Star

The word for today is STAR. On the way to training for the Census job this morning, the rock station for middle-aged folks who like to think they listen to new music once in a while (like when the Pearl Jam or Phish or the Rolling Stones put out a new album) was playing the Sly and the Family Stone's classic "Everybody is a STAR." I had one of those I don't want to get out of the car moments. I could listen to that song forever.

When I walked into the training room it didn't feel like I or any one of the 20 odd other folks in the room was a STAR. I began to think about what my niece had said to me a week ago, "Aunt Amy," she asked, "do the other people working on the Census have the same kind of degrees you have, did they go to the kind of schools you did? Why are you wasting your education?" I looked at the personal profile sheet of the woman to my right, it said high school graduate; I looked at the sheet to the left, it said the same thing. Oops, I thought, maybe my niece is on to something.

The crew leader, a young perky woman, with a mop of curly brown hair tied atop her head, told us this would be a verbatim training, meaning she had to read word for word from a big government instruction manual. Oh boy, I thought, this could be really boring.

She read fast, she whipped us through the papers we needed to sign, the fingerprints we needed to make, the details and the generalities. She made eye contact, she checked in to see if we were following along, she smiled a lot. This woman is my crew leader, I thought, this woman is a STAR. Toward the end of the training she said, ok, I don't need to read anymore, now we can be regular people, let's tell each other something about ourselves.

I listened to people introduce themselves. I discovered that I'll be working with an architect, a pianist, an actor, a laid off computer programmer, a real estate agent, an interior designer, a stay at home mom, a cartoon animator, a romance novelist. I didn't check where they went to school or their degrees. I could tell that each and every person in that room is a STAR.

At home this evening, I put on my bluetooth headphones and typed in a YouTube search for "Everybody is a Star." I walked around my house and played that song over and over. I listened to all kinds of funk classics. (James Brown is on the headphones right now.) I discovered that Madonna had incorporated "Everybody" into a medley during one of her concert tours in the 1990s. I thought about Sly Stone, whose genius, whose STAR burnt out into drug addiction, rehab and finally just became utter strangeness. I thought of Madonna, who I have always thought was strange, but has been a STAR without fail, without interruption, ever since she broke into the music scene in the early '80s (when I lived near her haunts in the East Village in NYC).

When I started the day, I thought I would need to prove something at the training. I thought I'd need to prove that I was better, smarter, sharper, more capable than the other people in the group. I noticed another woman who spoke a lot and drew a lot of attention to herself. She's doing what I had planned to do, I thought. She's forcing herself to be a STAR.

In nature, a star just shines, it doesn't have to force itself. At home this evening, with the help of good music, food and companionship provided by my next door neighbor, my animal companions, the people who read this blog, my STAR has been shining. Thank you!

Song of the Day: Sly and the Family Stone, "Everybody is a Star." Inspirational!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aKVpxR4rUc