“Hormones and Heartbeats – Find BALANCE!”

By Anna Cheshire Levitan (@5thStreetAnna) – Co-founder Black Carpenter Youth Empowerment

A ballerina stands immobile on one pink toe shoe in an endless perpendicular arabesque for what seems like an eternity. In awe, we wonder if she’s human or has planted some sort of magic balancing ball in that small shoe.

What we do not see is the rough calluses, taped muscles, and string of bloody toes that have gone into the gal’s center-stage nanosecond of timelessness, weightlessness, and breathlessness.

No stranger to hard work, the petite dynamo is really a tiger in disguise. She’s sweated bullets with the big boys for hours in dance class and late night rehearsals to avoid a face plant center stage. She practices her craft.

Ain’t no way I’m going down, she tells herself as she extends to an arabesque. Not tonight.

The ballerina knows deep down that a STEADY HEAD will keep her in BALANCE so she won’t wipe out in the HEAT OF THE MOMENT. Face plants suck, so she PRACTICES.

In a high school football stadium, we stare open jawed at a whiz kid running back catch a ball and take off to the end zone. Lunging side to side, he narrowly avoids a tackle. A tightrope walker in shoulder pads, the rookie scores a touchdown and we become a Friday Night Light’s crowd in a red hot frenzy.

Lost in the roar, we are clueless about the kid’s gut-busting drills, stomach-wrenching workouts, and crack-o-dawn races around the field the week before. We just see our “guy” in all his shoulder pad glory. The kid practices his craft.

Ain’t no way I’m going down tonight, he tells himself, charging down the field. Not in front of my teammates, Coach, or the fans.

Like the dancer on stage, the whiz kid knows that a STEADY HEAD will keep him in BALANCE so he can score the winning touchdown even in the HEAT OF THE MOMENT. Hard hits suck, so he PRACTICES.

Now exit the auditorium stage right and get off the football field. It’s time to move into the living room, boardroom, or even bedroom of our important one-on-ones. An important relationship is teetering and we’ve got to fix it. A wipe out is less than twenty seconds away!

When we talk to kids across the country, presenting Black Carpenter youth empowerment, we GET ON THE LEVEL with what it takes to do right by someone. There’s no magic to a strong relationship at home, school, work, or play. There’s no illusion to what works and what doesn’t. Like a lithe dancer or charging running back, everything in life takes PRACTICE.

Yet love is a rush. From the first nano-second we meet the “it” guy or gal, life goes into over-drive. That 250 gram muscle in our chest ramps up the tempo and beats rapid fire.

Bah boom bah boom…I am in love!

Perhaps we do not exchange a word on that first encounter, or maybe we talk volumes about absolutely nothing. Twenty-four, seven, we strategize and obsess about how the next meeting will go down.

Will she call me? Is he dating someone? How do I look? Not so bad, right?

Even our family notices the change in our behavior. Their polite taps on the bathroom door turn into full-scale bangs as we stand for hours in front of the mirror, examining every angle.

Welcome to the infatuation stage. Balance? Impossible. We are on a one-way road to CONQUERING a relationship.

But it is really about the other person or US?

We’ve all been there at least one time in our life. Despite the mad dash of feelings, now more than ever, it’s time to check drive and gauge speed. Relationships built only on HORMONES or our need to CONQUER tend to fall flat and pretty soon it’s see ya!

Our advice to all young Black Carpenters caught up in the rush of love – slow down. The old maxim is true: if you do not like someone, including yourself, you cannot truly love someone. Put the time in to find the friend in your partner and the friend in you. It’s SUCKS to loose a good relationship due to lack of discipline, practice, or just plain selfishness, especially when a wipe out can be avoided.

So what about that troubled relationship?

Start with these drills executed so brilliantly by the lithe dancer and whiz kid running back:

1) STEADY your head and heart
2) seek BALANCE in everything you do with or for each other
3) PRACTICE patience, respect, understanding, and genuine love for yourself and your partner at ALL TIMES, and especially in the HEAT of the moment.

Make the Most of the Moment and Avoid MOREDOM

By Anna Cheshire-Levitan (@5thStreetAnna) – Co-founder Black Carpenter Youth Empowerment

A child spends hours making drip castles in the sand, impervious to the approaching waves that inch closer and closer to his or her imaginary kingdom. Lost in the moment.

The child knows intuitively what so many of us adults struggle with daily, as we clinch our teeth and crowd our brain with details – facts and figures that clutter our kitchen counter “To Do Lists” and “Personal Goals and Objective Charts.”

We become obsessed and borderline mental when expectations fall short of our micro-managed intentions to snag the perfect job, find the most intense hobby, build the ideal house, drive the coolest ride, hang with the hippest crowd, HAVE THE MOST FRIENDS, FANS, OR FOLLOWERS, kick it with the sweetest purse, shoes, coat, bauble, haircut, or even orchestrate the most relaxing, damn-near-perfect “vacation” away from life’s clutter. Go figure.

Forget drip castles, we are on the one-way interstate to the kingdom of MOREDOM. We want more. We need more. We deserve MORE!

So we floor it out of town – away from the beach, the drip castle, and our inner child – and race off to get MORE of whatever we think “it” is. Soon after we start our engine, we swear to ourselves, and the people we have convinced and coerced to join us on the journey, that we see the lights of MOREDOM ahead in the distance…up there behind the bend…definitely over the hills in the next county, right?

“Don’t you see it, too?” we ask our journeymen.

As we race along, we might hurt innocent bystanders and even careen into people who we think stand in our way of reaching the promised land. Hell, sometimes we don’t even notice all the awesome, excellent, and important people who care about us, LOVE us, and wave to us, as we zoom by full speed ahead on the way to MOREDOM.

Wherever MOREDOM is, we are convinced of two things: it’s the place to be and it’s certainly not right here or right now.

We justify the journey and increasing speed to our inner child on the beach who really isn’t so sure about leaving the drip castle.

We can’t help it! We argue to the child. Grow up and take a look at the world around you. Life is really about consuming and enjoying and having access to MORE! Go back the to beach and leave me alone!

But our wise child on the beach understands two critical lessons we have forgotten due to the blinding glare of a kingdom that doesn’t exit and never really did:

1) all we have is the MOMENT

2) if a wave knocks down our beautiful drip castle, we have a CHOICE on how we react or behave to our environment and the world around us. We can get angry at the wave and stomp off, or we can grab another handful of sand and rebuild, or we can relocate to another sandy spot away from the waxing and waning tide.

Life is a matter of perspective.

So forget about MOREDOM. The kingdom is a mirage. You’ll never reach it. The more you focus on MOREDOM, the less satisfied you will be with the here and now, and brothers and sisters, that’s all you and I have!

Besides, we already hold the keys to the kingdom in the form of personal CHOICE.

In every circumstance, no matter what, when or where, we can choose right now how to act, react, navigate, stand still, accept, deny, forgive, move forward, and love who we are, what we do, and those we cherish.

In the face of a difficult issue, such as water at our toes or even worse, we are graced with the ability to choose how to deal with ourselves and the situation at hand RIGHT NOW, IN THE MOMENT!

Rebuild, move on, move over, or wait until the water resides.

Moment and choice – everyone has it.

These are also the two tenets of the Black Carpenter youth empowerment platform actor Brian White and I founded to help today’s youth navigate their potential, to build a lasting personal, professional, and spiritual foundation, AND move away from the street allure and pop culture obsession with the kingdom MOREDOM.

The first thing we say to kids who participate in our program, whether at the Jordan Downs Housing Project in Watts, Los Angeles, or at the United Negro College Foundation’s national “Empower Me Tour” stops in Washington, D.C. or Detroit, Michigan, is you are “blessed” with TODAY and CHOICE.

“You are ‘blessed’ because each of you holds the key to your future right here, right now, in this very room, in the form of personal choice.”

We affirm the Black Carpenter credo, “The CHOICES I make TODAY, determine the direction of my life tomorrow.”

Every child holds choice in the palm of his or her hand – no matter if he or she is an inner city kid raised by a single parent or a young woman or man waiting for his or her college acceptance letter.

And many of the kids we meet have never had the privilege to step foot on a sandy beach to build a drip castle.

If today’s kids stay focused on the promise of swag, cribs, and cars, aka their generation’s MOREDOM, and turn away from education, financial literacy, and personal responsibility, our great society will wash away with the tide.

Shouldn’t we practice what we preach and rise up as ROLE MODELS for the next generation? Each of us needs to slam on brakes and abandon the urge to siege tomorrow’s MOREDOM.

Make a difference in the life of one person TODAY. Reach out in kindness to someone you know or do not know TODAY. Forgive an enemy TODAY. Embrace your potential and possibility TODAY. Encourage a child TODAY. Tell someone you love them TODAY!

And if you are very lucky, and find yourself near a beach, give into your inner child…take a MOMENT to pull over and build a drip castle.

Learn more about Brian White (@actorBrianWhite) and Black Carpenter (@BlackCarpenter) by watching this video clip on Boldfacers.com

Black Carpenter Kicks off the 2011-2012 UNCF Empower Me Tour in D.C.!

A little rain didn’t stop D.C.’s kids from taking part in the Black Carpenter movement last week at the UNCF’s Empower Me Tour Kick-off.

What started as a rainy Friday morning in D.C. ended with hundreds of young Black Carpenters motivated and energized to “Jump Start, Kick off, and Realize” their hopes and dreams for the upcoming 2011-2012 school year.

Despite what some leading politicians and naysayers around the corner in Congress would lead us to believe, the Black Carpenter team on the ground, which included the One Economy Corporation who was in the room to film the Black Carpenter presentation at the D.C. Convention Center, learned first hand that today’s inner city kids are fired up and ready to self actualize. They are NOT apathetic, uncaring or demotivated, when given a real, call-to-action personal plan for their future which starts TODAY.

The kids that showed up for the Empower Me Tour, every single one of them, are NOT a lost generation that desires to drown intentionally in the deep waters of boredom, apathy, drug addiction, or street violence.

Hardly!

The 1,300 kids that arrived in buses from across the city are just HUNGRY. Scratch that, STARVING for LEADERS, MENTORS, and positive ROLL MODELS who will simply take the time out of a busy day or frenetic career to listen, reach out, and stand solidly by as WITNESS to their POTENTIAL and God-given right to build a rock solid life and create a bright future. More a “SHOW-ME-HOW-TO-BUILD” and “BELIEVE-IN-ME” generation versus the “I-DON’T-GIVE-A-BLANK” and “LEAVE-ME-ALONE” generation that leaders and pundits warn against in vitriolic political smear campaigns that intend to fill us with fear versus motivate us to get out and make a difference in the life of one young person at a time.

The kids we witnessed last Friday want to become BLACK CARPENTERS, but they need to know what tools to use. Black Carpenter co-founder and inspiration, actor Brian White, took the big step to show them how. He started off the morning’s presentation with a bang and banner. With his best swag on, Brian entered the hall and had the kids dancing on their feet with iphones, handhelds, cellphones and cameras out, waving, flashing, and snapping, ready to record his every detail and soundbite.

“I AM THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN MY FUTURE. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LUCK. THE CHOICES I MAKE TODAY DETERMINE THE DIRECTION OF MY LIFE TOMORROW,” affirmed Brian White, in a repeat-after-me shout-out that got the house rocking.

At the top of their lungs, he had the kids continue…I WILL NOT DROP OUT…I WILL NOT COP OUT…I WILL GRADUATE TO DOMINATE THE OPPORTUNITIES IN MY LIFE! (Black Carpenters of any age would be well served to start off each day with such an impassioned wake-up call!)

After his Black Carpenter affirmation, White and colleague, Black Carpenter co-founder Anna Cheshire Levitan, got the kids down to business.

“What’s the most important tool my toolbox?” White prodded the crowd. “Not the fame that comes from my roles on TV shows or in movies…not the NFL jersey that I wore when I played for the New England Patriots…MY EDUCATION!”

Brian White revealed to the kids that he would be NOWHERE without the public high school education he received from Newton South High School on the outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts and the college education he received from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Brian affirmed and confirmed that receiving those two pieces of paper – a high school diploma and college diploma – remain his proudest personal achievements.

Shout it to the mountaintops: the single most important tool in the BLACK CARPENTER TOOLBOX is EDUCATION!

The Black Carpenter team then opened up the presentation for questions from the audience and were BLOWN AWAY by the heartfelt dare-to-ask questions they heard.

Here’s a sample of what went down on the ground in D.C. from the kids in the audience:

1) Do you offer Black Carpenter apprenticeships?
Answer: YES! We will be announcing tangible Black Carpenter apprenticeships and partnerships within the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

2) What can I do to go to college if my mom or dad cannot afford to send me?
Answer: Schedule a meeting with a COLLEGE ADVISER, GUIDANCE COUNSELOR, OR TEACHER at your school to discuss YOUR FUTURE EDUCATIONAL DESIRES AND GOALS. Request that they work with you to devise a step-by-step process to help you find the right HIGHER EDUCATION OPPORTUNITY at a college, junior college or technical school. Ask them to help you RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP AND FINANCIAL AID opportunities that will help you receive the education you deserve.

3) How can I make a difference at my school when many of my friends are interested in drugs or getting rich quick.
Answer: Quick money and drugs never last. Education does. Set yourself out as a leader at your school and among your friends and take control of opportunities that will stand the test of time. Get involved at school to STAY IN SCHOOL!

Brian White and Anna Cheshire Levitan then passed out FREE (thanks to Empower Me Tour sponsor Wells Fargo!) copies of Brian White’s personal memoir, Black Carpenter: Straight Talk to Build a Solid Foundation. (ALSO Available through each of the upcoming UNCF Empower Me Tour stops or for Kindle downloads on Amazon.)

Next, the Black Carpenter team and UNCF Empower Me Tour hit the road and head to Detroit for another stop this Saturday, September 17…Be sure to sign up at uncf.org. Stay tuned for another Tour blog update from the road…

In the meanwhile, Black Carpenters, measure up!

Welcome to the Black Carpenter Blog

BC is at the Essence Music Festival this weekend in New Orleans and will post our 1st blog as soon as we get back. Look forward to sharing some straight talk with you soon about our experience.