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i had a taste of white entitlement this week-end when my kids surprised me with a surprise party on August 18th, my 85th birthday. in addition to my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, all of the guests were friends of my kids because all of my old pals are dead or living out of the state. I jokingly likened the lively affair to a "wake" and a last chance for everybody to view my body because i don't want a funeral when i croak, just cremation. Anyhoo, among the guests was a friend of my granddaughter's who is white, in her 60s, and crippled with no close family members. She considers herself to be my granddaughter's god mother because she was an old friend of her mother's, and she has latched on to my granddaughter and her daughter big time, expecting to be included in all of their activities, inviting herself to all of our family events, unaware of how she comes across as wanting to be treated like a privileged character. She considers herself to be a liberal, hates Trump and racism, all the while exhibiting a know-it-all attitude, and take-charge behavior. She is OK in small doses but rather annoying during other occasions. So, according to my daughter, this pest almost spoiled the surprise. She arrived late and because she is crippled, took forever to make her way to the house because she had to park far away, all of this causing my granddaughter to have to ride around and make up excuses to me as to why she was taking so long to go by my daughter's house to pick her up so we could supposedly all go to dinner. Once things got under way, this woman took on the role of being the choreographer of how things should go, who should speak first during the testimonial lies about me being a good mother, about who should sit where, who should be in what pictures, naturally creating a place of honor for herself. After a while us niggas got tired of this white Miz Ann and started to roll our eyes at her, eventually just ignoring her, something that seem to puzzle and hurt her feelings. While the rest of us were partying and singing along with a marathon of Aretha songs, she just kinda pouted obviously miffed because, among other things, she couldn't hold my great granddaughter on her lap and monopolize her. And, of course, she insisted that her gift to me be opened first. Of course, this kind of behavior isn't exclusive to white people in the company of blacks, but it never seemed to occur to her that she was the problem, not us and i really do think she would've been much less assertive had she been among a room full of her white peers. Whatever. i was totally surprised, and a good time was had by all. Well, almost all.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-22/ex-trump-lawyer-cohen-reaches-plea-deal-with-us-prosecutors/10150464 This just in @Troy Mr Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis said Mr Trump directed Mr Cohen to commit a crime and should face criminal charges as a result, claiming in a statement on Twitter that "If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?"

@Cynique I hope you have a most awesome New Year!!! 💜💜💜

HAPPY Belated Birthday Cynique! That was an interesting story.

LOL! Blasphemy indeed. I'll respond in the other thread. Colin Powell is retired. Tavis was erased as part of the #metoo movement. Obama nullified West....

To me, the middle aged men you mentioned are the few exceptions to the rule in a population of millions of mundane black men who simply go with the flow and are tokens who have a niche in the white Liberal community Black middle-aged men will make no waves when it comes to the most pressing issue of our time, - the deposition of Donald Trump. The one person who could really make a difference is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and he's a lost cause. But i appreciate your bringing to my attention the things i had no knowledge of when it comes to what some visible middle-aged black men are doing.

Let's just say, that black middle-age men might as well be invisible because they wield little influence over the direction of the country and this includes Obama. The high-profile over-achievers are successful in spite of being black and their visibility always seems to be in the area of making money.

OK you go with the reasoning of a 5 year and I'll go with that of the 50 year old 🙂

No, i'm not saying anything because i don't know enough about the subject. And the only blood type i'm talking about is "O". i don't know anything about A or AB. I can say that this subject has comes up from time time in my experiences and in a room full of people, there has always been at least one other black person besides me who has O Negative blood. I know nothing about this condition as it relates to European people. I also know that the RH factor was just discovered in the 1940s during WWII when blood transfusions were at an all time high. i have no idea what my parents' blood types were, but when i was born in the 30s the Rhesus monkey studies hadn't been done, and whatever their types were, it didn't kill me.

Protagonist: the main character Q1. Identify the protagonist? Q2. What is the protagonist’s goal? Antagonist: Person or situation that is interfering with the protagonist reaching the goal Q1. What or who is the antagonist? Q2. Is the antagonist effective in interfering or stopping the protagonist from reaching the goal? Theme: Main Message Q1. What message is the writer attempting to relay? Q2. Why do you say that is the message? Motifs: Lesser recurring messages throughout the work Q1. What recurring messages were throughout the work? Metaphors: Imagery representation for an issue, a person, societal ill, or situation. Q1. What metaphors did you notice in the book? Most memorable scene Q1. What scene from the book stayed with? Literary merit of the book Q1. How do you think the text will function; i.e. historical work, advisory work, reference? Author Q1. Would you read another work by the author?

1. No scheduled meeting time 2. The discussion board will remain open the entire monthh 3. Readers should comment on other’s post 4. Readers can and hopefully will add question to the standard question

I'm actually planning to pitch a workshop for this event next year.

My west coast family please consider joining for a workshop on #readingblack. If you care about Black culture, who tells our stories, and who profits from the activity; this workshop is for you: Tomorrow 1:30 p.m. at the Sacramento Black Book Fair.

I intend to have the information I gathered about independent publishing ready by next week. For now, I want to share a link from the New York Public Library. Your state may have a similar program. Look on the website and see. The details of the submission process are outlined. I just sent my review copy and information in. As one would expect they want the usual: ISBN No., Publication date, and reviews. Although the guidelines state a desire for diversity, the preferred review publications are Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and the other trade journals that are difficult for even traditional publishers to get into. Foreword, a trade journal which reviews small press and independently published books, is not mentioned as a preferred publication. The decision process takes six months. They do not order books from Amazon or other online vendors. The preference is for Baker & Taylor and Ingram. As stated in an earlier post, these distributors only take books from publishers that have already achieved a certain amount of success. A new publisher or an independently-published author would not be considered. As a balance to their biased information gathering, I included the seven public libraries and the historical society (someone sent An Extraordinary Life: Josephine E. Jones to the Wisconsin Historical Society -- I don't know who, but I am grateful) that had already accepted the book. With the torrent of books published each year, many of them poorly written and edited, I understand the need for guidelines. But people are going to have to use a little more imagination if they are not to overlook the fine books that are in the 21st century slush pile. The Diary of Ann Frank was rescued from that slush pile. I was tempted to write a cover letter reminding them that we would not know the work of Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Amiri Baraka, and Frederick Douglass if only traditionally published writers were selected for the library shelves. But I figured they were inundated with paper and wouldn't want anything they hadn't asked for. I'll let you know what happens in November. So here's the link: https://www.nypl.org/ask-nypl/author-submissions This link needs to be in plain text, which I don't know how to do. Try putting NYPL Submission guidelines for authors and publishers in your search engine. Enjoy the Memorial Day holiday!

Based upon feedback it looks like it would be best to abandon the proposed boycott of Amazon and redirect the energy to readers to purchase books, written by Back writers, from Black-owned bookstores. I'm joining an effort, started by a booktuber (folks on Youtube who create book review videos), Denise D Cooper. I registered the domain readingblack.com and will point it to this club. I'm seeking feedback on the meme below let me know what you think? This is a play on another meme I saw which used the phrase "Buy local or bye local."