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I just recently completed Toni Morrison’s latest book “Home”, a novel I have been looking forward to reading because its advance notices promoted it as being set in the 1950s, an era I could relate to. Since many of Morrison’s novels take place way back in the day, I was glad she had chosen to write about what was, to me, a more recent period in history. I was curious about how Ms Morrison would portray the 1950s which have been referred to as not only a bland and innocent time populated by the “silent generation“, but also the decade that was ripe for the civil rights movement it spawned. I anticipated she would write about a passive race of people, done with being patient, spurred into protest by dynamic leaders like Martin Luther King, and inspirational ones like Rosa Parks, and martyrs like Emmet Till, all played out against a backdrop of doo-wop music and Amos ‘N Andy TV and Dorothy Dandridge celebrity. The ‘50s I knew. Silly me. I should’ve realized that Toni Morrison would never stoop to such mundane predictability. With Toni it’s never easy. And “Home” is vintage Morrison. So, before long, through the vividness of her prose fraught with its extraordinary metaphors, and the wretched poignancy of her characters, I was beyond reading this book; I was experiencing it. In my imagination I was there, immersed in a version of life in the 50s that was diametrically opposed to the one I led back then as a young black woman residing in a small integrated suburb of Chicago. Crouched in the unforgiving frozen terrain of Korea, killing to keep from being killed while dodging bullets, I was there with the book's protagonist, Frank Money, as he witnessed the horrible deaths of the homeboys with whom he had enlisted in the Army, hoping to escape the dead-end drudgery that was their fate as black youth bogged down in the dusty little rural town of Lotus, Georgia. There, following Frank through the post traumatic stress that plagues him as a shell-shocked war veteran, wandering the dangerous streets of northern cities, working his way through despair with whiskey and the fleeting love of Lilly, a comely, ambitious woman not content to be his ongoing caregiver. There, listening to the frenetic be-bop music in a smoky little night club, visited between trains on his way back to rescue his gullible younger sister, “Cee”, who has been victimized and sterilized by a mad professor of eugenics. And, in the end, there, back in the confines of a hapless little town that modernization forgot, and slavery remembered. Yet a place that is also a welcoming haven not lacking in the homespun warmth and time-worn wisdom embodied by its black inhabitants, common folk of varying degrees of good and evil who, through the worst of conditions have endured, blissful in their ignorance, secure in their belief that “be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home”. As the book draws to its close I was also there, witnessing a reappearing zoot-suited phantom who like the style he sported, comes and finally goes with a smile on his face, signalling that "all's well, that ends well". At 145 pages, “Home” is a short intense novel, something which always earns points with me, and a satisfactory read for those who are up to the challenge of spinning straw into gold. Finally, because it is what it is, I have no choice but to give this good thing that came in a small package, 4 stars. * * * *

I used to read MAD magazine when I was very young. It used to crack me up. Spy vs Spy was my favorite.

Glad this damn election is over. For me, the award for enduring the long tedious campaign is not that Obama won but that all the conservative right-wing Republican wackos and religious zealots have been defeated. Now, it's back to square one, unmindful that the economy will continue to do what it does, independent of the manipulations of human input. At least America lived up to its reputation for reuniting after a contentious election, Donald Trump aside. I knew FaceBook would be on fire when Obama was declared the winner, and reading all of the comments brought something home to me. Everyone was praising the lord, thanking Jesus, describing themselves as jumping up and down, the kind of jubulance associated with multi- million dollar lottery winners. One poster declared that this was the happiest day of his life. All of this confirmed why I took such a dim view of the proceedings that pitted these 2 candidates against each other. For some reason I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for purple-lipped Obama and his moon-faced wife, yet at the same time I found the robotic Romney and his mannikin mate obnoxious. Meoooow. But what overrode my personal prejudices had more to do with the people who supported Mitt and Barack. For Romney, it was the white, thinly disguised bigots whining for a return to the past, and the anti-women pro-lifers, and the narrow-minded bible-thumping Evangelicals, and the fascistic super patriots, and the black Uncle Toms. These were who totally turned me off. For Obama, I was irritated by the hard core, blindly loyal hero worshippers with their herd mentality, - black people looking for Obama to fulfill whatever was missing in their lives, satisfying their need for a savior to right past wrongs as they cast a jaundiced eye at any Black who didn’t get with the program. An anathema for a contrarian like me. However, I guess this is what choosing a leader is all about. Supporting the candidate with whom you can identify. The only problem is that presidential candidates seldom fulfill their promises. Their empty rhetoric is just an exercise in platitudes and sound bites. And they end up being at the mercy of Congress and corporate America and the military. Whatever. Barak Obama has won and America will now return to business as usual as he tries to make his audacity of hope a reality while treading a slippery slope that requires the cooperation of a non partisan senate. Have you got his back, God??

EX COACH SADUSKY GOT OVER 30 YEARS FOR CHILD MOLESTING AT PENN STATE.WHY HAS BISHOP EDDIE LONG NOT BEEN CONFRONED BY, THE NAACP,BLACK CHURCHES AND BLACK POLITICIANS FOR BEING SEXUALLY INVOLVED WITH YOUNG BLACK BOYS.////...CHURCH IS AS BAD AS PIMP AND DRUG HOUSES..///

18 YEAR OLD BASKETBALL PLAYER TONY FARMER IN OHIO GOES TO JAIL FOR KIDNAPPING AND ASSAULT ON HIS EX GIRL FRIEND..JUDGE SAYS 3 YEARS THIS IDIOT FALLS TO FLOOR IN COURT ROOM..WONDERING IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN HIS HOME..BLACK MEN AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE NOT DISCUSSED BY BLACK CHURCH,NAACP OR POLITICIANS,WHY/GABRIELLE SANSON MISSING, ANOTHER YOUNG BLACK GIRL,WILL NAACP, CHURCH AND POLITICIANS GO SEARCH,PROBALY NOT./////EBOLA VIRUS KILLS 10 IN AFRICA REPUBLIC OF CONGO..EBOLA VIRUS CAUSES HEMORRHAGIC FEVER.ORIGIN UNKNOWN.IS EBOLA KILLING IN WHITE SOUTH AFRICA..ORIGIN PROBALY WHITE MEN LIKE AIDS AND AIDS VIRUS CREATED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS..DEVIL EXPERIMENTING......WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED IF EBOLA IS IN THIS COUNTRY SPECIFICALLY BLACK COMMUNITIES...KLAN TRASH AND NEO NAZI TRASH HAVE BEEN CAUGHT WITH ANTHRAX AND RICIN......../

PEOPLE MAGAZINE SAYS BEYONCE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.NO/I DO NOT THINK SO..HAVE YOU NOTICE THE BEYONCE'S AND HALLE BERRY 'S ARE CHOSEN MOST BEAUTIFUL..LIGHT SKIN NOT DARK....DARK SKIN VERSUS LIGHT SKIN.. ..THE WHITE MEDIA PERFER LIGHT SKIN BLACK PEOPLE NEWS ANCHORS ARE LIGHT SKIN FEW DARK SKIN.....ALSO MAD COW DISEASE IS BACK......