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The Justice Academy What You Should Know was a short easy to understand book about the American Criminal Justice System. It was written in a simplistic format to encourage citizens to learn more about police officers and the American Criminal Justice System. Coming in August...The latest book by B.L. Brown Rules of Engagement: Mending Citizen/Police Interactions This book is a game changer in police/citizen interactions! This book informs the public about what the police do, what they should be doing, how to avoid interactions with the police and what to do if those interactions are less than positive. It talks about case law that guides officers in the performance of their duties and why they rarely get prosecuted. It is the public's training guide to interacting with police. This book is a great guide for parents having "The Talk" with their children about citizen/police interactions. Get the book on Amazon in August and join me at the Decatur, GA Book Festival September 1-3, where the book will be featured in the emerging author tent. To learn more about the author and her books visit thejusticeacademywhatyoushouldknow.com

I've heard so much hype about the impact a total solar eclipse has on people that I plan to check it out. https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/south-carolina/ I'm planning to head to South Carolina to view this event.

One of the most enlightening books that I've read on the reconstruction period, the events leading up to and after is "A Pictorial History of the Negro in America" edited by Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer - Third Revision by C. Eric Lincoln and Milton Meltzer. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York Now that I'm looking at this book again through "new millennium" eyes - I realize this picture book with its complement of editorial copy is the literary version of "Instagram" today.

This is something i am definitely hoping to witness - again. I saw a solar eclipse in 1970, through my special glasses, altho it was slightly different from this one according to reports. I don't know whether it altered my life or not... This one will occur a few days after my 84th birthday in August and if i'm still around it will undoubtedly be the last great celestial phenomenon i will ever see so i really hope I get to watch it. That is life altering in a way, i think. Another one of the best viewing places in the country will be Carbondale, Illinois, where it will be perfectly visible for the longest amount of time. i won't be venturing down state to see it, and the Chicago planetarium is sold out but i'll stand in my back yard and look on as nature takes its course.

Back in the early 2000s when I was researching for my first novel - Graham Hancock's findings turned up a lot in my search on both the internet and in books. This dude is relentless, I see. He is not letting it go. In fact, his reporting pointed me to the "Kebra Nagast" (glory of kings) and that led to more information available in Ethiopia and Eritrea about the underground churches and the fact that it was the birthplace of Christianity... Thank you for sharing this - I remember how proud I was to learn all this about African continent...and it took me on an odyssey (both inside my novel and outside) to learn a lot more about our knowledge of electricity et al ...in fact the protagonist in my book intimates that she went to a technology high school because of her ancestors.

...After almost 4 months, I've decided to end my boycott of social media. I definitely won't go back to posting every day, nor will I engage in efforts to increase engagement on these platforms. Maybe I'll post once a week, in the hopes that someone with an engaged social media audience shares what I've posted. Others sharing my posts is what has generated all of my social media traffic for the past three years, anyway... Social media is very powerful, too powerful if you ask me.

@CDBurns, it looks like I missed this comment. That is a good way to measure the impact of social media; as a function of the fans and followers you've earned versus traffic. For a noncelebrity, the number of your fans/followers is a function of the effort you put into increasing them it whether it is through paid or active engagement on the platform. The size of your fan base is a good proxy for your engagement (paid and organic) on social media. Best Metric for Evaluating Social Media Traffic If your goal is to acquire traffic from social platforms then what better metric is there? I wish I had my data. Google Analytics free information going back that far is just a rough estimate and social media platforms do not provide the number of fans and followers over time at least not going back as far as I need. Of course, the platforms themselves have the data and benefit greatly from it...we, in turn, are at a disadvantage flying blind. Results of Social Media Boycott After 3.5 Months Three and a half months into my planned 6-month boycott, I've learned a lot. An increasing number of people use social media as their primary web presence--even if they have their own website. This means: Social media is becoming the only way to reach people for whom you don't have contact information. People who share photos and videos of you often only share this information in social media. To show appreciation requires social media engagement. When I research an author, bookstore, or related business, social media is the only often the only place where information is available. Often I have to resort to social media, because the website is inadequate as the site's information stale or missing altogether. People often reach out to me on social media rather than through my website or email. Unless they are highly motivated people use the tools that are most convenient to themselves, which is often social media. Social Media Use Can't Reasonably be Avoided Basically, I can't effectively run AALBC.com without logging onto a social media platform for the reasons mention above. But these platforms are largely limited to Facebook and Twitter. Today Twitter and Facebook make up 93% of all of my social media traffic (13% and 80% respectively). Five years ago it was 67% (10% for Twitter and 57% for Facebook). Again this growth in share of social media traffic occurred during a period when I've largely abandoned use of these platforms. Twitter visitors are more engaged with AALBC.com than Facebook visitors. Twitter users look at more pages and stay on the website longer. But again, Facebook drives much more traffic. Albeit the amount of traffic has not been proportional to the growth in Fan and followers over time. Facebook and Twitter Dominate, No Use for Snapchat and Instagram I have discovered no reason for me to use social media platforms like Instagram or Snapshat, despite the fact that these platforms are wildly successful and are increasingly dominating a higher percentage of Internet activity of handheld users. Globally handheld devices have already surpassed desktop devices in terms of the number of users, which is why Google has penalized non-mobile optimized websites. Almost 46% of my traffic, in 2017, came from handheld or tablet devices. Only 5 years ago it was less than 16%. If someone is aware of a way for me to effectively utilize Snapchat or Instagram to drive traffic to AALBC.com without spending a ton of money or time I'm all ears. Right now Facebook appears to be the best game in town for driving traffic to AALBC.com. I also have zero interest in using those platforms which poses another challenge. Traffic is Much Higher, Growth Due Largely to Traffic from Search Engines Resulting from Website Upgrade Google Analytics has defined 26 other social media sites that have driven traffic to AALBC.com. rounding out the top 10 are Pinterest, Google+, Goodreads, YouTube, Linkedin, Instagram, Disqus, and Reddit. Of these only Pinterest, Google+, and Goodreads have shown and growth in the past year; the others are have suffered a sharp decline. I can not explain the growth of Pinterest, Google+, and Goodreads this year. I have accounts on all these platforms, but I simply do not use them very much, nor I I plan to. Today social media traffic is higher than it was 5 years ago, but this is because of social media is a smaller piece of a much larger pie. Pages views are up over 200% compared to 5 years ago. This is largely due to the website's redesign. Of the top 5 most frequently visited web pages 4 did not exist 5 years ago. These 4 pages were only possible because of the website's new database. Organic Search (someone visiting the site by clicking a link on a search result) is 71.69%% of AALBC.com traffic year to date 2017, Social media is 4.51% For the same period in 2016 Organic Search and was 64.63% and social media traffic was 8.62% What am I Gonna Do? I'll update this shortly...