CRY ME A RIVER

 

Maybe we are all flat-headed fish trying to swim upstream into the future. It's the racism that keeps us wet - it's the water we cannot see.

We now live in a world without facts. It's obvious if you're following the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump. Voters claim they don't trust either candidate. But the issue here is not trust - it's gravity. Gravity is what's suppose to hold us down like facts. That's no longer

the case. It's what makes the average pundit too often a fish without water. What planet is this?  I listen to Trump and every speech he makes is an introduction into an alternative reality. One can only conclude that red and blue states have become parallel  worlds - or as Amiri Baraka once said - "one man's fast is another man's slow." A lie is a truth that has dirt under its fingernails. Immediately after the first debate in late September both candidates will claim they won. You can turn the television off now before watching - because nothing makes sense anymore.

We're dead when we think we're living. Seeing is no longer believing - it's only what the camera on our cell phones captures that matters.

 Smile- this is a stick-up you MF! Give me your money and your country. Yeah - that's a puddle you're standing in not a river.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Lord

Listening to the album - Coltrane for Lovers.  A nice way to begin Friday and the last days of August.
Too often love is a farewell.  How often do we embrace loss?
So much seems to be ending. It feels like my departure is just around the corner. When will I wake and find my bags packed? Yes, leaving is surrender. A white flag around my life - suffocating me for too long and almost forever.

Those Last Days of August

David Fenza was my guest ON THE MARGIN this morning.  We talked about the running of AWP, creative writing programs and the culture wars. I'll air the program again when it gets closer to the AWP Annual Conference in February 2017. To access the show go to: www.wpfwfm.org

Access archived programs and then scroll down to ON THE MARGIN,  Thursday 25th at 9am.

Next week my guests will be writers Rose Solari and Rick Peabody.

I'll return to doing The Scholars (UDC-TV) on October 4th.

The next book I plan to review for the New York Journal of Books (NYJB) is Clarence Major's CHICAGO HEAT AND OTHER STORIES.

Annie Kim

Nice to receive an email from poet Annie Kim this morning. Here is a link to her website.

https://www.usi.edu/sir/sir-press-authors/annie-kim

E-News

Today I return to teaching my online memoir class (Mining The Mine for Memories) for the University of Houston Victoria.  Last year it went very well. It was my introduction to using Blackboard. A good opportunity to enhance my teaching skills and provide myself with a nice focus for 8 weeks.


I completed and submitted my review of The Strivers'Row Spy by Jason Overstreet to the NY Journal of Books. The next book I requested to review is Chicago Heat and other stories by Clarence Major.
My goal is to review a book a month.


I'll spend the day doing some correspondence and reading. Currently I'm reading Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond edited by Evelyn Louis Crawford and Marylouise Patterson. The letters are filled with some funny stories about Zora.
Nothing has changed in terms of how writers behave.


Yesterday, Bernard Richardson, dean of the HU chapel came by the house. I gave him a poster of Howard Thurman.


I'm still in the early stages of downsizing.

DICEE

Yesterday I found the folder that contained the early information about the District of Columbia Interracial Coalition for Environmental Equity (DICEE). This is the organization I started back around 1990 with Neil Seldman the president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.


I plan to place this information in my archives at the Gelman Library, George Washington University. It provides excellent documentation of how people of color were always concerned with the environment. The environmental movement is too often viewed as a white movement.

Windows & Mirrors

Below are remarks I made at the DC Jewish Community Center (DCJCC) on May 21, 2006. The event that evening was a bringing together of African American and Jewish musicians. "Windows and Mirrors'' was a popular cultural series I helped start with Miriam Nathan and Ken Sherman. Today there is still more work to do.






Several years ago I met Miriam Nathan and Ken Sherman, who at that time worked for the DC Jewish Community Center. Windows & Mirrors was simply an outgrowth of our friendship.
Whenever we came together there was always a lot of laughter and what the poet Lucille Clifton calls "good times."


Too often we look around our world and we wish we could find the good times; they seem too often to evade the headlines of our newspapers. As a poet I keep struggling to write love poems, to embrace a vision that will guarantee a better tomorrow.


Windows & Mirrors is simply built around the idea that one looks into a mirror and celebrates one's own identity; one turns from the mirror and then looks out the window. Outside is the world. Outside is one's neighbors.


African Americans and Jewish Americans share traditions as well as social and political interests. In the past Windows & Mirrors has looked at everything from sports to humor to music.


Culture is like lace, it gives a human being a style of grace. But it's not simply decorative, in fact it defines who we are. At times culture is that bridge which connects people. We walk across and dance across the bridge, suspended in our awe of one another.


If we were to stop for just one moment, maybe we would hear music and we would realize that life is one note. One note we can all hear, if only we listen to our hearts, or maybe just the musicians who on this evening will remind us how to love. Their new sounds nothing but a tapestry of beauty.


E. Ethelbert Miller

REPORT FROM THE FRONTLINE: Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

My friend LW (living in Milwaukee) sent the following email:

The Sherman Park area, specifically an 8-block area had 6 businesses burned, with no injuries.  They attempted to burn BMO Bank but it was put out quite rapidly. The cause was another Black male was shot by another fearful policeman, who happened to be Black, the story that's being spun is that he had a loaded gun in hand and would not put it down. This all follows about 4-6 Black males being shot by police, and about 7-8 Black males sodomized w/nightsticks on the open street, with the excuse of looking for "drugs".  If I remember correctly only 1 lost his job.  The county is just now paying settlement in that case.

 

 

Some of the youth here are extremely frustrated at the lack of resources, the arts, gym, and Humanities have been removed from the schools for over 10 -yrs.  Moody Pool which was on Burleigh was closed, and razed, the next hardship offered is they will be charging a dollar an hour to park at the lake front, or a $40.00 annual permit. A place that helped to squelch some tempers due to the heat, another attempt to push out the other.

 

Yes, we the innocent have been victims of Black on Black crime, and also driving while Black. Thank you for checking on me, much appreciated.

 

Zika Virus

I was reading about Puerto Rico declaring a health emergency because of the Zika virus.
Can you believe the stats below?


There have been 10,690 cases of Zika confirmed in Puerto Rico, including infections of 1,035 pregnant women.  By year's end, a quarter of their population of 3.5 million will have been exposed.
This is based on a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Things to Do

I need to visit the National Portrait Gallery and see "In the Groove: Jazz Portraits by Herman Leonard." The exhibit will be up until February 20th.

Three meetings today, one on Skype. I wish I didn't have to go out - but maybe I'll take in a movie this evening or tomorrow afternoon. It was  nice to spend a couple of hours just hanging out yesterday with my buddy Kate. Both of us trying to keep the dark political clouds from hanging over our heads. Somehow we'll survive all this - in many places there will be deep suffering but the human light still shines bright from the moon. Maybe this is all a take home exam and we still can't find the answers.

The Debates

Kate Damon and I put together our list of people who should be considered for the panels that will interview Clinton and Trump during the upcoming debates. We came up with the following names:


Gwen Ifill
Judy Woodruff
Megyn Kelly
Don Lemon
Doug Brinkley
Lester Holt
George Will
Chuck Todd
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Jorge Ramos
Jon Stewart
Bill Moyers
Juan Williams

A book review and stuff.

One book  I've been enjoying this summer is - THE STRIVER'S ROW SPY by Jason Overstreet.
I hope to review it for the New York Journal of Books in a few weeks.  Overstreet makes the 1920's come alive in a new way. This book reads like a film that needs to be made. Wouldn't it be cool if one could see actors playing DuBois and Garvey?  Please no Samuel Jackson or Kevin Hart.


Today ON THE MARGIN will be my beloved friend Naomi Ayala. Next week I'll be doing a phone interview with Charles Johnson.


The summer is almost over. The fall is shaping  up to be a busy one. It looks like I'll be doing a considerable amount of travel over the next several months.


I'm going to unplug a little from watching Trump and Clinton.  Nothing is going to be serious until next month gets here. I can see Trump upset with the debates already - he might even walk out in order to create drama. The Clinton camp should play hardball with the selection of who will be asking the questions. Trump's case about the scheduling of political conversations up against the NFL is hilarious. Are we really watching the Super Bowl in September and October?

New words for lips that kiss...

Moral imagination


Contaminated moral environment


Race Porn


Recycled racism


Word embrace


Deep State


Digital Bunkers


Cultural Pilgrims


Deep Dish Conversations


Decision fatigue


They could be good eggs


Race Resurrection


Spiritual solidarity


K-Muffins


Culture Tank


Digital curator


Writing compass


Two-sided dumb


Racial fishbowl

E-NOTES FOR THE NEW AGE

IT'S TIME TO MOVE FORWARD and begin to write about different topics. For about three years I've been compiling a list of words to use that might help us change the narratives we cling to. Some of the words I created, others I heard and just wanted to sing.