AMELIE’S 2018 TOP LIST: Best Music album: Whack World by Tierra Whack. Toys with our newly born short attention-span. A non-male perspective that is not discussing sex, sexual appeal, money or anger. Released with an parallel choreographed video series that illuminates the logic of putting out an album in which every song is exactly 1…
Category: public service announcements
all too often I am simply preaching to the choir
but every choir is made up of single voices
so I like to add my own tone
not the mums
I live in a fast gentrifying neighborhood in Philadelphia. This form of gentrification is occurring as the small slice of white, middle class blocks keep expanding Northward. So it is not necessarily just young hipsters and it is not a first sighting of white folks. The attitude I most attribute to gentrification is the suburban…
perhaps the only story I need to tell
Tectonic Plates Rattle In the instance of a #metoo moment or when a sexual dynamic is introduced to an academic, professional or intellectual context, the lens focuses tightly on the two primary people. The focus of that lens follows the tradition that sex occurs behind closed doors. Once we remove that constraint, the damage can…
Never Lunchables
One of my favorite pieces of writing was selected by Silver Needle Press, a new literary and artistic collective that strives to foster creative community through editorial accessibility and artist involvement. The story – Never Lunchables – is dedicated to my parents and how they knew about the power of food and raised me to have a…
capitalism has always kept families apart
My paternal grandmother will pass soon, we have been told by doctors. She is 95 and has had a pretty awesome life. I will be able to attend her service, and even see her a few times before. It will cost $80 is gas for the drive back and forth, a little more for tolls….
The PH.D. I earned in my sleep
Stress dreams are a reflection of the seen and unseen stress of our waking lives. In general they are not fantasies set in unreal landscapes cavorting with mystical animals. Stress dreams too often are a photocopy of the days – a little blurred, lacking detail, washed out colors but intensified reactions, complex inner narratives, and…
nostalgia, trauma, and gentrification
Nostalgia, trauma, and gentrification. If your childhood was spent somewhere safe and quiet, with a cul-d-sac or winding country roads and square footage for each member of the family, including the dog – this may not apply to you. If you come from a place with a name not even recognized the next county over,…
drunk man travels well
After the frustration, then anger, than doubt and some tears, something else has to win. The reality of traveling demands one simply succumbs. I have been reminding myself of the drunk driver who survives the lamppost simply because he is drunk. Yes it is an ugly secret that doesn’t get public service announcements or after-school…
breaking glass doors
Posted via Medium Trying to expand readership https://medium.com/@ameliebaker/breaking-glass-doors-7ae3d73a4478 Or just read it here: Breaking Glass Doors While watching The Crown on Netflix, it was the intricate historical moments, the duplicitous uncle once king, and the advent of technology as a political tool that first caught my attention. But most captivating, especially in light of current events,…
Allies – what it might mean to be PRO-BLACK instead of anti-racist
Unlearning internal and external systems of white supremacy is a complicated and painstaking process. I propose that being pro-Black is shortcut through the maze of the construction of race, the history of rape and murder, the policy and legal systematic attempt to destroy Black people and the resulting fabrication of whiteness. A shortcut may not…
the revoke award show
When a person wins an award it is all celebration, publicity, and inscriptions in the record-books. Now we face the flood of “revelations” that many recipients of such awards do not deserve the honor. So a small article is typed out to state that the award, distinction, title or honor has been revoked. Yet no transgressor…
collective failure 