I'm Home

So I'm back from Seattle.

What I saw of the city was great. It's an interesting place, and very unique when compared to cities with which I am more familiar, haha okay is very unique when compared to Baltimore.

It was great to spend the weekend with a uniquely talented group of folks who taught me a lot. The process was supposed to be to help prepare us to nurture student diversity leaders, but I know just being there nurtured all of us.

In remarks last night I said basically the following:

"I've been thinking a lot about my first time coming here (to the conference) five years ago. I've thought a lot about how I felt emotionally. I know for sure that one emotion I felt was fear. Then I thought about something I once heard said, "Fear is the only thing which makes us live." I realized that our work, the work that we do (as diversity practitioners) isn't easy. That's not why we do it, we do it precisely because it is a challenge. We can't think of what we do as a burden, we have to think of it as an opportunity. An opportunity to each day live our lives more authentically, so that we might be the light which helps others live their lives more authentically."

There was time for seriousness, but there was also time for fun and fellowship.

We had a group which was very diverse in terms of age, ability, ethnicity, family structure, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and soco-economic status. We had the Harvard people, the Brown people, the Duke people, the HBCU people (Spelman and Oakwood), the public university system people (UCLA and UMBC), and others, and then me. We had come from places literally and figurately vastly different from one another. We all however were able to do three things I think always need to be done amongst a group of people who seek to better themselves: acknowledge the presence of differences, affirm the different voices and experiences of those gathered, and accept differences as being essential parts of our existence.

Now before I go what still has me laughing:

The Southwest Airlines Flight Attendants:
On the Flight to Kansas City:
When giving safety instructions specifically about oxygen masks:

"If you're traveling with a child, that's you're problem."

"If you're traveling with more than one child, choose the one with the most potential, right now."

On the Flight home to Baltimore:
"This is a full flight ladies and gentleman so avoiding eye contact with the person coming down the aisle, isn't going to work today."

"Welcome aboard, if you're just joining us, there are plenty of the highly coveted middle seats still available. You'll have plenty of friends once you get there, or not."

Okay as we leave dinner at our hotel
Win decides to ziplock one of the mini chickens. B tries to talk sense into him she says:
"In all seriousness Win you can't eat that chicken without refrigerating it, you're going to get sick, you're going to get food poisoning."
Win responds:
"I can put it on ice."
B responds:
"This is not "Grey's Anatomy", this isn't not a chicken transplant. You can't put the chicken on ice."

"How you going be five feet, when you looking up at me, and I just said I was five feet."
-Ti to Ash

"Have you seen the bathtubs? I'm taking a bath before I leave here."
-Win had me laughing

I already miss my folk.