Write Thinking

Way to represent, Rosie

by Nancy Colasurdo on May 3, 2013

GAME PLAN:

I’ve never watched the Kentucky Derby. Never paid much attention to it, really.

But it’s a safe bet I’ll be watching this one because I’ll be cheering on jockey Rosie Napravnik.

It makes me feel a little predictable, rooting for someone mostly based on gender and, well, the fact that she is a fellow Jersey Girl. But I can’t help myself. This stuff lights me up.

Photo by Tsutomu Takasu

Sometimes when I look back on about 15 years of covering mostly women’s sports earlier in my career, I wonder if I wasn’t partly drawn to people doing something I was never comfortable even trying. I was lucky to get a ‘C’ in gym class. So completely uncomfortable in my own skin.

Then, there I was, day after day on fields and in arenas watching female athletes run, jump, pass, block, spin, shoot, bat, field. It never got old. I never looked at it as an opportunity to be inspired every day, but in retrospect I’m sure that was a big part of the allure. Those young women were teaching me about sweat and competition and trying harder next time.

Since my job was to chronicle their experiences, the more I let in, the better. The deeper I felt the disappointment or the elation, the better the story would be. People wanted me covering their events because they knew I got something that went beneath the score and stats. I picked up the undercurrent, the joy of the player coming back from injury, not just the fact of it.

And covering female athletes almost always had the feeling of underdog. The fields were often not as nicely groomed as the ones the boys played on. The funding was less. The attention they received frequently paled in comparison to their brothers in the same school. They didn’t whine; they played. And back then, their brothers were starting to see that, hey, my sister puts in just as many hours as I do. The boys were starting to get it.

It was an exciting stretch to be writing about pivotal times for girls, filling their scrapbooks with clippings (yes, paper ones) and even occasionally speaking at their banquets. They were so grateful.

These days I pay little attention to sports, but 60 Minutes just did a piece on Napravnik and I liked how she came across – direct, confident, smart. Those qualities are not hard to find in Jersey women – damn right – and as I watched I felt represented. Yeah, Rosie. Let’s see what ya got, baby.

When she was relating to Bob Simon some of the finer points of communicating with horses and she said they responded to a “smooching” sound to burst forward, he asked her to make the sound.

“I’m not going to make that noise on 60 Minutes,” Napravnik said.

Translation, Bob: Yeah, right, with all that I’ve got to prove and with all I’ve accomplished so far to earn respect, I’m going to dish up a clip that can be spliced and diced into some sicko sexual montage on the Internet. Didn’t I mention I’m from Jersey, Bob? I’m wise to that. But nice try.

Not to make Simon sound depraved. It was done in fun. And to his credit the moment really captured Napravnik’s personality. She’s getting in there again. Storied Churchill Downs awaits. Last year she won the Kentucky Oaks on a horse named ‘Believe You Can.’ Could a life coach even make that up?

This reminds me of turning on the Masters for the first time in 1997 just to see what this sensation Tiger Woods was going to do. He cruised at Augusta and made history. It also brings to mind the few NBA games I saw last year because a little thing called Linsanity was happening courtesy of Jeremy Lin.

Every so often it’s nice to see someone ‘different’ emerge on the scene and take a sport by storm. You know there are already girls who want to be Rosie Napravnik. She’s taken them closer to believing it’s possible.

Heck, a bunch of us adults are paying big attention, not because we want to be jockeys but because we want to be something that we’ve been told we can’t or shouldn’t be. These people who just shrug off the naysayers and keep going, who get injured and heal and get back out there, we happily go on a little ride with them. Even it only comes in the form of screaming at the TV and raising our arms in the air.

Victory is sweet.

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Traveling to a Place of Expansiveness

by Nancy Colasurdo on April 21, 2013

GAME PLAN:

There are books I read and there are books I devour. And sometimes I am so called to read a certain something that I break my steadfast rule of not finishing the book I’ve already started to dive in to the new one.

Enter Learning to Breathe by photojournalist Alison Wright. It’s not every day I read a book with a foreword by the Dalai Lama and it’s definitely not every day I am riveted to a café chair, my bed, another café seat and then my couch because I don’t want to put it down.

I found the overarching reason I was supposed to read this book at this particular time in my life in the afterword:

“The pain I have faced has helped me relate to the hardships of others,” Wright writes. “I realize now it’s not about chasing the story. It’s about being part of the story.”

We’ll return to the pain and this message. But let me back up a little.

Yesterday I attended an event called the New York Travel Festival at Bohemian National Hall and, while trekking from Hoboken to the Upper East Side for a 9 a.m. talk isn’t my ideal way to start a Saturday (or any day, for that matter), I felt compelled to go. A Facebook friend had posted the gathering just a few days before and it immediately grabbed my attention. I’m not sure why as I’m not a travel writer nor much of a reader of travel writing, but I think it had something to do with having just written about the three goals I’m currently focused on, one of them being “Travel more.”

First I took in a talk by Andrew Evans, Digital Nomad for NationalGeographic.com. It was supposed to be about why bucket lists “suck” and while he did touch on that, he had decided to switch it up to ‘travel and terror’ given the bombing at the Boston Marathon. Equipped with accompanying images, he blended the two topics meaningfully.

I loved his story of being on a commercial flight that had to make an emergency landing in Memphis. As people grumbled instead of being grateful to be alive and then grumbled some more when they headed for room service in the Holiday Inn lodging the airline had provided them, Evans and another guy set out for some barbecue in a joint where they watched the Auburn game. Since it was a 24-hour delay, the next day Evans decided to take in a place he’d never had a desire to see – Graceland. He had no particular interest in Elvis and so Graceland would not have been on his bucket list had he created one, but he enjoyed the visit and became fascinated with the iconic performer.

Be open to what presents itself. Got it.

Evans (a.k.a. Where’s Andrew?) then showed a shot of a beautiful home with lovely landscaped grounds and told us it was Joseph Stalin’s vacation home – used four times. Because, he continued, what do dictators want to curb most when growing and retaining their power over citizens? Education and travel. Those things that most open us up to other cultures, other possibilities. And the dictators themselves don’t move around much, as was clearly the case with Osama bin Laden.

If Evans got me thinking about expansiveness, then Alison Wright came on stage next and emblazoned the concept on my brain. It was like he had made me look up and she was sky writing it with an exclamation point on the end. Your thinking needs to be more expansive, Nancy. Expand your idea of what your gifts can do, Nancy.

Wright is so beyond what we think of as a photojournalist. What she’s willing to do to make searing, storied photographs … well, it’s nothing short of courageous. At first, though, all I saw was a woman about my age (as it turns out, she’s six days older than me) showing her audience dazzling photographs and talking about how she got into her profession.

But even calling it a profession in her case seems off. It’s a calling, a way of life that sets her on fire as she roams countries, sometimes showing up with nothing but her camera bag and one clean shirt, to document lives. When Wright got to the story of being in a severe bus accident in Laos and having a broken back, tailbone and pelvis, damage to her organs including collapsed lungs, and glass and metal embedded up and down her arm, I kept looking to see if there were any signs of this on her now. I saw none.

Doctors, one after another, were astounded she survived. Her journey from the remote area where the accident occurred to her home in San Francisco and all she endured in between is poured out in the book I simply had to purchase after her talk. She includes flashbacks in it, delightful stories of places and people and even meeting the Dalai Lama in 1987 before most knew who he was (he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989).

Woven through is Wright’s meditation practice and her spiritual approach to all she does. It was pivotal for her recovery that she change doctors at one point, preferring to hear what she could do moving forward, not what she couldn’t. When she explained that she was determined to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, she was looking for support instead of discouragement. And, make no mistake about it, she did achieve that goal.

When I introduced myself to Wright after her talk I thanked her for being inspiring. In the inscription she wrote in my book, she called me a kindred spirit. And while it was lovely in the moment, I thought of how she is unfazed by worms in her body and I’m a shrieking fool if a spider skitters across my window sill. But then later, I felt a connection to her on a deeper level when I read a specific part of her book. She recounts having met Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk, in France in 1999; she was there to attend the retreat and photograph him. She writes:

“He explained that with air, water, and even love, we are different from one moment to the next. To have children or produce a book is output. You are giving something of yourself to be absorbed by others. You don’t have to die to be reborn. You can offer yourself to others through your insight, and your care. You can offer your heart. ‘And in that way you will live on and be remembered,’ he told me.”

I understand an independent woman living on her terms, passionately chronicling her life as legacy. I do.

We are indeed part of the story.

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Vulnerability and living

by Nancy Colasurdo on April 16, 2013

GAME PLAN:

Yesterday, about four hours before hearing any news of bombs at the Boston Marathon, I had gratefully deposited my tax checks in the mailbox at the Hoboken post office and I was heading to the gym about a block away.

En route, I saw what we’ve called since 9/11 an “unattended” bag sitting on the sidewalk next to a building. The closest person to the bag was standing 15-20 feet away, near the street. I approached him.

“Is that your bag?” I asked, pointing.

“Yes, it’s mine,” he said.

I went on my way.

Each time I do this since that fateful day in 2001, I feel a little bit like an alarmist. But I always talk myself into speaking up because it’s got to be a better feeling than not speaking up and having something awful occur.

Hours later while the news was unfolding in Boston– two blasts, blood, lockdowns – I couldn’t stop the chills from erupting on my arms. The damn vulnerability keeps escalating.

We can be vigilant, but really we just don’t know. We can’t get out ahead of everything. I remember my thinking in the fall of 2001 and it went something like this – I want to take the subway but if I take this one it might have a bomb so maybe I should walk or take another one but no maybe that one is set to explode because it’s in a busier area of Manhattan at this time of day but no that one is closer to the Empire State Building and surely they want to destroy that …

Staying above ground gives one the pleasure of sights like this in New York -- a Holly Fowler dress in a Bergdorf window.

On and on it went. At some point I think I made a subconscious decision that if I was going to die in some kind of diabolical plot it was going to be above ground and not “down there” in the cavernous, dirty, creepy tunnels. So I did a lot more walking, not avoiding subways altogether but opting out more frequently.

All of this came rushing into my head today because I had to go into New York after hearing it was on high alert in the wake of the unthinkable happening in Boston. High alert. Here we go.

I was excited about meeting a friend for lunch on the Upper East Side and then going to facilitate a discussion with a group of women at a senior center. My route was simple: PATH to F train, where I’d exit at Lexington/63rd and pick up the 6 train a few blocks away. But when I got to the Lex/63rd stop there was a lot of construction on the platform and I had to confront one of my biggest fears – a narrow path between the temporary wall and the ledge next to the tracks. I walked in single file with my fellow passengers muttering “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.” The three escalators it took to get to the street reminded me how far underground I’d been.

Note to self: You’re not taking this route home. In fact, on my way to meet my friend, I called an audible and walked instead of taking the 6 train. Instantly I felt better, lighter. Come and get me above ground, you bastards, while I’m smiling and walking with a spring in my step.

Lunch was wonderful. Then I was off to the senior center. It was my third time doing this and I knew I’d love it. The women there had engaged fiercely in previous discussions of “loneliness vs. solitude” and “loss and healing” so this day I brought with me a page of quotes on “vulnerability and living.”

It began with a Kobe Bryant vent on Facebook, a wonderfully vulnerable sharing after his Achilles injury that ran the gamut – rage, questioning, self-pity, physical pain, perspective, and determination that his pending surgery become the “first step of a new challenge.” Then I had a quote from Brene Brown, whose popularity has rocketed since her TED talk on vulnerability and more recently her appearance on Super Soul Sunday on OWN.

“Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experience,” Brown says.

At this time in our lives, is it really any wonder her talk is one of TED’s most popular? We are vulnerable when we get dressed and walk out the door. We are vulnerable when we tell someone how we feel, when we show up at someone’s funeral that we haven’t talked to in years, when we bear a child, when we ask someone to assist us, when we’re walking with a cane, when we let love in and especially when we let it flourish and plant a flag right there in our hearts.

Also on the one-sheet I assembled for our discussion was this bit from Other People’s Love Letters by Bill Shapiro:

I hate feeling so weak and vulnerable.
I hate that I miss him.
I hate that I am alone, and I always was.
I hate that I made him into a superhero, he was not.
I hate that he doesn’t want to kiss me.
I hate that every time I cry over one boy it’s like crying over all of them again.

What I hear in this is that we have a love/hate relationship with our vulnerability. We know we can’t live well without it.

I was heartened by how much the women engaged in the conversation, spoke their truth and made clear their need to talk about what had happened in Boston. It was such a satisfying experience to be able to draw them out that way and give them a space to express.

When I left I decided to stay above ground and grab a bus across 72nd Street and take it all the way to Fifth Avenue. The plan was to then walk a bit and play it by ear. Oh, how I love that stretch of Fifth from the Plaza down to Rockefeller Center. I can feel my own energy lift as I stroll. I paused to look at the windows at Bergdorf’s (and was introduced to the amazing Holly Fowler design pictured here) and stopped into the Lindt shop for a Stracciatella truffle (OK, two).

I took a subway back from Rockefeller Center and as I made my transfer to the PATH I scurried past the police and the National Guard to catch my train. So much blue and camouflage. I hope they read my glance and smile on the run as an expression of gratitude for what they are making possible for the rest of us.

The putting aside of fear just to live. It is, like it or not, our reality.

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Interior design sparks life design? Oh yeah

by Nancy Colasurdo on April 11, 2013

GAME PLAN:

A few years ago I bought four really cool chairs to put around my kitchen table. They were two sets, actually, that I decided would look great together. Used and refurbished, white wrought iron with seats that had been re-covered in yellow and gold tones. Total whimsy.

Photo courtesy of FreeImages UK

As it turned out, though, I wasn’t crazy about how they looked in the room. The proportion was off. They got kind of lost in my old, charming kitchen. I’ve since bought new chairs in a sleek contemporary style and I love how they look with my solid oak pedestal table. It works beautifully.

In the meantime, my friend Kathi graciously stored the yellow and white ones in her small storage space. It was a welcome solution for me at the time because I had built some kind of fantasy around those chairs. I saw them in a sun room or an alcove. They evoked possibility.

Last week, with much going on in Kathi’s life (the emotional and physical clearing and selling of parental homes), we determined it was time for my chairs to find a new home. She needs the space in her unit.

Shortly after the decision, we went for a walk and I was telling her how pivotal the timing was for this. She seemed intrigued. Those chairs set off all kinds of questions in my mind. Long-term, vision kinds of questions. This is roughly how it went in my head:

Do you want to find a new place to store the chairs?

Hmmmm. I don’t know.

What’s in the way?

Well, I’m not planning to move any time soon. And even if I did, I don’t envision a cottage with a sun room.

Well, let’s go at this from another direction. If someone handed you cash and you could do anything with it, what would you add to your life?

More travel.

Not a beach house or mountain getaway?

No.

Are you sure?

Yes. I’d prefer to rent those and have the freedom to move about.

Are you really sure?

Geez, the chairs are cool, but it’s not like they belonged to Virginia Woolf or Jane Austen.

(Laughter ensues inside my head – crazy, I know.)

So what are you going to do?

Sell the chairs. To a loving home.

There’s more, isn’t there?

Yes. This felt so good that I must apply it to my life as a whole.

As in, what else do you really, really want at this time of major transition?

Precisely. Let’s take this a little further.

OK, what else do you really, really want?

That’s broad.

I hear you. How about we limit it like this – what three things do you really, really want most right now?

1. To love and be loved well

2. To publish my book

3. To travel more

Um, that took you all of 10 seconds. How did it feel?

Fabulous.

And the rule moving forward?

Anything I spend significant time on from here needs to further one of those three things or it should be reconsidered.

Really?

Yes. I would tell any of my coaching clients the same. I’d hold their feet to the fire. And they’d be exhilarated by it. Over the moon, even.

All this from chairs?

Yep. That’s how it’s done. Thoughtful living. Focusing time wisely. Being willing to bend and even change. Letting go of one vision and creating another.

Chairs indeed.

Funny, right? Ripple effects of a seemingly small moment. Chairs as gauge. Infusing a routine thing with meaning.

And here Kathi thought she was the one clearing space.

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It’s Not About PC, It’s About ‘C’

by Nancy Colasurdo on April 9, 2013

GAME PLAN:

I’m happy to see President Obama apologized for commenting on California attorney general Kamala Harris’ good looks recently. Not because I was horrified or felt it made him a misogynist. I don’t think he is. But I do think he’s smart and evolved enough to realize the perception of what he said matters.

The President “fully recognizes the challenges women continue to face in the workplace,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

It sounds like the administration knew it was important to set the tone, that they had an opportunity to set an example.

Words matter. That’s what I’m getting from the news this week. People are saying things and then we get a bitterly divided public reaction on whether those things were offensive. What often blurs the real underlying issue is the argument over whether it’s about being politically correct. It’s not. It’s about being correct in a much bigger sense.

“Be impeccable with your word,” author Don Miguel Ruiz wrote in his classic book The Four Agreements.

This brings me to Rutgers University. In the spirit of full disclosure, I covered Rutgers athletics for over a decade as a sports writer for a New Jersey newspaper in mostly the 1990s. However, I have no specific knowledge regarding recently fired men’s basketball coach Mike Rice or any inside information on what is happening there now.

By now most of us have seen the video of what is supposed to pass for a college basketball practice. Throwing basketballs at student-athletes is not discipline. Manhandling them is not making them “men,” at least not healthy men. And calling them “faggots” is not spurring emotional growth or improving their jump shot. Rice was justifiably given leave of his responsibilities coaching the Scarlet Knights.

It is the latter, though, the part about language and the ensuing reactions to it that have given me pause the last few days. The shock and outrage over the use of that god-awful homophobic term feels plastic. I mean, who in the world doesn’t know that that word is used routinely at virtually every game and practice at every male sport in the land? Hel-lo.

I am not condoning it. I think it’s spineless and cruel. Nor am I seeking to be the curse word police. My own language gets pretty salty, so I’d be bordering on hypocritical if I crossed into that territory.

However, I can’t shake the thought this week that some of the best men I know, love and respect don’t think twice about using the word “pussy” when denigrating each other. On sports fields and in arenas, on golf courses, in bars, even on television. Here’s looking at you, Jon Stewart. I say this as one who rarely misses The Daily Show and thinks Stewart is brilliant. Much like in the aforementioned case of the President and the California attorney general, I don’t think Stewart is a misogynist. In fact, I don’t think most guys who use the ‘p’ word are. To them it’s just a word uttered thoughtlessly.

But it does beg the question – why is it when straight men insult other men, usually when they’re calling them weak, they are so prone to tagging them gay or female? Maybe it would be cool if they did start thinking about it. Maybe?

I have zero interest in whether or not this is politically correct. I am much more invested in authentic expression. Why not make it an area of our lives that could help along this gorgeous shift of social consciousness that’s happening? More and more we’re awakening to how our fellow human beings feel. We’re expressing more empathy, loving better, learning extraordinary kindness.

The President gets it. He has daughters. He wouldn’t be at all thrilled to reinforce the notion that one day their level of prettiness should be mentioned in the same breath as their professional accomplishments in a business setting.

I don’t think obsessing over every word that comes out of our mouths will change the world. But some thoughtfulness, done collectively, will.

It all matters.

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Shining a light on ‘Renoir’

by Nancy Colasurdo on April 4, 2013

GAME PLAN:

I so love words and putting them together to share my thoughts with the world, but sometimes there is nothing like seeing someone else use their words to great effect. Director Gilles Bourdos has managed to articulate something I feel again and again and haven’t been able to express quite like this.

“When I’m in a period when I need to re-center myself, I go to museums a lot,” Bourdos told Wall Street Journal writer Ralph Gardner, Jr.

“When I come to the museum, it appeals to me on a spiritual level. What speaks to me is the genius of human beings. I’m always much calmer when I leave.”

Ahhhhhhhh. Precisely, soothingly so.

Bourdos relayed this to Gardner as they strolled through the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Impressionist wing recently, mostly to talk about his film, Renoir. I saw the movie at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas this week and I assume Mr. Bourdos would be thrilled to know he left me feeling that same way upon leaving the theater. What a joyful accomplishment.

***

One is struck by the light over and over in the film Renoir.

Much like gazing at Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s paintings and marveling at how the light hits creamy skin or streams through tree branches or illuminates golden hair, Bourdos keeps us wide-eyed throughout this work set in the South of France.

But beneath the exquisite surface there is story, the kind laden with humanity and pain and devotion to craft. A man driven to paint so much that even racked with crippling rheumatoid arthritis and confined to a wheelchair, he is carried by a team of caretakers to his atelier or through a stream to execute his visions on canvas.

Compelled by the softness and sensuality of flesh, of bringing it from eye to brush stroke even at an ailing age 74, Renoir is pure inspiration by virtue of his determination to keep working. We learn in the film, via his son Jean, that he doesn’t call himself an artist.

Imagine that. Renoir. Renoir.

I so love learning things about great creatives that make them real. We tend to make those whose work endures into larger-than-life, idealized figures instead of what they are – people just like us. They were given a gift and they chose to pay attention to it, nurture it, even be consumed by it in some cases. That doesn’t make them perfect or in possession of all the answers or perpetually happy or immune to self-doubt. They are, in fact, often more ordinary than extraordinary.

“I was a very diligent student; I ground away in the academic way … But I never obtained the slightest honorable mention and my professors were unanimous in finding my painting wretched,” Renoir once said.

Those of us who put our work out there – especially when it contains the essence of ourselves – can’t help but draw comfort from things like this. It spurs us on. There’s a mug on my desk filled with pens that says, “When I began I was like everyone else.” The folks who put that on the mug knew it would sell. It’s a universal message. By the way, the person who said it was Claude Monet.

I’ve written a few times about authenticity in art and whether the sunshine-y stuff is as moving or “real” as the raw, gritty variety. Renoir is clearly in the former camp and when you put the work in context, when you take into consideration his single focus to keep the art flowing, the way he worked through his physical and emotional pain to do it, it’s rather stunning.

“I refuse to paint the world black,” Renoir, played by the actor Michel Bouquet, says to his son in the film. “A painting should be something pleasant and cheerful. There are enough disagreeable things in life. I don’t need to paint more.”

Better for him to use his particular talent to produce works that bring us on to the canvas or make the people he paints appear to be reaching beyond it. The dancing couple seems to be in motion. The party goers seem to be inviting us into the fold. The nudes call us to lounge or reach out and touch them. They are rosy-cheeked and luminous.

“The pain passes, but beauty remains,” Renoir says.

***

In the Wall Street Journal piece, Gardner asks Bourdos if he likes walks in the woods, as he says the director doesn’t seem like much of an outdoorsman.

“[Bourdos] quoted the great French filmmaker Francois Truffaut: that he could see everything he needed to see of life and nature in movies,” Gardner writes. Bourdos tells him, “Seeing it captured in art, or capturing it myself, is almost more real than the reality.”

I know what he means. Unlike, say, Mary Oliver, whose glorious poetry is steeped and enmeshed in the creatures and plants and trees she beholds on her walks in the woods, hers and our oneness with it, there is more of an observer feel in the work of Bourdos and, in fact, that of Renoir.

It’s almost like an idyllic mini-vacation to observe right along with them.

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Thank you, Jim Carrey

by Nancy Colasurdo on April 3, 2013

Dear Jim –

I’ll be honest. Most of your comedy since the fabulous In Living Color hasn’t resonated with me much. I prefer your work done in skits. But events of this last week have put me squarely in the category of Jim Carrey fan. A fan of the man even more than the entertainer.

By Francois Polito via Wikimedia Commons

The satirical video you did that went live on Funny or Die last week, well, it was brilliant. For those who missed it, “Cold, Dead Hand” is a play on Charlton Heston’s infamous declaration that we’d have to pry his precious firearm from his cold, dead hands. You made it into a song featured in a Hee Haw spoof in the video.

“But the psychos win no matter what you do, because they’re always gonna buy more guns than you,” you sing with a golly-gee smile in a cowboy getup.

It’s clever, well executed and spot on funny. And it in no way calls for disarming anyone or repealing the Second Amendment.

I suppose that is why it was so astonishing – or maybe not, given the drama-filled climate on this topic these days – to see so many people projecting those very messages on to the video. The vitriol in the reactions showed that the satire in your piece went zooming over their heads and the paranoia in this nation regarding guns isn’t subsiding any time soon. As long as there are people benefitting financially from keeping the belief alive that gun control = gun elimination, we’ll continue to be polarized and talk at each other instead of to each other.

So mind-numbing.

But your video performance and the ensuing reaction and then your response to that have been an apt reminder of how difficult it is to have a reasonable discussion about guns in the United States. Every day my Facebook feed is filled with untruths about what might potentially become law regarding firearms. Are there some hysterics on the side of gun control? Absolutely. But there is something decidedly more eerie about hysterics who are armed to the gills.

I keep shaking my head at those who call you a hypocrite because you have armed bodyguards. What does that have to do with the message in the video? You don’t call for the elimination of guns. You make a statement about the unhealthy attachment some Americans have to their guns, as it’s clearly not just about sport or protection. It’s identity. It’s insidious fear of some kind of impending revolt.

“These thugs, though menacing, are a minority but they will have their way if good people don’t step forward now and make a difference,” you write in a follow-up piece published on The Huffington Post. “Every American has the right to speak their mind. Every American has the right to bear arms. But it is up to every American to draw the line when it comes to the type of guns that are considered a reasonable means of self-defense.”

You have called attention to that angry element that muffles the voices of responsible gun owners. Kudos for exposing them in a brighter light and in turn showing us why it is more important than ever to address gun violence and brainstorm potential solutions.

While so many dismiss the opinions of celebrities on the bigger issues of our time, I find it courageous when you and your colleagues speak out with passion. You have a lot to lose, so it must mean you feel strongly about a cause when you go public and get vocal. There is this feeling that you couldn’t repress it any longer, regardless of the cost to your popularity or your pocketbook.

“And to the bullies who will try to marginalize and discredit me by saying, ‘Shut up, you’re just an actor,’ while they brag about what a great president the ACTOR Ronald Reagan was, who threaten me with the demise of my acting career and much worse, I say SO BE IT!” you write in The Huffington Post. “How shallow do they think I am? I would trade my money, my fame, my reputation and legacy if there were the slightest chance of preventing the anguish of another Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, or Sandy Hook Elementary School. I ask you, truly, what manner of human being would not?”

I wish I didn’t know the answer to that question.

Sincerely,

Nancy Colasurdo

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The Whole Gay Thing

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 27, 2013

GAME PLAN:

“The bottom line is, what does a player’s sexual preference have to do with her ability to play basketball?”

I wrote that in a front-page Sunday sports column on December 15, 1991 while working for The Times of Trenton. It was about Penn State women’s basketball coach Rene Portland and her team policy that no lesbians were allowed to play for the Lady Lions.

Four years later, in another Sunday column, I wrote this:

“There is a church in Philadelphia where Greg Louganis would not be welcome. No kidding.” You know, because homosexuals had “abandoned the way of the Lord.”

Back then it was mostly about AIDS and Magic Johnson and Arthur Ashe. There was buzz about whether Rock Hudson doing a love scene with Linda Evans on the set of Dynasty had endangered her life. I wrote about all of this in the latter piece.

I’m not sure why I was moved to literally pull print articles stored in airtight containers out of my personal archives (and date myself in the process) today, but I suspect it was partly about feeling a bit of pride in all of this progress that’s happening around me regarding gay marriage and, truly, attitudes around that.

Before it was the hot topic and there were Facebook photos to switch to red, I was writing about homophobia. As a sports writer for a mid-sized newspaper in the 1990s there was plenty of opportunity to call people on their tunnel vision and their use of religion to defend bigotry and I reveled in that. Maybe it feels a little jarring – if wonderful — now to be part of the groundswell as opposed to one irreverent voice in the wilderness.

I’m happy to be living in this amazing time. So much change is afoot and I find that so many in my generation have had to keep up in a myriad of ways. It is heady. On the issue of gay rights, many of us went the way of former President Bill Clinton.

“… Mr. Clinton’s journey from signing the Defense of Marriage Act to repudiating it mirrors larger changes in society as same-sex marriage has gone from a fringe idea to one with a majority,” Peter Baker wrote in Monday’s New York Times.

Yes. What he said. Regardless of our feeling back then that our gay brothers and sisters deserved the same rights as us, the marriage aspect was still fringe. In retrospect it doesn’t make much sense, but nonetheless here we are – the majority — embracing it with a feeling that it’s a no-brainer.

I’m certainly not the first to write that in 50 years this will all seem kind of comical. That we ever gave a hoot who Ellen DeGeneres was attracted to will seem silly. That loving couples as parents have to be male-female.

All of that, I think, is what makes it infinitely easier for me to bear the excruciating conversations happening all over the country right now via the Internet and otherwise. We are all hyper-sensitive and that is a vital part of sweeping change. I have seen gay people I love take exception to comments that are not at all anti-gay. I have seen conservative Christians I love express a kind of sheltered and, frankly, condescending view that has no place in decisions regarding the laws of our land. The Supreme Court is not deciding religious doctrine. Dial up the Vatican if you want Brownie points for quoting the Bible.

I wish we could all just take a deep breath and chill. I’m not about to start disowning people who are not evolving at the same rate as the majority. This is not about that, is it? I’m not comfortable getting up in someone’s grill when the whole idea here is to widen our perspective of love.

When I wrote my Greg Louganis piece back in 1995, I had just seen his emotional 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters and the footage of some of his dives. Here’s how I ended the column:

“I saw footage of one magnificent dive after another and felt my eyes get watery. I thought of the young people who viewed that splendor and were inspired to take up the sport. I thought of Greg Louganis, who detailed a troubled existence, referring to diving as his ‘salvation’ and how, right at that moment, I was witnessing one momentous save after another in the life of this complex man. I wondered if the members of that church in Philly and their ilk were watching. And I wondered if they were feeling.”

I don’t think I could express it any better now.

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Pink, Parenting and Pre-Adolescent Lingerie

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 25, 2013

GAME PLAN:

I love Pink. I particularly love how the anger that sometimes comes through her music fuels my workouts when I’m in that place. In fact, I think my thighs are a little smaller because of this very real and very gritty entertainer.

Perhaps it is because I have opted out of the whole parenting ride that I am completely appalled at something that happened at a Pink concert last week that has been getting a lot of positive attention from mommy bloggers. In the middle of her concert in Philadelphia, Pink stopped mid song (a really good one, mind you – “Who Knew”) to address a crying child in the audience.

To be clear from the start, I have no issue with Pink’s handling of the moment. It was human and lovely of her to reach out. But what seems much overlooked here is that this singer was so distracted by the distressed child that she stopped singing. How incredibly selfish is it to bring a child to this kind of event? Are you kidding me? If you can afford a ticket to see Pink, you can afford a babysitter.

And I’m only getting started.

The appeal of Pink is her authenticity. What comes through her music is that she loves deeply and rages wildly. And she’s vulgar. Sometimes I dig vulgar. A lyric from one of her most popular songs:

“Midnight I’m drunk I don’t give a fuck.”

I love this stuff cranking in my ears. I do. Makes me go faster on the bike. Pump the iron harder.

But is this appropriate for a child?

For those unfamiliar with Pink, the aforementioned line is from “U + Ur Hand” and the main verse goes like this:

I’m not here for your entertainment
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
‘Cause you know it’s over
Before it began
Keep your drink, just give me the money
It’s just you and your hand tonight.

Look at that last line again. Are you explaining to your child as that refrain loops over and over that she’s telling some guy in a bar to get lost and go home and masturbate? What a fun theme to discuss over mac and cheese and chocolate milk after the show.

I wouldn’t be this worked up over one example of one parent exhibiting this kind of judgment. In fact, after a friend who was at the concert posted about it on Facebook, I expressed surprise there was a child there and moved on. But since then I’ve come across a few more mentions of it and the tone is always a kind of exultation at how Pink is a mommy, too. I have come across actual conversations where one person after another thinks it’s just peachy to share this kind of experience with a kid.

Yes, Pink is a mother and used that sensibility to go out of her way to be kind in the moment when she could have just as easily embarrassed the parent in the middle of an arena. That is to be applauded.

But I saw one columnist who actually took it as a sign to reconsider leaving her kids home when she goes out to events like this. Please, mommy dearest, stick with your original gut feeling that it isn’t fair to you or the child or the people around you to take that kind of chance in a place of adult entertainment. To boot, there is plenty of time in later years to teach your child how to ward off unwanted advances.

In a welcome contrast to this idea of raising children who are three-going-on-25, there is a piece circulating social media right now that is a letter written by a father to Victoria’s Secret. It beautifully and intelligently addresses the company’s new line aimed at middle school girls.

“The line will be called ‘Bright Young Things’ and will feature ‘lace black cheeksters’ with the word ‘Wild’ emblazoned on them, green and white polka-dot hipsters screen printed with ‘Feeling Lucky?’ and a lace trim thong with the words, ‘Call me on the front,” Rev. Evan Dolive writes. “As a dad, this makes me sick.”

As well it should. I see so many of the parents in my life struggling with these issues regularly. Sexy clothes aimed at 8-year-olds. Sexy pop culture choices. It’s troubling. The demand has to be coming from parents, though. A power like Victoria’s Secret wouldn’t be churning out these kinds of garments if they weren’t sure they were meeting a demand. Those panties will sell. The comments on Dolive’s piece suggest as much.

He goes on to write, “I want my daughter (and every girl) to be faced with tough decisions in her formative years of adolescence. Decisions like should I be a doctor or a lawyer? Should I take calculus as a junior or a senior? Do I want to go to Texas A&M or University of Texas or some Ivy League School? Should I raise awareness for slave trafficking or lack of water in developing nations? There are many, many more questions that all young women should be asking themselves … not will a boy (or girl) like me if I wear a ‘call me’ thong?”

Of course for some girls the inevitable question might be, “Mommy, can I wear my new Victoria’s Secret thong to the Pink concert?”

Just fab.

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Anatomy of a transition

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 21, 2013

GAME PLAN:

First comes the shock, right? Bam. There’s change. Not change you initiated, but change that feels like it’s been foisted on you.

I have come to learn for me that’s ultimately the best kind. Emphasis here on ultimately. It’s rarely clear immediately that this is going to turn out to be beneficial or even life-transforming. In fact it’s jarring and it angers and frustrates me.

Photo courtesy of FreeImages

But then … liberation with a bravado edge. A little bit of jitters. Exuberance. Anxiety. Every day those ingredients whir as if in a blender and mix a new concoction for the day. As winter (eventually) gives way to spring here in the Northeast, I am downing my daily elixir with gusto.

Because here’s what I’ve learned in the last decade or so since being laid off from a television producing job in 2002. Back then I was panicked because I had never left a job on any terms but my own. It was unthinkable to NOT work for a company that was giving me benefits. I was paralyzed at the idea of COBRA, the great unknown.

Now?

I am an independent contractor. While I made that change a long time ago, I was still carrying around some of the old mindset and it came bubbling to the surface when a long-standing, steady freelance gig came to an end. I reverted to an ‘unemployed’ mentality pretty quickly.

Then a few days into it, it hit me. I already pay my own health insurance. It’s a fixed amount. No reason to panic.

“You are not unemployed, Nancy,” a friend said. “You are an independent contractor who lost a big client.”

Of course. Duh.

But let’s take that further. While the conventional mindset is that it’s time to “find” a job, in my case that’s not true. It’s time to create income. It’s time to dig in.

Self-employment with the focus on ‘self.’ Self-generated. Self-growth. Self-motivated. Self-sustaining. Columns self-published – after all, am I not a natural columnist? Why would I depend on someone else to validate that?

That – all lined up and layered — is empowering.

I have been working a lot and it’s come with an escalating enthusiasm that feels like a new beginning. I make a point of building in small and large breaks in the midst of all the productivity. A day at a museum here, a 16-minute meditation with Oprah and Deepak there. Every day invaluable Morning Pages a la Julia Cameron. Several days a week glorious workouts at the gym. Since Hurricane Sandy, about once a week I go to Mass on a weekday at 12:10, more than anything to force myself into spiritual stillness for 30 minutes.

A few weeks ago I worked my way through a stack of old magazines before discarding them, looking for images or words to add to my evolving vision board. I wound up with so much beautiful material that I realized my existing vision board was earnest, but reflected the short-term. Excited and seeking a clean palate, I wound up creating a whole new vision on my bathroom door.

What emerged was not a concrete goal, but a recognition of a higher consciousness and a more ambitious way of looking at my life and what was before me. Shortly thereafter I started to feel as if I was being led, as if there is a breadcrumb trail laid out for me to follow. I am being nudged, whispered to, cajoled.

Updating my bios on social media sites turned into an enlightening exercise as I thought about what I wanted to convey. Each conversation with friends far and near has provided some kind of high value. For example, one talk last week made me yearn to teach again. The following day I conceived the idea for a class called “What Are You Waiting For?” that would do for enrollees what my first course in The Artist’s Way did for me back in 1999. I had this nagging feeling back then that there was something more. Turns out I was right.

We need to find our definition of living. I think I’ll be fine-tuning mine for the rest of my life and that makes me really happy.

For now, this day, this moment, I’m keeping ear to ground, eyes open, heart and soul welcoming, mind cooking like crazy.

Self-employment in all its glory.

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