Jane Jacobs, Urbanist, Planner, Guru passes on.

Passing of a great urban guru: Jane Jacobs

I encountered Jane Jacobs last semester as one of the foremost urban culture writers to grace the city as we know it.

She wrote the book “Death and Life” which was one of the foremost pieces on creating municipal diversity
1. A street or district must serve several primary functions
2. Blocks must be short
3. Buildings must vary in age, condition and use.
4. Population must be dense
She described everyday life as she saw it from her home above a candy store in New York City. She goes through her daily life and understands the way a community works from her daily routine and things considered mundane, such as taking out the trash.

In at least five fields of inquiry, she thought deeply and innovatively: urban design, urban history, regional economics, the morality of the economy and the nature of economic growth.

She continued her life as an avid educator of the city planners of the day.
In a Fortune magazine article in 1958, she concluded a trial run-style essay saying, “Designing a dream city is easy, rebuilding one takes imagination”

She will be sorely missed in the Cities fraternity by novices such as myself and her contemporaries in the world of Urban Studies.

Aptly eulogized in the New York Times 04/26/2006, she not be easily forgotten.

La Femme Afrique shows topical insights from an African woman living in the United States. Africa content includes the arts, writing, food and people.

Rocky Horror Picture Show

ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW …
MIDNIGHTS FROM 1976 TO DATE-
A TRADITION OF MADNESS, MOCKERY AND A SWELL OL’ TIME.

For a movie that premiered in late September 1975,only to flop at the first Box Office release, this show has defied the critics and stands out as one of the most watched and performed movies to date. Yes, it is not only, a movie-oke type of experience. RHPS is also an audience thriller where the audience re-tells the story over and over every time it is performed in what one Louis Farese, a Rocky pioneer calls ‘counterpoint dialogue’

Last Saturday, I had the unique opportunity to be a virgin, meaning, somebody who has never seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show, hereon referred to as the RHPS. Saturday was April Fools’ Day 2006, thirty years to the date when it first took over the midnight showing at the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village, a known midnight movie place.

There was a firewall in the large number of similar novices, alright, I will say it, virgins. So I chickened out and sat down, but from then on, I was thrilled by the excitement of the audience and the fact that this was a movement, not just another flick at midnight. By movement, I mean we did stand up and sit and step to the left and put feet on the right and yell out to the now famous characters over and over.

Like many novices, I felt like I was an outsider. Indeed, there are clear characteristics of a RHPS-holic, notably, the aversion to dress up in show cast get-up, the knowledge of the very first lines, including, “Buy an umbrella, you cheap…..”, to the sl-heroine(sic) Janet. The show was preceded by the pre-show highlights, where the Trannies(maybe you know them as ushers in theaters elsewhere), led a select virgin sample group to the ritual where they learned the words to the now famous lines said to Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, and participated in the marshmallow version of the same. Kudos! to the Trannsylvania Nipple Company for their intro.

Little can be said about the innuendo, intended or unintended, or the fact that the one you bring may be the one that you intend to ahem…dare I say, recreate Rockin’ Horror with? All in all, the show is one not to be frequented by the faint hearted, rather, carry your props, your untrained voices and your team spirit…And don’t forget your newspaper.

Buyer Beware. The RHPS is highly addictive, so watch yourself later laugh over that line the previously quiet your-mom’s-age lady said, tickle the guy or girl you met at the theater and share a knowing wink with people as you walk out. Check out the stats and anecdotes at the official RHPS website,www.rockyhorror.com and for Pete’s sake don’t think you can just watch the version on video, or now, on fancy disk, rather, get out with ten or fifteen of your friends and see the magic recreated on another midnight like the April Fools’ and I don’t mean next year.

La Femme Afrique shows topical insights from an African woman living in the United States. Africa content includes the arts, writing, food and people.

seniors…bye bye

“No more poverty for me, I am in my own world with my diamonds and pearls.
I have moved further than the grass grows and further up than the reaching up to the skies has allowed me. I have finished the year here, no longer ill at ease.”Frosh

An open letter to all seniors,
If it does not directly hit you, you may read over my shoulder as I write.

I remember walking along the windows outside the PSB labs and you waving to me through the window, beckoning me in. Maybe now I can look forward to Organic Chemistry with the confidence I saw in your eyes as I wondered whether I too could. I also remember walking with you for the first few meals here at the DC telling me what was on each day. In addition, how to sometimes take the Blue Bus over to Bryn Mawr, for the grill at Erdman. My widening tummy thanks you for the directional advice.

I remember your introduction to other freshmen at both schools, with faces fresh to the scene, we are grateful for those first few connections, who we will share this journey with when you are long graduated.

You made me cry at the a’capella concert. You were singing on stage so adorably. I was so proud of you representing out there. You were the first to ask shy me to a dance on the first weekend here last semester. I wanted to buy you a bouquet after, but I thought that was cheesy and clingy. I am all about flowers now, as you already know. Remember, you took the Swat van with me and we snoozed all the way back. I guess we owe the schedule makers for that last 2:30am run.

You were the reason I did not quit that class, that gym class where I was not sure I could last through. Yes, the one you panted through and raved about after. Nothing, of course can compare to your auditioning for the same dance group as me, just for moral support even though you couldn’t possibly schedule it, what with your major work ahead for the semester.

Thanks for going to the first walk along Penn’s Landing. I guess that would still be just a place on the map of the city that I had not been to yet. I wonder whether you know getting me to go to Cuba Libre last Halloween haunts me to date, and that I sneak off for a meal as and when I can. Shhh! Don’t tell Mother when she comes to pick me up next week. That goes for the Phillies and Pat’s Cheesesteaks too.

I think I want to go to DC next Fall like you did as a soph, to see if working there will be a plus in the years until I too graduate. See I am proud of you even after all the names we call each other; you call me Squirt, Froshling, Kid and maybe I will stop calling you Granps, and ordering a mail order walking cane for you every other week.

I am convinced that I will not hide from you if I ever see you walking down the street, because though my major is Undecided right now, I have no doubt I will be someone, just like you some day. We have not solved for world peace and I still think your choice of hairdresser is wacky, but I will miss you and hold you close in my heart. Sincerely, Your Frosh.

La Femme Afrique shows topical insights from an African woman living in the United States. Africa content includes the arts, writing, food and people.

paranoia…or something like it

I am the victim of a series of awry dinner dates. Let us not use names, dates or idiosyncrasies to describe the gentlemen in question. I guess there is none to blame, but the Fates. Let me blame the music that I listened to just before I went out each evening.

So back to the topic, dinner and a date. I started each of these encounters a very excited girl starting out the friendly banter that separates the men from the sheep, so to speak, just to tell whether there was going to be some kind of dinner conversation. I have no doubt that there is something about the wind after the rain that drives me to want to talk to people that I would never otherwise have met.

Take for example the Musician pastor, who goes to church maybe 6 out of 7 times a week. There are no parallels with the men of the cloth back home, apart from the preaching of similar message. I still wonder what drove me to go there, in a date. So we went to this sandwich bar here in the town, as an icebreaker. Convinced by those 20-20 news specials that I did not want to become another unidentified body found washed up on the banks of the River, I told all of my friends where I was going and when to call the police if I did not turn up. We went and had sandwiches at the local café here.

I wanted the conversation to flow, for us to meet, greet, and feel like we had known each other our whole lives. I wanted the fact that he opened the door for me to cover for the faux pas of eyeing a girl seated next to me the whole time that we were having dinner. Maybe I am selfish, but I wanted the fact that he offered to pay to compensate for the jerky conversation that seemed to revolve only around him and gym and church.

Do not get me wrong, I am as firm a believer in the glorious resurrection of Christ, and celebrating Easter, but why did it have to be that I should experience fellowship only at his church. Why did he want me to forget that he had another personality apart from the three things that he resolved to talk about the whole time, whether I was involved in any church where I was from, whether I was working, why I was not willing to accompany him to church. All this ran through my mind as he hungrily eyed my sandwich, which he was foregoing to have a leafy salad, after mumbling through a diet explanation.

I do not think that I have been as acutely aware of time when I am out with someone as much as I was at the 22nd minute of the hour I spent out with the Musician Pastor. I insisted on going back at school as soon as the last bits of the sandwich went down with the iced tea that I was having.

I went back just as the clouds were threatening to drop a world of drops on the thirsty ground outside my dorm room. I wanted to sink and become one with the grass. I guess I was tired, because there was no way to describe the sinking disappointment with the last hour’s antics. I spoke my goodbyes and watched the tiny car disappear round the bend. Watching the sunset rain, I hoped for more smiles than tears, I hoped for Spring again.

La Femme Afrique shows topical insights from an African woman living in the United States. Africa content includes the arts, writing, food and people.

archives, my first impressions, one year later

Arrivederci. I begin by saying goodbye. I use a language I speak not a word of to describe an event that I did not realize  I was a part of…saying farewell to who I was and becoming a new creature soon to be called, ‘CHILD OF NO WORLD’ I remember Redsan’s song, ‘Kenyan!’ which I thought was referring to some obvious fact. I mean, a song about Kenyans sung to Kenyans, by a Kenyan? The height of redundancy was the first thought that crossed my mind. After all we are the sons and daughters of this land we call home. So I said silent farewells to the land that has breastfed, potty-trained and initiated me into adulthood.
      I entered the world of the Amerikajin. The continent of a thousand original nationalities, where I acquired a new name, black woman. I watched and laughed at the movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman. I was so far away from that title that I could afford a chuckle or three. Then I entered college just a few days later. Uncommonly interestingwas the way in which the sensitivities were on  the forefront. People would ask me if I was from Africa, then when I would reply in the affirmative, they would comment, ‘oh I have many  friends from Nigeria,’ and grin knowingly(stupidly in my opinion) but it was stil the early days, and I was quick to correct  the less informed in the area that I was actually from East Africa. It was often lost on them that it was like calling the East Coast a stone’s throw from California.
       I saw the faces of all shades of colour and my nose unwillingly got exposed to the noxious trailing suspicion of those questioning eyes running along my ample thighs and those ears straining to hear where my ‘weird’ accent was from. Are you an immigrant? That was asked with the best of the intended fellow feeling and it landed in my ears sounding like a mumbled version of the song ‘I’m an alien…I’m a legal alien, and a black woman walking through’

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La Femme Afrique shows topical insights from an African woman living in the United States. Africa content includes the arts, writing, food and people.