My Friend Cecily Sent Me This Interesting Analysis

The Tide of Destruction Washed Away the Pretense of Equality

I’ve done my very best to keep this forum about sexual topics and restrict
serious discussion for the AfroerotiK yahoo group but my soul won’t let me do
that this month. AfroerotiK is about addressing issues of Black culture and
sexuality and healing us as a people and I can’t, in good consciousness, limit
this forum to issues of sexuality when there are so many other larger, more
sobering discussion that must be had.

Everyone has been affected by the news of Hurricane Katrina and it’s victims
who happen to be largely of color. The media has made no attempt to hide its
racist practices by portraying the economically disenfranchised Black people
that live there, whose lives have been devastated and destroyed, as thugs,
criminals, and lawless rouges while the fairer “victims� of Katrina are
portrayed as helpless and defenseless survivors trapped in dehumanizing
conditions. Down in Louisiana, with its vicious racist policies that allowed 30% of New
Orleans’ residents of color to live below an acceptable standard of living
and educational opportunity, with its governor having her lips dripping with
the words of interposition and nullification, calling her own devastated
constituents hoodlums and lawbreakers, the receding waters have revealed a
frightening reality in this so called land of opportunity. The commander in chief,
the leader of the free world that was elected for his supposed ability to lead
this country in times of terror, has turned an intentionally blind eye to
relief efforts and arrogantly thrown a pittance of aid and assistance as a
appeasement to those that might question his reaction. A few sound bites and a
few dollars absolves him of any guilt or complicity for the conditions of all
the areas devastated by Katrina in which people are color and people with no
means are involuntarily thrust into the limelight as America’s newest reality
television stars. There’s no million-dollar prize at the end of this game of
Survivor, there’s dehydration, starvation, and death for the losers and the
winners get unimaginable nightmares that will haunt them for the rest of their
natural lives.

White people (and Blacks that want to distance themselves from the heathen
behaviors of the people on the news) want to point the finger of indignation
and say, “Look at those animals, those ‘BLACKS’ down there, stealing
televisions and creating chaos. Look at them fighting and behaving like beasts and
savages.� White American can rest easy that Black people do in fact possess the
inherent criminal/inferior gene that predisposes them to acts of lawlessness
and savagery and it’s right there on the television to prove it. The
assumption is always that white people would NEVER behave that way under those
catastrophic conditions.

They’re right. They are absolutely correct. White people have never lived as
third class citizens in the richest nation in the world so it’s very
reasonable to assume that white people would be able to afford to pack up and leave
when the threat of impending danger was looming on the horizon. White people
would not have to wait for days for food and water and dry clothing because
there would be safe havens set up before the last rain drop fell that would
have provided cute little tote bags of toiletries and snack foods, insurance
agents to process claims and bank representatives to provide emergency loans as
they got off the evacuation buses. White victims of a tragedy like this
would have the nation rallying around them with signs of solidarity waving from
SUVs and flagpoles all around the nation. Moreover, when white people would
eventually behave in barbaric and uncivilized ways, the way anyone would do
under such dire circumstances, there would be a psychological term slapped on
it, a telethon to cure it, and the media would cover it more than the OJ Trial.

Newt Gingrich said, “If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw
coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to
respond to a nuclear or biological attack?� I’ll tell why the two are vastly
different. God forbid there was planned act of terror that would occur in a US
city, you’d see the nation rally around that cause, the draft would be
reinstated with the quickness, hundreds of billions of dollars would be given to big
businesses to aid them, and we’d be at war with Iran in three days time.
Bush never intended to have a plan to respond to the victims of the hurricane
and he hasn’t lost a minute’s sleep because of it. The plan to attack Iran has
been in place since the same illegal plan to invade Iraq was set in motion.
As long as there’s money to be made by Bush and his cronies, there’s a plan,
a backup, and a contingency all outlined.

It’s estimated that it’s going to take an estimate $56 billion dollars to
rebuild New Orleans. (That says nothing of the other devastated towns, hamlets
and villages that don’t have TV cameras there to chronicle their
devastation). Bush generously offered $10 Billion dollars to the relief effort. I guess
now he’s concerned about fiscal responsibility now and pinching pennies
because of the billions he’s spending to get an oil monopoly . . . I mean building
democracy in the Middle East Why not cough up $100 billion W? You are making
exponentially more than that by charging us $4.00 a gallon for gas. Why do
we, the American public, have to dig deep in our already strained pockets to
aid in the relief of these victims? This is the richest nation in the world.
Don’t pinch pennies when it comes to your own citizens.

Message boards all over the Internet are filled with posts from white people
that are espousing hatred and rejoicing that Katrina caused such devastation
and how they wished that it had killed all the (racial epithet) of New
Orleans. Black America has been feeling the pain of the racist tone since the
first reports of Black people being termed looters and white people were
miraculously finding food. We are supposed to accept our lot in life and not complain
because that’s the premise of this great nation. Black people, check your
birth certificate to see if you are classified as three-fifths of a human
being. Chances are, if you are poor and undereducated, it says you are because that
’s the way the government is treating us.

Where are the cries of God Bless America that followed 9/11? I guess people
want to save their prayers and petitions for causes all America can rally
around, not just the Black people. Where is the emergency midnight session for
Congress to pass illegal legislation like they did with one white woman who
was already dead while thousands of living people suffer without food and
water? Will America wear brown ribbons as a show of support for the flood victims
of Katrina? I think not. It is with this faith that we as a nation will be
able to hew out of the cesspool of despair a drop of hope.

Nothing will change. In two weeks, things will go back to normal. TV
stations will go back to being focused on some white girl missing in the Caribbean,
Sin City will have dried out and it will be old news. We’ll be tracking the
next hurricane that is set to hit Florida and airlifting everyone from The
Keys to Disney World to a safe haven. Black America will have digested yet
another bitter racist pill and swallowed it with a xenophobic chaser. Katrina has
washed away the pretense of equality in this country and we have been left
exposed and vulnerable.

Copyright 2005 Scottie Lowe
topic of Katrina's Aftermath.

This from Bellatrys

Words of Hope

Make no mistake, we are in dire straights now, as an empire.

On 9/11 we lost two skyscrapers, four jumbo jets, took a hit on the heart of our national defense headquarters, and some 3000 lives taken and thousands survivors' lives more wrecked.

This week, we lost a city.

Did you get that, "security moms"--? Did you get that, you "9/11 changed everything" voters?

New Orleans, for all intents and purposes, has just been nuked. This is worse than an ordinary bombing because the citizens cannot go back and take shelter in the rubble. It is uninhabitable, it will remain uninhabitable for months if ever, and it cannot be made safe to return to until all the unburied dead are taken out and the contaminated buildings either sterilized or torn down. The people who have survived are dispersed like Fallujans across the country, with whoever will take them in.

We haven't had a city bombed since we bombed ourselves to pieces in the War of Northern Aggression. Pearl Harbour - we talk all the time about Pearl Harbour, and what was Pearl Harbor? A minor port in the back end of nowhere that existed only for us to use as a refueling station, not one of the major metropolises of the world. "The size of Edinburgh" a British report said, to explain the magnitude - the capitol of Scotland. A major city, devastated - we are dealing with what we so casually have dealt to other countries, in Europe and Asia and Africa, and we have never ever had to face it, not since 1865.

So we really don't have a clue what we're facing, at all. Only second-hand, except for people who for whatever reason lived through the bombing and aftermath of their city, like Balkan immigrants.

We have lost a valuable strategic port, as truly as if it were taken by an enemy fleet, and more surely, for we must take it back from the Sea, not just mortal men; in the midst of a valuable, fertile region for agriculture and fishing as well as industry; we have lost a significant amount of our shipping ability and our land transportation will be impacted drastically as well; we have lost an irreplaceable thing, a national treasure, a living heritage of a time before modern America that was not an artificial construct, a restoration like Colonial Williamsburg but the raw, messy, unairbrushed real thing, jewels and warts and all.

We have lost tens of thousands of lives, in a preventable catastrophe.

So what hope is there?

I'm not going to offer typical feel-good words, because I don't know how and I wouldn't if I could. I schiz, as longtime readers know, between a sort of grimly-amused detached factuality and florid poetical rantings - I figured out, in the cold light of morning, why I free-associated a voodoo god as a key part of this, after ladyjillian spoke of making an Offering to him, - it's like I told jesurgislac, because the Army is disproportionately southern, and minority, and poor, and angry armies stuck in distant bits of the Middle East with no strategy and no leadership have in the past fragged their least effective officers and marched home on their own, and imperial armies recruited from backwoods provinces wasted and used with poor leadership and worse pay had a tradition of deposing dynasties and making one of them Emperor, and peasants turned into refugees in their own empire by the corruption and incompetence of the aristocracy leading to floods and famines in neglected exploited provinces have a history of taking up arms, and now we have the perfect revolutionary storm: an underpaid peasant army from the neglected exploited backwaters in an unplanned underequipped war with a bloodbath caused by inept leadership and corruption back home where their families are. The Army is the only thing we have with the resources to fix New Orleans now, not just because all countries use their armies to fix things because it's most efficient, because all our civilian faculties have been stripped to feed the military-industrial monster, and they're going to be the ones stuck principally seeing the horror on the ground for the months to come.

Forget 2006. Forget talk of impeachment.

If I were George Bush, I'd be having nightmares about Indira Gandhi's fate.

But that's not what I want to talk about now. I'm not a Greater Good sort, like the so-called liberals who still say things like "I think that the Iraq war will turn out to be a good thing in the long run, if it brings democracy to the Middle East." (If this is Democracy™, if this is the best that Democracy™ can do, you can keep it, frankly. More on that later.)

I can't offer cheap tinsel hope, like George Bush going down and glibly promising that it'll all be built back bigger and better than before, bright and shiny and new. We don't want that. No one who loved New Orleans wants that. I don't speak for myself or even for those who have visited New Orleans and want it to be the way they remember it, selfishly, thinking of NOLA as a priceless art treasure looted and melted down for gold. I speak principally for, and to, people like him, who can't use our sympathy and sorrow and pity and prayers, they're like US currency in a post-apocalyptic world.

What is needed is the kind of calm, practical advice such as the editors of the Biloxi Sun-Times are giving here to citizens afflicted with survivor guilt - spiritual counseling of the best.

What do I have? Cold historical facts, and oracular madness. This - not a rant, not sure what it is, has been days brewing, from the first hours it became clear that the flooding was catastrophic and irreversible and unstoppable.

What I have is Europe in my bones, the soil of the Rhine where I was born shaped me as truly as the humid air and heady memories of the Big Muddy and , and Asia and Africa and the Spanish Main in the folds of my brain, artifacts that I have seen and touched and roads I have traveled through the grammery of other travelers' words and pictures, since I first could remember my own name.

There's no way out but through. Americans despair too quickly, we do.

We talk of getting guns and holing up in our houses at the first realization that our political situation is deranged; we talk of running for other countries before they even start arresting newspaper editors for sedition and breaking up printing presses; we tend to assume that because this is new to us it's unprecedented and no one else has ever experienced anything like it.

Now too many people are talking about abandoning New Orleans, and unfortunately given the scope of the disaster and the already-existing poverty of Louisiana, that's not something that's going to be left to the citizens themselves. Lots of people - including idiots living in Florida - are saying that it's not worth restoring,

But New Orleans is not Pompei, it's not buried under meters of lava, and it wasn't a small resort town like Aspen either. New Orleans is more like Naples in some ways, like Venice in others, but I don't know the history and I'm not as personally familiar with either of those cities as I am with another - and which tens of thousands of US tourists alive all across the country are as well.

We need to look hard at Rome.

Rome has had floods that went something like 18 feet high, the watermarks are etched on to the facade of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva where St. Catherine of Sienna is buried - and into the priceless irreparable Renaissance murals inside. From a certain point down on the walls, it looks like someone took a washcloth with bleach to them, even though they've been restored. Catastrophic floods when the Tiber jumped its banks, in the unsanitary cities of the past with ox turds everywhere and no radios - yes, it could actually be worse than it is, hard as that is to believe. (Just not in a modern, developed First World [sic] country.)

But that's not the worst of it. There are canonballs embedded into the walls along some of the quaint little streets there, and scars from the pounding that they took. Rome's been under siege more times than I can count, and some of them resulted in the sacking of the city. Rape, arson, looting, melting down of art treasures for gold, rampant drunken destruction for no reason - from ancient times and their own civil wars to the disgruntled oppressed Goths to the fusion of ethnic and religious tensions, geopolitical gambles gone bad, personal antipathy and the resulting bizarre alliances that led to the Holy Roman Emperor sacking Rome with an army of mercenaries in 1527. The Renaissance was not as fun as people think it was.

(One of the more fascinating things in that article about the 1527 sack is that much of the sacking was done by Romans themselves - the city leaders - that is to say, the aristocracy, who saw it as a great opportunity to conduct internecine urban warfare against each other and try to get revenge and leverage. By the time they were done some 45k citizens were dead or refugees, and then afterwards the heads of the rival families reconciled and went back to working with each other politically. Iraqis have nothing on us Western Christans at the height of Christendom.)

The city was hit several times by the Plague - there are first hand reports, letters of people in Galileo's time trying to quarantine themselves and still go on with their lives and hoping that neither they nor their friends or family would die - and that was on top of the regular summer malaria outbreaks from the heat and swampy water; and on top of that you have the devastating "renewal program" of Mussolini and the original Great Fire, which was believed by the inhabitants to have been started by their leader, in order to put about his plan for rebuilding the city by getting rid of the slums and tenements in one fell swoop. Economic devastation has depopulated the city and left it a ghost town more than once in all its thousands of years of history.

And it's still there. Still Rome. Scars and all, full of people living their lives after all these thousands of years of tragedy and betrayal from the top down and periodic ruin. It's still a great place to go, it's still a great place to live, it's still a great place, period.

If the Romans can do it, can't we?

If the English could rebuild London twice, if the Portuguese could rebuild Lisbon after the Great Quake, if Germans could stand to rebuild Dresden and Berlin, if the French could restore Rouen and the Belgians Louvain, if the Japanese could bring themselves to repopulate Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Tokyo, don't you think that we Americans are up to the task? Are we just going to roll over and let New Orleans - New Orleans! - die forever, without even trying for a miracle?

I'm not just making a jingoistic appeal to our national pride, trying to buck us up like a football coach whose team is on a losing streak. I'm asking a serious question. We've been very loudly proud for a long time. And very loudly patronizing of other countries and how well they handle problems or don't, over the decades. But sometimes mouth-proud doesn't mean anything but a windy bully. Now we're faced with a real challenge, the worst one in most if not all of our lifetimes. Is there anything to our vaunted courage, ingenuity, and dauntless pioneer spirit? Or is that all dead in the ashes of the New Deal?

--I don't know. I can't see that far; even Delphi could only offer an If/Then to Croesus. But there is a choice before us, and it's up to us to decide if we choose defeat from the get-go.

This From Hungry Blues

Sunday, September 04, 2005
Displaced New Orleans Community Demands Action, Accountability and Initiates A People's Hurricane Fund
Not until the fifth day of the federal government's inept and inadequate emergency response to the New Orleans' disaster did George Bush even acknowledge it was 'unacceptable.' 'Unacceptable' doesn't begin to describe the depth of the neglect, racism and classism shown to the people of New Orleans. The government's actions and inactions were criminal. New Orleans, a city whose population is almost 70% percent black, 40% illiterate, and many are poor, was left day after day to drown, to starve and to die of disease and thirst.

The people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night, scattering across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical plants and the wealthy white districts of New Orleans like the French Quarter and the Garden District. We will not stand idly by while this disaster is used as an opportunity to replace our homes with newly built mansions and condos in a gentrified New Orleans.

Community Labor United (CLU), a coalition of the progressive organizations throughout New Orleans, has brought community members together for eight years to discuss socio-economic issues. We have been communicating with people from The Quality Education as a Civil Right Campaign, the Algebra Project, the Young People's Project and the Louisiana Research Institute for Community Empowerment. We are preparing a press release and framing document that will be out as a draft later today for comments.

Here is what we are calling for:

We are calling for all New Orleanians remaining in the city to be evacuated immediately.
We are calling for information about where every evacuee was taken.
We are calling for black and progressive leadership to come together to meet in Baton Rouge to initiate the formation of a Community Oversight Committee of evacuees from all the sites. This committee will demand to oversee FEMA, the Red Cross and other organizations collecting resources on behalf of our people.
We are calling for volunteers to enter the shelters where our people are and to assist parents with housing, food, water, health care and access to aid.
We are calling for teachers and educators to carve out some time to come to evacuation sites and teach our children.
We are calling for city schools and universities near evacuation sites to open their doors for our children to go to school.
We are calling for health care workers and mental health workers to come to evacuation sites to volunteer.
We are calling for lawyers to investigate the wrongful death of those who died, to protect the land of the displaced, to investigate whether the levies broke due to natural and other related matters.
We are calling for evacuees from our community to actively participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans.
We are calling for the addresses of all the relevant list serves and press contacts to send our information.
We are in the process of setting up a central command post in Jackson, MS, where we will have phone lines, fax, email and a web page to centralize information. We will need volunteers to staff this office.

We have set up a People's Hurricane Fund that will be directed and administered by New Orleanian evacuees. The Young People's Project, a 501(c)3 organization formed by graduates of the Algebra Project, has agreed to accept donations on behalf of this fund. Donations can be mailed to:

The People's Hurricane Fund c/o The Young People's Project
99 Bishop Allen Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139

If you have comments of how to proceed or need more information, please email them to Curtis Muhammad (muhammadcurtisATbellsouthDOTnet) and Becky Belcore (bbelcoreAThotmailDOTcom).

Thank you.

I wish I could hear jazz 24/7. I wish I could live in a music-filled room that would travel with me everywhere I went so that I could hear the sounds of the city. One thing that I was thinking about today. Edgar Ray Killen went free a few weeks ago and now Black people are dying and starving in New Orleans and Mississippi. Something has got to break. We will not have this anymore.

Bellaytrys at Nothing New Under the Sun has an incredible essay on the situation in New Orleans here

Get OFF Your Asses

God Bless Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans. I hope his anger will be shared by millions and I hope that it will be impactful in delivering a stinging blow to this administration.

Its time to help, not be depressed.

Oh God

All hell is going to break loose.

This from the San Francisco Bay View

'This is criminal': Malik Rahim reports from New Orleans

by Malik Rahim

Malik Rahim, a veteran of the Black Panther Party in New Orleans, for decades an organizer of public housing tenants both there and in San Francisco and a recent Green Party candidate for New Orleans City Council, lives in the Algiers neighborhood, the only part of New Orleans that is not flooded. They have no power, but the water is still good and the phones work. Their neighborhood could be sheltering and feeding at least 40,000 refugees, he says, but they are allowed to help no one. What he describes is nothing less than deliberate genocide against Black and poor people. - Ed.

New Orleans, Sept. 1, 2005 - It's criminal. From what you're hearing, the people trapped in New Orleans are nothing but looters. We're told we should be more "neighborly." But nobody talked about being neighborly until after the people who could afford to leave … left.

If you ain't got no money in America, you're on your own. People were told to go to the Superdome, but they have no food, no water there. And before they could get in, people had to stand in line for 4-5 hours in the rain because everybody was being searched one by one at the entrance.

I can understand the chaos that happened after the tsunami, because they had no warning, but here there was plenty of warning. In the three days before the hurricane hit, we knew it was coming and everyone could have been evacuated.

We have Amtrak here that could have carried everybody out of town. There were enough school buses that could have evacuated 20,000 people easily, but they just let them be flooded. My son watched 40 buses go underwater - they just wouldn't move them, afraid they'd be stolen.

People who could afford to leave were so afraid someone would steal what they own that they just let it all be flooded. They could have let a family without a vehicle borrow their extra car, but instead they left it behind to be destroyed.

There are gangs of white vigilantes near here riding around in pickup trucks, all of them armed, and any young Black they see who they figure doesn't belong in their community, they shoot him. I tell them, "Stop! You're going to start a riot."

When you see all the poor people with no place to go, feeling alone and helpless and angry, I say this is a consequence of HOPE VI. New Orleans took all the HUD money it could get to tear down public housing, and families and neighbors who'd relied on each other for generations were uprooted and torn apart.

Most of the people who are going through this now had already lost touch with the only community they'd ever known. Their community was torn down and they were scattered. They'd already lost their real homes, the only place where they knew everybody, and now the places they've been staying are destroyed.

But nobody cares. They're just lawless looters ... dangerous.

The hurricane hit at the end of the month, the time when poor people are most vulnerable. Food stamps don't buy enough but for about three weeks of the month, and by the end of the month everyone runs out. Now they have no way to get their food stamps or any money, so they just have to take what they can to survive.

Many people are getting sick and very weak. From the toxic water that people are walking through, little scratches and sores are turning into major wounds.

People whose homes and families were not destroyed went into the city right away with boats to bring the survivors out, but law enforcement told them they weren't needed. They are willing and able to rescue thousands, but they're not allowed to.

Every day countless volunteers are trying to help, but they're turned back. Almost all the rescue that's been done has been done by volunteers anyway.

My son and his family - his wife and kids, ages 1, 5 and 8 - were flooded out of their home when the levee broke. They had to swim out until they found an abandoned building with two rooms above water level.

There were 21 people in those two rooms for a day and a half. A guy in a boat who just said "I'm going to help regardless" rescued them and took them to Highway I-10 and dropped them there.

They sat on the freeway for about three hours, because someone said they'd be rescued and taken to the Superdome. Finally they just started walking, had to walk six and a half miles.

When they got to the Superdome, my son wasn't allowed in - I don't know why - so his wife and kids wouldn't go in. They kept walking, and they happened to run across a guy with a tow truck that they knew, and he gave them his own personal truck.

When they got here, they had no gas, so I had to punch a hole in my gas tank to give them some gas, and now I'm trapped. I'm getting around by bicycle.

People from Placquemine Parish were rescued on a ferry and dropped off on a dock near here. All day they were sitting on the dock in the hot sun with no food, no water. Many were in a daze; they've lost everything.

They were all sitting there surrounded by armed guards. We asked the guards could we bring them water and food. My mother and all the other church ladies were cooking for them, and we have plenty of good water.

But the guards said, "No. If you don't have enough water and food for everybody, you can't give anything." Finally the people were hauled off on school buses from other parishes.

You know Robert King Wilkerson (the only one of the Angola 3 political prisoners who's been released). He's been back in New Orleans working hard, organizing, helping people. Now nobody knows where he is. His house was destroyed. Knowing him, I think he's out trying to save lives, but I'm worried.

The people who could help are being shipped out. People who want to stay, who have the skills to save lives and rebuild are being forced to go to Houston.

It's not like New Orleans was caught off guard. This could have been prevented.

There's military right here in New Orleans, but for three days they weren't even mobilized. You'd think this was a Third World country.

I'm in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, the only part that isn't flooded. The water is good. Our parks and schools could easily hold 40,000 people, and they're not using any of it.

This is criminal. These people are dying for no other reason than the lack of organization.

Everything is needed, but we're still too disorganized. I'm asking people to go ahead and gather donations and relief supplies but to hold on to them for a few days until we have a way to put them to good use.

I'm challenging my party, the Green Party, to come down here and help us just as soon as things are a little more organized. The Republicans and Democrats didn't do anything to prevent this or plan for it and don't seem to care if everyone dies.

Malik's phone is working. He welcomes calls from old friends and anyone with questions or ideas for saving lives. To reach him, call the Bay View at (415) 671-0789.

I have found a new love for Kanye West.

Oh Nina,

I Wish I knew How it Would Feel to be Free
(As sung by Nina Simone)

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I could break all the chains holding me
I wish I could say all the things that I should say
say 'em loud, say 'em clear
for the whole round world to hear.

I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart
remove all the bars that keep us apart
I wish you could know what it means to be me
Then you'd see and agree
that every man should be free.

I wish I could give all I'm longing to give
I wish I could live like I'm longing to live
I wish that I could do all the things that I can do
though I'm way overdue I'd be starting anew.

Well I wish I could be like a bird in the sky
how sweet it would be if I found I could fly
Oh I'd soar to the sun and look down at the sea
and I'd sing cos I'd know that
and I'd sing cos I'd know that
and I'd sing cos I'd know that
I'd know how it feels to be free
I'd know how it feels to be free
I'd know how it feels to be free

I have been watching the news as of late( I rarely watch television), but I have taken notice of the way that the media has been reporting the devastation down in New Orleans. I say, the next time, and every time after that, that someone in the media gets the nerve to talk about Black people in New Orleans or mention the word looting, someone should seriously beat the shit out of them.

For the Bush Administration... And the U.S. Media ...In This Time of Great Suffering

Now if your mind lies in the Devil's workshop
And evil duens your thrill
And trouble and mischief is all you live for
You know darn well
That you'll go to hell
So you're living high and mighty
Rich off the fat of the land
Just don't dispose of your natural soul
'cos you know darn well
That you'll go to hell
I say hell
Where your natural soul burns
Hell
Where you pay for your sins
Hell
Keep your children from wrongdoing
'cos you know darn well
That they'll go to hell.
I say hell
Man, woman were created
Hell
To live for eternity
Hell
With an apple they ate from the tree of hate
So you know darn well
That they went to hell
Now Satan was an angel in heaven
But he stirred up trouble and war
So the LORD commanded that the Devil be branded
So you know darn well
He went to hell
Yeah, he went to hell
Yeah, he went to hell
He went to hell.

For a biting analysis of the way this country, and especially those with power have handled and portrayed the situation in New Orleans read here

There is just too much going on in the world. 1,000 were killed today in a stampede

Trent Lott has apparently
lost his house

Lauren at Feministe has a very moving post concerning Katrina and what has happened in the aftermath spells out in terms of American culture, how it operates, and what it values.

By way of Hungry Blues, Marian's blog has a great analysis of the Bush administration's totally disgraceful response to the after-effects of the hurricane and flooding of New Orleans and the Gulf area.

I am saddened and utterly depressed about the situation in New Orleans. At the same time, while thinking about the total destruction of the oil refineries along the Gulf the lyrics to a Nina Simone's song keeps popping into my head, " Now if your mind lies in the devil's workshop and evil doings your thrill, and trouble and mischief is all you live for, you know darn well that you'll go to hell." My heart goes out to the people of New Orleans, especially those that are left stranded there in that city with no shelter, no food, no clothing. God forbid. Please donate to the relief effort for those affected by this disaster. You can do that here

I swear I recieve more male attention than vinegar and water attracts flies. Why though does it always seem that nothing is catching?

Nina Simone's "Look of Love" is running through my head today( as it was last night), so I listened to the CD. I love Nina. While listening to the CD I also re-appreciated her rendition of "I Love You Porgy." All from the Released CD.

This article concerns the hinderance of freedom of the press and free speech by the U.S. military in Iraq.

I am really concerned about the effect that Hurricane Katrina has had on the Afro-American communities of New Orleans, Biloxi, and other towns.

This Game from Body and Soul

Go to www.musicoutfitters.com and type in the year of your high school graduation and get the top 100 songs from that year. Italicize the ones you didnt like, bold the ones you liked, and underline your favorite(s). Leave the one's you dont remember alone.

Top 100 Hits of 1998 / Top 100 Songs of 1998
1. Too Close, Next
2. The Boy Is Mine, Brandy and Monica
3. You're Still The One, Shania Twain
4. Truly Madly Deeply, Savage Garden
5. How Do I Live, LeAnn Rimes
6. Together Again, Janet
7. All My Life, K-Ci and JoJo
8. Candle In The Wind 1997, Elton John
9. Nice and Slow, Usher
10. I Don't Want To Wait, Paula Cole
11. How's It Going To Be, Third Eye Blind
12. No, No, No, Destiny's Child
13. My Heart Will Go On, Celine Dion
14. Gettin' Jiggy Wit, Will Smith
15. You Make Me Wanna..., Usher
16. My Way, Usher
17. My All, Mariah Carey
18. The First Night, Monica
19. Been Around The World, Puff Daddy and The Family
20. Adia, Sarah McLachlan
21. Crush, Jennifer Paige
22. Everybody (Backstreet's Back), Backstreet Boys
23. I Don't Want To Miss A Thing, Aerosmith
24. Body Bumpin Yippie-Yi-Yo, Public Announcement
25. This Kiss, Faith Hill
26. I Don't Ever Want To See You Again, Uncle Sam
27. Let's Ride, Montell Jordan
28. Sex And Candy, Marcy Playground
29. Show Me Love, Robyn
30. A Song For Mama, Boyz II Men
31. What You Want, Mase
32. Frozen, Madonna
33. Gone Till November, Wyclef Jean
34. My Body, Lsg
35. Tubthumping, Chumbawamba
36. Deja Vu (Uptown Baby), Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz
37. I Want You Back, 'N Sync
38. When The Lights Go Out, Five
39. They Don't Know, Jon B.
40. Make Em' Say Uhh!, Master P
41. Make It Hot, Nicole Featuring Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott and Mocha
42. Never Eve, All Saints
43. I Get Lonely, Janet
44. Feel So Good, Mase
45. Say It, Voices Of Theory
46. Kiss The Rain, Billie Myers
47. Come With Me, Puff Daddy
48. Romeo And Juliet, Sylk-E Fyne
49. It's All About Me, Mya and Sisqo
50. I Will Come To You, Hanson
51. One Week, Barenaked Ladies
52. Swing My Way, K.P. and Envyi
53. The Arms Of The One Who Loves You, Xscape
54. My Love Is The Shhh!, Somethin' For The People
55. Daydreamin', Tatyana Ali
56. We're Not Making Love No More, Dru Hill
57. Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind
58. I Do, Lisa Loeb
59. Lookin' At Me, Mase
60. Looking Through Your Eyes, LeAnn Rimes
61. Lately, Divine
62. Quit Playing Games (With My Heart), Backstreet Boys
63. I Still Love You, Next
64. Time After Time, Inoj
65. Are You Jimmy Ray?, Jimmy Ray
66. Cruel Summer, Ace Of Base
67. I Got The Hook Up!, Master P
68. Victory, Puff Daddy and The Family
69. Too Much, Spice Girls
70. Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are), Pras Feat. Ol' Dirty Bastard and Mya
71. How Deep Is Your Love, Dru Hill Featuring Redman
72. Friend Of Mine, Kelly Price
73. Turn It Up [Remix] / Fire It Up, Busta Rhymes
74. I'll Be, Edwin McCain
75. Ray Of Light, Madonna
76. All For You, Sister Hazel
77. Touch It, Monifah
78. Money, Power and Respect, Lox
79. Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Verve
80. Dangerous, Busta Rhymes
81. Spice Up Your Life, Spice Girls
82. Because Of You, 98 Degrees
83. The Mummers' Dance, Loreena McKennitt
84. All Cried Out, Allure Featuring 112
85. Still Not A Player, Big Punisher Featuring Joe
86. The One I Gave My Heart To, Aaliyah
87. Foolish Games / You Were Meant For Me, Jewel
88. Love You Down, Inoj
89. Do For Love, 2Pac
90. Raise The Roof, Luke
91. Heaven, Nu Flavor
92. The Party Continues, Jd
93. Sock It 2 Me, Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott Featuring Da Brat
94. Butta Love, Next
95. A Rose Is Still A Rose, Aretha Franklin
96. 4 Seasons Of Loneliness, Boyz II Men
97. Father, LL Cool J
98. Thinkin' Bout It, Gerald Levert
99. Nobody's Supposed To Be Here, Deborah Cox
100. Westside, TQ

The FBI is Now Using Terrorism to Harass Peace and Civil Rights Organizations

Hungry Blues has just disclosed that the FBI is using Anti-Terrorist surveillance to Harass and profile Peace and Civil Rights groups. You can read about it here

Why is Condoleeza Rice Afraid of the Venezuela-Cuba Alliance?

Znet has an interesting article concerning the congenial relationship between Cuba and Venezuela and why Condoleeza Rice is utterly opposed to it here .

Backlash Blues

Nina Simone, Langston Hughes


Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash
Just who do think I am
You raise my taxes, freeze my wages
And send my son to Vietnam

You give me second class houses
And second class schools
Do you think that alla colored folks
Are just second class fools
Mr. Backlash, I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues

When I try to find a job
To earn a little cash
All you got to offer
Is your mean old white backlash
But the world is big
Big and bright and round
And it's full of folks like me
Who are black, yellow, beige and brown
Mr. Backlash, I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues

Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash
Just what do you think I got to lose
I'm gonna leave you
With the backlash blues
You're the one will have the blues
Not me, just wait and see

S.K.'s friend that works at the library here at Purdue is quite an attractive man. I am absolutely smiling right now sitting in the library. I wonder if he is married. I have not seen a ring on his finger.

This is a hilarious post concerning that ever popular song (especially with my niece and my sister) "Hollaback Girl."

Racism at Purdue

Having picked up the Purdue newspaper this morning, I ran across an article concerning a Purdue football player, Uche Nwaneri. According to the account in the paper, he was approached and assaulted by a former colleague from the Purdue football teacm, Ryan Noblet at a summer work out camp. Nwaneri responded by hitting Noblet, fracturing his jaw. What followed reeks of the underlying racism that is present at this university and is something that totally needs to end. Nwaneri states that a day later the police came and took him down to the police station where he gave a statement. The university then charged Nwaneri with misconduct. At a hearing, Nwaneri was found guilty of battery and was suspended from the University for the fall semester.

At his appeal,which was closed to the public, his attorneys were allowed to be present, but were not allowed to speak, only to whisper advice in Nwaneri's ear. When he pursued a line of questioning concerning racism at Purdue, the appeals board chairman dissallowed his line of questioning. During the appeal, Ryan Noblett's history of assaulting classmates was produced by witnesses, a history covering three years at Purdue. During the appeal, Nwaneri states that Purdue Police placed him in an interrogation room for over an hour where, in his words they "threatened, bullied, and intimidated him." Lt. Fred Davis of the Purdue Police, the interrogator,accused Nwaneri of "lying, of being a criminal, and told him that he would have to stand trial and that he was going to jail." There is no police record of this interrogation. Davis could not be reached for comment by the Newspapers. Nwaneri is pursuing a lawsuit based on a negation of his right to due process.

I believe this is absolutely a violation of Civil and Human rights and that this is a case that should definitely be on the radar of the ACLU, the ICLU, and other Civil Rights Organizations. Everyone should be paying attention to this.

What Happened at the Jazz and Blues Fest Tonight Here in Lafayette

Tonight, the Jazz and Blues festival here in Lafayette was quite nice, a beautiful evening. However, there was one incident which quite stands out and says soo much about Lafayette and god forbid why is the world like it is? Well, anyway, what happened was, a new act had started and so a friend and I walked over to the venue where they were playing ( a really great band called Mississippi Heat---they are excellent!). Well, there were no seats left, so we stood there at the front-- where there were other people standing. Well, some old white lady decides to get up out of her chair and grab my friend I and shove us out of the way. Hmm. I mean not ask if we could move, but pull us out of the way. Honey lord have mercy. My great great granddaddys name was Morgan Goodson and my great granddaddys name was John Archie DeRamus, I am not about to play. Well, at first, when she shoved me, I went and stood against the wall, you know being passive and standing there, but then I decided I was going to go back and stand again. So I did, and she decided she wanted to push me again. Well, I just kept standing there and gave her the eye that said, "white woman, who in the hell do you think you are? Get your hands off of me." Well, the lady who sang with the band, Ida something-- she was GREAT!- well, she noticed what was going on and she told that lady from the stage---in the middle of singing-- "get your hands off that man." Well I was pleased as punch and very greatful and I enjoyed myself the rest of the night dancing quite wildly with the rest of the crowd that joined there in the front. It was lovely, but alas, why are there such people in this world. I know, but still. Lovely night though!

I Shall Be Released

Nina Simone

They say everything can be replaced
Yet every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here

I see the light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now any day now
I shall be released

They say every man needs protection
They say every man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place too high above this wall

Now yonder standing me in this lonely crowd
A man who swears he's not to blame
ALl day long I hear his voice shouting so loud
Crying out that he was framed

I see the light come shining
From the west unto the east
Any day now any day now
I shall be released

My Dilemma

At this point in time, I have to decide whether I want to stay at Purdue for my phd or go elsewhere. at this point, I intend to apply to Boston, UC Santa Cruz, and Purdue, others may cone along later. Alas, I want to be able to feel comfortable in my own skin and I want to be able to breath. I have always thought of myself as a more urban person-- I believe my true nature is that of one who was meant to roam the earth. However, as much as I have not been quite so happy about Lafayette/Purdue, I am comfortable here now, and its something that I know and I am used to. I know,and I always want to be the type that takes risks and goes for the broke, out on a limb, but most times I find myself sticking to what I know. How horrible. I am most definitely the type that would probably stay in an abusive relationship simply because of the familiarity. Alas, if I could rest assured that I would not kill myself trying to make my way through a phd program at Purdue (not in terms of academic roughness, but in terms of playing politics) I would stay here. I have been told and I know that there are no nurturing, motherly phd programs. But at least I can have a little bit of peace, room to breathe. We shall see how it goes. As Susan would probably tell me, I need to get on with it.

I really enjoyed A's party tonight. It was great fun. She is an amazing person-- a maternal/feminist force that could definitely single-handedly change the world.

I'm feeling sick to my stomach and am quite abhorred. Tempering the mindset of lay conservatives (nonpoliticians),the Conservative movement is building up Condoleeza Rice to run as president, presumably against Hillary Clinton. God forbid. Kill me now or buy me a one way ticket to France..... I am absolutely sick...

I am a bit tired. I wanted to blog a bit about my teaching though. I love it. I open every semester with June Jordan's "Poem About My Rights," and it makes a great kick off for my class. I truly do enjoy teaching.

Nina Simone's version of "Just Like a Woman" keeps playing through my brain.

Hugo Chavez is a wonderful man. I will write later about the entire Roberts/ U.S. agenda against Chavez, but for now I just want to say that Chavez is a wonderful human being and I admire his dedication to humanity and his commitment to bettering humanity. Just recently,Chavez has offered to sell cheap oil directly to poor communities in the United States through Venezuelan-owned Citgo corporation to help alleviate the pinch being felt in poor communities because of the high price of Oil. God Bless Hugo Chavez!!!

Right Wing Campaign Needs to be Uncovered

There is a right wing campaign going on now, mostly subtle and semi-covert, to try and persuade Black people that Reproductive Rights advocates are against them and are out to eliminate the Black community. Body and Soul has a great post on this subject and alas, a few months ago I responded to a letter to the editor in the Journal and Courier on the same subject. This needs to be addressed.

What the Hell?

Someone should really castrate Pat Robertson. That son of a bitch.

Before I Forget

Thank you to my Other Mother here in Lafayette, Rosetta. She is the kindest, sweetest soul a person could know and thank you for helping me get a job over at Ivy Tech;-) Thanks to Quinise as well. I love good people. God bless them both.

Today was quite a hectic day. I was running all over town and all of the buses seemed to want to crash into something.

I am supposed to be adding adsense to my site, but I dont know what the hell I am doing.

Something is terribly awry with the rightwing agenda when Chuch Hagel agrees that Bush needs to meet with Cindy Sheehan and compares Iraq to Vietnam.

Something looks terribly a lot like the early Twentieth Century

My Mood Right Now

All Progressive Struggle is effectively dead.

Another thing I find interesting is the whole phenomenon from the 70s and 80s of the actresses with three names... more on that later.

Jessica Lange, Faye Dunaway, and Lauren Hutton, not only look alike, but there is a lot of room for comparison among the three women. I believe all three are very progressive women, all three have been actresses, and all three have been hailed as beautiful women. Faye Dunaway is the oldest, born in 1941. Her first film was Hurry Sundown, a great drama about race relations in the South, co-starring Jane Fonda and Diahann Carroll. Lauren Hutton is the second oldest, born in 1943 and her first film was The Paper Lion in 1968 with Alan Alda. Jessica Lange, the youngest of the three born in 1949, made her first film,King Kong in 1976. All three are known to be strong women and quite outspoken-- Jessica Lange most recently criticized George Bush and the war in Iraq while accepting an acting award in Spain, Faye Dunaway is a seasoned activist and outspoken lefist, and Lauren Hutton has done work on women's issues. Further, both Faye Dunaway and Lauren Hutton are daughters of the South.

Why is it that Lauren Hutton,Jessica Lange, and Faye Dunaway look so much alike? I often get them confused.

Strollin’ in the park, watching winter turn to spring
Walkin’ in the dark, seein’ lovers do their thing, mmm
That’s the time I feel like making love to you.
That’s the time I feel like making dreams come true.
In a restaurant, holdin’ hands by candlelight.
When you’re touchin’ me, wanting you with all my might.
That’s the time I feel like making love to you.
That’s the time I feel like making dreams come true.
When you talk to me, when you’re moanin’ sweet & low.
When you’re touchin’ me and my feelin’s start to show.
That’s the time I feel like making love to you.
That’s the time I feel like making dreams come true
Strollin’ in the park, watching winter turn to spring
Walkin’ in the dark, seein’ lovers do their thing, mmm
That’s the time I feel like making love to you.
That’s the time I feel like making dreams come true.

I will soon provide a review of Nina SImone's Released CD.

Canada has a Black Governor-General? Michelle Jean? I did not know this. I believe I have been out of touch a bit....or perhaps it just hasnt been that important in U.S. news

Have You Seen This Woman?

Latoyia Figueroa's has been missing from her home in Philadelphia since July 18th.

Why do bad things happen to good people? The Baja Peninsula, owned by my dear friends Zoila and Salvador, burned down yesterday. There was absolutely nothing left.

Bellatrys has a great post on racism and xenophobia.

There are certain things that I truly hate that I will never see or experience. I will never see Nina Simone in concert. I will never see Barbra in concert. I missed all of the good things.

What We Have Learned

That the British police system is just as racist and xenophobic as they used to be.
As seen by this lynching .

As I am now revisiting Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins--in the last few breaths of summer at which point I have nothing new to read, my mind turns towards an analysis of my self and of me within the context of the kind of wonderful critical discussion that Dr. Hill Collins carries out in this book concerning all aspects of life for Afro-American women and how Black feminist scholarship applies to this. I am a gay, Afro-American male, a progressive, radical thinker, a nonconformist, and a person who is dedicated to the struggle to end all forms of oppression and hegemony. As such, I am perhaps the most uncomplimentary person to the white male power structure, along the lines of such powerful and beautiful figures as Audre Lorde and June Jordan, my forbears. The task then becomes, how to overcome the oppressions with which we are burdened--how to combat and eradicate the negative imagery that is imposed upon all of us who are colored at birth, and those of us who choose not to comply with the rules and standards of a racist, sexist society.

At birth, I was refused because the color of my skin and my classification as an Afro-American. Automatically, I was pushed into that place among the Western/ Euro hierarchy where, as Jimmy Baldwin puts it, I was "blacker than sin, black as night, etc, etc." Later, as I developed into a personality and developed passions, interests,desires, I was once again, in a most brutal fashion, told that I was wrong-- and the game of surviving the brute force with which the power structure with which we daily exist became that which honed my skills of survival, of existence. This is the nature of playing the game of politics, and the personal is political--especially for those who do not fit into the ideal constructed by the white/male power structure.I can only imagine how other individuals have dealt with these realities in their own lives. The entire cycle of life that we each go through is a process of finding trying to find out who we are, to carve out identities, and to have those identities validated-- that is the human struggle and that is the ultimate thing that people strive for. To find validation. While I am still searching for many things, I think one thing that has saved me and that perhaps sets me apart from most is that I have my validation. I have always had it-- it is one thing that I do not need to search for. Now, in the nature of hierarchies, white people have their validation--which is called white privilege-- which leaves the rest trying to scramble to make up for that apparent "lack." This is the nature of oppression and of hierarchal structures. Everyone should be validated, and everyone should recieve the validation they need to go through life. As most don't, this is where the real stick of things come through in regards to humanity. This is the result of oppression and hegemony. However,I am of the belief that everyone CAN be validated and should be. I don't believe it is necessary to want or covet what others have, or to devalue one(s) self or one's community in the wake of some kind of ideal that is placed before you or that is spoonfed to entire societies. Everyone should have a knowledge of themselves, a sense of themself, and enough of that spark to muster through to achieve a sense of security and sufficiency in life. I am very glad that, despite being open and aware of three types of oppression--as an Afro-American male who likes men, and who also exist as a radical, progressive thinker, that, perhaps the reason for my development in this fashion, that I have known who I am and therefore don't require anyone else's validation. Not of my humanity. That was and has been instilled in me, from whatever force-- my forbears, my ancestors, whomever-- but it has been with me, and therefore I have been able to totally reject and refuse the dehumanization that is sent my way by the forces of oppression and hegemony. I feel in sync with myself, as to who I am. There are things I want, there are things I desire, there are things that I aim for and want to achieve. But I know who I am, and that is all there really is to do. Know who you are.

This morning on the Today Show, Matt Lauer spoke with soldiers in Iraq. Nothing but white men, with a bunch of black women standing around them, muted. Boy should they not all be castrated? These people are evil.

Candace and I have been playing phone tag with each other for a couple of weeks now and we finally got ahold of each other tonight. She wanted to know if I had seen someone around campus. I am not mentioning names for the sake of discretion. We had a long, good talk about men.Her relationship with___ was quite beautiful. It is interesting how things can get so hot in such little time, two and a half months. What they had was very sweet. I think about Candace and myself, and the experiences one has in finding and blending with people who connect with you so well. She had ____ and I had Charles, both for very brief moments in time( Charles and I hung out from early April to the time he left in late June, so thats roughly three months). Life provides some beautiful moments.

One more thing on the subject of teacakes. I took one batch out of the oven, as they were done. My grandmother yells, loudly, "put them back, put them back." What ever for? Well, I had temporarily forgotten that my grandmother does not like her food to be any color but a deep brown-- everything but rice. I remember once my sister baked a cake, it was a nice yellow cake-- my grandmother stuck that cake back in the stove saying "It needed to brown." So tonight, I asked my grandmother why she didn't like mulatto cookies. Ha.My grandmother wants it dark to burnt,no mulatto.Hahaha. Such idiosyncracies.

Tonight I helped my grandmother make teacakes. This is such a ritual--the process of making teacakes-- a holy, spiritual ritual bound into the homes of Black women whose roots extend to the south--whether they be in the city or in the rural, teacakes are a Southern Black Woman's tradition. It puts me in the mind of the teacher from "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," with her nice, plump yellow wafers. My Uncle Lawrence used to love to have my grandmother bake teacakes--he said she was the only one who could make them as his mother did. Everytime he came to Prattville, or simply thought about it my grandmother would bake teacakes for him. His eyes would light up at the thought of teacakes. My uncle was such a delightful man who took joy in everything. My great-grandmother earned the nickname "teacake"(which eeriely makes me think of Zora Neale Hurston--what an odd coincidence) from her relatives. Alas, one of the stories I remember is my mother telling of how when she was a little girl and her grandmother would be cooking or baking this old white woman who was called "Aunt Francis," would come to my great-grandmother's back door and ask her "Sissy (what she was normally called by nickname) you got some food? You made any teacakes today? You know we cousins" My mother would be standing behind my great-grandmother and wondering "who is this white woman standing at my grandmother's door?" Cooking is such a spiritual process. I love cooking as well.

My Summer at Home

I go back to Lafayette in a couple of days (Lord don't I wish I were going to New York-- or to UC Santa Cruz(I'll do that next year) and I have been in Alabama since the second week of July. It has been interesting--in a slow, rural way( I need to get OFF of I-65).I had lunch and hung out with Denise and Sandrika and took in all that has changed since the last time...and over time. I will write more about that later.

My strength comes from the Black, rich soil and from the souls of Black women.

Finding one's voice is absolutely essential. Speak truth to power and learn to names things for what they are.

Soon I wish to revisit Virginia Woolf's " A Room of One's Own."

Oh Nina, Where Are You Dear?

Goddamn this country. Goddamn the whole thing. A few days ago they released Edgar Ray Killen from Prison after having been finally convicted in June for the murders of Schwerner, Cheney, and Goodman in Mississippi in 1964. Oh what a wonderful message that sends about the ideology and the ethics of this country. It took forty years for them to do something about it and then he only serves a few weeks in prison. Hungry Blues has a great analysis of the situation. This just speaks to what I have said of this country, its values, and the true nature of itself. We need to get rid of the infrastructure that upholds the racism that has permeated this society for centuries. We need total, radical, revolutionary change. This puts me in the mind of a speech that James Baldwin gave at UC Berkely in 1979. We, people who believe in equality, respect, and human dignity and who are dedicated to progressive struggle need to partake in what James Baldwin calls "noncooperation." Listen to his speech here to find out what that means. James Baldwin Lecture and Open Forum,UC Berkeley: April 19,April 26 1979.

One thing more about Mattie Roper that I forgot to point out. She was 14 when she had her first child. She had her last child at 60.

Major Castrators

One of my phrases, that I have coined is "major castrator." I define this as a person(mainly women) who possess Anger, Passion, Fire, Commitment to Justice, and who strike directly at the root of oppression. I decided that I would make a list of the people who qualify, in my book, as major castrators. This list is abbreviated and will grow for sure. Feel free to suggest people for this list.

Nikki Giovanni
June Jordan
Maxine Waters
Nina Simone
Cindy Sheehan
bell hooks
Molly Ivins
Angela Davis
Vanesse Redgrave
Jessica Lange
Barbara Mikulski
Arianna Huffington
Barbara Lee
Loretta Sanchez
James Baldwin
Anita Hill

Alas, I deem Cindy Sheehan as the new Mother Jones!!!

Maxine Waters

has gone to Crawford, Texas to join forces with Cindy Sheehan! I LOVE Maxine Waters---if there is anyone in Congress that I wouldn't mess with it would be HER!

I used to recite three poems all of the time, "The Lady of Shalott,","Lord Lovel," and "Lady Clare." God if I were in the third grade again.

Oh there was once a time when I could recite "The Lady of Shalott," in its entirety. I can still memorize and recite poems. I just moved from " The Lady of Shalott" to "Cultural Exchange,".;-)

Gas for $.26 a gallon

right

here

Why Did Maria Schriver Marry This Man?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in

trouble

I Have Always Loved this Song

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words.
Killing me softly with his song.

I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
And listen for a while.
And there he was this young boy
A stranger to my eyes.

I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd.
I felt he found my letters
And read each one out loud.
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on.

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words.
Killing me softly with his song

He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair.
And then he looked right through me
As if I wasn't there.
And he just kept on singing
Singing clear and strong.

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words.
Killing me softly with his song.

I think the most touching scene from the film Ray is the funeral scene for George, Ray's little brother. Great movie.

I think that perhaps all of the against John Roberts are efforts that will be done in vain. Perhaps other tactics are necessary to get the results desired.

If the United States were Barbra Streisand and Nikki Giovanni I would love this country immensely, but it is not. This country is George Bush and white men with power and all of the lynchings that have taken place in this country, and all of the filipinos that they killed during the Spanish-American War,all of the Indians that they drove out of the Eastern states and destroyed on the reservations. This country has a lot to pay for. And if you wish to ally yourself with it or pledge allegiance to this crap, then go right ahead.

I have not written much at all about Mattie Roper,which I don't know why as she was such a strong and powerful figure. She and Morgan Goodson stand head to head within the Goodson family. Alas, last summer, when I was again in Prattville, I went to the courthouse and found a document where she made him pay her--in money and in goods, for money that she had loaned to him before their marriage. She was quite a character. My great-great grandmother was a strong, beautiful spirit who drove hard to do for her children and to make sure that, as the mother from the Women of Brewster Place said, "her children would never have to apologize to anyone for who they were or what they were, whatever they looked like." Morgan Goodson was fierce, but he was a bit of a lazy man--intelligent, but when his children got old enough, he let them work his land and he sat down.
He was also strong willed and as I said, mean. When he would get in his moods, when his children were younger, he would take his seat in his chair on their porch and wouldn't move for days on end and would leave her to get food and work the fields for their children. Mattie was a strong woman. She was also reportedly the best shot in Autauga County. She knew herbs and medicine, and in her later years went around from house to house visiting all of her children and their families, giving them medicines so that they wouldn't get sick during the year.

Mattie was fourteen when she had her first child. She was born in 1857; Morgan was born in 1854. Her mother was a white woman named Caroline Roper, the daughter of a methodist minister and her father was a stud on the plantation(owned by someone else, I don't know whom), named Greenberry Smith. A stud is a breeder, which means that Greenberry's job on the plantation was to have children. He had 49 of them that we know of. Greenberry's was an odd case, as he was a mulatto and they rarely bred mulattoes as their children could run away. However, mulattoes were bred because a light-skinned mulatto slave, especially a girl, brought a higher price on the market than the average slave. Mattie Roper was a very, very light skinned woman. I may post her picture sometime if I figure out how to do that. Anyway, she was all but a white woman. They said you couldn't tell she was a woman of color until her children were surrounding her. Morgan, on the other hand was dark, a very dark brown with red eyes. His father, Philip Goodson, is said to have been a mulatto as well and his mother was a full-blooded Cherokee by the name of Pee Y( I do not know how to spell this).

They say Mattie could rarely be caught wearing a dress and could work a plow better than any man. Indeed she represents a kind of strength that I hear a lot equated with women of color, especially slave women, of that time. I have heard that some slave women, when they were pregnant, would be in the field when it was their time to deliver and would simply stop their in the middle of the field and have that child and then get right back up and go to work. Incredible. It is said that she told, when she was a girl, on the plantation(I should find out who's plantation, although it is said she was owned by her Grandfather--so perhaps), that it was her job to fetch water for the white men when ever there was company. She said that she would take her bucket and get the water and then dip her hair in it and take it to them to drink. Her hair was so fine( I don't know what that means) that they wouldn't know it was wet and would go right on drinking that water. This is one of the first acts of resistance that I had ever heard of and I thought it was fucking fantastic!

Mattie Roper died in the 1920's and the story goes that once Morgan Goodson was fussing loudly at her and she told him, " Morgan, if you don't stop fussing at me you're going to make my heart overflow." Well, he kept on and so she killed over. Both Morgan and Mattie are buried in our family cemetary. I will definitely try to get her picture online( I highly doubt I will be successful).

The Way I Feel About It

I have caught quite a few stares now and then with what I say, especially with my political views,but frankly I don't give a shit. I will state again that I am Afro-American, that I am not American and the word Patriotism does not even register in my vocabulary. Some have said to me, " you sit here and reap the benefits of this country and then complain about it or reject it, why don't you just leave?" Well my response is that this country didn't do and hasn't done shit for me. Everything that I am and all of the blessings that have been bestowed upon me are reapings from the hardwork and labour of John Archie Deramus and Sadie Mae Goodson DeRamus and Morgan Goodson and Mattie Roper. America didn't do shit.Thank you. And to all of my ancestors that have come before me, I give all of my thanks and give my utmost respect.

More on Afro-Americans and Landownership

My great-great grandfather and great-grandfather bought land(and inherited some, but those are other stories) in the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th Century. To be exact, my great-grandfather bought his property in 1913. Afro-Americans for a long time held a considerable amount of property in the Southern states. After the Civil War,Congress passed an act which effectively broke up many of the old plantations in the south and divided them into plots of land which they sold to the newly freed slaves and others who could buy. If I remember correctly,I believe one could purchase 100 acres of land for $40. As a result of this, many many Blacks bought land which they primarily farmed, and which became the foundation for the growth of the Black Middle class after the Civil War. Since 1910,this economic stronghold for Blacks has been slowly eroded as Blacks have lost their land for various reasons. In cases I know, my aunts and uncles (actually my grandmother's first cousins, but we call them aunts and uncles as they are so close to all of us), the Fraziers lost their land about five years ago now. Their father, Harrison Frazier, left them 500 acres of prime property surrounding the current high school. After my Uncle Amos died, my uncle Sylvester and others began to quarrel and the land ended up in court, and thus was sold( as that is what white judges do to Black property ownership in the south). What a loss that was, they didn't even get what the land was worth from the sale. Anyway, if you are Black and you have land KEEP YOUR HANDS ON IT and hold it for dear life. Land is the basis of economic stability.

Land, Money, and relatives do not mix. This is something that I have said for a long time. Nothing but a big headache. My great-grandfather, J.A.B (John Archie Bradson) left 97 acres for his children and my great-great grandfather, Morgan, left 300 acres for his heirs.We are all the beneficiaries of this land as they left it as

heir property

My Uncle Lawrence ran the Goodson estate until his death and my Aunt Earnestine (mis)managed the DeRamus estate until she became unable to, and now my Aunt Betty, who can manage it, but who has no imagination and I certainly don't want her to run it, but she is. If it is one thing about my Aunt, she can hold on to a penny until it burst, so we know the estate won't loose money, but she is not the type of person I would want running anything for me. However, Uncle Lawrence didnt want his hands in it as he didnt want to hear every mouth in the world yapping, which I can understand. Lord, he moved to Enterprise when he grew up and rarely made his way back to Prattville-- in order to stay out of that fray. Anyway, I suppose I will take over at some point.

Snippets of Gossip

Thinking more on the subject of career and the idea of finding a mate versus defining one's role in the world, alas Dr. D once told me that when bell hooks was in Graduate School she was involved in a hot steamy affair with a professor. Well, this professor fell head over heels in love with bell and proceeded to divorce his wife so that he could be with bell. When he told bell of his plans to leave his wife so that he could be with her, she reportedly looked at him and said" You stupid fool, you did what?" Haha. There is definitely a reason why I love bell hooks.

I baked a cake today. The presentation could be better but I am utterly pleased with myself;-)

Cindy Sheehan

This is the text of a speech that Cindy Sheehan gave in Dallas a couple of Days ago. Cindy Sheehan lost her son in Iraq and is now camping out in Crawford,Texas to ask the Bastard in the White House(soon to be painted another color) exactly why her son had to die.

Cindy Sheehan: It’s so great to be here.

Last year when you guys had your convention in Boston, my son had only been dead a few months, and we were really honored because the Santa Barbara chapter took my daughter’s poem A Nation Rocked to Sleep, (and they did it again this year), and I remember Michael Cervantes, he brought the booklet over to our house and showed it to us, and I never dreamed in a year I’d be standing here in front of you as one of the speakers at your convention, I never dreamed I’d be doing this at all, but isn’t it weird what life hands you…

I never heard about Veterans for until, I can tell you the exact day I heard about VFP, it was May 4th, 2004, and my son had been dead exactly a month, and I was watching CNN, and something came on, it was a report on Arlington West in Santa Barbara, and we lived about 6 hours north of Santa Barbara, and it was the May 4th before Mother’s Day, which was May 8th, and VFP was going to put it up on Sunday, every Sunday, so I called my husband and I said, “There’s only one place I want to be on Mother’s Day this year, I want to be at Santa Barbara. I want to go and see Arlington West.”

When we went, the first time we went, there was a little over 700 crosses, now there’s over 1,800 crosses.

And I’m glad to hear everybody else’s words, because somebody’s gotta stop those lying bastards. Somebody has to stop them.

I got an email yesterday - - If you guys heard I just had a story published that talks about - - it’s called Where Do I Live?, it talks about an Iranian-American who got the shaft because a recruiter liked him, and the recruiter falsified his paperwork, so he ended up in prison. He’s been in prison since November without due process. Another mother whose son was found dead in Iraq, they told her that he died from a drug overdose. Three months later, they got the toxicology report; no drugs. She was devastated, she said, “I know my son, he did not do drugs.” She was told that her son’s wife and his battle buddies said in a report that yes, her son abused drugs in Iraq. But when she got that report it said categorically that no, he did not abuse drugs. So how did her son die?

And then there’s Kevin and Monica Benderman. Kevin did exactly the right thing and got 15 months in prison. Whereas like Dahr (Jamail) said, the war criminals in Washington, D.C., they don’t even lose a night’s sleep. Then we have this lying bastard, George Bush, taking a 5-week vacation in a time of war. You know what? I’m never going to get to enjoy another vacation, because of him.
My vacation probably - -this is really sad because I have a really cute dress I was going to wear to the banquet tomorrow night, but I’m either gonna be in jail or in a tent in Crawford, waiting until that jerk comes out and tells me why my son died.

Anyway, I got an email, I kinda got off track, a man emailed me yesterday, I get contacted by all kinds of people with their stories, and he said Cindy, I read everything you write, I read it on LewRockwell.com, he said, “I get tears in my eyes, but today I cried real tears, and I screamed, because my dear sweet nineteen ear-old cousin was killed in Iraq.”

And he said, “Cindy, why didn’t I save him? Why didn’t I knock him out, why didn’t I take him to Canada?” and I wrote him back and I said, “You know what? We all think that.”

I said to my son not to go. I said, you know it’s wrong, you know you’re going over there. You know your unit might have to kill innocent people, you know you might die. And he says, “My buddies are going, I have to go.” He said, “If I don’t go someone’s going to have to do my job, and my buddies will be in danger.”

So what really gets me is these chickenhawks, who sent our kids to die, without ever serving in a war themselves. They don’t know what it’s all about.

30 of our bravest young men have already died this month, and it’s only the 5th of August. And the tragedy of the marines in Ohio is awful.

But do you guys remember back in March when we were having our 2nd year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq which was pre-empted by Terry Schiavo, so that’s all that was on the news, not 5,000 of us in Fayetteville, Wolf Blitzer said it was insignificant, but they put Terry Schiavo on, and I wrote something then called The Amazing Hypocrites and I asked why does she deserve life more than my son, and the Iraqi people? And more than the other people that this war has killed.

But do you think George Bush will interrupt his vacation and go visit the families of those 20 marines that have died in Ohio this week? No, because he doesn’t care, he doesn’t have a heart. That’s not enough to stop his little ‘playing cowboy’ game in Crawford for 5 weeks.

So, as you can imagine, the grieving parents who lost - - lost, I don’t like to use that word, whose child was murdered, it’s extremely difficult, you can’t even get a small scab on our wound, because every day it rips open. Every day, I don’t know why I do it because I already know that war is ugly, I already know that war is hard. But I open up the DOD site to see, who became an angel, while I was sleeping.

And that rips my heart open, because I know there is another mother whose life is going to be ruined that day. So we can’t even begin to heal.

---------------------------------------------------------
So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush was speaking after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio, he said a couple things that outraged me. Seriously outraged me. And I know I don’t look like I’m outraged, I’m always so calm and everything, that’s because if I started hitting something, I wouldn’t stop ‘til it was dead. So I can’t even start, cause I know how dangerous that would be, but George Bush was talking, and he never mentioned the terrible incident of those marines, but he did say, that the families of the ones who have been killed can rest assured that their loved ones died for a noble cause.

And, he also said, he says this often, and this really drives me crazy, he said that we have to stay in Iraq and complete the mission, to honor the sacrifices of the ones who have fallen.

And I say, why should I want one more mother to go through what I’ve gone through, because my son is dead. You know what, the only way he can honor my son’s sacrifice is to bring the rest of the troops home. To make my son’s death count for peace and love, and not war and hatred like he stands for.

I don’t want him using my son’s death or my family’s sacrifice to continue the killing. I don’t want him to exploit the honor of my son and others to continue the killing. They sent these honorable people to die, and are so dishonorable themselves.

So, as many of you have heard, and I didn’t mean to cause any problems with the convention, but I was writing an email to everybody, and I was so mad, like I said, and I just had this brainstorm, I’m going to Dallas, I don’t know where Crawford is. I’ve been in Texas, Casey was stationed at Fort Hood. I drove from northern California to Fort Hood one time, it took like, 30 hours. And I thought, I could be driving for days to get from Dallas to Crawford!

But I don’t care, I’m goin’. And I’m gonna tell them, “You get that evil maniac out here, cuz a Gold Star Mother, somebody who’s blood is on his hands, has some questions for him.”

And I’m gonna say, “OK, listen here, George. #1, you quit, and I demand, every time you get out there and say you’re going to continue the killing in Iraq to honor the fallen heroes by continuing the mission; you say, ‘except Casey Sheehan.’”

“And you say ‘except for all the members of Goldstar Families for Peace’ cuz we think not one drop of blood should be spilled in our families’ names. You quit doing that. You don’t have my permission.”

And I’m gonna say, “And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for.” And if he even starts to say ‘freedom and democracy’ I’m gonna say, bullshit.

You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that, you don’t tell me my son died for ‘freedom and democracy.’

Cuz, we’re not freer. You’re taking away our freedoms. The Iraqi people aren’t freer, they’re much worse off than before you meddled in their country.

You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine…

(massive round of applause)

And if you think I won’t say bullshit to the President, I say move on, cuz I’ll say what’s on my mind.

So, what’s gonna happen? I started this, I thought it was gonna be just me and my sister driving to Crawford, but it kind of mushroomed and people from as far away as Dayton, Ohio are coming, to help us, to stand behind us, because I travel all over the country, I speak, I write, I get feedback on my writing, and just in the little over a year that I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen a major turnaround in this country.

People don’t just want to hear it, they want to know, what can we do? What can we do to get him out of power? And I’m gonna say the ‘I’ word. Impeach. And we have to have everybody impeached that lied to the American public, and that’s the executive branch, and any people in congress, and we gotta go all the way down and we might have to go all the way down to the person who picks up the dogshit in Washington because…

We can’t let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they’ve done in this world. We can’t have a pardon. They need to pay for what they’ve done.

So anyway, I’m gonna go to Crawford tomorrow, and I’m gonna say I want to talk to him, and they say, he’s not coming out, I’m gonna set up my tent there until he comes out to talk to me.

And I have the whole month of August off, just like him. It’s just the way it worked out, I was supposed to go to England tomorrow to do some Downing Street things, but Conyers cancelled, so hey, I have a lot of free time on my hands, and I’m gonna stay until he comes out and talks to me. And if he quits his vacation and goes to D.C., I’ll pull my tent up, I’ll go to D.C., and put it on the White House lawn, and I’ll be waiting for you guys when you get there September 24th.

Another thing that I’m doing is - - my son was killed in 2004, so I’m not paying my taxes for 2004. If I get a letter from the IRS, I’m gonna say, you know what, this war is illegal; this is why this war is illegal. This war is immoral; this is why this war is immoral. You killed my son for this. I don’t owe you anything. And if I live to be a million, I won’t owe you a penny.
And I want them to come after me, because unlike what you’ve been doing with the war resistance, I want to put this frickin’ war on trial. And I want to say, “You give me my son, and I’ll pay your taxes.”

I live in Bacaville, come and get me if you can find me there and put me on trial, because like Camilo (Mejia), Camilo knew what was right. And he went to prison for that. And Henry David Thoreau he went to prison, he refused to pay his poll tax, and Emerson, I call them HT and RW, and RW came to visit HT and said what are you doing here, buddy? And HT said, why aren’t you here? This is the only place for a moral person in an immoral world.

It’s up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist. As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you. These maniacs have no authority over us. And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can’t put our spirits in prison. And I know that Camilo came out a much stronger person, he’s one of my heroes, it’s great a row of heroes in front of me here.

And everyone gave such great testimony this evening, I have to wonder, why do we keep doing this to each other? Why do we let this continue time and time again, why do let it happen? And it’s because our country, is so good at demonizing people, I still have relatives from WWII that still call Japanese people ‘Japs’. And we demonize the Iraqi people, where, most of this country doesn’t even think we’re killing innocent people.

Because, “Oh Cindy, don’t you remember what happened on September 11th?”

“Yeah, but, were any of those people in Iraq? And the people who flew those planes into the Trade Center, where they from Iraq?”
When I was growing up, it was ‘Communists’. Now it’s ‘Terrorists’. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.

But I do see hope. I see hope in this country. 58% of the American public are with us. We’re preaching to the choir, but the choir’s not singing, if all of the 58% started singing, this war would end.

I got an email the other day and it said, “Cindy, if you didn’t use so much profanity… there’s people ‘on the fence’ that get offended…”
And you know what I said? “You know what? You know what, god-damn-it? How, in the world is anybody still ‘sitting on that fence’?”
“If you fall on the side that is pro-George, and pro-war, you get your ass over to Iraq, and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand up and speak out.”
But whatever side you fall on, quit being on the fence.

The opposite of good is not evil, it’s apathy. And we have to get this country off their butts, and we have to get the choir singing.
We need to say, bring our troops home now. We can’t depend on the people in charge binging our troops home. Because you don’t plan on bringing the troops home when you drop so much of the reconstruction money into building permanent bases.
I was hoping to come to the banquet tomorrow night, but unless George comes out and talks to me, I’ll be camping at Crawford.
Thank you.

Yesterday I watched the final episode of Living Single, which is one of my favorite shows(ok, so its been off the air),but alas I found myself cringing as Maxine Shaw attorney-at-law relented and gave herself to Kyle Barker. While the show didnt say that she gave up her career for him, and indeed hinted that he returned from London for her, I found myself not liking it, prefering that Maxine stay single (away from Kyle) and continue as a successful lawyer, with her child, without him.

So my question is, why is it that I dont like the idea of anyone giving up their career for someone(which I totally don't like)? Further, why is it that I always seem to prefer the image of the single, successful person(especially woman), especially women like Maxine Shaw attorney at law and dislike it if they find someone and alter that image in any way?Does it have to do with not liking the idea of submission, which I dislike wholeheartedly? I remember when I was in the seventh grade, one of my teachers asked the class a series of questions like Will you ever get married? If so, when? What do you want to be when you grow up? Alas, I have always wanted to write, ever since I was three years old, so I always knew what I wanted to do. However, what I remember specifically from that question and answer session is that most everyone in the class answered that they wanted to be married and have children, and mostly in their twenties. It was only myself and a girl, Courtney Brooks ( who I might write about later), who said that we didn't ever think we would get married, and if we did(not to each other) it wouldn't be until we were in our forties and had established ourselves in a career. Both of us, as well, were iffy on the subject of having children. I still find that interesting and odd. I am very much about finding oneself and having a purpose in life- and have held to the idea, perhaps wrongly, that people should want more out of this life than to find a man or have children. I totally realize at this point that the idea of "career" is inherently capatilistic and not progressive, but I do believe that finding one's purpose in life is much more fundamental and natural than defining oneself in a career.I have since given up the idea that everyone should want this, and that for some people drifting (and indeed, perhaps for us all) is something to do,but still, for myself, I prefer the idea of the single, successful person who reaches their fullest potential and explores the extent of their possibilities.

My favorite male singers definitely have to be Stevie Wonder and Michael MacDonald. I love both, and also, Michael McDonald is perhaps the only man who could absolutely put me out(using an old-fashioned expression) with his voice.

Hungry Blues has a great post on the Cindy Sheehan case

here

Yesterday I watched a movie called Man Under Fire with Denzel Washington. I felt several things after watching this movie as it just tugged at me quite a bit. Firstly,I am troubled by some of the dynamics in this film. I know I perhaps look at things too politically all of the time, but I always do as I feel I must. Firstly, I am troubled tha this man gave his life to save this white girl. This is absolutely politically speaking, for personally it is quite a different thing, but on a political level-- when was the last time a white man died to save a black child? Would they? Also, the film also gives the sublte impression that this man had to die because A: He was a former assassin and B: Because he killed high positioned officers who just happened to be corrupt. I think Denzel Washington's politics are quite good, but I would definitely like to ask him about this film and what he feels about these troubling conflicts within the film.

This from Barbra's Website

Confronted often by Internet and media information that is frequently incorrect, in 1994, working on her speech for Harvard's School of Government, Ms. Streisand had noted, "I love information, but I'm afraid of the information age - too much information and not enough spiritual growth to handle it. I'm still afraid our technology is more advanced than our hearts. There's something lacking now - this gap, this void between technology and compassion."

Bellatry's has a great analysis of the Cindy Sheehan case.

Sometimes you need to stop, eliminate all of the words and exist totally within your heart. To reach that level where there are no words, just the rhythm of your heartbeat. "Live while you live and then die and be done with it."

My grandmother and my mother are both too much into fulfilling the roles handed to them by society, or the ones which they accept-- wife, mother, daughter,respectable . Whatever.My grandmother told me today that she was taught by her mother to be obedient. She said it with such pride. I looked at her. I dont think that word even registers in my vocabulary. Alas, I will define my own way. "Don't tell me not to live just sit and putter. Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade!Don't tell me not to fly Ive simply got to--if someone takes the spill its me and not you who told you you're allowed to rain on my parade?! I march my band out, I beat my drum, and if Im fanned out your turn at bat sir, at least I didn't fake it, hat sir-I guess I didnt make it! But whether Im the rose of sheer perfection a freckle on the nose of life's complexion a cinder on the shiny apple of it's eye- Ive gotta fly once, Ive gotta try once only can die once, ooh life is juicy juicy and usey and Im gonna get my bite sir!"

A few nights ago, I heard Monique give kudos to Condoleeza Rice. You know my sentiment. Black people need to watch out. When you play with a dog he will lick you.

I remember once when we were living in Chicago, my sister and her class at St. Ambrose put on a play to the music of Ray Charles'"Hit the Road Jack." It was a great time. My sister was/is a gifted person, even though she doesnt use them anymore. Very gifted dancer. I also remember when her ballet class put on a performance to the music of Gloria Estefan's "Do that Conga." I enjoyed that too. I should have taken ballet when my mother offered. I was too shy.

Tonight I revisited, with my sister, the songs of my childhood, particularly the music of Ella Jenkins. Ella Jenkins is an absolute favorite of mine stemming from the time that my Aunt Johnnie used to play her records in our class from the time I was was in Head Start til I left her class when I was in second grade. My aunt was my first teacher, a pivotal point in my development and in the current of my memories. She was a gifted teacher, and not just because I was her nephew, but she always sought to engage and awe us with the wonderful things that we had to learn in her class. She also doted on me and spoiled me( my relationship with my Aunt is a point of interest that I need to reflect on), letting me set up her movie projector in class when we were going to watch a film or pop popcorn or play with all of the things that she had to use in our classroom.

My aunt had a basement full of objects that sometimes made their way into our classroom. I remember most vividly the movie projector, the popcorn popper(on days when we would pop popcorn there would be those exciting trips to the grocery store before school). God memories are flooding back. We lived right across the street from Aunt Johnnie and Aunt Bertie and everyday we would carpool to school and work, dropping my mother off at Robert Taylor, my sister at St. Ambrose, sometimes Aunt Betty at her school or Aunt Bertie at hers and then Aunt Johnnie and I would make our merry way on to Price-- that is if her car made it. Sometimes her car would stop on the road(Aunt Johnnie had a peppermint green Cadillac, her pride and joy)at which we would load onto the bus and make our way to Price, or we would see Mrs. Bull, who would give us a lift to school. I remember once when Aunt Johnnie had a wreck, and there by the grace was Mrs. Bull, who took me to school while Aunt Johnnie stayed and cursed at the woman who hit her.

One of my favorite songs was "Little White Duck" that went

There's a little white duck
Sitting in the water.
A little white duck
Doing what he oughter.
He took a bite of a lily pad,
Flapped his wings and he said,
"I'm glad I'm a little white duck,
Sitting in the water."
Quack, Quack, Quack.

There's a little green frog
Swimming in the water.
A little green frog Doing what he oughter.
He jumped right off of the lily pad
The little duck bit.
And he said "I'm glad,
I'm a little green frog,
Swimming in the water,
Glumph, Glumph, Glumph."

There's a little black bug (bzz)
Floating on the water.
A little black bug (bzz)
Doing what he oughter.
He tickled the frog on the lily pad
That the little duck bit.
And he said, "I'm glad,
I'm a little black bug,
Floating on the water.
Bzz! Buzz! Bzz!"

There's a little red snake
Playing in the water.
A little red snake
Doing what he oughter,
He frightened the duck and the frog so bad,
He ate the little bug,
And he said, "I'm glad
I'm a little red snake,
Playing in the water.
Hiss, Hiss, Hiss."

Now there's nobody left
Sitting in the water
Nobody left
Doing what they oughter
There's nothing left but the lily pad
The duck and the frog
Ran away - I'm sad
'Cause there's nobody left
Sitting in the water
Boo! Hoo! Hoo!


God I remember us singing that in class and listening to those records. When they werent at school those records were in Aunt Johnnie's basement and the last I have traced them, they made their way into Aunt Earnestine's storage house when Aunt Johnnie retired and moved back to Alabama. Hmm... What a Memory.

Tonight I had a very long, lovely conversation with Kelly. I love talking to him. He is a sweet man and I value the bond between us. I would love for him to be mine again.