MarnitaSpeaks Intro!
I think of myself as an innovator or inventor. At my core, I love to devise practical things that people need and show benefits to the person using it. I like simple elegant solutions to complex problems. I have hacked many solutions that allow me to more efficiently and productively get necessary tasks accomplished.
One of my favorite historical figures is Elijah McCoy. His inventions are what we are talking about when we say ‘the Real McCoy.” He was a Black man who created something that was so useful and so hard to copy that in the late 19th century in the US and Canada, his inventions substantially made trains more efficient. Unfortunately, because he was Black he wasn’t allowed to own many of his own patents.
It impacts my community, friends, family, and me very directly and negatively when we are denied equal access and opportunity. That’s why I invented Intentional Social Interaction (“IZI”), I was seeking to build a very robust best practice intervention to measurably improve the lived embodied experiences of my family, friends and wider community. I genuinely believe that we are all better when we provide seats at “the table” for anyone who desires a seat. Sharing power and valuing differences are practices. The more opportunity we have to practice sharing power and valuing difference, the more positive the experience of sharing power and valung differnces is, the more likely we will want to turn sharing power and valuing differences into both personal and community practices.
I was solving for “x” when I invented IZI.
I took the hundreds of thousands of hours of the unbearable cruelty of being denied access and opportunities because of the color of my skin;
I took the lifetime of rejection from my birth family because of the stigma under the rule of law associated with my carrying the proverbial one drop of Black blood;
I battled to find my own value. I saw the rich and deserving value in others so many others deny. I had to learn to see the rich and deserving value in myself.
I’ll be sharing my views on myriad topics that matter to me personally including:
Music that Moves Me
Beautiful Food
Cultivating a Pollinator Yard
The EverExpanding IZIverse–Topics, Tools and Techniques
Living and Loving Someone with Lewy Body Dementia
Marnita’s Hot Take on Whatever Floats My Boat
At the end of each column I’ll leave some questions so you can continue your own exploration / conversation on the topic!
Today’s Questions:
Have you ever begun a practice of any type? What was the practice? Are you still maintaining the practice? Why or why not?
What is something about you that no one could know or tell simply by looking at you?
Have you ever been a full time caretaker of someone living with a terminal illness?
Do you live to eat, eat to live or something in between?
Have you ever had a meal that you will never forget? If yes, describe it!
Have you ever lived, worked or played where you were in the minority as a result of your ethnicity, gender, mobility or mental or physical divergence from the rest of your cohort?
Have hijinx ever ensued?
