Me and the Legends on TV

Tonight I watched TV for a long while, beginning with the Making It Here episode that was taped in October about GoNOMAD. It was a rush to watch it after such a long time in coming. I kept expecting myself to stumble on a word, or botch up something but it went remarkably smoothly, as if I had a script. I was winging it…that is one thing that happens when you love what you do–you’re never at a loss for words and can always manage to talk about it eloquently.

Later I watched Oprah Winfrey’s Legends Ball. Touted all week, the show turned out to be quite emotional, a tribute to ‘legends,’ black women who have accompliished something that Oprah wanted to recognize while these women were still living. At first I was a little put off by the exclusive blackness of it all….thinking what it would be like if a white woman dared to honor so many people and leave out any black women. But my daughter Kate said, sensibly, that hey, every day is white people’s day…so it’s ok to have only black legends and ‘Young’uns” as the pretty younger black women stars were called.

The opulent weekend included dinner served by one waiter for each diner, cooked of course by Jean Georges, the famous French chef, and ended with a gospel brunch where some of the legends such as Patty LaBelle and Gladys Knight picked up the mikes and sang to Jesus. Not a dry eye in the tent, these ladies know how to wring emotion out of legends, young’uns and the rest of us.