I really don’t think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try.

~ Nikki Giovanni

After starting her career as a singer in Chicago-area clubs in the 1940s, LaVern (then known as Little Miss Sharecropper and later as Bea Baker) began her recoding career with Okeh Records in 1951, later switching to Atlantic in 1953.

It was during her Atlantic years, which lasted until 1964, that some of her best-known R&B hits were made, including “Tweedle Dee”, “Jim Dandy”, “I Cried A Tear”, “Play It Fair”, and her version of Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey’s “See See Rider”.

Though LaVern had many R&B hits during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as work with Alan Freed and Ed Sullivan in movies and television, wider success still eluded her, in part due to Mercury Records’ hiring of non-black Georgia Gibbs to cover her songs (as well as those of other black artists) for the middle-of-the-road world of pop music. Baker was deeply angered by the record company’s move, and a legendary public assertion that Gibbs would have no career if not for the work of others followed, along with LaVern’s petitions to Congress to give musical arrangements the same legal status afforded original musical compositions. Though LaVern lost her legal fight, it touched off subsequent social and legal controversies still being studied today.

In the late 1960s LaVern, like a lot of popular American artists at the time, toured with the USO to entertain US troops serving in the Vietnam War. After a trip to Vietnam, LaVern became ill with pneumonia, causing a lengthy stay at Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines.

Upon her recovery, a friend suggested her as the Entertainment Director for the USMC Staff NCO Club in the Philippines, a position she held for 22 years before returning to the USA, where she spent the remainder of her life working on film soundtracks, appearing on Broadway, and releasing compilations of her earlier hits.

In 1991, Baker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In a further show of strength after her return to the USA, she continued performing even after diabetes took her legs, and her last recording was “Jump Into the Fire”, which was featured on a tribute CD to Harry Nilsson.

LaVern Baker passed away in 1997, and after originally being placed in an unmarked grave, local historians fundraised for a headstone. She is buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, NY.

When it was recently our turn to take part in what is supposed to be one of the “last” traveling Christmas weekends of a classic abuser who happens to be my hubby’s grandmother. Her main target is my mother-in-law, a beleaguered caregiver at the end of her rope. The rest, which mostly included home caregivers, her billionaire daughter-in-law (out of her son’s earshot) and niece has recently branched out to include her son (a self-made man) for not building her an elevator, and even newer, me. My own fresh, personal hell comes by the way of supposedly not being “thankful” enough for the hand-me-down dress and coat and assistance with the downpayment on a condo for my new spouse and I (which was gramma’s way of making up for forgetting she was gonna help him with his student loans).

Here’s the thing about me: having worked my hardest and on my own for much of my life, I have often been accused of being TOO thankful, as in so much so that my tributes can make others uncomfortable. To the end concerning my supposed infraction of not saying thanks for anything and everything, I tried sweet, empathetic understanding as well as exact dates before giving up, thanking her for the terminally awkward moment she’d just offered me, and left just as her son – who she’d been upset with previously over nothing – arrived.

After some pressure from well-meaning relatives to go to the dinner I’d planned on skipping out of horror and fear for what might come next, it was assured there would be distance between myself and the proclaimed Queen of Mississippi. Instead, I arrived to find that this was not true, and that instead the only ope seats were directly next to and across from her. When the relatives tried bumbling musical chairs to make up for the mistake, I elected to just SIT DOWN and save us all even more embarrassment.

Here’s what happened: she apologized (apparently a first, an anomaly according to everyone else in the family) and went on to mention that she might be allergic to steroids, a fact she thanked me for mentioning months ago to her own daughter when she had first noticed her mom’s exacerbated mood swings.

Hmm. More on this steroid subject will be part of my next entry; I’ve actually got quite a volatile essay on my Kenalog experience.

Back to granny for a moment: I know she’s never worked hard for the $ she gave my spouse for our condo. Her son invested $ that his father worked hard for. She threatened to spend that gift of 50k on herself, and I had dared her to. “Please!” I pleaded, “live your life – this gift of love – to its fullest! Any less would be a sin!” “Well I just might!” “Even better,” I egged on, “spend double!”

Anyway, it seems to be a case of “mo money = mo problems”, in that, while everyone seems thankful for what they have, it’s a constant and simultaneous loyalty check and poke to the eye I’m grateful to witness as an adult but am happy to have missed out on as a child with a humble background; we had all kinds of real reasons to flip our wigs, money and whether there was enough being a constant threat. On the other side, once you have more than you can spend, keeping it that way seems to take precedence over most other activities.

May balance, love, light, abundance and positive challenges guide you, and when all else fails, don’t be afraid to crank “Jesus of Suburbia” or “Beverly Hills: Where I Wanna Be” while dragging the hose hundreds of feet to all your baby trees.

I love this country, no matter how much I have to fight or how many inequities exist. At least I’m in a world where I can WORK to rise above in one way or another.

Not thankful? Moi? Pshaw, I say, pshaw.

My own fall from grace came from a scenario I lost with my partner, who very much wanted me to attend what (apparently, though at this point I seriously doubt it, at least if the feistiness of said relative is any indicator at all) is supposed to be his elderly relative’s “last Christmas” up at the farm/compound, one of those majestic and beautiful places seemingly sprung from the heavens specifically to engender these kinds of situations. Mo money = mo problems, indeed.

For whatever reason, the relative, an elderly woman whose very presence flies in the face of the reason we “honor our mothers and fathers”, seems to enjoy making herself out to be a victim of everything in the world despite having been handed a husband, a teaching job, and several million dollars with which to grow and play with. Apparently all of this isn’t good enough, and I suppose that if I refused to read a book or a newspaper or make friends or if I insisted on going nowhere or doing anything with the money left me except complain that I COULD do something if I wanted to, as no one I’ve helped is even remotely thankful (despite all of the thanks and praise, which somehow disintegrates into the ether before ever reaching her impoverished ears or eyes)…

…Sigh…at any rate, I’m being reminded this week of exactly why I have spent my last nearly 20 years of my adult life carefully cultivating my holiday crowd to the point of self-loving isolation: it’s all about Releasing My Soul From the Crazy. It is a worthy cause for those in the know.

Later: Let’s Get Specific-al…!

The second component to my health program — well after I started counting calories — was seeing a nutritionist. I had no energy for the longest time and I basically forced myself out of bed and to work w/ the aid of industrial strength stimulants, pain medication and stretching; all of the tears and frustration finally paid off 3 months into the program, and I’m about 50% better now. Both a Vitamin D test (through my PCP) and general allergy testing contributed to my better health; I still have quite a bit of pain, but my cognative abilities are gaining strength again and I actually feel like getting out of bed most days now, which is quite a change from the past 2 years.

I must take a moment to thank my father for showing me how to persevere in life (even if it was sometimes a terrible and negative experience; I learned nonetheless), and my mother for teaching me to have compassion for those who can’t. It’s not an easy path — curing one’s own ills — and it requires intense amounts of discipline and patience with shortcomings to get anywhere. If you are a person in the thick of healing from fibromyalgia or any other medical issue, please give yourself more time, especially if you’re close to being at the end of your rope. I had a lot of bad days over the course of the past 2 years, and some of those days I woke up wondering whether to shoot myself or go to work, completely emotionally divorced and simply trying to make a decision about a disorder I thought would take my life down the toilet one day at a time. At this point, I realize that it is going to take a while for me to heal — I might not ever do it completely — but with the right tools, I at least have a chance. So do you, but you might have to do a little work to figure out what your tools are.

Rebecca Black — like a lot of other entertainers and artists who started independently — is simply reaping both the ups and downs of newly-found fame, as is Ark Music Factory, the DIY house behind the Rebecca Black “Friday” video. Rebecca and Ark have since found themselves the subject of interviews, criticism, and much hand-wringing on the part of industry players like Ms. Cyrus and her ilk, while personalities like the wonderful and usually right-on Stephen Colbert offered to sing “Friday” with The Roots and Taylor Hicks on Jimmy Fallon if enough people pledged to donate funds to Donors Choose (awesomely enough, they did!).

That Rebecca’s a pop artist might be part of the problem people have with her, along with her youth and the fact that her family — rather than a well-screened pop-machine — were the ones to spend the money for Ark to make the video that’s catapulted her to household-name status nearly overnight. I think it says more that it cost relatively little for Rebecca and Ark to accomplish what they did in contrast to the bloated pop machine that has famously chewed up so many artists and spit them out over the decades. Pop stardom can be a fickle mistress, and it can also be a scary (though exhilarating, at least for a time) way to make a living, as older artists who have already taken their spin on the hit parade are just as quickly dropped — left to their own devices to sort out what’s left of their career and any money that DIDN’T end up in a producer’s pocket — and are recycled for the next big thing, then the next, then the next. What I think really pissed people off — never mind that “Friday” is infectious but not particularly strong on its own, two things that can be remedied over the years as Rebecca grows as an entertainer and artist– is that she’s living proof that a pop star might not need the machine as much as they used to. If you can’t get the attention of Sony or Columbia or Interscope or whomever is entrenched at the moment, and you’re not big on dancing for your supper on the tables of LA for a pittance, then you can go to a studio like Ark and produce your own video — and your own album — for a fraction of the price and the time it would take to attract the attention of industry heavyweights.

This is a point similar to one that independent artists like The Dead Kennedys, Neko Case, Jolie Holland, NOFX, Slim Moon, Sleater-Kinney and the creators of sites like buyolympia.com have been making for years: if you don’t have the machine to back you up, then you need to make your own machine. If you can’t get the LA Reids of the world to take your call, then you need to become your own version of LA Reid. If you can’t get a job with a major paper or site — or if they’re not covering what you’re interested in — then make your own like Jessica Valenti did with feministing,com, or like war correspondent Caleb Schaber (the former Hustler writer who created The Northern Nevada Newswire) or like Timothy King, the correspondent who started The Salem News with little more than determination, wit, a website and a few cameras. The internet has further leveled the playing field so that anyone with a little free time and access to camera and audio equipment can participate in the further democratization of the media, and with the advent of new technologies, media kingpins may end up needing the public more than the public needs them: in short, if you’re terrible, it doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re everywhere, because you can be just as easily ignored in favor of someone with great music and films, quality news, or at the very least, new ideas.

People commit suicide for a lot of different reasons, and they often aren’t that clear to those left behind. Sometimes the reasons aren’t even clear to the person who completes the act, and they kill themselves not through careful planning but on a whiff of fate and a last glimpse into their own soul that cannot be reconciled. What is clear, however, is that the shock, pain, despair, guilt, anger, insult, pity, hated, sympathy (or empathy, depending on the person), yearning and sadness of those left behind is felt for years — sometimes even decades — and it continues to gnaw and burn long after the funeral ends, the family goes home, and the kids grow up. A suicide can sometimes make the living boil over with emotions so intense that they lose themselves for years, even if the intention of the person killing themselves was to supposedly “make the world a better place” without them.

A year after Kurt Cobain died, I saw Hole play at Lollapalooza 1995. After trying to work my way up to the stage for what seemed like an eternity, I gave up and borrowed a friend’s binoculars instead. The band played a mean, fast, tight set — one of the best I’d heard from them at that point in my life — and at one point Courtney’s face flashed in my direction. The power of her gaze was otherworldly to me — so full of a pain and rage — that it almost knocked me off my feet. I put down the binoculars, closed my eyes, and absorbed the full power of the music instead.

Over the years following the release of their album/CD Live Through This, I watched as Courtney’s career seemed to implode, then come back to life with a string of film performances as an actress who gave great, fully realized performances in The People Vs. Larry Flynt, Basquiat and Julie Johnson, among others. She’d seemingly recovered from the destruction wrought by the tragic loss of her husband, was back on top, and had a promising career that could take her anywhere her heart desired. Despite a few scary, terrible, and messy instances of her own, she seemed to have crossed into the life of an adult artist — completely self-possessed — and had left her naysayers and haters in the dust, gnashing their fingers on crusty computer keyboards or against bottle after bottle as she proved them all wrong.

Celebrity Skin, Hole’s third full-length studio album, was released in 1998 to the delight of fans, most of whom waited faithfully for 5 years between releases, and who passed the time downloading unreleased songs and urging her to make more music more often. The 5 years spent outside of the music system prompted some people to complain that she’d given up rockin’ out for fashion and Hollywood, but I (along with other faithful fans), just hoped she’d keep creating. Whatever it was, we’d gobble it up. She spoke to us from the very depths of her soul with an honesty that just wouldn’t quit, and for young women — many who were discouraged from following their dreams or expressing or loving themselves — she was a breath of fresh air long overdue, a woman who spoke her mind and was (mostly) unapologetic about the results.

For better or for worse, we loved her for her mix of grace and gravity, sorrow and amity, and anger and energy. We appreciated her (and many of us still do) for being something many of us struggled with, even with the inventions of Lilith Fair, Riot Grrrl, and the coming of the Third Wave: a tits-out, boldly talented woman with a wicked sense of humor and an often spot-on critique of the world around her. We forgave her transgressions because we realized that most everyone had failures, faults, and fuck-ups. We saw ourselves in someone who had been ripped to shreds by patriarchal friends, family, and media. Her presence was a giant middle finger against the betrayal of women by a patriarchal system that on the one hand might kill another man for raping their daughter, yet on the other (and maybe even on the same day) could blame a woman they saw on a news report for being physically abused by her boyfriend for whatever reason — it often didn’t even matter — for being a (insert anti-woman slur here) and for “asking for it”. The way she completely owned her humanity inspired many of us, and some went on to speak up, grab musical instruments of our own, and make something of ourselves. Yes, there were/are others (mentioned above) towing the same promises of freedom and expression, but Courtney was amazingly consistent, energetic, and herself, no matter the cost.

I’ve been away for a while as I worked through my medical issues, and I’m thrilled to say that my fibromyalgia — which has plagued my life for the past 2 years — is starting to wane. I’ve changed my diet, lost 30 pounds over the past year and 1/2, have hired a masseuse and nutritionist recommended by friends, and have slowly managed to get my life back in the face of some pretty incredible odds that, at times, seemed like they would knock me out of the game of life completely. I still have some work to do as I find my way out of the woods, but I’m able to work full time without wishing I were sleeping, sitting motionless in front of the TV (something I never did without another simultaneous activity until the fibro hit) or that I were simply nonexistent. I questioned how long I’d be able to take it long enough to realize I had to do my best to find a solution, and even though I was ferociously determined to hang on to my life at any cost, there were times when exhaustion took over and made me question everything. In the end, I decided to do whatever it took to make money to hire the kind of caregivers I really needed, and I also made the decision to become completely and utterly honest about my condition with those who are closest to me. I temporarily released the stiff-upper lip I’d always showed the world in an effort to be tough enough to be good enough, and I let others help me for a change.

Over the past few weeks I’ve remembered what it’s like to have to be patient with myself, to forgive myself for nearly working myself to death for so many years and (undoubtedly) sometimes being unkind to myself, and also to realize that without the work ethic that developed from the abuse I suffered when I was young that I might not have ever been able to solve the real world problems I’ve seen. There’s something to be said for pulling myself up by the bootstraps so many times, and though I hope to become more comfortable in life, I am grateful to what the difficulties of my life have brought me in terms of the successes I’m experiencing now.

Complexity — the wilds of the gray areas of life — can drive our desire to learn, to teach, to make better lives for ourselves and those around us, to stop making the same mistakes again and again and to forgive ourselves when we finally realize that we’ve sold ourselves short. It can help us to get over so much in life — really, to get on with our lives — and it’s yet another reason why life on Earth can, at times, truly be divine.

Granted that nothing is perfect, and sometimes my body can be annoyingly inconsistent, I am happy to report that over the last several days I’ve had more good days than bad as I trade my old diet (which had once again become pretty pedestrian due to how physically depressed I felt) for such treats as Himalania goji berries, TerrAmazon “nibs” with cocoa + Brazil Nuts + ground coffee in the mix, Kaia brand pumpkin seeds, Bio-K+ Probiotics, Fage Greek and Wallaby brand yogurts, Odwalla protein shakes (which, despite the sugar, are now a part of my diet that’s making me feel better), and finally, Tulsi Chai and Windor-brand coca tea (which, for me, has been a great replacement for most caffeinated beverages). I’ve also started with more organic meats and veggies, and today, rather than gobbling down a mountain of fries with my chicken nuggets, I asked the cook behind the counter to give me steamed vegetables instead.

I’m allowed one day a week to “slack” a bit on the diet, and that’s how I went about choosing the fried nuggets and steamed vegetables for my Sunday afternoon meal; I also had what I imagine will be the last of any high-fructose corn syrup drinks for a while, as they make my teeth feel sort of fonky, but I may spring for a Freddo if I have to spend many more hours working today. (I don’t like working on Sundays, but it’s the most prudent thing for my current work and medical schedule for the next few months.) According to my nutritionist, this kind of dieting (6 days on and one day off) is to keep me — wisely — from going absolutely crazy from abstinence, a factor that can make people blow their nutrition plans. as I’m in it for the long haul, I’m willing to treat one day a week as a “drunk all night” type day, one day a week that offers me the stamina to continue my path of self-control for the other 6 days. The last time I went on a diet, I counted calories by using my iPhone’s “LoseIt!” app and lost 30 lbs, which I’ve been able to keep off consistently. It lasted for about a year and 1/2 before I met my nutritionist, a woman who reversed many of her own fibromyalgia symptoms after a period of years.

My nutritionist is one of those rare people who saw/felt her bout with fibro coming and managed to beat it back with the stick of life; over the years I managed to do the same thing when fibro-like symptoms reared their hydra-like heads, but this latest bout with it nearly crushed me (it resulted from a back injury that kept me from exercising or doing much of anything useful for a while except work), and turning to pain, sleep, and wakefulness medication and therapies has been the only way I’ve been able to wrestle with this disorder effectively.

This time around, it has been here to stay, and the fact that I’m also dealing with some severe nerve pain in my right hip (it’s been here on and off for 2 decades) has made the problem ever more annoying, as my doctors have refused to look at my hip or tell me what might be wrong with it; the only treatment I ever had was a harrowing cortisol shot that made both the hip pain and my mood about 1,000 times worse; for a while, I couldn’t walk more than a block and 1/2 without severe pain, something that NEVER happened before I was shot full of cortical steroids by what looked to me to be a methed-up jackass in a lab coat (I think they fired that guy, but I’m not entirely sure). I’m not sure if it’s an insurance thing or what, but I’ve had to seek alternative therapies in order to heal whatever the mystery pain is. They usually work (as does the Dilaudid I’m now taking, hah hah).

The good news about Dilaudid is that it 1) works faster 2) contains no acetaminophen 3) is very tiny 4) works in totality for much longer periods of time, resulting in my taking far less medication overall and 5) doesn’t make me feel loopy, warm, or weird the way the vicodin did. Because of this last observation (#5) I’ve also been able to cut back on medication for wakefulness and tiredness; it’s as if my brain and body have a new lease on life that is slowly spreading to the rest of my work and play habits; I’m grateful for its existence, and it’s been a tremendous help where other doctors and drugs failed miserably. It gives me hope that my life will one day get completely back on track, pain and neuro bullshit be damned.

Cheers to all of you, and may you all find your own versions of healing for this terrible affliction. Blessed Be and take care.