Vixen Chronicles

 Have you been listening to my new (ish) podcast, Grown Ass women with Nina Foxx ? I've been wanting to do one for some time and the pandemic has given me time, since I don't have to commute two hours a day and don't go anywhere else. I have have been using all of that time spent in the car to do creative things, I was reflecting on this last episode. Blaxit Part 2: Nathan Nash, Just an American-For the First Time. Nathan has made a Blaxit--he's moved to Singapore. One thing that struck me about him and the \lLast Guest, Ms R. Both made what they thought were spontaneous decisions (but that were really years in the making), with a minimum level of planning. Nathan actually went to a south Asian country without so much as a hotel picked out and no idea how to contact his friends there. He relied on the kindness of strangers to drive him hours, in a place where he really didn't speak the language or even fully understand the culture. These days, this is not something ...

This will piss some people off.  In America, I am Black first. As a result, we tend to codify many things by race. It is a travesty, though, to contrast the media coverage of the Paris terror attacks and the Kenya University shootings as a function of race. I realize that doing so, for some people,  is an avoidance of a collective social hurt.  There has been a war on Christianity since the crusades. It is not new  is certainly independent of color. In all likelihood, the shooter in Kenya was black. This does not make it un-terrible. What happened in France was also independent of race. The news reported two Americans died. I saw one  man who was as at the Stade show his almost-wound. His phone saved him. He was black. He was also African. And French. What happened in France is better compared to 9/11, when we, Americans of all ilk felt suddenly naked as the terrorist attacks stripped the proverbial wool off of our western sense of security and safety we enjoyed...

I think I may have caught a cold for the first time in many, many years.  The last time I had one, I think was 8 years ago.  I know how it happened too.  I flew coach. I went to Europe last week to do some consulting.  I was supposed to leave on Saturday, but before day, about 5AM my time on Friday, I get this call.  Ike was coming and the team was flying through Dallas, Could I possible leave early? Like in a few hours? Now, I love Paris, so it didn't take too much persuasion to have me packed and at the gate in three hours. Normally I get upgraded on these trips, and I knew my Saturday flights had been upgraded, but seems like everyone had the same idea.  The flights were full of folks trying to outrun the hurricane. I held my breath until the very last minute, but lo and behold, I was seated in the back of the plane. On both flights. I met my colleagues in Dallas, and we must have looked real pitiful because the flight attendant gave us free wine after we whined about eating wit...

I'd been taking things at my usual break-neck speed for several days, so it was high time I slowed down to a more leisurely Parisian speed. The kids wanted to go to Eurodisney, but we could go see Monsieur Raton at home, so we opted for a Parisian amusement park instead.We chose the Jardin de Acclimation. Part park, part amusement, park zoo, a sort of schizophrenic place, literally smaller than my back yard. Its been around awhile. At one point, in the 1700"s, the zoo was an anthrolpolgie exhibit where they'd displayed africans in cages. After locating it on a map, I pondered how I would get there. It looked to be between the Arc de Triomphe and The Grand Arch, so how far could it be, right? Ha! Ha! I wouldn't be fooled twice. As it turned out, the best way to get there would be by train. Acck! I whined. I complained, but I finally acquiesced. I was going to have to go underground. After I was sedated, we figured out the route. Ten minutes later, we were there....

Things in the mirror are closer than they appear. Things on the Parisian landscape are further away than they appear. I know this now without a doubt. You see, someone thought it would be a good idea to walk to the Eiffel tower. It looks so big, how far away could it be, right? Oh, I'd say almost an hours walk. We walked and we walked and we walked some more and we still weren't there. It just didn't get any closer. I walked off all of my lunch wine and wasworking on my morning criossant before we got close. I mean, the durn thing was so far, we stopped in a park to rest. I stalled the kids. They were excited about the prospect of more stairs. I told them of the Parisian grass police and how it was illegal to walk on the grass in here. if you did, a silent alarm was set off at grass headquarters and the paddy wagon (or whatever its called here) would be on its way to swoop you up and spirit you away to the Bastille. "Will they behead you there, Mommy?"...

The littlest one is afraid of the dark. So when we decided we wanted to go to the top of the Arc De Triomphe, we had to figure out how to triumph over her fear. A dilemma, we had to navigate an underground tunnel to get to the arc. It sits in the center of an etoile (star) when seven major streets and arondissements come together and crossing the street above ground is not humanly possible, that is of course, unless you are suicidal. I wasn't this day. We settled on snatching her up and running through the dark tunnel as she clawed her way up her father's body like a kitten trying to escape a bath. There's a spiral stairway that climbs inside the arc. The kids wanted to count their way up. I stopped counting just short of delirium (and around stair number 315). We rushed up the steps and the kids were loving it so much McDonald's was jealous. Well, the kids rushed and we followed because as everyone knows, you absolutely cannot go slower than your children, ev...

The kids were missing. I could hear them laughing in my dreams. I sat up in bed, panicked, realizing they'd benefited from my jet lag and had escaped from their beds somehow. I was disoriented and it took me a second to recognize my right bank hotel room and to recognize that their voices hadn't come from my dreams but from the bathroom. Both at the same time. Not good. Another kind of panic set in. That could be just as bad as my imagined kid-escape. Groggy, I bumped into a few walls as I made my way to them. I rubbed my eyes. "What are you guys doing in here?" I asked. "Mommy, Look, there's a special bathtub for my dolls in here." It took a second for the object of their fascination to register. "Honey, that's not a doll tub. That's a bidet." I rubbed my eyes. If I wasn't so tired I'd laugh. "We don't put our dolls in there." "Why not?" I just wanted to go back to sleep. "It's not for ...

I was exhausted by the time I stepped out of the plane, but that quickly dissipated as soon as I caught a glimpse of the Arc de Triomphe.  It was Sunday and tomorrow was a national holiday.  There was some sort of commemoration there, not the usual ceremony  of the unknown soldier and the etoile was filled with bands and soldiers in ceremonial regalia. Our driver whizzed by and I hurriedly snapped photographs from the car and quickly tried to explain the history of the arch to my girls. We'd approached from the same direction as Napoleon's troops, even though he'd marched through an incomplete wooden arch at the same spot where we now saw the soldiers.  They seemed to ignore my tidbit of history, the older one rolling her eyes at her mother, the odd Trivial Pursuit Queen, but I knew they would get something from my babblings. Our hotel wasn't far from there.  I'd stayed at the same place last time I'd visited, ten years ago and I quickly realized how long ago th...