Editor’s Edict:

It’s already mid-month of this brand new year and surprisingly, I think I’m pretty settled into it. Are you? Somehow I feel like this year will be like an amazing jacket you bought three years ago, put it in your closet with the tags still on and you are just now finding it…something old, yet new.

Whatever your situation may be, let’s take off the old jacket we’ve been wearing; it has done its job, it has run its course; it’s time to change!

Maybe you’re discovering old talents you’ve let lie dormant and are realizing once you blow the dust off ‘em, these talents can make you “change” (literally and figuratively – think $$)! Maybe you’re changing your outlook on life or the way you do things which will help you make a significant shift in your current position since changing a stagnant position can bring on growth.

The Gazette is due for a positioning change. Since I was a teenager reading “Seventeen” magazine and realized I wasn’t represented on those glossy pages, I’ve wanted to have my own magazine -- hence, the birth of The Brown Betties Gazette. This year we’ll be working to turn BBG into an actual online, flippin’ mag (see here). We will be accepting advertisements and donations to make this happen (click on the Paypal logo!). If you are interested in advertising with BBG, email us at brownbettiesgazette@yahoo.com!

Somehow, I think my mom and grandma win this month with how they have had to change…uhh, read her article, “Momma Said” and you’ll see what I mean. We have some wonderful poetry from Cecilie Davis Carter for “In My Solitude” and Tanya Alexander-Henderson asks you to defy what you hear with her piece in “The New Haiku”. Sidney Gaskins offers you a 2009 Challenge in “Love. Hate. Want. Need.” I’m a “Mocha Mogul” (so is Sidney), and came across a blog written by Nicole, also a Mocha Mogul, that was perfect for “Unzipped”. I hope you’ll enjoy it as well as the eighth fiction installment of "Harlem's Awakening"...the back story to Harlem & Joe of “Harlem’s Night Cabaret” as performed by the Brown Betties.

Our featured January Brown Bettie is my dearest friend, Miata Fuller…she is the perfect woman to jump off 2009 simply because she is who she is!

Thank you for reading; please forward to a friend; and don’t forget to visit www.brownbetties.com! If you have any comments, feel free to hit me up at brownbettiesgazette@yahoo.com

xo
The Hot One

ps. The biggest change of all: GO OBAMA! I still cry when I think of it.

Here are pics of me and some friends on that wonderful night he was elected. Photos by friend, Adrian Pitts.

Panorama of all watching the election unfold.

Un-believable. Couldn't stop crying.

Obama Girls!

Love. Hate. Want. Need.

By Sidney Gaskins

Each month, Sidney breaks down what she loves, hates, wants or needs.

What happens at the beginning of every 365-day cycle? There is a collective resolution-making frenzy. People spend the end of the prior cycle reflecting on the past and thinking of ways to bring it in the future with their New Year’s Resolution. What would happen if New Year’s Resolutions were called “New Possibility for Change”? What if this year you changed how you thought about a resolution and made it a challenge for your self, but stuck to it?

The Challenge: 2009 The Year of BOLDNESS, FREEDOM, and HAVING IT ALL.

In all areas of life these three elements can bring change if taken on as though Life depends on it. Let’s break it down in specifics to “Love”:
1) In love, BOLDNESS can break down walls; build strength and closeness; and even open an avenue for healing.
2) FREEDOM, injected into a love relationship or family situation cultivates comfort, security, acceptance, and the opportunity to speak your heart and your truth.
3) Planting the seeds of boldness and freedom can result in HAVING IT ALL in love. (Do not think that “love” necessarily has to do with an intimate relationship. Apply it to the people you love in your Life. Apply it to the most important person in your Life: YOU. Are you willing to change your love relationships this year?)

With BOLDNESS, FREEDOM, and HAVING IT ALL as a model for 2009 and beginning a regimen of love, it follows that shining the light of love on all areas of life can extricate hate, attract wants, and fulfill needs.

If I may interject, it is not an accident that I happen to be writing this at this time. Everything in this column happens to be what I am taking on. The truth is that boldness, freedom, and having it all are necessary ingredients for me to live the life I love in all areas. From 2008 to 2009 there were changes that happened but I allowed them to happen without taking action to have it go another way -- without taking true responsibility for where my Life was going. However, being on the rollercoaster is over and taking the reigns is in store so that I can have what I want. Most of all, to have the vision I see come to fruition, change is the order of the day. That vision is something that will take me outside of my comfort zone and requires change.

For me, my challenge includes: I would love to see the vision; hate to make the changes; want to be present; and need to embrace the boldness, freedom, and having it all to have 2009 be The Year of BOLDNESS, FREEDOM, and HAVING IT ALL. Will you take the Challenge with me?

Sidney Gaskins, Family and Business Consultant/Coach, is the CEO/President Enterprising Life in metropolitan Atlanta, GA. Enterprising Life encourages individuals and businesses to look outside of the box to unleash their dreams and achieve success. For more information visit: www.EnterprisingLife.com or call 678.886.3174 .

In My Solitude

Change
By Cecilie Davis Carter








2008
Stuck in a box
Humidity
No air
Can’t breathe
No track of time
Blackness
Ears are ringing
Voices in my head
Flowers are dead
Can’t move
Can’t think
Need
Need
Need
Panic
Hot
Fighting back tears
Adding on years
Can’t breathe
Can’t breathe
Can’t breathe
Can’t walk
Can’t talk
Can’t love
Stuck
NEED CHANGE.

2009
BRIGHT
FLIGHT
LOVE
AIR
LIFE
HOPE
CHANGE

The New Haiku
Each month we'll feature a New Haiku from
Tanya Alexander, poet and director of Harlem’s Night Cabaret


This month, we decided to include one of Tanya’s original poems. It’s message is priceless:

Recession?
How 'bout progression?
Bountiful sessions that teach us life lessons.
Pleasant like children who finger paint yes's that hang on the fridge of their fathers and misses.
More's not less's.
Good, better, best's.
Counting your blessin's and relieving all stresses.

How 'bout successes?
Organized messes and chaotic guesses that bring about wishes with
New visions and freshens our passions.
Gives us rations of abundance and fashions a soul harmonized and long-lastin'.

Can we say yes's?
Instead of negation, excuses of races, hatred and stagnation?

Can we see faces?
With eyes that speak and move beyond places of
Color, gender and sex orientation?

We are a nation.
A world of free spirit that moves through space and
takes shape and
remakes and
becomes something great.

We can see visions and listen and move to new levels of enlightened positions.
We can change our perspective, be still and reflective, become a collective and then effective.

Don't believe what you hear, ya'll.
Ain't no recession.
There's only progression.

Get Tanya's new spoken word album, "Pieces of Tanya", on Itunes or CD Baby. Some soothing samples are here:

"Unzipped"
Contributors offer what gets them "Unzipped"

"How Would Anybody Know I was Drunk at the Bus Stop?"
by A Mom on the Edge

Chapter 1--Holding the Line

Whenever I feel like screaming and hiding in the basement watching Lifetime all day, I remind myself that my goal as a parent is to 'hold the line'. Kids need boundaries, I am a trained therapist, I know this. I know that they push the boundaries to see if they will hold, because a strong front makes a country, a car, a mate, a child, feel safe. It is my job as a parent to hold the line on morality, social graces, education and a host of other things. Most days, I am up to the challenge. But other days, I keep flashing back to that game in gym class in elementary school. Do you guys remember Red Rover? "Red Rover, Red Rover, send the skinny, weak girl right over?..." I remember holding on so tight to that hand next to me, not wanting to be the weak link on the team. I remember the boys who use to run so hard into your hand that it brought tears to your eyes but you didn't let go. Parenting is a lot like that game. Most days, you get the weak girl trying to break through, but not really trying cause she didn't want to play anyways. But some days, that boy who got held back twice and weighs way too much is running directly at your writing arm. Wouldn't it be easier to let go and let him fall on his face? After all, was there a prize in this damn game?!! But then you remember that you have pride. and that you think you can beat him. And there is nothing worse than losing a game that you really think you have the ability to win. So come on back talking, come on bad attitude, come on 'I don't like you even though I'm wearing your last paycheck on my back', come on all you crazy mofos in the world who want to take my babies down...Red Rover, Red Rover, send that bullshit right over--mamma's waiting for ya...

Nicole’s primary field is in Therapeutic Social Program Development. You can read more of her blogs on her Mocha Moguls profile.