull it off in the amount of time he had? Traveling to Snoop’s hotel, would his fried chicken lose its heat and crisp?  In the end Stansberry knew he could make it happen. ”They loved it,” says Stansberry.  “They absolutely loved it.”

              
When asked about cooking for E-40, Stansberry fondly speaks of the rapper. “I grew up with Earl Stevens,” says Stansberry (Stevens being E-40’s birth name). “When he was touring in Minnesota he called me up and said, ‘Hey, B. What can you do?’ I asked him what he would like and he said he wanted seafood. So we did Garlic Roasted Cherry wood-smoked Dungeness Crab.” 40’s entire team devoured the food. Now everyone from B-Legit, Juvenile and Keak Da Sneak to Too Short call Stansberry when they are in town and Chef Brian happily hooks them up.  Recently his team hit the set of his brother’s, the video directing phoneme Taj Stansberry  (who directed the YouTube record smashing Hit The Floor featuring Pop Sensation J. Lo) set feeding featured Kingpins of Rap Rick Ross and Lil’ Wayne.  2Chainz and Swiss Beatz (Alicia Key’s producer husband), also have recently enjoyed the chef’s food fare.

             
He’s also cooked for global politicos. Reverend Jessie Jackson dined on Bronze Salmon, Hillary Rodham Clinton enjoyed the Caramelized Ginger Lemon Torte and for the President of Bolivia, Stanberry prepared an authentic Bolivian dinner, replete with ingredients he had to source out of state. He is currently preparing a menu for the king and queen of Norway. Not star stuck but very humble, Stansberry will tell you in a heartbeat that it’s not about him. It’s about the food.

Right now, Stansberry is really into perfecting his sauces, rue in particularly as he is really into gumbo right now. He also has taken on fusion cuisine—taking two world cuisines and combining their ingredients to create innovative food experiences. “I’ll take two cultures, like Italian and Mexican and create something,” he says.

Stansberry is most excited to throw his chef’s hat into the food truck ring by taking his high end food to the streets. He sees a street food revolution happening in America from coast to coast. “I believe the food truck revolution is really serious,” says Stansberry.” You don’t have to pay the property taxes, you don’t have to rent a big building and you can go everywhere to serve people your talents.” Stansberry states that America is beginning to catch on to street food, but it’s been a common way to chow around the world. “If you travel to Thailand, Australia, Italy, Jamaica, they all have street food and vendors,” says Stansberry. “[The food] is not pretty, it’s not expensive but it’s done well and from the heart. It’s done straight from the soul, like music.” As many as 2.5 billion people around the globe eat street food every day. In fact, Chef Brian will be touring Thailand later this year to do his on study on street food vending.

Stansberry has envisioned a statewide food tour up and down the California coast in his spanking-new truck company, Flavor Face!, that will cater to The Stars beginning January 1. The menu will feature Chef Brian’s signature “Stick-N-In-Movin’“ items: Mac-n-Cheese on a Stick, Spaghetti-n-Meatballs on a Stick and  Tuna Tartar on a Stick.

“Music, food and people go hand and hand,” he states about his appeal to the Top Artists he feeds.  When he goes H.A.M. (Hard as a Mutha) in the kitchen, he sets his timers to his own playlist. It’s not uncommon to find this celebrity chef cooking to Sade, Confunkshun or George Benson. However, when he goes real hard in the kitchen, it’s all about bumping Mac Dre or Ice Cube.

Stansberry might say that the two hearts he loves nourishing the most with his food belong to his two daughters, the both of whom he’s is currently putting through colleges. Stansberry sees cooking as both an art form and a way to make it out of tough circumstances. “A lot of my friends are dead; a lot of them are in prison. [Cooking] has been a way to stay off the street and work at my craft. It’s a way to be better as an individual. To young, prospective chefs, he offers words of advice: “Eat everything, taste everything and travel as much as you can. Learn other cultures, languages and terminologies. And look and listen.”

-Contact Chef Brian Stansberry, owner of High End Catering at bdown66@yahoo.com, on Twitter @FlavaFaceCo or on Facebook.

A Poetess Breaks Maafa Down for the People

Post by Yacub Majeed.

Poetess Sunny Patterson holds no punches. Pow...pow, pow, pow! Take that, Beast!

Love & Vodoo--The Curse

"There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any."
-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark


Commitment is more than an involuntary stay in a sanitarium. In a romantic relationship, any significant personal relationship, for that matter, commitment is fundamental to the love and positive energy that flows through the union. What's real tends to last. What's not tends to fall apart easily and disappoint.

But really, at the end of the day, for me every since I saw my first disaster movie called "The Day After" in the early '80s, I've been mildly concerned with survival should the shit hit the fan. So, for me, I'm thinking who is not going to ditch me, but love, care for and be with me should the Zombie Apocalypse actually go down, you know? Who's going to have my back should civilization unravel tomorrow but me? As I have no children, my primary concern will be for my aging parents. I must prepare, as I just hit 40, to be my own savior. Wow.

After I found out my sophomore year of college that Walt Disney was a known racist, I ditched all hope in the princess fantasy. It was bull, a simple product; and at 20, completely obvious as it was hard to find a gentleman, let alone a prince. Do some women get a taste of it? You bet. But only about half the people who take "the plunge" and have "the wedding" can get through the tough times to actual sustain long marriages. It is a rarity in these days and times for people to be married 40, 50, 60 years. If so, I wonder, how many of those years are spent truly happy? How many are tested by infidelity, mental and physical disorders and acute boredom? How many bounce back?

I was actually confronted with the news that chances were I would never be happy in love around the age of six. Yes, six. My grandmother, the matriarch of my mother's family, delivered the bad news. By this time in her life she was an ordained minister and missionary, so it was only appropriate she deliver this oral history down to me. I was her youngest grandchild.

One summer night in the San Bernardino Valley, as the desert wind howled and the window a/c unit chilled the dining room air, we sat around the dining table after dinner one night and she told me about our family curse. She spoke in hushed tones. A terrible pox was put upon us because of jealousy and  romantic love. You see, my grandmother's mother started the whole thing.

My great grandmother Helen Young was from a well-to-do African-American family. Upon graduating college, no small feat for a Black woman at the turn of the 20th Century, her father arranged a marriage for her with an African prince. If great grandmother Helen would have gone through with it, explained Grandma, we would all be princesses today.

Great grandmother Helen had other plans. By a twist of fate she met and fell in love with a half Black, half Irish musician with a penchant for booze. Grandma actually minced no words, describing her father John Russell as a "bum." However, he was her mother's heart's desire. Upon cancelling her engagement to the prince she was disowned from her family. What's more, the prince, distraught, was said to have gone to his witch doctor for retribution against his runaway fiancee. The witch doctor then put the curse on our blood that no Russell woman would ever be happy in love.

One might believe from the family track record that the curse took. Cut off a couple of my fingers and I could still add up the happy marriages on my mother's side, with one hand. I think that curse followed me back to The Bay.

I've wondered what, if anything, that old witch woman had to do with the situation I find myself in now. Pushing 40, a successful relationship had eluded me. I've had passionate relationships, even lengthy ones (seven years lengthy), but not one I could say was with the person I've really been looking for. The person I've always wanted possessed qualities I'd never experienced in a partner; foremost he would accept me at the place I showed up at and would be willing to grow and build a life with me.

My current relationship of nearly three years has by far been the most promising. We love and respect one another as we are. Our greatest challenge has been the two thousand miles that has separated us the majority of the time. After careful consideration I have decided to close that gap by moving to his state so we can get on with building a life together. It's a big step for the both of us. I'm not taking any chances. Sage, myrrh and frankincense will be burned in our space before I even unpack. My second biggest challenge will be controlling my mind. I'm sensitive and I tend to over-think everything. I suppose because of my life experience often being dictated by Murphy's Law, I just realized how often I wait for the other shoe to drop; in other words, for things to fall apart.

My boyfriend thinks my "curse" is hogwash and says we create our own fate. Part of me agrees. My Great Grandparents had many good years crisscrossing the country in a traveling jazz band, having eight kids along the way. The other part of me isn't so sure. For all of civilizations advances, life is still a great mystery. Who's to say that witch doctor didn't conjure up a magical link between this and the spirit world so strong that it may affect the outcome of this love relationship that I'm working on being my last? Ahh, there's that over-thinking again.

Curse or no, I must believe in the power of our love to overcome all the new trials and tribulations we will be facing together. For, in my heart, I truly believe that living in love creates the best luck of all.

Janet & Michael Jackson - Scream (We About That "Public" Life) #Scream #Vox #WeGrind #HAM

"No I'm not feeling myself; No I'm not trying to be hired to do parties, I'm not trying to do anything special here except consolidate my mixes, that all" -Anonymous DJ

Throwback Thursday-- "Learning to Live Like Latifah"

Learning to Live Like Latifah

Commentary

By Andrea N. Jones, Pacific News Service

In a world that demands women slim down to Kate Moss-like proportions, the writer finds inspiration from rapper-turned-actor-turned-glamorous metrosexual Queen Latifah

October 19, 2004 - I was broke and I needed to call my Jenny Craig Weight Loss Consultant to let her know that I just couldn't do it anymore. Although I hadn't reached my "goal" weight, which would put me at a size 6, I'd gotten down to a 12 (the average American female is a size 14). Breaking the news wouldn't be easy.

Upon our meeting 17 pounds ago, Lily told me that I shouldn't be a victim of genetics. She's an Ayn Rand devotee, committed to the theory of clawing over the ordinary person with bloody tooth and nail to become the ideal self. I read "Anthem," a Rand book she gave me, and I enjoyed it. The climax of the novella is reached when the protagonist discovers his name.

After canceling my last appointment, I received a voicemail stating, "Andrea, don't let me down. I want to see you lose the weight and see how beautiful you'll be."

I'm the kind of woman who would rather eat an entire bag of unsalted rice cakes than disappoint an elder. It took Queen Latifah to become a brand for me to get my "ah-ha" moment.

On Monday nights I veg out on UPN -- "Half &Half," "Girlfriends" -- your typical 30-something black city-girl fair. During one commercial break -- bam! -- there she was, again. This time giving a plug of the hit-maybe-miss new comedy "Taxi," starring her and Jimmy Fallon. Queen Latifah! Queen Latifah, who I just saw hosting "Saturday Night Live" with musical guest, Dana Owens (a.k.a. Queen Latifah). The same buxom woman I eyeball to be about a size 18, who has endorsements with Maybelline and Pizza Hut and a plus-size underwear line available at Wal-Mart.

Latifah's a home girl-turned rapper-actress-singer, turned glamorous female metrosexual. She's big, beautiful, symmetric and wonderfully made up, I concluded, never-minding the blitz of her machine. Her character's name in the new film is even Belle, which means an attractive or admired woman. "Except for a few minor proportions and multi-millions of dollars, we're in the same league," I told myself. It was like seeing myself on a good day through someone else's eyes, and discovering my true name.

I admit that, after my thighs and waist thinned out just a bit, I began to see myself more clearly.

Now, I don't profess to have Latifah's personality. She's the 21st century's answer to Pearl Bailey, a world-class American entertainer popular through the 1950s and '60s who also moved easily between stage, film and television, Rubenesque as she was. With the recent release of Latifah's "The Dana Owens Album," many are drawing comparisons.

Elders in the black community remember Bailey as one hell of a saucy, talented and tough broad. Latifah and Bailey share a no-nonsense charisma and sexuality. Black folk admire women like them because they show pride in where they come from, and in what God gave them. They are archetypes for big girls everywhere.

What I know at 30 is that big black women crave what we've wanted and never had -- attention. I think the attention we are seeking is from mainstream America. Why else would we spend ungodly amounts of money on purses, weaves, shoes and luxury vehicles? Most black men I know profess to prefer a larger lady, a woman somewhere between the size Oprah was two years ago and her size last season. Latifah is an example of how women in the black community show a kind of love for themselves that infects those all around them. Her celebrity franchise has opened a door. We are fortunate today that we can step out of our big-boned loving community and set an example of grace, style and boldness for big women suffering in communities clinging to a Size-0 Kate Moss Model of beauty.

Yesterday I called my local Jenny Craig Center and cut the cord. The cost was killing my disposable income. No vacation, no home improvement. Hell, I spent the last two months losing and gaining the same 2.2 pounds. Some say it's a plateau. I'm feeling it's where I should stay right now. Everyone tells me how great I look and how good I'm doing at the gym. My boyfriend calls me "juicy."

Bailey once said that a crown, if it hurts us, is not worth wearing. Most women just can't afford to be constructed like J. Lo. I say, let's learn to love our jellyroll.

Walking down the street, all done up, I get a little ditty stuck in my mind as my hips switch and I get into a rhythm. It's Destiny's Child's chorus, "I don't think you ready for this jelly/I don't think your ready for this jelly/ 'Cause my body too bootylicious for ya babe." On such a day, I'm Queen.

Daddy Issues and Memories of My Father

In our own way, we are all scientists. In the concrete jungle, the mating scene is an exercise in Social Darwinism. We are drawn to select the best in the bunch and then we put that person under our microscope even further. I've spent my dating life either choosing or being chosen by men I very consciously compared to the very first man unconditional love ever flowed through and that's my Dad.

Indeed, there seems to be something to the Freudian notion that we play out our relationship with our opposite sex parent with our opposite sex partners. Men love to accuse an unstable girl of having "Daddy Issues." I've heard my homeboys say this about women a hundred times. Yet, most men I know want a Mommy in their women but would never acknowledge that fact.

I decided I would take a microscope to my own life and look into my own so-called daddy issues. I had a few memories and thoughts.

As a baby growing up in a townhouse apartment on Oakland's High Street, I was mostly a Daddy's Girl. My dad would pick out my puffy Black Power 'fro and combed and braided my ponytails as my hair grew. He would take me to the A&W Drive-Thru in the Fruitvale District, carefully maneuvering the town's hills with me strapped in the stock adult-sized car seat. Child car seats were not the law then. Instead, my father would stretch his right arm out over my tiny body as if it were a steel bar only covered in mahogany flesh as we entered intersections, met stoplights and crossed crazy drivers. Funny thing is that I've been searching for that sort of security every since.

During the fall of my second birthday my parents divorced. Irreconcilable Differences. Daddy quickly remarried a woman from his hometown in Tennessee in the summer of 1976, year of The Bicentennial. My stepmother came with a new older brother, my only brother. We would play and laugh with my older sister, having a genuine bellyaching good old time. By the time I turned 4 my dad informed me that he, a Vietnam vet, would re-enlist in the army. This was the first time I felt heartbreak. My Daddy, my protector, was going away to lands unknown to me. It would be 8 years before I would lay eyes on him again.

When Daddy left, I didn't just lose my king, but I lost a little piece of myself too. Sure, he sent cards and checks and I received the occasional phone call from Colorado, Germany or South Korea, however, for all intents and purposes within the hood, I was a fatherless child. I clung to a photo my father took shortly before he left Oakland of him dressed in a Saturday Night Fever chic white suit, wearing a gold chain and a Fu Manchu mustache, leaning on one knee prominently with a toothy smile.

That summer I was molested by family members. There was no one to hold the culprits responsible, really. Virtually fatherless, there was no one there to exact my revenge. I was accused of being fast, yes, at 4 years old. The shame pained me to my core and I was determined not to be a victim again. Food became my protection. I took to eating butter to quicken my fattening. In my mind, layers of fat could protect me from predators sexualizing me anymore. By the time I entered the first grade I weighed 100 pounds. My mission was accomplished.

By 12, my body had been stretched passed capacity. In regard to my father, I teetered on feeling a sense of abandonment and then cared for when I received phone calls and gifts. My father sent for me that summer. He had just been stationed stateside. I was not the little darling anymore but an obese adolescent. He knew nothing of the abuse. A stern man, Daddy was dismayed by my posture, stance, walk and weight. For him my obesity showed my weakness. Again, I felt shame. I was on course to becoming a 300 pound woman. A lifelong battle with my weight began. By 15, I shed enough fat to be considered a thick treat. As much as I loved the attention I feared it. Sexual objectification unsettled me so much because of my past, however, as I grew into a woman I learned to compartmentalize my sexuality from victimhood.

I stopped talking to my dad about men every since he accused me of acting like I was looking for Mr. Goodbar when I was in my 20's. Like most women, I turn to my mother and my homegirls. Homeboys offer harsh truths and are often right on the money about the men I date. I've shared moments with men who have made me feel as special as Daddy's little girl, but never as safe as my Daddy could with one outstretched arm.

That sense of safety has never been simulated. I'd like to say I've stopped looking for it. In the concrete jungle you just can't expect your inner girl to be indulged. In a landscape of Social Darwinist, no one gives a fuck about how you think or feel but the people who love you. I've come to realize that I expect a lot from the men who claim to love me or want to be more than friends. After all, I think I'm a great thing. Maybe it's because I'm a Taurus that my love is demonstrative. Insofar as I show love I expect to receive love action in return. Talk is for the birds.

Upon my own scientific examination, fear of abandonment and a love of emotionally unavailable men seem to top the list of my so-called daddy issues. Classic, right? No doubt these "issues" have bleed into my love life. However, what a man may consider a daddy issue I call having standards. A man is not going to come in and out of my life and if he can't give he will get the door.

My daddy and I still have issues. I resent the fact that he never came back to California. On a bad day, I feel like I was left like a sack of potatoes. I think if my father had stayed, a true Alpha male, the abuse would never had occurred as my abusers would not have dared. I have to remember that times were different then. Folks didn't expect there to be predators within families and daddies of yesterday were not as involved as they are today. The upside is that I was able to become my own person as I didn't have to live in his shadow. He still defines me as being weak as he's never understood the artist in me. I see myself for all that I have survived as tough as nails underneath the soft exterior.

At the end of the day, I know my daddy loves me and that I love my daddy. The fact is that his replacement is not on the scene. At best, my Ph D in Love will score me a really good dude, not another Daddy.