I absolutely love Debarge and have always loved Debarge since the 80s. I dont know, but I do.

I can't believe I moved this close to Chicago and can't hear the Tom Joyner Morning show ( I have bitched about this before to some people). I listened to Tom Joyner every morning before I moved to Lafayette and have been listening to Tom since not only did he have hair, but had an afro. I want my TJMS!

I am remembering when we used to live in Harvey and my sister and I would wake up in the mornings (after my mother had left for work) and get ready for school listening to the Tom Joyner Morning show. Then we would walk down to Mrs. Cobbins' house and Nikki and Tony ( a girl) would walk to school after Tony finished blowdrying her hair and then Mrs. Cobbins would take Patricia and I to school Patricia was a cow, but it was a nice time.

I am tired of hearing about Natalie Holloway. If she were of color or not a white girl, we would never have heard of her. We don't need to hear of her either.

I wonder how it is that I find myself liking some of the things that Dr. James Dobson has to say? Alas, I wonder why I am not hearing these things come from the left?

Eh, I will be returning to Lafayette in a few days. It should be interesting. I talked to Shannon. She is in Nebraska right now. It is interesting where life takes people.

I have been meaning to blog about this for a while. As much as I can't stand Condoleeza Rice, we do LOVE her cousin Connie Rice with the Advancement Project. She is a most progressive and interesting spirit. I would love to work with her or be involved with her work in some way. She is absolutely great!

I had forgotten my mother has stepsisters. Never really thought about it. I have only met them once. Its just interesting and I never thought about it. My grandmother and all but one of her sisters are divorcees. The two brothers never divorced. My grandmother divorced once and was widowed once, my aunt Earnestine divorced, was widowed, and then divorced again ( and has step children), Aunt Johnnie divorced and has step children ( who are Freda's half siblings),Aunt Bertie was widowed (by Fess), Aunt Sadie divorced, and Aunt Betty divorced. Interesting trends.....

It truly is something else to be a DeRamus. To be a Deramus meant, for me, that people knew who you were and old women beckoned you to come and sit on their laps and there was a name and an acknowledgement that proceeded you. If nothing else, I knew, have always known and been aware of the fact that my great grandfather's name was John Archie DeRamus.Indeed, for my grandmother and her sisters, it was something else to be "One of the DeRamus girls." To be one meant that you were educated, you had status, people showed respect and admiration.

Indeed, there has always been this sort of interesting air surrounding "being a DeRamus," it provides a sense of kinship and the closest thing that I have ever come to identifying as loyalty, and it also beckons one to carry out that legacy with the bearings of dignity and grace. It borders on being something patriarchal, but it isn't.I believe it is something beautiful, interesting, and very fine. To add to that, it is also something else to be one of Morgan Goodson's descendants. if you go to Autuaga County and talk to the older people, those who have been there for a while, they know that name and they respect it. Morgan Goodson was a bold, fierce, and industrious man who provided a legacy for his children and who commanded and demanded respect from the community. They said that Morgan Goodson knew more about the law than any other man in the county. If you needed advice go to him. They also said that he was a soothsayer and could tell the future. People feared him a bit because he had red eyes.

On the other hand, my great-grandfather John Archie was a meek and mild man,who again was respected and truly admired throughout the community. He was a farmer who had a comfortable living, he had the first of a lot of things in the community, and he sent his children to school. John Archie was meek and mild perhaps after he was married. When he married my great-grandmother, it is said that he was quite stuck into some very bad habits and ways and held to some notions that she shed from him quickly. One incident I have heard recounted is that one time my great grandfather told my great grandmother to do something around the house. He came back a bit later and she hadn't done it, so he hit her. They say my great-grandmother picked up a log and proceeded to knock him unconscious. After a while, his sister and others came running up the road to check on him. His sister said to her, " Sissy, you hit your John? I would never hit my John ( she was also married to a John)." My great-grandmother is to have said, " I will not only hit my John, I will kill my John." That was the end of that.

How dare the British police use "an investigation of terrorism" as an excuse to let their racism show through. They should be castrated and the family of that Brazilian should be the one's to do it. Alas, I think the entire situtation, with both Britian and the U.S. is highly intriguing. In the words of Nikki Giovanni, " You are no longer the big bad sherrif on your faggoty white horse, you are the Indian you so disdain."

I want to blog about something that is pressing against my mind. Everytime I talk to a man does not mean that I am looking for a relationship. Sometimes I just want to fuck. This country and the people in this country are becoming ever more conservative (populations truly do move as a monolith).

I don't know why people have the mindset that everyone needs to WANT a boyfriend, or needs to be looking for one, or needs to be in that mindset to express interest in someone. I believe in being free, and I believe in being liberated to live as you please. And that means when I want to have sex, I am looking for sex, and when I am interested in more than that then I am. Alas, even if I am interested in more than just making use of your body, that doesn't mean that I am looking for any kind of commitment. What ever happened to people like Germaine Greer or Alice Walker who moved freely and in directios in which they were led by their wants and desires and not by any set conventions?

I believe in blending, connecting,appreciating and allowing for that to grow and nurture or to fade away like two ships that just meet briefly out at sea. I have never been in love with anyone (although some people may think that I have been in love with them). More often than not when I meet men (and somewhat, people, for that matter), I am bored with you after about the first five minutes of conversation and am really no longer paying attention, probably looking for a way to depart. I don't say that as a way to be mean or anything, but most of the men I have encountered simply do not captivate me. Of the men I have been involved with,Kelly was very sweet,very reserved and conservative-- I enjoyed him.

Anatoli was strictly sex, I enjoyed his dick ( and still desire to sometimes)and though he completely satisfied me sexually and we do get along as friends, he does not intrigue me. Alas, (I love Anatoli) most times he would tell me that I was too much of a radical and ask me why I was so much into Angela Davis and her communism. So much for spiritual and intellectual connection. That is what truly makes the difference between someone to love and someone with which you enjoy something else ( be that friendship or sex or whatever). Charles was really sweet and I totally relish the experience that I had of being involved with him. He was a friend and we blended totally-- with music, with dancing, with talking, and with beautiful sex. He was a breath of fresh air that I definitely needed. A beautiful dance that I enjoyed while the music lasted.

Alas, I don't need anyone to hold my hand, and I do believe indeed that there is a serious problem in this country and with the people in it. You cannot and really don't need to be involved with ANYONE until you can walk on your own two feet and be One with yourself. I don't need anyone to hang on to. However, I must admit that I have followed a bit too much along the lines of my Aunt Betty's sage advice that "You don't need a man- you can make one, you just can't blow any breath in him." I don't think it is necessary to dehumanize.

Alas, companionship is nice, and it is something that is sweet and very good to have. However, if that was all I wanted out of this world( or out of a person), I would by a dog. Appreciation is something totally different.

To write some more about me. I have always, at least for along time, existed in a duality( in essence, my double consciousness). One of the core dualities that define me is being an artist and being intellectual and and engaging in intellectual endeavours. I believe the two are profoundly connected at the root and together, they define me. I am an artist and I am intellectual. First and foremost in my self-definitions, I am a writer. Therefore, I believe that comes first. I am a writer. I am a writer and I make use of words to express my thoughts and in pursuit of my explorations of the world and the ideas that behoove me. I thrive on creativity. I have the feeling that something is in store for me and I must wait for what that might be to be revealed. I want to be known, I want to be published, and I want my words to reach people and carry through into their lives and into the greater human existence. I remain and give my total dedication to my craft. I want to bring out the wizadry in my words.

I am not an American. I am Afro-American.

It is an interesting, terribly wicked experience that Black women had in the south and the situations that arose out of them. My cousin Cottie's experiences sit on my mind at the moment. Her mother was my great-grandfather's sister, who's name does not come to me at the moment. As a young woman, she worked as an assistant to a white doctor, basically as a maid. She turned up pregnant, with my cousin Cottie. It was a dangerous thing for women of color to work in white homes and work for-be in the presence of white men, because rape was prevalent and they were at the complete and total mercy of these men. The numbers of Black women working as maids who took home mulatto children afterwards is quite considerable; it did not stop with the plantations.

Alas, my great-grandfather, as most were not able to back then, vowed that "his daughter's would never work in any white man's kitchen." Also, it is said that he never let any white men into his house (perhaps the only white person allowed in his house was his mother-in-law, my great-great-great grandmother Caroline Roper).

To compound these blighted tales, you also have the conundrum that is the most awful legacy of these events. To these white men, these women were all at their mercy, and that included all, even the one's that they produced themselves.

Another slightly different story is that of my Cousin Lillian and her siblings. Now I am totally wicked and going to hell, but I will get to that later. Anyway, Cousin Lillian was a dear old woman, she died at 99 years old a few years ago, and was still here in all of her glory, mind and all. Her grandfather was the founder of the town that my maternal family hail's from,Daniel Pratt. She did not want to hear that one,Her blue eyes would get red hot when that subject came up. Anyway, Daniel Pratt fathered Cousin Lillian's father ( and appropriately, allowed him and all of his descenedants to be buried in the Pratt family cemetary. Oh how wonderful are white folks.)and a few years later, his white son(Lillian's uncle), fathered Lillian's sister by her mother. That too, is an interesting situation. Not quite the same, but indeed interesting.

Anyway, I am totally going to hell. Every summer they would cart Cousin Lillian out at the founder's day celebration and have her talk about the early history of the town and all that jazz. Anyway, Daniel Pratt's other descendants in the town, the white ones, were quite active and around. Among these was my ninth grade math teacher, Mrs. Bugay. Mrs. Bugay was fabulous, love her to death. She is absolutely a classy act. But still, I had to. So one day, I was in the hall, going somewhere and Mrs. Bugay was on her way somewhere too. We stopped to talk and I decided that I was going to be a bit mischevious. So at one point, I chimed in, "Oh, and Mrs. Bugay, I know one of your cousins." " Oh you do?" She chimed in in response. I said, " Why yes, Lillian Gholson." Her response, " Oh why yes, I know Ms. Lillian. She's a sweet old lady." She handled that one with much class. I love Mrs. Bugay. Anyway, oh the tangled webs.

I Hope to Shout

This post is about my dear,late cousin Henria who died a few years ago. She was quite an interesting character. The only black square dancer I have ever heard of, she lived in Idaho, where she taught, and was in Milwaukee living with her mother, my cousin Cottie. The experience meeting her was one that stays with me with such permanence because of A. the events that took place and B. the fact that she died that next summer.

It was Thanksgiving when we drove from Chicago to Milwaukee so that my grandmother and my aunt Earnestine could see their cousin, whom they had not seen in more than half a century. My aunt Earnestine maintained a correspondence with Cousin Cottie, and occassionally there were phone calls exchanged between the three. Cottie, who is about the same age as Aunt Earnestine, which would make her now about 88, moved away in the late 40s with her Lutheran minister husband, never to return to the South. There is a story there and I will get to it later.

My mother and Henria, who had known each other briefly as children, bonded immediately and hit it off so well it was like two sisters connecting with one another. Henria would do my mother's hair and they would talk and talk and talk, and take us for long walks around the parsonage where she stayed with Cousin Cottie and the Reverend, who was ill. At that time,Henria wanted to know from my mother two things-A. Was her mother's father a white man and B. What was the deep dark secret that her mother was keeping and that had kept her from going south or telling her Children anything about their family and heritage. My mother, knowledgeable about all of these things (as were the rest of us who were there in the house, except Henria-- and the little children) told her that yes her mother had a secret, but that it wasnt her place to tell her. She also told her that yes, her mother's father was a white man. (Cousin Cottie is soo fair she is almost transparent. She is one of those that is whiter than white people, and you can tell that they are mixed, although others might mistake them for white, if they don't know any better.

My cousin Cottie left the South to escape her nebulous heritage( especially with the tale tale of her color and the fact that people in the community knew who she was)as well as to escape something else. The deep dark secret that she never told her daughters and that really was the reason that she left the South is that her first cousin (also my Grandmother's first cousin), I suppose I need to stop using names, but anyway, her cousin left home and went to Florida where Cottie was living with her husband, Reverend Grigsby.

After a while, Cottie was ready for her to leave. She didn't. Little did she know, this cousin of hers and her husband, the reverend, were having an affair. She wrote endless letters to her aunt to call for this girl to come home, but she didn't leave until she came up pregnant. The child she had now lives in Colorado and does well for herself. She also, this cousin, sort cleaned up the situation by passing the child off as her later husband's( who just happens to be my grandmother's other first cousin, on her mother's side). Well, that sure made for some uncomfortable situations and also was the reason why Cottie never told her children anything about where she came from or who her people were. Alas, I am quite sure that there was some tension and some held breaths back in the mid 80s when cousin Cottie dared to go to a family reunion and who just happened to climb into the elevator with Cottie and one of her other daughters, but Cousin X and her daughter, the other daughter of the Reverend Grigsby. I find it quite sad that Henria went to her grave wondering about those things. It all does seem a bit foolish.

Alas, another situation to arise out of this quagmire occurred back in the early seventies when the other daughter of Grigsby was just out of college, had moved to Chicago to get her start and my grandmother was recruited to show her around and help her get comfortable. What happened, do you guess? Not long after that moved, the other daughter found out that Uncle Amos was not her daddy and that Reverend Grigsby was. Cousin L hit the roof and called my grandmother and blessed her out. My grandmother was bawling. My aunt Johnnie ( the vixen that she was, and that's a good thing) picked up the phone and called Cousin L and gave her a few choice words. Who might have told the big secret? Cousin L's sister, my cousin Fannie ( who is fabulous and runs the People's History Museum in Prattville Alabama. She is still going at 84 years old). What a little mess that was.

Anyway, I don't know why I blogged about this, but I was thinking about Henria. She used to have this phrase, "I hope to shout," that she would say all of the time. She was a beautiful creature. Definitely an interesting presence in the world.

Poor Eleanor Clift, she always has to fight to speak on the Maclaughclin group. ( I know I didnt spell that right).

The Roberts Nomination

What I have observed with the Roberts nomination is that, with Bush's nomination of Roberts, he went with his ideology and his home base instead of embracing the choice that Liberals (god forbid) and others would have been more comfortable with, Gonzalez. I think it says something.

What I learned today/ Indiana Isn't that Bad

From a conversation I had today, I discovered that Shirley Graham Dubois, the wife of W.E.B. DuBois, is from Indianapolis. Quite interesting. Indiana is not all that bad,especially where white folks are NOT of concern. I am aware and have known that there was (and perhaps is?) quite a scene in this state. Haki Madhabuti is in Gary, the Black Panthers were in Gary and Indianapolis, Nikki Giovanni was in Kokomo, and one of Lena Horne's uncle's published a Black newspaper out of Indianapolis. The National Black Caucus was here ( with Jesse, et al) back in the late 70s, and one cannot fail to mention the history of the Mennonites, the Quakers, and other progressives in this state.

I thought it would be most magnificent, and quite a positive thing to do, to make a list of the people whom I feel are important, progressive people that if not known by all, should be. I will just list names and perhaps a little bit about them, as I dont feel like doing much right now, but I will probably do more later.

Dr. John Henrik Clarke, professor
Angela Davis, professor, activist
Barbra Streisand, singer, activist, leftist fundraiser
June Jordan, poet, major castrator
Nikki Giovanni, poet, major castrator
Amiri Baraka, poet, revolutionary activist
Haki Madhibuti (Don L. Lee), poet
Maya Angelou, poet, activist, advisor to the black billionare Oprah ( go girl)
Jane Fonda, actress, activist, humanitarian
Bettina Aptheker, professor, activist, daughter of Herbert Aptheker and friend of Angela Davis
Hanan Ashwari, Palestinian activist and politician
bell hooks, academic, intellectual, radical progressive
Elaine Brown, former Chairwoman of the Black Panther party, academic, author
Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party,intellectual
Stokely Carmichael, SNCC leader, Black Panther, intellectual, Revolutionary
Martin Luther King, progressive,Nobel Prize recipient, in his later days radical thinker
Bayard Rustin, activist
Josephine Baker, singer, activist, progressive radical thinker
Nina Simone, singer, activist, major castrator
Lorraine Hansberry, radically progressive playwright
Howard Zinn, historian, author, public speaker, radical progressive
Alice Walker, Zinn's student, author, radical progressive
Assata Shakur, activist, author, former political prisoner persecuted by the U.S.
George Jackson, prisoner, political activist, author, radical progressive, assassinated by American racists.
Aime Cesaire, author, progressive
Franz Fanon, author, radical progressive
Toni Morrison, author
Derrick Jensen, radical progressive, professor
Sonia Sanchez, poet, radical progressive
Al Sharpton, former presidential candidate, radical progressive
Jesse Jackson, former presidential candidate, progressive, powerful public voice
Ntzoke Shange, playwright
Paul Robeson, actor, singer, writer, political activist, radical progressive
Cesar Chavez, activist, progressive
Che Guevara, political philosopher, revolutionary
Gloria Steinem,journalist, progressive radical
Langston Hughes, poet, social activist
There are more to come.

The World I Want

Why can't Angela Davis be the secretary of state? The world would be so wonderful if it were run by( and in that case, I think they would not operate along the lines of "running" anything) Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Barbra Streisand, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Steinem. They would have a very large cabinet too. It is amazing and I still intend to write a paper about how two complete and total people such as Angela Davis and Condoleeza Rice could come from the same place, just about ten years a part from each other, and be who they are today. One, a progressive, the other serving as a face for evil ( Black people should be scared that now people can identify a black woman's face with this country's machinations). Oh what a world it would be though.... It puts in my mind a song I love so much "Everything," by Barbra

I want to learn what life is for
I don't want much, I just want more
Ask what I want and I will sing
I want everything,everything.

I'd cure the cold and the traffic jam
If there were floods I'd give a damn
I'd never sleep, I'd only sing,
let me do everything, everything.

I'd like to plan a city and play a cello,
Play at Monte Carlo, play Othello
Move into the White House and paint it Yellow
Speak Portuguese and Dutch, and if it's not too much
I'd like to have the perfect twin, One who'd go out as I came in
I've got to grab the big brass ring so I'll have everything,
everything
I'm like a child who's set free at the fun fair
Every ride invites me and it's unfair saying that I only
Get my one share doesn't seem just I could live as I must if they'd
Give me the time to turn the tide,
Give me the truth, if once I lied
Give me the strength that's gonna bring,
More of everything, More of Everything
Then I'll have Everything (Then I'll have everything)
Ev-er-y-th-ing OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH