I’m currently on the final leg of my “bonus” round trip to Los Angeles to work on amplifying the site with the wonderful folks of the Maynard Institute.
I wanted to take a moment and reflect on how the airport, especially National Hall at Reagan Washington National Airport, is a slept on gathering place.
Well, soon, this won’t be available unless you have an airline ticket. The airport is in the process of closing that part for public access. I understand. You all know how much I understand, considering the noise I made around Kansas City’s airport and its needs. KC itself is finally taking some of that advice and building a new airport that keeps layover travelers in the era of the TSA in mind.
This also makes me think about how sad it is that I can’t see people off from the airport, at least not totally from the inside. That kids can’t linger at the gate at Piedmont Triad International waiting for that far away aunt or cousin, like I used to do as a kid. That the first time I flew in 2006, my parents had to get a special pass to walk the Charlotte-Douglass airport corridor with me. That Les could come to Ben’s Chili Bowl with me in December when I last flew, but unless we travel together, we won’t be able to do that soon.
I’ll be leaving Los Angeles via LAX, which is one of my favorite layover airports period. From looking at the Jetsons-inspired plus designed by a team with a black architect Theme Building, to ordering food by robot, LAX feels like the epitome of the jet age. The airport I left from, Washington-Dulles, also is a nod to what we thought the jet age would be in the 1950s. Well, those who were major world architects and media makers, who all tended to be white and male.
Next week’s email will have more thoughts on what I think about the jet age and airports, along with how I always feel on the ground in Los Angeles, and how that’s changed since I read Parable of the Sower. So consider this newsletter a two-parter.
This is a short, travel version of The Black Urbanist Weekly. This is also edition #6. While my head’s in the clouds (literally), I want to thank you all for continuing to support this work. I really want to thank the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education for investing in my training and validating that the world needs a paper like this and more media-producers of color.
Other Things on My Mind This Week…
The city I’m in profiles a delightful woman from the city I’m from.
More to come on these kinds of situations, but no, I’m not in favor of neighborhoods segregating into tiny school districts, like these folks in and around Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
And I can see why this effort over the years to desegregate schools in Shaker Heights, Ohio is falling apart.
Anytime I’m at a black play or film and I’m one of the handful of actual black folks in the audience, and even as I write this newsletter, I do wonder what gaze am I really using like the creator of Slave Play, the latest play by a black person on Broadway getting buzz.At the end of the day, it’s mine, as a person who’s been taught and enabled to straddle all kinds of worlds.
Additionally, the older I get and the more I interact with people, especially thinking back the panel I was on at the Savanah Congress for New Urbanism in 2018, the more that I feel, like this author, that generations need more racial and class-based analysis.
Same with gender presentations. While this speaks to trying to be seen as bi, it also is glaringly absent of how body-type, skin color, hair texture and other racial elements complicate this, especially when they converge with social and economic class.
Before you go…
—Check out the job board. There’s a new position on the board this week! Renovations coming soon. You’ll be one of the first to know when the new board launches and how you can take advantage of expanded features and resources revolving around it.
–Get this newsletter a day early, along with other bonuses by supporting the platform via Patreon.
—Buy a bag or t-shirt from The Black Urbanist store or greeting cards from Les’s Lighthouse. The holidays are coming and these will make great gifts!
— Let me come to your town, office, church, school or whatever space you cook up and tell my life story, motivate your students, help you with your marketing and branding or all three! Book me for a lecture, workshop or both. Also Les is available for motivational speeches and for one-on-one life and health coaching. Book her.
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