Vaboomer -- Baby Boomer Views & News

Singing for Joy: Celebration #17

A LIfe Renewed

Last summer, a former neighbor called to ask if I would take her mom to UMDNJ in Newark where she was to receive a liver transplant. My friend was too far away at her job to get her Mom to the hospital in the time that she had been given. Of course, was my answer. My friend said , "Mom is afraid and is not sure she wants to go." I was in a focused mode and said, "I can't convince her, if she wants to go, I'm happy to take her. " In a few minutes I called Malvonia and heard the indecision in her voice. I said to her, "Malvonia, I have two questions for you. Do you want to sing? Or do you want to die?" Without hesitation she replied, "I want to sing." I'll be there to get you in five minutes, I told her.

Off we went to the hospital and several days later I heard that she had emerged from anesthesia singing. The nurses and doctors were amazed and she said "I am reborn."

Expunging the Inner Naysayers

In the weeks that followed I visited Malvonia often and heard her childhood story. It is one that many of us have heard. A dad that controlled and criticized and tore her down: You're ugly, no count, can't sing, no talent, never amount to anything. She was in exaulted music circles in Detroit where they lived, in the company of Dizzy Gillispe and Nat King Cole. At one time she sang back up for Natalie Cole, but Dad cut her feet from under her. But she could not bring her own voice out clearly.

Then came financial difficulties /and a bad marriage and children to support alone. And finally in the month before her 59th birthday, a liver transplant. Many health philosophies hold that the liver is the seat of anger and if that is so, Malvionia's anger was killing her. We do certainly know that the liver is one of the body's basic filters and when it is full of toxins, you clean it, replace it or you die.

Malvonia was lucky, that she was able to replace hers; even tho she was cleaning it as well, but not soon enough. In her case, it took cutting out the anger, sorrow, insults, bad feelings for her to reclaim her angel voice and begin anew.

www.BoomerMade.com

Gives singer a second chance

Malvonia is a gifted singer. She can bee bop, scat, croon, doo wop, rock and roll with the best of them. So far we have one of her originals for you to hear on boomermade. Enjoy. And just wait, just wait for more: she is a major talent.

                     Listen to Malvonia sing:

 

A reFIREment story or How an Academic/Activist/Actor Is Becoming an Entrepeneur

Money on Monday: A reFIREment story Part 1

When you were little did you look up at the stars and dream?

 

When I grow up, I'm going to be a...

We know Bill Clinton dreamed of being president and he achieved his dream Political Dreams/. He became our president and led our country through an unprecedented era of prosperity and peace. (Let's hope President Obama and Vice President Biden Donate Barack  can lead us past this retrograde time into a new GREEN era of peace and prosperity.

I did not dream of being president. At an early age I had gotten the sexist social message that girls could not be president. But somehow the stars seemed open to my dreaming and I wanted to be an astronaut Female Astronauts I was a sucker for comic books and fantasized along with all the female and male heros who zoomed between the stars and met up with new peoples on new planets. In fact I still want to fly into outer space. My end of life dream now is to be

an oral historian for the 20th and 21st centuries in a new colony on Mars...

or wherever. And given our increasing technology, my fantasy does not seem so unreachable now. It just takes money mostly!

Had I been encouraged in math and sciences, I might have pursued that dream earlier and flown on some of the early Apollo missions. (Like many girls of my era, I was told to become a secretary, irrespective of the fact that I have NO apptitude for paper handling and cannot to this day type or spell worht ummmm worth a darn--Thanks be to spell check! (Honestly, I did not mispell worth on purpose!!)

So how did I get from my early dreams of being an astronaut to my present entrepreneurial journey--Executive Editor and co-founder of Thimbleberry Press (www.thimbleberrypress.com) and founder and President of CornueCopia, LLC, the parent of www.vaboomer.com and www.vaboomerviosks.com? 

A major point I want to share today in my long life journey, is my willingness, no inner urge, to learn new things and to try new things. Not being able--so far--to fly in outer space, I have chosen to fly in inner space. Another is my basic inner drive to make things. Whether it is remaking an old house and beautifully, or whether it is improving a social situation, I like to see what might be and garner the resources (people, ideas, money, etc) and see it through to actuality. I am also not bound by directions. When I know enough, I flaunt the rules--unless life and limb are at stake.

I used to drive my Ex nuts because I would not follow the cooking directions on packages.

I have cooked for decades and have my own standards of doneness. Most frozen food cooking directions are way too done for me and I use my judgement. In truth I now believe that the real issue symptomatic of our issues, was that I didn't follow HIS direction to follow the package directions!!

And finally I am not daunted by my ignorance about the nuts and bolts of a new venture.

Sometimes NOT KNOWING lets you dream even bigger, because you don't know the potential obstacles and you take amazing chances and wild solutions.

AND I am at the same time, a very practical person and know that any project takes longer than allowed for--well sometimes. And not everything imagined can come into being--at least not right now, maybe later, or in a different place or form.

For instance, after adopting my daughter and while we were still living there, I looked all over Beijing for language materials. I wanted to be able to offer the sound of Chinese to her as she was growing up. But no where was there the lively engaging, colorful materials I was seeing in my inner eye. Well, I said to myself, I'll just have to make something.

It took some years to get to manifesting my bi-lingual CD "Sing Together in English and Chinese" while I was finishing up my doc, getting used to being a parent, camping in a construction site for five years as the VA Rehab we bought was being made livible. But in 2000, working together with a friend, I produced and co-wrote a ten original song CD. You can get it on www.vaboomerviosks.com. And in the coming months you'll be able to down load the individual songs.

So my first impluse was to fill a need.

I saw few interesting engaging materials that would appeal to American kids and could be used by non-Mandarin speaking parents or teachers. And even though there are tons more materials now 13 years later,  I still find them somewhat lacking. And there is another way to understand "fill a need." It is my own need to create and bring an idea, a dream, into reality. So mine was a need to fill as well.

My mission was to connect--to build a language bridge bewteen China and the West, specifically the US. I wanted this bridge to be there for my kid, so that she would feel connected and "at home" in her two countries. And I wanted this bridge to be there for thousands of other kids as well.

And finally, I love making things with other people.

I think this comes from my days as an actor, working in a creative ensemble, where you have your distinct part to play, but everyone needs everyone else to raise the curtain and make the show go on. Theatre is a wonderful lively community.

This was my first foray into the world of business. It was and is still a new one to me. Coming from an education/arts/activist background, it still feels a bit strange to me and there is SCADS to learn. I'll probably never be a "suit," but the notion of sharing the treasures of my heart with others to give them pleasure and uplift, makes my heart thrill. And if there is not joy in life and the living--what is the point? Well...Oh...ok, I admit it...I like the money as well!

More next Monday when I'll be back in Jersey.

Resources: 

http://www.jonathanfeinstein.com/

Globalization, the Challenge for the New President, and Boomer Brillance

I've thought for years that the whole approach to education and to employment is wrong headed.

Instead of education being aimed at nourishing the brilliant creative that is in each of us, it systematically crushes that spirit in the service of turning out corporate cogs who will "man" the corporate factory line. 

  

And that factory line grinds along and grinds along--albeit increasingly less and less here and more and more elsewhere. Globalization offers a poignant opportunity to Americans.

On the one hand we are witnessing the last days of industrial society here in our country. That machine has moved elsewhere. The hound of fear is abroad in the land, because as a people we have yet to create the new organizations and embrace with joy and optimism the new ideas that will foster and rekindle our national brillance.

The American Industrial Century is definitely over, but that does not mean that a new era of unprecedented creativity and national

reFIREMENT

cannot emerge. I often feel as if I am a lone voice in the wilderness encouraging boomers to become boomerangers by entering their creative cores and reFIRING instead of retiring. Now more than ever, America needs all its creativity and will to grow. Boomers have this soul--battered and discouraged a bit by the conservative wars of recent years, but there simmering nontheless.