My Mad Men Obsession Continues...

I just caught up to the rest of the world and I saw this Vanity Fair article on Mad Men.

Honestly, I've not read the article yet because I'm loving the photographs. I mean, seriously, just look at them:







Annie Liebovitz's photos are stunning. Sort of a Norman Rockwell throwback quality to them. These images are a little genteel by comparison. However, if you can dig back into your memory, or perhaps you might have missed W Magazine's photo essay with Brad and Angelina.






Both sets are extremely narrative. However, Steven Klein's photos show a menace in marriage that lies beneath the surface. There's a softer hint of tension with the images of Mad Men protagonists, Betty and Don. I love both sets. I think by default, my generation is still captured by the imagination of life in 1960s America.

I don't know. I've been thinking about marriage a lot lately, particularly because I'm revising a short story of my own that has a character looking side-eyed at it.

Maybe it's time to read more Yates.

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, August 15-18, 1969

Ladies and Gentlemen, Richie Havens' Freedom.

I Want My Country Back

Tea Party Protestor, Staten Island, NY - April 15, 2009, originally uploaded by indigo_belle.

I'm not sure which America she's talking about either.

To be honest, I find these town hall meetings distressing. Grown ass people are practically throwing tantrums over a social reform agenda that they'd in all likelihood would benefit from. Most of these folks appear to be part of a socio-economic class that gives them health care, but still would lack adequate coverage if they were inflicted with a serious illness.

Rachel Maddow did an excellent account of the strategy or, strategery behind these town hall disruptions. Reasonable people can see through the menagerie and recognize that this is in fact, a politically orchestrated effort.

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These details notwithstanding, it's still important to parse out language here.

This rally cry of 'I Want My Country Back', 'I Want My America Back' or some of my other favorite invocations, 'socialism', the Obama/Hitler analogies, ---the 'birthers', and good lord, the 'deathers'--- just drips with racism. I don't say this flippantly, but the supposed fringe parts of the conservative movement have invented so many ways to say nigger it's ridiculous. The language is loaded is white racism that it would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge it.

However, in acknowledging racism in language is dangerous territory. When you're trying to coax people to the middle ground, acknowledging racism shuts down communication. People get tongue-tied and lock-jawed on old narratives. They get angry, hurt and defensive. They feel guilty. They stop listening. They act out. No one wants to be seen as a bad person. I think what I'm getting at is that intent behind words like socialist in relation to the Obama Administration's policies doesn't sit well. I'm not sure if these folks know what socialism is. I think these words get tossed around and sits on tips of tongues without full awareness of the historic implications behind them.

I'm not sold on health care reform as it stands either. I'm in desperate need of concrete details from Congress and the White House. But I live in a democracy. I understand that the point of town hall meetings provides me with access to my elected representatives to listen to differing points of view that may ultimately (or so I hope) influence public policy to the benefit of my community. Shouting down anyone to the point that nothing is discussed isn't free speech or democratic. It's stupid. It's selfish.

The left or anyone who was opposed to the Bush Administration certainly felt put out about the direction of the American experiment. I certainly felt that we were falling in a pattern that didn't represent the values that our nation purported to uphold. I protested the Iraq War, and I could look to the left and right of me and see a broad based coalition of like minded people who felt as I did. I don't imagine if town halls were held to levy support for the war six years ago, the left would be shouting down those who supported it. I don't think we'd burn Bush in effigy.

While I can appreciate opposition to health care reform and that the extremes of the opposition may very well constitute a minority of the total population, I cannot ignore the pejorative nature of their critique. There's bloodlust behind those words.

I want my country to find the middle ground.

Pastime Paradise

Tea Party in New Dorp Staten Island, NY. April 15, 2009, originally uploaded by indigo_belle.

I posting this as a stub.



As I was reading this post by TNC, my iTunes DJ randomly landed on this classic track. I don't believe in coincidences. As the summer presses on, and our national debate centers around flash point issues of health care reform and race. Within those two issues are layered complexities of class and the shadow side of our American heritage.

I can't remember who said it last year during the campaign, if it was a pundit, an analyst or Michelle Obama, but with advent of Candidate and President Obama, someone said, 'Now we'll find out how racist this country really is.' That sentiment loops through my head as I try to sort through the barrage information and misinformation.







If you haven't watched Alexandra Pelosi's documentary, I think it's worth at least a once over. I don't feel that she necessarily presented these folks in the most objective light, but given the growing populist right resentment towards a reform agenda government complicated by their racial animus, maybe she wasn't so far off.

There's a fine line between discourse and disruption. A fine line between civil disobedience and sociopathy.

More later.

A Beautiful Mine

Mad Men Season 3 Premiere is a short but distant two and half weeks away.

AMC's website has an awesome interactive program that for a fan like me, was irresistible.



The cultural history is layered. It's doubtful you'd see someone like me, even in my Mad Men avatar, move so freely in that space without it signifying some aspect of the past social contract. But it's nice to imagine that animated me could be patron in a bar, rather than server. It's a period of history I'd rather pretend never existed, and skip to the good part, when we got civil rights and I get to experience integration and live in a 'post racial' society. However, Weiner's drama is still compelling. The nuanced day to day interactions of race, gender and class in what we can now refer to as modern America, are so exquisitely rendered that I can't help but watch the show as if it were a cultural document. For our post-modern, 'post-racial' society, it's an interesting history to watch unfold week to week, a close examination of how far we've come in our own narratives, and a reminder of how far we still have to go.

As a writer, I find Don Draper, Betty Draper and Peggy Olson fascinating. I grew up poor, so suburban ennui, unhappy marriages, or inhibited women are fascinating for me. The women in all of these narratives seemed to be silently screaming. The tension was building last season with the women. Over drinks last weekend, three very liberated women (me and my friends) got to discuss the implications of psychotherapy from that era. We were trying to convince our friend that she needed to get caught up on the show; we were talking of the scene where Betty's psychologist talks to Don about what Betty discussed in therapy earlier. A detail that we found alarming. It was such a common practice, no one questioned it, until 1970. A lawsuit created what we've come to accept culturally as doctor-client privilege.

It just makes me want to reread John Cheever and Richard Yates. Maybe Patricia Highsmith, too. It also makes me want to listen to RJD2 on repeat.

Go Mad Men Yo'self.

Public Option Now

Health Care Reform Rally - Washington, DC. June 25, 2009, originally uploaded by indigo_belle.

It should be restated again. We need health care reform now.

For one, like MSM, I got distracted by the Gates-gate episode. Following this very complex conversation or rather deconstruction about race, class, authority, law, free speech, and frankly, a story of two 'reasonable' men clashed which escalated about who's member is bigger than the other, was riveting.

It's already been said by many more wiser writers and minds than me; that Obama's presser last week that the real message of the urgency of the need for reform was buried in the MSM coverage of a seemingly gaffe by POTUS.

I've been trying to synthesize my thoughts about the bubbling race in America today question for weeks now. I had a rather random post that was only to function as a primer for me to redress late. I felt something was coming. I just wasn't expecting it to come in the form of segregated pools, excessive force/abuse of power cases, and the death of a pop icon.

Again, I digress.

I also started to draft a post about my recent trip to DC to lobby for reform. Particularly, I wanted highlight the people I met and why they were willing to bake in the late June heat, to push for reform and a public option. A few real life things happened that got in the way of that for me. And then my uncle died. I don't meant to make him out to be some sort of martyr, but the significance of his passing and the health care debate cross hairs for me. He was diagnosed with stage four cancer in March. He didn't have health insurance. It wasn't provided to him through his job. I can't help but wonder if there were a public option, would he have been able to seek medical attention months, years ago for a stomach problem that he could have easily dismissed as indigestion. He stopped treatment in June. Apparently he lived an expectantly longer life than any doctor would have conceived. He had a pre-existing condition that complicated his treatment with chemo. As my mother explained to me this past weekend, he had a childhood disease that should have been terminal. And it's apparently genetic. The irony, if you want to call it that, is that my uncle may have saved the life of his children with the discovery of this disease that was responsible for the complicating treatment that would've prolonged his life. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that.

The other story that seems to get lost is the face of the uninsured. It's an issue beyond black, white and class. 43 million Americans do not have health insurance. I've heard reported (trying to verify) that the number of uninsured Americans under the age of 30 constitute the large part of that number. A detail that I don't find too surprising. The low skilled worker, or the recent college graduate who have entry level jobs often are, for lack of a better word, shafted. Ask any bright, young thing who's employed by a publishing house, magazine, or advertising company to someone who's working as a janitor, security guard, or retail clerk. Do they have adequate health coverage, if any? Would a public option help small businesses who factor fringe benefits in employee compensation? Would small businesses be able to expand and hire more workers? Would that aid in our economic recovery?

I think Obama failed to explain these facts in a way that can incite urgency among everyone. MSM failed in deconstructing the argument in digestible bits that would push the conversation beyond what polls supposedly say about what Americans want: deficit reduction.

I'm biased of course. I'm part of a Venn Diagram of constituencies that's affected by this. I want a public option. I'm a bright, young, African American, thirtysomething that would love the independence of not relying on an employer to provide health care coverage. I'd also love a system that would make it affordable so that people like my uncle can seek and receive care in instances where their employer can't afford to provide them coverage. I'd also like for the forces that claim to read tea leaves through polls realize that my biggest care in the world is not the growth of the American deficit. I do care about it. But I'm a member of the generation that will carry the burden of many debts. I'm still researching the data, but my impression is that the national debt will increase with reform and without reform. I'd like to hear a sound debate about the rate of that growth if we don't reform our entitlement programs now.

It's food for thought.

Picturing Themselves

This is an excellent post about women and their role in the Iranian Revolution from Tehran Bureau.

Women are so prominent in this movement, from mothers surrounding the men during protests to shield them from police and the attacks from the basij. There's a strong feminine energy here.

I'm still following this. I hope everyone else is too.

Moonwalker

I don’t think I knew it until I was washing the dishes this morning that I’ve been mad at Michael Jackson for years about Billie Jean.

Seriously.

Like everyone, I was listening to Thriller on repeat upon hearing of his death. In 1982, washing the dishes was one of my household chores. I was eight. Billie Jean was playing on the radio and I finally listened to words of the song and got it.

Who was Billie Jean anyway?

Somewhere, the synapses crossed and I think my eight-year-old brain rationalized that Michael, like my dad, or gave my dad a reason to pretend that I wasn’t actually his daughter.

The first time I called my father daddy, he looked me square in the eyes and told me never to call him daddy because I wasn’t his daughter. I understood and didn’t understand simultaneous. Because I looked like him. I had a space in my teeth like he did. No one on my mother’s side, including my mother had a space between their teeth. Their teeth were perfect. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. I think I got angry, because I knew it didn’t logically make sense. He certainly acted like he was my father, so why say some ish like that? Then I thought it must be because it made him feel old to have a daughter. Then I felt some sympathy. I mean no one wants to feel old. It smelled like ben gay, collard greens and mold. At least that’s how I imagined old to feel.

Everyone and their mother loved Billie Jean. I couldn’t tell if it was because it was a good song or simply because of Michael’s deft gravity reversing soft shoe push across the stage and then subsequent toe stand as a ballet dancer. I didn’t like it. I actually hated the song until I made myself love it. I listened to the words, the heavy blues guitar riff, that sounded full of a world of deep delta troubles. Now I can hear Muddy Waters all up in and out of Billie Jean. I’m not sure how as a child I understood the meaning of the song. Maybe it was the hook, ‘the kid is not my son.’ The contradiction in the narrative, ‘eyes were just like mine. Wanna dance on the floor and around.’ The hazy hindsight of one-night stands and adult relationships stirring some rationalization in eight year old me.

In other words, I was pissed. I knew where babies come from. My mom was pregnant with my sister and my father was around and then not. And in the summer of 1982 while I was doing the dishes, he tried to teach me how to moonwalk. He seemed to have grasped the mechanics. It was a soft shoe push backwards. Small steps. All we needed was the smoothed and scuffed surface of the kitchen floor. Maybe a little of the soapy suds from the sink where I was doing the dishes to help with our torsion, motion backwards, like Armstrong. ‘That was how he did it,’ my father, excuse me, Gerald, explained. I did get it for all of five minutes maybe less. Under a heavy bass guitar blues riff, pushing my one foot after the other backwards, a small step for mankind with this man who looked like me and was not of me, yet was everything to me.

Now I realize it may seem weird to be secretly resentful of Michael for a song. Even odder to me that this is thing I’m thinking about today on the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing.

I guess this is how memory works. Fragments of the familiar link back together in space.

MJ Legacy, Ctd.

For those of you aren't aware, Jay Smooth's Illdoctrine video blog often offers the most insightful discourse on issues and themes in the hip hop world as well as pop culture.

His most recent post about MJ offers a deconstruction I haven't heard too many places except in the comfort of my circle of friends, artists, writers.



It seems to me that mainstream media and its pundits, missed an opportunity to examine this hyper-reality that has manifested in our culture over the past 25 years or so. We watched Michael for nearly four generations in my family. You can't say that about many pop stars. And I don't think any of us thought about the kind of spiritual and emotional toll that takes on a person who is constantly watched, living in a meta-reality, between worlds, personal and public.

Disambiguation, Redux

Toni Morrison shared some wisdom about language, culture, and writing at a talk about a month or so ago. I've watched it a few times. She hit some nerves for me that have been swimming in my head for years. Blogs, Twitter, SMS text messages, hyperlinks... all of these things that allow us to move and share information faster, regardless of quality is unprecedented.

Watching some of the opening statements for the Sotomayor confirmation hearings, I found myself returning again to this video:



The key point? There's a difference between discourse and information. Literature, more specifically the novel, in this age will still act as a vehicle to organize information and human emotion. As Morrison says, 'the novel can be a body of knowledge.'

I'm still processing, sorting, filtering, organizing...

Happy Fourth of July

BET Doesn't Care About Black People

'George Bush doesn't care about Black people.' That was Kanye West. Remember? He blurted that out in a moment of honest frustration with the Bush Administration's blunder at providing relief to victims in the Gulf. Network media cut to commercial fast during the Hurricane Katrina benefit. We all know what happened or didn't happen after that.

Fast forward to 2009 and the BET Awards. We all in the African American community had great expectations for a proper send up for Michael Jackson from America's only Black network.

*Le sigh*

Writer and Comedian, Elon James White, goes where no prominent African American leader or entertainer will ever go.

This is effin' hilarious.

Canonization

We danced hard.

We watched him. We studied those moves. We studied those moves like our lives depended on it. We succeeded and failed. I had no rhythm in 1982. Eight year old me struggled to copy those moves. In third grade at Golda Meir Elementary, we had a talent show and a group of us practiced a dance routine to You Wanna Be Startin Something. I was the weakest link. I danced like the Tin Man in the Wiz, even though I always adored the limberness of the Scarecrow.

I remained a fan but kept it closed to the vest.

My late friend Peter had a saying, 'Sometimes, you just gotta dance out your demons.' He picked up from watching an episode of Charmed. I used to mock him, but I still accepted the underlying wisdom.

I've been watching old videos of Michael like everyone else has over the past few days. A few videos come to mind, Beat It, Jam, Black or White and the seminal work, Thriller. Watching Michael's dance solo at the end of the Black or White video (beg at 6:32) I can't help but feel he was dancing out demons. He morphs from panther to man dancing fluid, masculine, and wild, then back to panther.

Michael was Matrix before the Wachowski Brothers dreamed it.

What were those demons? Only time will tell us the full extent. We saw evidence of them over the years, never quite grasping his metamorphosis from black man to indeterminately ethnic. Perhaps it was a hybrid of love and hate for mankind that compelled him to make his body a template to teach us something. That we are one people, beyond artificial lines of color. I did see that. However, I also saw a soul in crisis, sacrificed to us for contempt and ridicule.

I did eventually figure out how to dance. It was in 1991. Shit was pretty bad then for me, but this song may have saved my life. Flexibility and abandon came when I finally let go and surrendered myself to pulse of the music. And the body memory of those moves revealed themselves to me.

Sometimes, you gotta dance it out.

Only now, I realize that I turn to his songs to help me deal. In his voice, the rage at injustice, poverty, racism, all the things that divide us vibrate underneath his songs. I connected to that. It's the equivalent of a primal scream for me. Growing up in '80s and '90s America and being black were challenging times. My family struggled during those times. My parents couldn't afford to buy me a Thriller jacket. We ate government cheese. I was lucky to score an old copy of Right On to clip pictures and pullout posters of El Debarge, Michael Jackson, and Prince. There were drugs. There was crime. There were senseless deaths. There was hunger.

Things that make you wanna holler. Or scream.

It seems to me Michael came from a musical tradition to give voice to those struggles. Marvin Gaye's What's Going On begot Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life, begot the Jackson's Can You Feel It, begot We are the World begot Man in the Mirror, which begot Heal The World.

He was an artist.

He used music to give voice to our shared frustrations, local and global. He also gave us hope. He entertained us. His videos challenged convention and elevated story. He merged forms revolutionized dance as means of communication. He reminded us that there is ecstasy and joy in dance.

He held his crotch because when you have Kundalini energy moving through you, you gotta try to harness it.

Shiva is known also as the cosmic dancer. It is said that Shiva's dance manifested in two forms, gentle and violent. Shiva dances to destroy, create and build again. Watching Michael, I can't help but wonder if that was the energy he was trying to manifest in his fluid motions, pirouettes, pops and locks, gravity defying leans and moonwalks. Michael broke down old forms and barriers in everything and birthed something new.

He was a deeper creative spirit than I had originally imagined. It seems clearer to me now as I look back on all those years with adult eyes. Michael was a student of history and culture. It didn't seem obvious to me growing up, but now, I'm a better student. I've studied other cultures and their dances, and I understand now what Michael was trying to show us.

I weep for yet another marker of the end of my childhood. Nothing lasts forever. It sucks that sometimes you have to lose something to realize how much really had.

But I'll never forget the dance. I'll shake my body onto the ground as if all of creation depended on it.

They Don't Care About Us

I'm not alone in seeing the connection.

The person who posted this originally created it before MJ's passing. If anyone denies Michael Jackson's reach, message and legacy. I encourage you to look at the video.

Warning: These images contain graphic content and may not be suitable to minors.



The world is watching.

Mad World

Huge Rally in Support Of Mousavi, Tehran, originally uploaded by mousavi1388.

I feel their sense of urgency. And I'm hopeful for their success in achieving self determination as a society. The people deciding who represents them. It's not so much about the who's the best leader for the Islamic Republic of Iran. It's about respect for the process, the structure of the civil society itself. Mousavi is symbol now. I don't think we'll ever come to know what kind of leader he would be. But these protests do show that the people were seeking an alternative to Ahmadinejad, a leader that could be a vehicle for reform within their society. And the system failed them.

Remember 1989? There's a weird symmetry in history. Deja vu all over again. I remember feeling the same desperate sense of urgency and hope and dread for the students in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. I was a tween then, but I understood the longing of an oppressed people challenging the system. Later when we started high school that same year, two German tourists spoke to my world history class and talked about the shifts they were feeling then in their own country. I asked them a question that I felt in bones. I asked them if they thought the Wall would come down. I still remember his facel, and he said, 'I hope so. I sure hope so.' It could not have been more than two weeks later and the unthinkable happened. I remember Jeremy running to class the next morning saying to me, 'Syreeta! How'd you do that? How'd you know? You called it!'

All I can say is that people dream in a common language. If you heard those German tourists in my history class in 1989, you could feel the urgency for change. And I don't think it's a stretch that young Germans felt a kinship with the students in Tiananmen Square. In the wake of that tragedy, they might have found their courage to challenge the old order in their nation.

The poignant part of the President's Cairo speech two weeks ago sort of reads now as a prophetic allusion to events that are now manifesting. Pundits have found fault with the connection with Civil Rights Movement and resistance movements -fringe to moderate- of some Arab communities to regimes. I felt that it struck a very raw nerve. Something that we all had to acknowledge. African Americans learned from the Indian struggle against British rule during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1947, India became a sovereign nation again. Our own history shows how civil disobedience can affect change. It ended injustices my forebearers suffered through. It gave me the right to vote without fear. It seems clear to me now that the Iranian kids heard him. Still, Obama can't engage them directly. That's not his purpose at this time. A statesman engages governments. This is a populist movement. And all we can do is watch, support, and hope that human rights are respected.

My color scheme is green so that they know that I'm with them.

A More Perfect Union 2.0

This is simply brilliant.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If you don't have time to watch the video, please read the transcript. I can't think of another person who has the moral authority to deliver this speech. I felt the same way about his speech on race last year. There's a maturity beyond the words. There's clarity and acknowledgment that he gets it. And so do we. He doesn't insult our intelligence or talk down to us about it. He's embracing it full on. There's honesty in balancing our fixed perceptions and opposites, naming them and then challenging us to transcend.

I don't even need to glean what the Right will say about this. But in embracing this 'third rail' of sorts, he's taking the road I don't think any of the candidates last year ever could. The opportunity here is to challenge the world community to be the change we wish to seek in the world.

The middle ground is something close to freedom.

Funkin' Lesson

I don't know what's going on in my brain today. But it began with a question that I woke up with this morning: what is black?

And then I remembered the jam from back in the day.



Still thinking about where I'm going with this question. But right now, I'm shakin' my ass to early '90s hip hop.

Validation

H/T to Crucial Minutiae blogger Jennifer Gandin Le for this one. If you have time to watch this short film featuring TJ Thyne of 'Bones' fame, please do. And if you're not smiling by the end, then there must be no love left in your heart.



Happy Friday.

Not In Our Name

'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' - Martin Luther King

I'm not sure if enough people are talking about this.

I've been avoiding it myself. Looking at the issue straight in the eye. See the character of the American people through the actions of our leaders. Honestly, I don't want to. But much like that nagging small voice inside your head, you must relent and deal with it.

Part of the strategery in releasing these memos is that it forces us to talk about it. Everyday people, beyond the mainstream media. Some would like to frame this debate as 'leftwing' issue. Some have even attempted to phrase the conversation in this way:

It’s hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, ‘Oh, much good will come of that.’ Sometimes in life you want to keep walking… Some of life has to be mysterious.

- Peggy Noonan

On the interwebs, populist outrage seems to be simmering. Andrew Sullivan and Ta'hesi Coates for the Atlantic Monthly have written about it.And again, we have Shepard Smith, with his flashes of outrage. This guy's done a song about it, Jon Stewart reported it satirically on the Daily Show, Nick Flynn wrote a brilliant essay about it in Tin House last year, George Saunders wrote satirical story about it for the New Yorker, and yet, I sort of get the feeling that we're not angry enough.

We are avoiding talking about it. It's ugly. It's ugly like lynchings, serial killers, interning Japanese American citizens, rape, police brutality, eugenics projects, and slavery. It's the dark side of the force that everyone tries to forget.

For what good is this great republic if we can't be honest and be held accountable for our crimes? How dare we say that we're the moral compass to the world when we're unwilling to prosecute crimes committed by our leaders? When did we let our fear forfeit the rule of law?

The most damning realization in my reading these memos, the Red Cross Report, the Senate Arms Services Committee Report, and other sources to deconstruct the issue is this: Torture became policy. Torture suborned confessions to support the invasion of Iraq. Torture was policy and vehicle to support a political and agenda.

And that realization sends chills down my spine. It makes me weep. I hope I'm not alone.

Torture is wrong. Waterboarding is torture. There, I said it. And I will say it again and again. We all should. And we can't stop until officials of the previous administration are brought to justice and are held accountable for their crimes against humanity and the republic.

photo: © syreeta mcfadden 2009

NaPoWriMo

Is not a car. Is not a pair of jeans, or a new band. It is the acronym for National Poetry Month. Beginning every April and for the remainder of 29 days, NaPoWriMo encourages all of us, rock star poets to the general population to write poems. One poem every day.

And don't you think there is no better time than now to write poems? The writing and reading of poems, at least for me, has always proven instructive. It compels me to give pause to a hurried lifestyle, where I miss things like silence, grace, beauty, and reflection. When I was growing up, my grandmother gave me poems to read as shorthand to unravel my conflicting emotions. I don't think I would've survived my teens without the quiet, defiant confidence I got from Invictus. Or hold the contradictions of being an individual and a world citizen without If. And if she hadn't primed me, I don't think I would've felt exhilarated when I read Canonization, and ultimately realizing that those metaphysical poets I studied my senior year were really masters at seduction. Ah, John Donne, you had me at 'let me love.'

I'm going to try to meet this challenge and post a poem a day. We'll see how I do. And if the words don't come, I'll substitute with a photograph. Because sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

photo: © syreeta mcfadden 2009