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When in Florida, I spend hours in Barnes and Noble and Starbucks working on AALBC.com. Sometimes I use the library, but I like being able to buy a cup of coffee and something to eat without having to pack up and leave.. Plus, I can people watch in B&N and Starbucks. People are so interesting, but before I digress let me tell you about a Brother I've become friendly with over the last couple of years, Milton Bertrand. We started talking because I noticed he was sitting in the B&N at a wooden desk--that he brought into the store himself--which initially seemed crazy--who brings a desk to a bookstore?!. We started talking and he explained how his desk actually folded up into his backpack. I thought that was such a cool idea since tables can fill up during busy times in the store. I filmed him on my cell phone but never edited the video (just never got to it). Late last year, I ran into him again and this time he had an upgraded model of the desk. It was no longer made out of wood, but plastic and a light-weight metal. The desk can also be converted into an easel with the desktop doubling as a whiteboard-like writing surface. So I filmed him again and this time I even started to edit the video, but one thing led to another and I never finished editing it. Yesterday I saw him again and told him I'll get to his video, but I was saying to myself I must sound like I'm full crap. So while he never asked for a video, I'd been promising to create one, for the better part of a year, but never did it. So I decided to finish it today. Hopefully, it will inspire others to create. He told me he actually filled a large order for a school.

I discovered late in life that I am an Existentialist and didn't know it. The 3 Stages of Life: (1) Birth (2) What the fuck is this? (3) Death

By virtue of being a crook, Donald Trump rescued himself from failing businesses by declaring bankruptcy and is probably indebted to Russia and maybe even China. He is foolish. As president he is an uninformed wind bag, a thin-skinned narcissist who blames others for his mistakes, and an irresponsible liar drunk with power. His Twitter tweets are often incoherent and contain misspellings. He gets over ,not because he is shrewd but because he is a sign of the whimsical times when flukes flourish and everything is haywire. Nobody was more surprised than him when he won, - by virtue of being at the right place at the right time and the beneficiary of the peculiar electoral college. ( His Press Secretary is pathetic as are his Secretaries of Education, and of Housing and Urban development, just to name a few.) He is humored by others around him who perceive that Republicans are "on a roll", - again because of the dynamics that have capriciously been brought into play because the world has become skewed, the tide has turned and some would even attribute this discombobulation to the configuration of the stars. Whatever. And I didn't say Corporate America or the Government who was in power during the Hurricane Katrina or the Flint, Michigan disasters were fools. Callous, yes, but not fools. Black people may be responsible in part for their own problems but let's just say that, from the very beginning in America, they got off on the wrong foot.

Ofcourse seeing more of "yourself" in your day to day reality will improve your self esteem. One of the reasons so many Africans and West Indians who migrate to the United States and do so much better as a group than AfroAmericans has less to do with them being inately smarter and more to do with the fact that they come here with a higher sense of self esteem and self-worth. They achieve greatness because they BELIEVE they can! Despite the poverty so many were raised in, Africans are born and raised in an environment where everyone of worth and achievement LOOKS LIKE THEM. The president and politicians are Black The school teachers and principals are Black The police officers are Black The lawyers and judges are Black The soldiers are Black The construction workers are Black. Everyone who runs the society....despite the problems that society may have.....are Black. So you grow up looking at people who look just like you who are called smart, beautiful, powerful, brave, and any other positive attribute you can think of. You grow up with the mentality that you can aspire to and achieve the highest positions of the land through effort and skill. Contrast THAT with the United States where White people basically run the nation and keep it humming and you end up going to them for your every want, need and grievance. Black folks don't even make thier own toilet paper. You grow up feeling oppressed, opposed, limited in your options, and feeling that others who don't look like you are better than you and that you should "know your place" and rely on them. BTW..... I look forward to Harriet Tubman's face being on the 20 dollar bill....lol. I just hope they don't lighten her up or straighten out her hair. MLK and Frederick Douglass should have BEEN on some currency.

Perhaps the characteristics that made Robinson an ideal candidate to integrate baseball, were the same ones that did not necessitate his assignation. Robinson was a young man when he died, younger than I am now. I still think of myself as relatively young, perhaps I always will... The Robinsons used to host a big concert in their backyard in CT, eventually if got so big it was moved. I attended a few times it was like a family reunion. I spent most of the day drinking and playing spades. The Jackie Robinson Foundation used to host an awards banquet for their scholarship fund at the Waldorf Astoria hotel (they still may do it I just have not been in a long time). It was a big event. For some reason, Goldman Sachs used to have me sit at one of their tables--which was unusual because everyone else at the table was a partner (read: very wealthy). I never did learn why they invited me, but I always enjoyed myself. I met Bill Cosby one year. This was long before the rape allegations Cosby presented as much more elderly than I expected and this was well over 10 years ago. It is interesting to consider how the Black American presence in major league baseball is approaching our involvement in Ice Hockey. 50 years later we need another Jackie Robinson, a great athlete, family man, advocate for Black rights, free of drugs and hormones, with a squeaky clean rep, to integrate baseball once again. Then again they don't make men like Robinson anymore, do they? May he rest in peace.