Elliot Washor's TGIF 12.12.2025

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder

Far below the Northern Lights

 I wish I was in Texas

Swinging on a steady roll…

Taj Mahal – Texas Woman Blues

Well…. This week the entire BPL Team was in Dallas, Texas with loads to get to on the agenda from the upcoming Big Bang this summer to a discussion of the vision and mission of BPL focused on the Impact Campaign to doing community service and finding LTI’s for Big Bang and also just having time to play.

This time we were a much bigger group and the quest to stay small while getting big loomed large for me as a question. How do we keep our vision, mission and soul?

“As a performer, one has a mission, like Coltrane, to take your solo out to talk to God.” Patti Smith

At our first staff dinner we gave out the Juice Awards. Here each person honors another with an award specifically created about their attributes. The ceremony of mini performances ran through the entire dinner. This time I gave out the Creative Conqueror Award to Aris Miller and because of our shared love of vinyl records her award was accompanied by an old vinyl album of mine by The Persuasions called Street Corner Symphony.

 This group sang on the street corners where I first heard them and then gained a following on shows like Inside Beford Stuyvesant on Channel 13, the NYC Public TV Channel. I’m not sure of the time but when Frank Zappa heard The Persuasions perform, he quickly brought them to LA to record an album. It makes perfect sense that Zappa’s band was called the Mothers of Invention. In so many ways their music was way ahead of its time and beyond classification. The Persuasions were their opening act. Like BPL, Aris and Zappa, The Persuasions are Creative Conquerors. This group never performed with instruments and their five-part harmonies were out of this world. For their entire career (four out of the five members have now passed) they remained hard to classify. Were they jazz, doo wop, gospel, R&B, classical, rock or all of the above? In many ways BPL and other entities like Google are also hard to classify. Putting us in a box defeats the purpose. I love the Juice Awards and how it brings our BPL community together in close encounters of the best kind. I think it was Joshua Poyer who created the Juice Awards and he also gets a Creative Conqueror Award for ‘Juice ‘in’ us. Thanks.

Part of our time in Dallas was to scope out Leaving to Learns for Big Bang. My first attempt was derailed when I found out that the shoe repair shop, I wanted to go to was too far from the hotel. For quite a few years, I’ve been doing a dive into repairing objects and people in trades, crafts and occupations that won’t go away in the age of AI and why they will be around. That said, I had to nix it knowing that if I went with Charlie to his scouting exploration of a Maker Space that I might bump into something along the way. Sure enough, we had lunch in Klyde Warren Park just a short walk from the hotel. Once there, I meandered over to their glorious playground. It was there I made a new friend Ernie, the security guard. He’s been there since the playground and park opened and was quite the park historian. One of the many things we talked about was how this mall type park was built directly over a highway and that they are planning to build over more of it including space for an ice rink. Given there is a movement that Jeff Palladino has been writing about where our students are involved in building parks, housing and stores over the Cross Bronx Expressway, I’m sure there will be interest in this Leaving to Learn.

Austin Street Center

It has been quite a while since we went out into a community as a whole staff to take time and go to a place to work together giving back. I felt it was time really well spent and gave us perspective on where we are going for our Big Bang. Like me, I’m sure some of us had a pretty hard time there given our personal histories and those conversations and the work we did brought us together. Thanks to Katrina Martinez and the team who had the foresight to make this part of our time in Dallas. IT was well worth it.

Café Momentum

Before going to the Austin Street Center all of us had lunch at Café Momentum. Like Café Reconcile in New Orleans where some of us had lunch a few weeks ago, these youth development organizations are figuring out ways to serve healthy foods to their communities and both educate and support youth through some difficult transitions. Both are amazing places run by amazing people.

I had a wonderful time in Dallas and saw things that most don’t see when they come to a place but this is who we are from vision to mission.

Next week, I’ll be meeting with groups in San Diego and California on our CSSR award and IBPLC work.

Have a great week!