Tillamtiptoldyou.com, the podcast about pop culture, black history, and spirituality. It's about to be a great part. Dr. Tim, go and take it away.
Tillamtiptoldyou. Hey y'all, hey, it's your girl, Tim. Thank you for joining me for another edition of Tillamtiptoldyou. I'm so excited to be with you today.
I want to tell you about my overly emotional day on yesterday, where I watched 40-year-old version and then followed that up with Lovecraft Country last night, the season finale, and just a common theme that I felt yesterday that I want to share with you between those two things. And then I also want to talk a little bit about your brother at Falt, which is Ice Cube, O'Shay Jackson rather. And then I have my first porch women episode for you that will be coming up after I run through these things. So that's just a pretty end.
So yesterday, I was cleaning my room trying to reorganize some things and I turned on Netflix and turned to 40-year-old version. Now, just based on the ads and the pictures and the Netflix little trailer thing, I was like, oh, okay, this will be light watching for doing some chores at the same time, folding and kind of thing. It's not a big deal. Man, can I tell you I cried through 75% of that yesterday?
I cried through 75% of that. Right up like did her thing with that film. She spoke to parts of myself that I had not allowed myself to think about. I posted about it yesterday last night on Instagram with the Zordon Hairston quote about mud puddles.
And essentially the quote says, there are some people who look at mud puddles and see oceans with sailing ships. And I realized that I am one of those people that sees the sailing ships on the mud puddle. And I have defined my career in such a way that I've defined it in a very normal way, right? This is a normal career education.
This is what it looks like. But that's not really who I am. I'm the person who sees the ocean when I look at a mud puddle. And I realize that there are dreams that aren't, I won't say necessarily bigger, but they are different from the life that I'm living now.
And to see it play out on the screen in that way, at my age with the issues that we have, black women at that age, it just, oh my gosh, it really, it really spoke to me. So if you haven't already seen it, please go watch it. And then send me an email. Let's unpack it together.
Because there is so much there. I think that we spend so much time allowing other people to define success for ourselves, that we pursue their versions of success and in so doing we kill parts of ourselves over time. And we round those corners, we grind those parts of ourselves away in such a slow, steady way method that we're not always consciously aware until it hurts one day, that that part of us is missing. And so yeah, just, I don't have too much else to say other than make sure you tune into that.
So I had that morning and I was already like exhausted, emotionally exhausted from that. And then Lovecraft Country Bay Bay. I'm not going to give a whole, you should have watched it, but I'm going to do my best not to give spoilers. Here's the thing, right?
There is something about bringing them ancestral mothers together. Oh, baby, can nothing stand against you. So I just wanted to say that, that part really touched me. It also really touched me, the idea of sacrifice, what is it that we will sacrifice and for whom?
Right. And if you tuned into the historic, I'm sorry, the holistic training Friday, we talked about my offer being a period of control where other people are defining things for us, rather than us defining things for ourselves. I think there was a powerful moment when Tiks sat down with GI to define family in a certain kind of way. And I'm also really glad that Misha allowed him to define grief because that's what a lot of us are carrying today based on that season finale.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about the ancestral mothers and defining things for ourselves, even defining legacy, like what that looks like, defining hell for oneself. Hannah thought that the fire was hell until she realized she was in complete control. She got to define that space that she had created. Sometimes we create things and we still allow other people to define it.
I think there was a beautiful message in that that we needed to pay attention to. And you know, you have heard my dog is over here in the crate doing some kind of dance. So if y'all hear background noise, I don't know what's going on this morning. I'm about to put his butt outside if you don't get quiet.
But anyway, there is something about making space for yourself that was a common theme for me across 40 year old version and Lovecraft Country last night. This idea that we create the spaces that make us feel safe and that when we're making these spaces, we are cognizant of how it affects other people. But essentially that space has to be made for us. And it's just a beautiful, beautiful concept.
Now I talked a little bit about the ancestral mothers. Let me say this. Black men have irritated me a little bit this week. Some, because I've also been in love with some brothers who obviously can think their way out of a wet paper bag.
Some of them can't. Let me tell you what I'm frustrated by. This O'Shay Jackson foolishness. I'm not going to call him Ice Cube anymore because I believe that Ice Cube was a character he played for 30 years.
I have a problem with O'Shay Jackson. More than a problem I have with O'Shay Jackson, which let me just say what I think his problem is ego. Ego. He had not, even in his current interview, he was trying to rationalize and justify why he's tied his name, allowed his name to be tied to Trump's platinum plan.
It was obvious in the interview with Roland Martin that he had not even read Trump's plan. Nor when in May, the Democratic Party sent them their 22 page plan. Had he read that. And now he's trying to pretend that the Democratic Party didn't have a plan.
A brother on Twitter, it was sent to you. Like we can see that post. Where it was sent to you. All right.
So the 22, just so you didn't read it, the 22 page plan was sent to you. You got angry because supposedly they wouldn't sit down with you until after election. Here's a secret that some of us may not know and that is real political engagement happens after elections. Like I would be suspicious of anyone sitting down with you in May of an election year to talk about policy.
Like if they have not already planned policy, then they are pandering to you to get a vote and worse than they are manipulating you so that you can pan to other black people to get a vote. And it has nothing to do with enacting change. Change happens outside of an election cycle. All right.
I'm going to need these. Let me say this to my people. I love Baker said it often. We don't need a leader and we definitely don't need a leader.
So let me say this. In the United States, there's something called the myth of meritocracy. It is insidious and it conditions some of us to believe if you have large amounts of money that somehow proves that you are intelligent. No, it does not.
I excuse me. O.J. Jackson has no business speaking for black America. None.
None. And these men all over social media himself included that hint at the Democratic Party said down the Cardi B was the problem he's sitting down with that. That's apples and oranges. She never pretended to speak for all of us.
And it was a conversation. She did not tie her name to any political policy or plan for black America. And even if she had, which we now know she did not, but even if she had, what's the problem with that? You may have because it was a woman and not you.
Like there's a whole lot of ego wrapped up in that masculine ego mapped up in that that we got to unpack a little bit. We can have excellence in our lanes and not speak for all of black people. If you want to be an activist, if you want to be a cultural spokesperson, I'm going to need you to do the work and actually speak to people, speak to our specific needs. All of our needs are economic and the facts.
Like all of this seems to ignore the basic premise that Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Turay, said in response to King's non-violent strategy, you can't negotiate with a country that has no moral conscience. Right? That's what Turay said to King. Like you can appeal to their higher character if they have character.
How the heck are you on one hand saying Jackson is justified in sitting at the table to negotiate things with 45 when you've been paying attention what 45 has done the last three and a half years? Like, are you really that naive? It's not going to make sense to me. Anyway, anyway, anyway, those are the things I wanted to run through.
Here's the part that I really want to share with you. So I had an opportunity to sit down with two of my very close friends, Latrice and Denise Johnson, and their porch women, and I wanted to share their stories with you. So give me a second. Y'all listen to this interview and then tell me what you think.
I am happy to have on the show today, look, two of my closest friends, I feel like they're true allies and comrades in education. And that's the niece and Latrice Johnson, yay. Hi. See you.
I'm so happy y'all are here. And we got good news to share and all kinds of stuff. Thank you. Thank you.
Like I said, y'all, these are educators after my own heart. It's not just a job for them. It's a sacred calling and responsibility. And I am proud to count them as friends.
And they don't know it, but I try to pat them. I'm like, what would Denise do right now? What would the trees do right now? Like, how would they approach this?
I do do that in my personal and professional lives. I live my life. I'm like, we would take a new one, right? Yes, let me call Tiffany so she can connect me to the ancestors to see what they're doing.
And I need to make it. We do what we need to do. I'm so excited. So I'm very intentional that they're our first guest is porch women because they're from the South and they are women after my own heart.
And I wanted them to start off just talking about their new book that's out the mustache twins. Can you tell us about the book and why you wrote it? Yes. Okay.
So the mustache twins is actually the mustache twins story and experience to love writing. And about a year ago, near I think our birthday, we said, you know, we had been writing little parts of our story because we both teach, you know, elementary and middle and I taught high school and middle school and we used to use our own stories to teach writing to our kids and they were funny or, you know, sad or tragic. But for us modeling those stories with our kids was everything, you know, remembering. And so I think we were just talking about something we were written and decided that we should put these little thing yet together into a book.
And we had said we were just coming up with ideas like we can post on our birthday and, you know, come out with them and have a, you know, lunch or whatever. And that's what we did. We just got together. We decided on which memories we were going to story.
We set up titles with each other and we thought about those memories together like, you know, what would be interesting to tell someone else. So what was funny to us and we came up with these titles so that and then we assigned the titles that you want to know that. So, you know, I took certain titles and she took the others and began to write and we were like, you guys give each other homework, huh? Yes.
And I'm like, right, because we were like, we need this done within a year. And so like, did you write a day, write this or read this. So, yeah, and then it came for a sort of, yeah. And I know this because of some backstory, but can you tell us how actually, so this is a professional work, right?
It's self published professional work. You guys make sure you go out and get it. But how it came from self work, because I know you've mentioned before how it started off as like an internal project of the came public. Yeah, so we decided together.
So my research is around writing the self. I'm all about, you know, putting yourself and writing, leaving stories, leaving legacies, telling your own stories, right? And I preached this to my kids, to my students and so me. So, you know, that part was important that we just write our stories down, you know, that we leave our stores for our kids.
And it wasn't necessarily for other people's viewing or for their consumption, but it really was about us remembering together us undoing some, you know, some pain around just going up our mom, you know, so if for us, it was really putting ourselves in writing in a way that allowed us to remember to heal, to laugh, to remember the joy. And I like, because we are like in a moment, right? And everything feels so heavy and so, you know, harsh, but writing these stories felt easy and needed and like hard work. Hark to work.
And, you know, for me, I was pushed. So, you know, the tree is the one who, you know, with the published work and things and, you know, I just talk a good game. So smart game. This has been an opportunity for me to actually push myself to become a better writer.
So, you know, while the trees is preaching these, you know, write yourself, write yourself into the world, I needed to do that. And I feel accomplished, you know, we really set out a goal and it made that goal happen. One of the most powerful pieces in the book for me is that you declare that everybody's a writer, right? That we all have these stories that help us connect them.
I think that's important. We also have to celebrate your guys because both of you have some big things going on. Please tell us about seed. Okay, so seed stands for student education and event development.
So I partnered with the vault and the vault is an art center centered around entrepreneurship art financial literacy for the community. So we've partnered to create this resource center for children and families going through their virtual learning. So, we do offer space for homeschool collective, but on the side of that we are a resource center for parents who need their child to be somewhere safe. While they are experiencing or going through their virtual learning.
So we have a few public school children that come to the center for safe space to do their virtual learning, but also we offer extracurricular activities like gardening and art. So these children can, you know, still have their virtual learning, but has some kind of interaction with a few children and have some time to do some hands on activities as well. I love that. So you guys are approaching the whole child, not just academic parts, but I'm definitely all of education.
And it's such a great space. When I visited, you know, there's art up and there's a garden and it's just a lovely space and the kids look so happy just to be there and they're able to move around the space as they were at home in a sense. They don't have to. We don't have a whole lot of permissions going on.
They have to ask these arrests or anything. They're really becoming what we want them to become like self regulated in their learning and they're choosing what books they read and you know what activities they belong to. We take walks. We're located in the city of East Point.
So we take walks to City Hall and just, you know, talk and look and marvel in questions. So the children range from second grade to seventh grade and they interact so well together. It's just amazing to watch when learning can just happen without a whole lot of input from adults. Right?
I love it. I love it. So Denise, if somebody is interested in to learning more about that work and possibly enrolling their children, what do they need to do. So they can contact me at Denise Valt Seed on the NISE, vaultseed at gmail.com.
And you know, and I'll get back with them as soon as possible. Great. I'll make sure I put that in the show notes guys and the latrines. We're also celebrating you are an award winner this year.
National award, the Alexi Purpose Award from the National Council for Teachers of English. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Tell us more about that.
So it's for an article that I published just this year actually revealing the human and the writing and it's about writing in secondary schools with black children. So the award is usually given to what they deem as the one that will have the greatest educational impact. So I'm actually, you know, quite honored and humbled by the experience because this is my second time winning this award. And I just humbly passed by that.
Well, you know, I really, every time I think about it, I'm like, they could have given the award to anybody else. They could have said, you know, she already got it, but they really, you know, appreciate the work and I appreciate that because You know, just like I talk to my students about writing the self even my research is a reflection of, you know, writing the self and the work that I love to do with high school kids and And it's for me just confirmation that I'm doing the right work. So, Right, I am so appreciative of that. And then the trees also as a professor and residence.
I think you guys have a lot of overlap between, you know, we know your twins and stuff, but there's also like a shared identity as well beyond just the physical look alike Where education is more inclusive and holistic. Tell us about your professor and residence trees. So I I've located this space actually I just started at university of Alabama and it's a, you know, all white academic Space where I was not feeling like myself because in Atlanta, I'm going to Emery Morris Brown, Georgia State. I learned that black intellectualism is a thing and black scholarship is popping.
But when I got to Alabama, I was just like, where is it? So I found a black high school and a principal who was awesome and amazing. And I said, can I please just hang out here. I need somewhere to go like and see black people and, you know, people like people reading.
So he let me hang out at the school and I'm at the teachers and I went out there for a year. And decided this is where I'm going to be and I started conducting research and identifying like issues with students with teachers. I found a writing club. I ended up putting my daughter in the school.
I mean, you know, which is a whole nother thing, but I ended up working with the flag core. I ended up being a president like all these things. So, you know, the professor in residence is one thing, but it really was my home. My, my professional, my scholarly home.
And I needed that as a scholar, you need to be around people that remind you that what you're doing is important and or not even important but necessary. And I just did not feel that in my own institution. So the professor in residence has been everything to my career and it's really the reason why I can do the hard work and, you know, people identify it as, you know, necessary or important. So, um, yeah, it's everything.
And I need, I know I need to write more about it so that people kind of understand what it is, but it really is more just home. So, So, You may be able to figure out now why I wanted them to be on the show. Recently, I've written about my room mentality and that the tortoise always carries its own shell. We create what we need when we need it.
And both of you all have done that in terms of creating these educative spaces where we get to imagine what our future is like we get to imagine. So we're writing stories about our past. You guys talk about remembering and re instituting the past, but I argue that you are also helping to design a future by sharing, you know, stories with our young people. And I'm so Oh, my gosh.
And of course I'm getting to you because you make sense. Oh, my God. I was getting to you too. I'm like, what?
Okay. That just really Oh, my God. Thank you. I know.
I mean, That's your strength, man. I mean, thank you. Yeah, thank you. This is what happens on the porch, right?
You got these really people who come together and we have to be able to claim that for ourselves. You know, we don't wait for other people to say we're brilliant and we got genius. We're going to do it for ourselves. And we come together.
It's like a system. We all put our pieces together and we all are better because of it. Sorry for coming out and having a conversation with me. I'm so thankful.
I just want to wrap up with the question that we're going to ask everybody. What is your fondest porch memory? Okay. So mine is making up dances on the porch.
I remember specifically the song by Lisa Lee Sinco jam head to toe. Yeah, I even remember the move we had to it and we would just play our little boombox. We probably had a song on tape where we recorded it off the radio and we made up a dance near the knees. We probably had on our mansion.
I can show it out. And I think my most fondest memory on the porch. Well, we couldn't really have a lot of company on the inside. So we really did a lot of entertaining on the porch.
We couldn't have people come in. Mom wouldn't plan it. So we could have our friends who lived around the neighborhood and we did a lot of entertaining on the porch. A lot of playing, a lot of pretending, hanging out, boyfriends on the porch, first kiss, and things.
But tons whirling. So the porch was really like a playground for us. So yep, I think it was so huge. It was big.
Beautiful porch. Nothing on it. No furniture. Just a good one.
Here's the creating fun spaces. Yeah. And our own porches. You guys have classes coming up that'll be open to the public.
How do people get in contact with you about those classes? Where should they send a message to So we're developing courses around storing your own experiences. We'll have a we're also going to develop our website. The classes will be available soon, probably in the next month or so, but they can email us at the mustache twins 77 at Gmail.
And we will be putting, you know, information out on our social media and Facebook. So and the website is Once it be created, thanks to the Fulton County Creative Arts Grant. So I want to put them out there and thank them for that as well. Great.
I'm so excited. And of course, I'll be sharing information through my outlets as well. To give folks more information about that. Make sure you go out to Amazon and purchase the mustache twins story experience to love writing.
Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you. Love you.
Love you too. So can you see why I love those people? I love these people and I hope that you too. Please reach out to them at the content information they share and do me a favor.
If you enjoyed this segment, please send me an email at Dr. Tippett, tell them to told you that comment and let me know. And if you'd like to be interviewed, let me know that too. Thank you for joining me today.
I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful rest of your day. Tell them to tell you. Bye y'all.