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December Solstice art or text craft parade The December Solstice is December 21st 11:19 pm EST or UTC-5 , it is the beginning of winter in the northern hemisphere, summer in the southern hemisphere share photos of art OR text of fiction The photos can be to->sculpture/knitting or sewing/graffiti/tattoo or any craft depicting Black people in summer in the southern hemisphere, any country <south america/caribbean/africa/south asia/australia> OR Black people in winter in the northern hemisphere, any country <north america/europe/northern asia> The text can only be fiction based on the following: Black person or peoples at the first day or summer or winter STORY 1 : https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-december-solstice-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=963 Story 2: https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-december-solstice-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=964 November 28th Native American Harvest Art Thanksgiving is November 28th , share photos of art OR text of fiction The photos can be to->sculpture/knitting or sewing/graffiti/tattoo concerning Native Americans enjoying food only -can include Black seminoles- no colonists from europe The text can only be fiction based on the following: Native Americans communities around harvest - black seminoles allowed- no colonist from europe https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-native-american-harvest-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=961 November 11 Veterans day is November 11th, share photos of art OR test of fiction, guest comments are allowed The photos can be to->sculpture/knitting or sewing/graffiti/tattoo concerning Black Veterans, any country any time, any army The text can only be fiction based on the following: Black Soldiers who fought against the USA for the british/ Black soldiers during the Haitian Freeing/ Black Seminoles during the time of osceola/jonas caballo/Black soldiers who fought for Menelik II in the first Abyssinian-italo war story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-veterans-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=959 story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-veterans-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=960 October 31st Halloween, Oct 31st to Nov 1st is Samhain, mid september equinox to december solstice The time of final main harvest before the winter. look at this dog, the ghost:) https://0512-97.tumblr.com/post/631277935457878016 Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-halloween-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=957 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-halloween-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=958 October 12th-13th indigenous peoples day - present a story of text or images that reflect Black Indigenous people of the USA or the greater american continent https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/539-indigenous-peoples-day/ September Equinox- it is september 22nd 13:31 UTC equate to 8:31 utc-5, it is the beginning of fall in the northern hemisphere, spring in the southern hemisphere < http://www.astropixels.com/ephemeris/soleq2001.html > share photos of art OR text of fiction The photos can be to->sculpture/knitting or sewing/graffiti/tattoo or any craft depicting Black people in spring in the southern hemisphere, any country <south america/caribbean/africa/south asia/australia> OR Black people in fall in the northern hemisphere, any country <north america/europe/northern asia> The text can only be fiction based on the following: Black person or peoples at the first day of spring or fall Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-september-equinox-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=948 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-september-equinox-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=949 September 21st international day of peace- a story of peace https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-september-equinox-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=947 September 7th – Mrs. moses, born 1860 was a painter from new york state, began painting at 78,a story of an older person painting Statian LAbor Day- First monday of September-a story of john henry in the usa Ray Bradbury birthday August 22nd- I quote him: "Libraries raised me... I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for ten years" Submit a story using three random things, solid/liquid/gas/eectromagnetic in the room where you sleep, utilizing a book in some fashion in the story. Cat Nights begin on August 17th - display any text or art concerning cats. <Cat Nights begin on August 17. This term harks back to the days when people believed in witches. A rather obscure old Irish legend said that a witch could turn herself into a cat eight times, but on the ninth time (August 17), she couldn’t regain her human form. This bit of folklore also gives us the saying, “A cat has nine lives.” Because August is a yowly time for cats, this may have prompted the speculation about witches on the prowl in the first place. Also, nights continue to get longer. Cats, crepuscular creatures, are nocturnal hunters. Their superior night vision means that the nights belong to them. citing> https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-black-cowboy-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=943 Mid June Solstice to september equinox, Midsummer eve < equal distant days between the June Solstice and the September Equinox, august 6th or 7th in 2020, ? 2021 > Usually celebrated August 1st , also called Lammas This is a free subject time, think of your dreams or compose any art or prose to any subject. Black Cowboy day- In the USA , National Cowboy day is july 25th so I say, give this day to art, text full of imagination for the black cowboy https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-saint-mary-magdalene-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=938 Saint Mary MAgdalene- the catholic saint day is the 22nd of july, i say she warrant better, what is your craft to her? https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-aphelion-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=936 Aphelion is July 4th 11:04pm in 2020, the Aphelion for earth is when the earth is farthest from the sun, in its eliptical orbit. If you consider the Perihelion the beginning of a year, then the Aphelion is the trust midyear point. Every planet around the sun has an aphelion. Earth's moon like all other moons has a similar action, called an apogee to a planet, where a moon is farthest from the planet it rotates around, by having an elliptical orbit. Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-aphelion-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=923 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-aphelion-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=924 Midsummer day June 24th - summer in europe or other places was culturally started in May and ended at the end of august. Thus late july was called midsummer. Usually between June19th and june 25th. What dream did you have? Father's day is june 21st Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-june-solstice-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=911 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-fathers-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=912 The June Solstice , in 2020, is on the 20th, it will be in the moment 5:43 PM on Saturday In the northern hemisphere summer begin, in the southern hemisphere winter begin. The sun will appear to be at its highest point in the sky in the northern hemisphere, the lowest point in the sky in the southern hemisphere. In parallel, during the December solstice, in the northern hemisphere it begins winter, in the southern hemipshere summer The sun will appear to be at its lowest point in the sky in the northern hemisphere , while the highest in the southern hemisphere EQuinox, the path of the sun crosses the equator of earth extended out into space or the celestial equator. Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-june-solstice-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=909 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-june-solstice-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=910 Juneteenth is July 19th , a day celebrated as the day when all black people in the usa knew that the slave system had been destroyed, not legally abolished, which is the 13th amendment. State text or graphics depicting Juneteenth to you. https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-juneteenth-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=908 Flag Day <june 14th , June 14, 1777 the usa flag was adopted : "That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.">- commemorating the Flag of the usa. IT is not a federal holiday. But, what does the USA flag mean to you? I ask for various text or graphics depicting that feeling. Here is some trivia. When is a star supposed to be added when a state is added to the union? https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-flag-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=905 Memorial Day <last monday of may originally may 30th, originally called decoration day> - create writing or art that involve the the death of Black soldiers who died serving on the battlefield for the us military or others. I ask a query? https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-aphelion-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=914 Joan or Arc canonized <may 16th>+ Jumping Frog Jubilee <every third weekend in may, honoring MArk Twain's first published work> https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-mothers-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=901 Mother's Day is May 10th , Photos or text involving art /live model/stories involving black mothers Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-mothers-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=897 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-mothers-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=899 May 1st, Floralia or festival of Flora/ hellenistic Chloris or Communists/socialists international workers day for incident involving a workers march on may day, make a story concerning flowers and labor across flag borders, excluding the usa , also called May Eve , or MidSpring or Mid march equinox to june solstice Earth Day, is april 22nd, show art or text or fiction involving the earth Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-earth-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=894 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-earth-day-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=895 Eostre Easter is April 12th in the year 2020, the name is derived from Ēostre the real or unreal germanic goddess but the date and most modern traditions refer to Pascha which roughly translates to passover, the Jewish holiday. But, I want to focus on Ēostre. For easter, include the real or unreal traditions attributed to Eostre, like rabbits, or make your own.You can show photos of art OR text of fiction The photos can be to->sculpture/knitting or sewing/graffiti/tattoo or any craft depicting Eostra real or unreal traditions The text can only be fiction based on the following: Real or unreal traditons of Eostre. Orthodox catholic easter comes a week after roman catholic easter. Story 1 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-eostre-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=892 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-eostre-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=893 April Fool's day April 1st http://houyhnhnm.github.io/aprilfool/index.html March Equinox art or text craft parade The March Equinox is March 19th 11:49 pm EST UTC -5 , it is the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, fall in the southern hemisphere share photos of art OR text of fiction The photos can be to->sculpture/knitting or sewing/graffiti/tattoo or any craft depicting Black people in fall in the southern hemisphere, any country <south america/caribbean/africa/south asia/australia> OR Black people in spring in the northern hemisphere, any country <north america/europe/northern asia> The text can only be fiction based on the following: Black person or peoples at the first day of spring or fall AALBC STORY https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-march-equinox-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=878 Story 2 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-eostre-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=890 Story 3 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-eostre-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=891 Saint PAtrick day https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-eostre-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=889 Mardi Gras is February 25th in the year 2020. I ask you to make a journal of your day in New Orleans during mardi using photos from wherever you like to paruse Story 1 : https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-eostre-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=885 Story 2 : https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-eostre-art-or-text-craft-parade-good-news-blog/?do=findComment&comment=886 Black Hearts Day or Valentine's Day good news - Any Love , story or image stating Black love, any language, any geography, any religion. Love is meant to be shared everyday,but giving it a day in the year to itself is not an evil or bad thing. Enjoy Black people together. In the usa it is feb 14th Richard Murray Valentines day album 2020 LINK Mid dec solstice to march equinox, Midwinter day in the northern hemisphere- called imbolc , ussally celebrated on february 2nd , which is also groundhog day in the usa ? Martin Luther King junior Day - His actual birthday is the fifteenth of january but the federal holiday is in a monday for three day weekends, like others. It is celebrated on the third monday in the month of january in every year since its inception in the Statian Empire. I ask you to share , historical fictions/prose/graphical artwork in any style concerning MArtin Luther King jr....I do wonder why Blacks in the U.S.A. can not come together and demand a true day off for this federal notice. And also share, officials days in a country outside the usa for a black person in history? In Amendment Why the holiday is on his the third monday and not his true birthday? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Monday_Holiday_Act MLK jr's views on Financial Accountability https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnKP__N7MNI MY 2020 speech https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/194-richard-murray-creative-table/page/7/?tab=comments#comment-820 Marcus Garvey Birthday Jan 17th January Perihelion The perihelion is the moment in the path the Earth make about the Sun ,elliptical orbit, where the Earth's position is closest to the sun. It will occur : January 5, 2020 2:47 am EST or UTC-5. The June Aphelion is when the earth is farthest away. Please provide any art or text concerning a sun coming closer, and don't try the twilight zone episode. YEAR MARK EXTRA A Day, and Most Night, At The Uffizi Daylight savings time 2020 Arcane Idol 2020

These are the members I have guided into this website, an eternal pledge drive https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/9365-sabine-ziya/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRUL_JY2-Oj3tVRtnPUugvg https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/9251-maame-dede/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=53502809&ref=br_rs https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/9366-rosa/ http://melaninmoney.tumblr.com/ https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/9384-uniquelymade7/ https://www.facebook.com/uniquesolidfoundation https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/9407-angel-alita/ https://www.facebook.com/AngelAlita77

ADINKRA EXAMPLE 2/21/2019 Link to example in comments: https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/215-sanatambo-is-here/?do=findComment&amp;comment=504 Kobo complete version: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sanatambo-adinkra ORIGINAL POST 3/25/2018 Good day all, I wanted to accomplish a few things early two thousand and eighteen: make a video game utilizing some sort of Black cultural reference, sell it on a platform; I achieved it. SanaTambo which mean art puzzle is here; it is a rendition to nonograms, more commonly known in the usa as picross; the images one can create are versions to Adinkra from Ghana. To access it, you must use the Kobo App. If you want to test out whether you can utilize it, you can use the first entry in the SanaTambo series, which is free. https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sanatambo-adinkra The process itself was very interesting. I will share that in my emailing list. If you want to join my email list, you can comment on here as a member or guest and we will connect. SanaTambo Versions English https://www.kobo.com/pt/pt/ebook/sanatambo-adinkra-1 Français https://www.kobo.com/fr/fr/ebook/sanatambo-adinkra-3 Português https://www.kobo.com/pt/pt/ebook/sanatambo-adinkra-1 日本語 https://www.kobo.com/ja/ja/ebook/NNxdRbPVXT-g8GicV2IVSw 中文 https://www.kobo.com/zh/zh/ebook/sanatambo-adinkra-2 SanaTambo Example I have created a system that allow me to make puzzles in the style to picross/nonogram/SanaTambo . But I need to check how the system will operate in varying scenarios. I made an example epub to see. In my emailing list I asked folk to check it out but I ask as much in the AALBC community as well. Whatever your experience please share it publicly in comment, guest comments are allowed, or in private, or ,<if you are in my emailing list> an email. If you want to join my emailing list, please ask me and I will add you after a short correspondence. The Example is linked below , it is a free ebook https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sanatambo-example

The essence of day 1 was making a game that was a non zero sum base. I placed in the audiobook my audio thoughts. If you want a complete reference, the ebook has the audio as well as the transcript and the game. The Game link below is where you can see my gaming example. In a non zero-sum game, winning or losing is not the goal. In the game I made, the goal is to keep playing it, thus you do not want it to end, you are in control of both sides, like when one plays chess by themselves but unlike the chess scenario the goal is to never have either side win, it is to keep going. In my head, I had an idea of jason and the argonauts, if you know that film from ray harryhausen. Question, what problem does the game have? I will not tell Oh, penultimately, what is the game imaged on the cover of the audiobook/ebook or this blog? And lastly, I love to quiz, where does Houyhnhnm come from? Audiobook : https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/gameclass-audio-i EBook : https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gameclass-i Game: https://houyhnhnm.github.io/Gameclass/game1.html Introduction , Day 1 (Above)

Title:Harlem - June to November 2015 I am a child to Earth living side my peer, in a concentration in a night, I see... not from the Sun, many moon, shining ... many voice yell in the sky no horn or four horseman ride remind, a faint glimpse to a god kicking a free moon by know why, not I Out from the quiet Harlem Where the trees recall yesterday South from the modern Where the lights shine away... from the old song in the street Is a raccoon family Waiting for sapiens to segregate Tis a wait insane Waiting for: fish fry, jass, or roof... parties Them can not survive: mixing, security, or real estate But a darkling notice the scene He provide a path in the shade Just to a few from Harlem past... to find the Black Bath Walking outside, I ponder, where is wisdom, when the Sun can not wake me to see it, and... what can be seen from apartment 2B? concrete sequoia, surround every pane, even the baby thrush, needing parental sustenance, can't be known, and... we all ask, where with all is hope?... can I know in 9C? can enlightenment be, where no butterfly roam, even if I live or write every poem?... may I live near 2B... only down the hall, where you live in 4U, and maybe you can see or know, if you own, a pane or more from hope... will it sing, to my craft, as I walk... apartmentless, in the public dark The Trees or the Churches, are all that will stand Where is the tree that remember the land Does a church know where, the skulls from the first, was planted The collages from modern mancraft is disorganized, most ignorant I heard from one collagent ... The Pigeon who climbed a whole hill do not forget a sky never needing, to walk to one again ... do not forget an earth while sleeping to fly truly fly... to a rose beyond any sky do not forget a time when two sunflower , grow at first glance for one grow a short... distance yet, the shades them can not see prove:sky, earth, or time in chiaroscurhyme and!...this dummy still stand! pondering a turncoat dove ponderance I am comforted in knowing their finiteness though, I know a clear sadness for the collages everborn pretelling I will never know where stand the skulls, or the land What if a green speak to you one day do you think, it will speak to Giants colored grey or multicolor dirt from an annual day I say they are not signs... from the urban green not like those southern trees who know the bloodiest luxiery A salvadoran Rose, through my mind, once spoke to me We look at each other through a lens that is the moon after in the afternoon, a bluejay hope to find hopping up the fire escape to the top floor, why?! a rainforest on the third, or higher than Everest on the roof or maybe a query from the terrace fleur How do you find a place beyond time, is it galaxy wide, or smaller than an eye? Does a green, the Moon, or an avian know where it hide In a deep autumn night I think, what deep thought from those once cargo or more than likely, threw off did they saw life as hope, or a wrought did they trusted in nature, used her time as I have born in summer, a plethora from light... this fall beginning I was unwised, lived on the obvious prismal abuse suddenly pondering, why I suddenly dream to you you are not in a thought yesterday think yesterday has nothing from you? now nearest to the future what will winter be, these questions do you feel the sunlight when i do do you feel the rain are you surround between the night stars do you block their speak ... or the mirror to chaotic reality... silent fantasy from Richard Murray 2015 Check out my ebooks- the free one is noted, please read/enjoy/give me your response: Sunset Children Stories: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sunset-children-stories Looking West and West: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/looking-west-and-west Janidogo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-janidogo The Gospel of Joseph: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gospel-of-joseph The Nyotenda FREE : https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-nyotenda Includes a comic. The following link is an excerpt LINK

I successfully published a poetry book, i entitled, Poetry or More. Now, the original plan I used is to place three year in one book, text side audio. Unfortunately, a 100MB or 100,000KB limit exist on ebooks that can be loaded <that is fair cause that equate to a huge amount from raw text>. Thus, I made four version, one is only text that include all the years. The other three are partials: 2015-2016, 2017 January to June, or 2017 July to December. The text only includes all the poem stories, poem of the months or seasons. I placed the links to each Poetry or More variant below, and if you want an excerpt I kept the December solstice 2017/December 2017/December Poem Story 2017/July Aphelion 2017 poem blog entries. All is linked below. Enjoy. Poetry or More 2015-2017 text only https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/poetry-or-more-1 Poetry or More 2015-2016 audio or text https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/poetry-or-more-2 Poetry or more 2017 January to June audio or text https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/poetry-or-more-3 Poetry or more 2017 July to December audio or text https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/poetry-or-more Overdrive links https://www.overdrive.com/series/richard-murray-short-story-collection December Poem Story 2017 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/137-december-2017-poem-story/ December 2017 https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/134-july-aphelion-2017-poem/https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/120-december-2017-poem/data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAPABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw== July Aphelion 2017 Listen to "January Perihelion 2017" on Spreaker. Farthest from the light Is the ancient under water wheel Seahorse, crab, anchovy, or like, dance in it The last to it's kind It's descendent's, kill or betray the old life ...Long before man, or when dinosaur's began Earth made the ancient plant's To play side all other children But... came a change Earth became cloudy, the sunlight distant in essence And, nearest penultimate ancient plant's died But the heart from Earth, did not want all to die And embrac'd the ancient under water wheel To usher in the dinosaur And, it surviv'd, to today, deep in the water Far from the sun , alway's Audio ( https://www.spreaker.com/user/6716082/july-aphelion-2017 ) Check out my ebooks- the free one is noted, please read/enjoy/give me your response: Sunset Children Stories: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sunset-children-stories Looking West and West: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/looking-west-and-west Janidogo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-janidogo The Gospel of Joseph: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gospel-of-joseph The Nyotenda FREE : https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-nyotenda Includes a comic. The following link is an excerpt LINK December 2017 Poem December I hear some speak to maturity why am I not convince? do I have access to a wise diary am I living behind a fence nothing literal or from prison is about me sole support from my sense kin to all common water's born from being many schnee each winter, the former liquid chime, Never Again! On the craterous surface, will we be sow Under only the sky, above all other life, is our remaining time ... then the sun rise, and maturity prove elusive again ... I hear few speak to possibility why do most shun if sense do they have no craft they fee are they surround from total absence? nothing craftal or annihil they don't see all support from their mince kin to all warstarter's born from inherent malflee each winter, the sanguine rhyme, Always Again! In the cavernous channels, will we be sow Under only the hide, between all other life, is our remaining time ... then the lids rise, and possibility prove all coming again ...Can a possible be immature Is immaturity a craft from some possible to reject all other possible Do the questions prove sense? Audio ( https://www.spreaker.com/user/6716082/october-2017-poem ) Check out my ebooks LINK Short Story Collections LINK JIHI series LINK The Gospel of Joseph: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gospel-of-joseph December Solstice 2017 Happy December Solstice. Mama Earth in less than a moment tilt her axis farthest from parallel to the Sun, more than any other time save one between the Perihelions. May those in the northern hemisphere, have a collective , communal warmth, may those in the southern hemisphere, have a energetic smooth cool. A once virgin prince, now white hair king Ponder to her tomb, the Last Rose, from Hadinchi On his regal seat, in a cold empty hall He remember, the fairies dance, on all the jewel pall's No longer their sprinkle's, in this long fall He leave his seat, stride slow on broke floor He see her portrait, made when good time's were more A goblin weave'd her skin, from hairs on the amber boar No longer it make step, in this long fall Open the hall door, and on to the mausoleum The path shimmer or shine, throughway, to where his woe's sum From glass depicting her life, molded from dragon fire's, or jitu hum's No longer they breath or song, in this long fall Finally, to her body rest, in grandeur timeless A statue made, from the king mind or hand, to her likeness Eight ninth from centuries, on the craft, and still a jumble mess No longer can he remake, in this long fall And fall... the white hair king, crying My Love! my love... Time smooth over, and none recall, or only hear whisper, in winter To the once virgin prince or Tamawari, his lover ...But, the rarest whisper, say a black dove cry in a spring, will end their leter Audio link( https://www.spreaker.com/user/6716082/december-solstice-2017-poem ) Check out my ebooks- the free one is noted, please read/enjoy/give me your response: LINK Short Story Collections LINK JIHI series LINK The Gospel of Joseph: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gospel-of-joseph Be Safe December 2017 Poem Story Somewhere, or sometime, in existence In a temporal expanse Tween cluster's from star's or nebula's On a planet from like set Aside a beach, part to an isle in the caribbean, is waterfall's Where she sit I don't know her name Have not ask'd about Been here a few day, and still not approach I have no game, or malice play A simple joy, watching the sun, shadow, wind, or mist mix, about her, or her dress But... time is near done The time this somewhere Me no romeo, her no juliet Nor us two ship, to make a living idol or gret or regret Only a woman enjoying the sun, shadow, wind, or mist, mix about her, or her dress Or a man enjoying where she sit, honorable distance, no persistence Two pleasant, quiet, honest... model: amber rayne photographer: Travis Houze https://www.flickr.com/photos/37051354@N04/27333584943/ Check out my ebooks- please read/enjoy/give me your response: LINK Short Story Collections LINK JIHI series LINK The Gospel of Joseph: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gospel-of-joseph

Dear Readers, I tend to enjoy reading various articles on writing , the industry, the concepts, et cetera. parallel to craft articles. These topics can be fun or engaging. As some of you know, I have a controlled electronic footprint, meaning, I don't keep old posts. This blog never had fifteen posts and never will cause I don't like ejunk. But, I realize, aside my posts to what I created and create, I need a post to just chit chat if you will. So this post will serve that function, through its comments I will posts various topics concerning writing. Work Cloud EBook List- see below , Onmyoji Contest Entry , Pacific Rim contest Entry , Bettering American Poetry Anthology Entry , White House Carol , Maple Me entry , We Happy Few Wellington Wells entry, Fiyah Magazine- , Killens Review-, Audiobook list , Concrete Fables Creative Cloud Questions to think about , How We Define Art a response , Lessons from Last Action Hero , Black Soldiers fighting for the British against the USA during USA secession why no memorial , Levar Burton Reads , Ethiopian apocalyptic film , Is Biography the biggest genre today circa 2018 , if they remade Cleopatra jones? , which cliche you dislike most? , Grammar Check , those who write love are making money, have you done a collaboration .. on a train , be your character on social media , who are afro latinos ? , a short history to the internet , What describe best the Native American experience in fiction , Get Out early - what do you think compared to the final film? , Prince and religious friction in film , Let us compose something together using these rules, what other language will you say if you can? , AALBC community book- in progress till made , not any time soon but... , A Glengarry Lead , silhouette in film , Get Out defined , inspiration listings, the return of poetry and some fun , written and sun by Aretha Franklin , Unconventional art , Der Tchrumpfs , Selections from poetry through the native female pen , a question to multiculturalism , Nonqonqo in A Warm December , Peola Edit- Immitation To Life 1934 , concealed carry models , Ann Gorman Edit- Follow Me Quietly 1949 , censoring online , MLKjr2019 , Black Party to governance , Star spangled why, Audio EXcerpts , False Civility , US , Glass submission story , code geass, Juju webseries official poster , acting , lee daniels workshop , black anti immigration , silent sundays , a positive child bride story? , a fictional character to be president of the usa? , Ta-Nehisi Coates , George Lucas , open marriage in fiction, kobo audiobook , Fiyah nanowrimo writing groups , Black Solidarity day 2019 , The Comeback Of Sexual Chocolate , no time to die poster content , Overdrive , lt uhura dollypartonchallenge , emoney, a day and most night at the uffizi , raprushmore , Malcolm 2020 , daylight savings time 382020 , the black fratrem , a saint patrick day past, heavymetal sixart challenge, startwithlove , to arbery from maurice jackson, from owner's choice to merit , FIYAHCON 1 , Flashfiction 7142020 , Radical Racer , 20th anniversary Deviantart , the ethics of lust , Sanctimony Literature , ? Calligraphy Mirror Kiss of a dagger , Angelique Noire , ? Anthology Sentences Breonna Taylor , ? Engineering Cloud Fixing Plastic , Blacksmithing Basics , multi electromagnetic wave observation , AMP in Email , Makers jobs or cosplay , ? Email Gazette Fragments fifth issue , tenth issue, eleventh issue , twelfth, thirteenth , fifteenth ,sixteenth, seventeenth ,eighteenth , 19/20/21/23 ,24/25/27/29/30/31/32 , 33/34/35/36/37 ,38/39/40/41/42/43 , 44/45/46/47/48/49/50/51/52/53/54 , 55/56/57/58/59/60/61 , 62/63/64/65/66 , 67/68/69/70, 71/72/73/74/75/76 , 77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90 , 91<->130 , ? Question Cloud The Internet without the USA, are marvel movies theme parks or cinema, joker of our times , the greatest native american warrior in film , is dr serikawa the special effect , isn't it time for a pro nazi german film, Ligt and Daenerys , liking online , what does joker 2 after the joker film with joaquim phoenix mean , when is a culture allowable , history book Kamala Harris side Corey Booker , who will be your fictional fertilizer , MLK jr. day 1202020 , what tropes are you tired of , still alive obstinate , What is the July 5th speech fo FRederick DOuglass ,Has the Black community in the usa repeated the mistake of the black soldiers of the 13 colonies throughout its existence in the usa, 9112020 , ? EBook LIST Richard Murray Short Story Collections Kobo Link OverDrive Link JIHI series Kobo Link Overdrive Link Poetry or More Audiobook link Kobo Link Visasiki Audiobook link Kobo Link Gospel of Joseph Kobo Link Overdrive Link Richard Murray Collages Kobo Link SanaTambo Versions Overdrive Link Kobo English Kobo Francais Kobo Portugues Kobo 日本語 Kobo 中文 Der Tchrumpfs Kobo Below is a collage i made to Ty Wilson Art Be Safe

BlackGamesElite is a online club which I started to do two thing 1. Have a community considering Black people, a human community based on the auniversally accepted phenotypical range of skin, in relation to all elements of the video game industry, from developers to culture to characters in games or any other factor in said industry. 2. To have fun:) Rules 1. Have fun 2. All phenotypes are welcome, but if you can't handle Black empowerment, whether you be black or not, please go somewhere else online.

"No one wants to pay for distraction, but they will pay if it's packaged as help." (me) How help is defined is tricky. It depends on the client/customer's wants. If your prospective customer wants to escape their environment, then consider if you, the independent author have the skills, resources, and experience packaged in your book to help. If your book is the solution, then show them how it can get what they want. In this case, adventure, exotic destination, and as a bonus, a mental place where they will experience something new. If your book doesn't qualify to assist, then recommend one that can and sell it to them. Note: selling is an exchange of goods and services for currency. (Currency could be signing up for your newsletter because they value your judgment.) You can increase your market to gain their trust and sell them what they want another time. This marketing mix relies on the SAVE* strategy. When marketing your book, consider a promotion campaign that features Solution, Access, Value, and Education. S = solution - show us how your product helps us solve our problem. A = access - consider how your readers decide to make purchases and provide product info along those channels. Remember, following customers around a store doesn't work - so don't cyberstalk your prospective buyer either. Think about affiliate marketing - advertisers want to appear where they know prospects are receptive to their solution. It's soft promotion because there's no one aggravating them, allowing the candidate to seek out information for themselves. V = value - ask how does this product (book) benefit your reader. Every book is not for everyone. So first find out who reads your type of books - and then share with them how your book fits their desires. E = education knowing who your readers are allows you to share information on topics they enjoy. If your book is a romance - then romance readers would be thrilled to learn the latest - like a romance industry gossip website will bring them to you - and you can engage and build a community around mutual interests. And this how you can position your book, product/service, in a way that helps them help you. "You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want." ~ Zig Ziglar (salesperson, motivational speaker) *Eduardo Conrado, who was senior VP and the chief marketing officer at Motorola Solutions, allegedly came up with the SAVE marketing mix framework.

There’s only one way to become a bestselling* author. Get a lot of people to buy your book. - Simple, right? Yes, but it’s not easy for independent authors who must get their book in front of enough people to gain global sales. Well, at least it wasn’t easy before the internet and the growth of eCommerce. Back then, it was nearly impossible to make global sales without a prominent publisher. Now any writer can sell worldwide. So why do so many independent authors insist on selling their books exclusively on Amazon.com? And to their detriment. There are plenty of viable outlets available that will lead to better sales and robust revenue. Yet many stop there and then wonder why they can’t make a living as an independent author. Possibly some of the reasons for poor sales include lack of knowledge, not enough preparation, and not setting an initial sales goal. Fortunately, there are simple fixes for these oversights. For example, Setting a SMART1 ( Specific, Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-based) sales goal. i.e., Using several distribution channels, Independent author will sell 300-1000 units* during the first week of publication. You are identifying viable outlets to sell the book. Direct sales, eCommerce sites, book distributors such as Ingram, hand sellers, independent bookstores, retail bookstores, specialty outlets, etc. Make sure at least one of your outlets is also a reporting agency to NPD Nielsen BookScan Delaying publication to prepare a sales strategy, and to solicit presales. Now that you’ve considered a plan to sell 300 or even 3000 books during the first week of publication, it’s safe to tell you the rest of the story. Determining where you will sell to your customers and how you will get your books to them is also known as Place. It is the 3rd P in the marketing mix. So, deciding Amazon as the exclusive Place to sell books is unwittingly using a marketing tactic that may negatively impact your book’s sales revenue. Note: although Amazon is referenced throughout the article it’s not the focus. It’s about getting you, the independent author, to consider a solid book sales strategy that allows you to make your book available in multiple locations. * (3000 -10000 books sold is the statistical count for WSJ or NYT bestseller, respectively.) ** Post inspired by @Troy 's Tweet (1/7/2020) ~Mel Reference 1. https://www.smart-goals-guide.com/smart-goal.html What is a smart goal? | acronym smart goals 2. https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/bookscan/stores.cgi (npd publishers marketplace BookScan stores reporting 3. https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/industry-expertise/books/ (NPD BookScan book market trends) 4. https://www.ingramcontent.com/publishers/distribution (book distribution worldwide |Ingram content group) 5. http://www.bowker.com/ (Connecting publishers, authors, and booksellers with readers)

It goes without saying; white American's are the main ones who do not take responsibility for their actions. Where do I start; the mass murders, the drug and domestic abuse and terrorism, the welfare abuse and fraud, or the wealth and economic inequality gap? They cheat in everything from wage earning to college entrance exams, to voting and generational privilege. They had a 400-plus year head start on all people of color who they have kept back three grades in life, oppressed and literally abused, threatened and mistreated for the simple reason of arrogance and privilege. They are violent while calling others terrorist and criminals. They are cruel from the heart of humanity while lying about the character of Black men, women and children....Read More

Jerry Lawson Play and Create a game https://g.co/doodle/pky25gd VIDEOSOFT a company he founded https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/articles/videosoft/videosoft.html from the website above ATARI VCS/2600 VideoSoft By Daryl Lytle Back on December 15th, 2010, Scott Stilphen announced that not only had 6 "long lost" Atari VCS prototype games by VideoSoft been found, but that 100 boxed copies of each were available to buy! In February of 2011, I wrote up reviews of all 6 games (which can be found on this site - links are at the end). Of the three non-3D games, they claim that two of the three - Atom Smasher and S.A.C. Alert - are complete. I consider all three of three non-3D games complete. The game, Depth Charge was supposed to also have a second level that was similar to Sega's Sub Scan 3D (minus the 3D). This game can stand on it's own as a completed game. You can make your own decision on this. All three non 3D games were fun. I enjoyed them and I will continue to play these games for quite some time. As far as the 3D games are concerned, first and foremost Genesis 3D is a great little game. The 3D was decent, and it was in the same game play vein as Tempest. This is the only 3D game that was also considered completed. It has a decent replay value because it was challenging and fast-paced. It was a lot of fun to play the Ghost Attack 3D game. I really wish this title would have been completed back in the early 80s, but I'm really happy the fact that the people who put this together went ahead and made a menu driven 16K multi-cart and put all three levels on it for the sake of completeness. That made it worth the hefty price tag it carries. There is a little replay value with this title. The third 3D title, Havoc 3D, would have been a great title had it been completed. Unfortunately, due to the fact that you can only play this game once and have to reset it, it doesn't give it a lot of replay value. The 3D games are a really cool set of games/demos. They are more of a novelty set of games, something different and fresh. As for the 3D effect, I find that if the room is dark and I sit approx 7 feet away from my 36-inch regular CRT TV, I can see the 3D effect. There are so many things that can play a factor in 'seeing' the 3D effect, (or messing it up), so it's not going to work for everyone. Many things play a factor in getting the 3D effect to work properly. People's vision (or lack of), the type of screen you are using (CRT, LED, LCD, Plasma, Monitor), brightness and contrast of the screen you are using, and the brightness in the room. It took me a while testing different things to get this right with the different games, so I don't think of this as something that will work for everyone. Some people are going to try one title, it may not work for them and they are going to throw the game in their collection and say, "The 3D sucked; it didn't work". That's to be expected. If you aren't willing to try some different combinations, you may have issues. In all fairness, this isn't exactly Disney/Pixar's REAL3D that you see in the theatres these days. It was tricky to see the red/blue 3D in the theaters back in the 70s and 80s (I remember Creature from the Black Lagoon this way) but it did work. Still, I believe these titles are absolutely worthy of any collector's shelf. I know that they are steeper in price individually as opposed to other titles, but purchased as a set, not so much. If you buy as a set it's the equivalence to buying a $35.00 game and paying $5.00 priority shipping, per title, (or $40.00 a title shipped), which isn't that bad. If your budget doesn't allow for it, grab one or two or wait for the ROM images to be released. I would like to thank all of the people who made these titles available to the public possible after being buried for all these years. A find of this magnitude (c’mon SIX titles!!!) is a once in a lifetime thing. Especially considering that the people who programmed these titles, Jerry Lawson to name one, is a classic gaming icon and did a lot of good things for the CG community. These were the first 2600 titles to attempt a blue/red 3D effect and for the technology they were working with at the time, this isn't all that bad. As for the question of, "Why didn't they finish the other titles before they released them?" Who wouldn't have wanted that to happen? But that isn't as practical as it sounds, that alone could have driven the cost up even more and taken years more to release. I can appreciate it being released as the original author left it at the time. As far as I’m concerned, we got four completed games and two playable demos. I, for one, am a very happy camper. I purchased two complete sets (#5 and #99) - one for the collection and one to play. Check out my reviews of each game, and 2600 Connection's video footage of each: 3-D Genesis 3-D Ghost Attack 3-D Havoc Atom Smasher Depth Charge S.A.C. Alert https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/3d_genesis.html 3-D Genesis By Daryl Lytle I really like this game. It is a bit of a Tempest clone. Set in the future, the planet is overrun with huge insects that fight for survival. The enemy has been pushed into a deep crevice. You are the scorpion like warrior that must battle the oncoming waves of insects and destroy anything that crawls out of the deep void to threaten the planet. The select button will chose a one or two player game and fire to start. You control the scorpion like creature much like the 'crawler' in Tempest. You must fire upon any insects trying to crawl out of the void. Moving left or right will maneuver your player around the outer edge of the playfield. Enemies will climb up the walls towards you. If one reaches the outer rim, it can knock a section of the outside wall away. If you move over that area, you will fall into the pit! There is also a creature that's called a 'rail snail' that shows as a yellow section of grid of the outer rim of the void and is constantly moving around the edges that you must contend with. It will kill you if you touch it, but for a brief second prior to it changing direction, it will emit a couple tones and you can touch it, which gives you the ability to either: fill in one of the sections of the grid that the other insects tore away and bridge the gap so you can continue along the rail, or it will give you a one-time immunity from being touched by another one of the insects. Use it however you feel is best. You get three lives per game, and when you touch another creature, you fall into the void and lose one life. You will also lose a life if you accidentally fall into the void due to the 'rail snail' removing a section of the grid. There are 8 waves to defeat, and after each wave, your wave counter will flash letting you know that you cleared that wave. After the 8 waves, the game continues on, though your counter never goes higher than 8 waves. The game is a lot of fun, it's pretty frantic. The 3D effect is pretty good, the enemies scale from small to big the closer they get to help give it the needed effect. Good sounds accompany the action. It has decent graphics and great game play. This definitely has a good replay value. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/3d_ghost_attack.html 3-D Ghost Attack By Daryl Lytle This is one of the games that I would have absolutely loved to have been completed and released back in the day. This game was going to be a three level game. Thankfully, all three levels of this game were included in one cart making it a 16k cart for completeness. A nice menu allows you to cycle between each level you want to play. You can start on level one and work your way to the third level or play each level individually. The first level you start outside the haunted mansion. There are ghosts moving back and forth throughout the mansion and you have to shoot them all to move on to level two. As you press the fire button, it will flash where you are shooting on the screen so you know where you are aiming. Moving the joystick eight ways will move your gun sites around the screen. The second level takes place in the graveyard where once again, you must shoot all the ‘nasties’ and then proceed to level three. Level three you are staring into the portal to the ghost world. You must shoot as many specters as possible before they escape into our world. This pretty much ends your tour of the haunted mansion. Ok 3D effects, the third level ghosts scale towards you to help the effect. Cool sound effects, cool graphics, ok replay value and ok game play. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/3d_havoc.html 3-D Havoc By Daryl Lytle This would have a very promising 3D asteroids type game. Looking out of the ship's front view, you are to blast as many asteroids as possible. Once you've blasted approximately a dozen asteroids, you will start the next level of the game. This is a first-person perspective scenario that looks like you are flying through a tunnel. Once you blast a few more asteroids, you get a "HERO" screen with a bunch of shipmates jumping up and down congratulating you on your successful mission. Unfortunately this is where the game pretty much ends. You start the tunnel level. You can shoot, but you can not hit anything. The difficulty switch will cycle your shields either on or off. The manual states that the gauges at the bottom of the screen unfortunately do not work. There is a Fuel, GRed, and Shield gauge. There also looks like at the top of the screen some type of scanner that doesn't appear to work. It cycles colors as the game continues, but this may have been something that just wasn't completed in the game. This could have just been there for special effects. Not sure. The 3D in this game is alright, some scaling. Decent sounds and graphics, game play is ok and has a little replay value. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/atom_smasher.html Atom Smasher By Daryl Lytle Now this is a unique game. This is a one or two player game. You can opt for: player vs. player, player vs. computer, and even computer vs. computer! In the Atomic Arena, you and a partner take on unstable atomic particles. The object of the game is to blast these atomic particles out of the arena's moving doors and score points. If you get touched by one of these, you start to 'melt'. You can melt several times before it's ‘Adios Muchachos’. If you succeed moving the particles out of the arena, you move to the next level of the game. In this arena you will simply struggle to survive. You can only move vertically along the walls of the arena to avoid contact with the atoms. Whatever your condition is from the first level will carry on to this level. This adds a little more challenge to this level. Hang in as long as you can to make it past this level. Left hand players rejoice! At the main screen you have the option of picking 'right-handed or left-handed player' via the Difficulty switches which is very unique, I believe a 2600 first. Said and done, this is a fun and challenging game. It has good game play, good sound and graphics and a good replay value. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/depth_charge.html Depth Charge By Daryl Lytle This is a solid sea battle style game. The point of view is through the glass of a periscope. Once again, the controls are tight, and handle pretty good. The Select button will cycle through game variations. You can choose between guided or fixed torpedoes and the number of torpedoes you start with can be 30, 60, or 90. You control the crosshairs of the targeting sight. When you press fire, the crosshairs appear, when you release the fire button your torpedoes tear through the water towards the enemy. Blow up the ships and you score points. Some ships are fast, others are slow. Some will sink with one correctly placed shot and some take multiple shots to destroy. You have a status section at the bottom of the screen that displays information showing when you are Ready, Armed, Fired and Loading. Holding the fire button down will cycle between your score and how many torpedoes you have left. Once you are depleted of your torpedoes, "00" will be displayed and you will hear a loud tone. That is when the game comes to an end. At this point even though you can control your crosshairs, you are simply waiting for the next cruiser to finish you off. The game will also end if you are blown out of the water, displayed by a beautiful explosion, and then it's, "You sank my battleship!" Good game play, sound is good, graphics are good and has a decent replay value. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/sac_alert.html S.A.C. Alert By Daryl Lytle This is a cool arcade flight combat game. Handles really good, controls are tight. It’s a one player game. Hit select switch to cycle between land and sea missions. Once you take off, you take on both ground and air targets. You can see your bullets rip into enemies. Planes not only come straight at you, but also zoom across the screen. There are ground targets you can engage, tanks, factories, ground to air missiles, ships, etc. When you see the landing strip on the ground (or in the sea missions, a carrier) head right for it and you can land to refuel and repair your jet. The next level begins over new territory, terrain changes and ground enemies can fire at you. You have a small HUD that shows Altitude, Score and Fuel. Warning lights on the left and right side of the HUD flash and sound off when necessary, i.e. if you get too low in altitude and might crash, or if your fuel gets below 20 units or when your jet takes on too much damage. Enemy hits show on your cockpit glass. If you crash, the screen turns black and you can replay that mission, if you have remaining jets. When the game ends, you get ranked, "Crew, Pilot, Ace" and rated "0-9". Good game play, sound is above par, graphics are solid. Has a good replay value. INTERVIEW WITH LAWSON https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/545/vcg-interview-jerry-lawson-black-video-game-pioneer VC&G Interview: Jerry Lawson, Black Video Game Pioneer February 24th, 2009 by Benj Edwards In late 2006, I received a large collection of vintage computer magazines from a friend. For days I sat on my office floor and thumbed through nearly every issue, finding page after page of priceless historical information. One day, while rapidly flipping through a 1983 issue of Popular Computing, I encountered a photo that stopped me dead in my tracks. There I discovered, among a story on a new computer business, a picture of a black man. It might seem crazy, but after reading through hundreds of issues of dozens of publications spanning four decades, it was the first time I had ever seen a photograph of a black professional in a computer magazine. Frankly, it shocked me — not because a black man was there, but because I had never noticed his absence. That discovery sent my mind spinning with questions, chiefly among them: Why are there so few African-Americans in the electronics industry? Honestly, I didn’t know any black engineers or scientists to ask. I tried to track down the man in the magazine, but all my leads ended up nowhere. I’d have to put the matter aside and wait for another opportunity to address the issue. Fast forward a few months later, and I’m standing on the showroom floor of Vintage Computer Festival 9.0. As I spend a few minutes thumbing through a vendor’s large array of cartridges for sale, I hear a voice from behind. “Do you have any Videosoft cartridges? Color Bar Generator?” I turn around and notice a large black man in a wheelchair, hair graying at the edges. He seems out of place. I scan the crowd — yep, he’s the only black guy here. Fascinating — what’s his story? Instead of bumbling through a few impromptu questions and making a fool out of myself, I decide to research his identity first. As it turns out, the man I encountered that day was Gerald A. Lawson (aka Jerry), co-creator of the world’s first cartridge-based video game system, the Fairchild Channel F. Naturally, he was attending VCF 9 to give a presentation called, “The Story of the Fairchild Channel F Video Game System.” Jerry Lawson (L) discusses Fairchild Channel F schematics at VCF 9.0. Being one of only two black men (I know of) deeply involved in the industry’s earliest days, Jerry Lawson is a standout figure in video game and computer history. He’s a self-taught electronics genius who, with incredible talents, audacity, and strong guidance from his parents, managed to end up at the top of his profession despite the cultural tides flowing against him. Growing up in America, a land of endless diversity, we tend to fall into certain cultural grooves — well-defined paths of cultural history — that both unite and separate us. We get comfortable with those grooves and use them as the basis of our assumptions about behavior within certain age groups, socioeconomic classes, and ethnicities. Despite this ingrained cultural momentum, there are still people who manage to skip those grooves and chart their own course, ignoring any conventions that get in their way. Jerry Lawson is one of them, and he’s got an important story to tell. This interview took place on February 6th, 2009 over the telephone. [Update (04/11/2011): Jerry Lawson passed away on April 9, 2011 at the age of 70.] [Update (2015): Read my in-depth account of the creation of the Fairchild Channel F and the invention of the video game cartridge at FastCompany.] [Update (2017): If you enjoy this interview, check out my interview with Ed Smith, another early black video game pioneer.] Early Life Benj Edwards: For history’s sake, when and where were you born? Jerry Lawson: December 1940. I grew up in Queens, New York City. BE: How did you get into electronics? JL: I started very young. I went to school, but I was an amateur radio guy when I was thirteen. I was always a science guy since I was a little kid. BE: Do you have a family history in engineering? JL: I found out only later in life that my grandfather was a physicist. Because he was black, the only place he could work was the post office. He was a postmaster. He went to some school in the south — I don’t know which one it was. BE: Did your father do anything like that too? JL: My father was a brilliant man, but he was a longshoreman. He could work three days a week on the docks and make as much money as most people did in six days. He was a science bug — he used to read everything about science. BE: He probably encouraged you to do experimenting when you were a kid. JL: Yeah, he did. In fact, some of the toys I had as a child were quite unusual. Kids in the neighborhood would come see my toys, because my dad would spend a lot of time giving me something, like the Irish Mail. The Irish Mail was a hand car that operated on the ground. It was all metal, and you could sit on it. You steered it with your feet, and it had a bar in the front, and the bar with a handle. You’d crank it, and it would give you forward or backward motivation, depending on which way you start with it. I was probably the only kid in the neighborhood who knew how to operate it, so I used to leave it out all night sometimes. I’d find it down the block, but no one would take it, because they didn’t know how to operate it. BE: So that must have been in the 1940s then. JL: It was in the ’40s, yep. I also had an amateur radio station in the housing project in Jamaica, New York. What happened was, I tried to get my license, and the management wouldn’t sign for it. And it was really hard for me as a kid to research literature and the public things I could find, but I found that it said if you lived in a federal housing project, you didn’t need their permission. Hot diggity! So I got my license, passed the test, and I built a station in my room. I had an antenna hanging out the window. I also made walkie-talkies; I used to sell those. I did a bunch of things as a kid. My first love started out as chemistry, and then I ended up switching over to electronics, and I continued on and even got a first class commercial license — in fact, I worked a little while in a radio station as chief engineer. BE: Did you attend college? JL: Yes, I did. I went to Queens College, and I also went to CCNY. BE: Did you study electronics there? JL: Before I had studied electronics, I had pretty much been into electronics all the way around. When I was 16 or 17 years old, I used to repair TVs at different shops I would go to. I did what they called “dealership work.” And I used to also fix TVs by making house calls. It was a place that had opened up in Jamaica, New York that was called Lafayette Radio. And I used to spend almost every Saturday at Lafayette Radio. Lafayette Radio was a huge electronics store. They had tube testers, capacitors, resistors — you name it, they had it. And my mother used to give me a small allowance, and I’d go down and buy parts. There were two other electronics stores — one was called Peerless, and the other was called Norman Radio. My budget would say, well, I could only afford a capacitor this week, so I’d buy a capacitor. I could only afford a socket, and I’d save my money up for a socket. How ’bout a tube? And I ended up building my transmitter from scratch. First Computer Encounters BE: What was the first computer you ever used? JL: The first computer I ever used was known as the [Forest?] 65L. It was the world’s first militarized, solid-state computer. It was designed by ITT, and I went to a training school for it. Built inside a mountain. They were like the push-button war machines you see in the movies. Remember the movie Fail-Safe? That was that machine. BE: What brought you to see that computer? JL: I was working for Federal Electric — ITT. Federal Electric was their division of field sales people that went around different parts of the world and did developments and projects. I was hired by them originally to go to Newfoundland to put a radar set back online — to finish the installation and adapt the modifications so it could be put online and used. My first love was imagery and radar. Computers were simple stuff. BE: To fast forward a little bit, before I get off your history with computers, do you remember the first personal computer you ever used in the 1970s? JL: Two of them — that is funny, because I had an Altair. And before that, I also had — Fairchild gave me a DEC PDP-8. I put the PDP-8 back into work. In fact, the PDP-8 is a story in itself — that ended up running a school in my garage. With the PDP-8, I had two tape units, the tape controller, a high speed tape reader, and all the maintenance boards and backup spares for it. My garage became a service depot. DEC said I had the only operating PDP-8 — straight 8 — west of the Mississippi. And they asked me if they could run classes in my garage on it. As a result — my PDP-8 had a control unit on it called the TC01. And the TC01 didn’t have all the maintenance updates on it. They said it would cost about ten grand to update it, and I said, “Well heck, I’m not paying ten grand.” So they said — for them having the class in my garage with the guys there — they would do the updates for free. They did. The whole updates for free. My neighbor came over one day, and the funniest part of it was he walked in, and — it was not just the computer, it was the computer and all the stuff that went with it. The unit itself was about, oh, eight feet by six feet, and about three feet deep. And it sat in my garage, and I even ran a special power line to it. And he walked in one day and he saw it running, and it was running what we called the exercise routine, which was a maintenance routine I used to run on it. And he saw these tape reels running back and forth, and lights going on and off, and he looked at me and he said, “Is that what I think it is?” I said, “What do you think it is?” He said, “Is that a computer?” “Yeah.” And he said, “You got a computer in your garage?” “Yeah.” “Did you get one when you bought the house?” [laughs] BE: What year was that? JL: That was ’72, I think — ’70 or ’72, around in there. BE: That’s really early for having a computer in your garage. JL: I had an ASR-33 teletype machine too. That was the output for it — printer input and output. And my daughter used to love to come in run this one little thing — she knew how to hook the speaker next to the data line, and it played a song. She would go load that in — and she new how to load it — so it would play that song. BE: Did you play any games on it? JL: Lunar Lander. It was all text, no graphics. Early Electronics Career BE: Take me through your early electronics career. Besides ITT, where else did you work before Fairchild? JL: I worked for Grumman Aircraft, Federal Electric, and PRD Electronics. PRD Electronics was the job I went to when I left New York. That was a computerized test facility called [VAS], and we used the 1218 UNIVAC Computer. I went to programming school for the 1218, and we wrote software for it, and we all wrote a part of it which was a compiler that we called VTRAN. I used to hate programming. It was a drudgery I really hated to do. We had two methods of writing programs: one was what we called “ELP,” an English language program, then we had to convert it to a thing called VTRAN, which was our own language we developed. I worked for PRD about 4-5 years, I guess, and I transferred to a company called Kaiser Electronics, which was out in Palo Alto. BE: When you were working for Grumman and those places, was that on the East Coast, or had you already gone to California? JL: On the East Coast. When I went to Kaiser, that was the first time I went west. BE: What what was Kaiser’s main business? JL: Kaiser was doing military electronics — particularly the displays. They did the head’s up display (HUD) for the A-6A Grumman aircraft. They also did the VDI, which was the vertical display indicator. The HUD was a system that shined on the pilot’s canopy so you wouldn’t have to watch the turn-bank indicator, speed, what have you. The vertical display indicator was something that was on the dash, which was a scope tube, like a TV image, that let you see — for instance, if you had plotted a course, whether you were turning away from that course, whether you were on course, whether you were flying upside down. Little goodies. What the ground texture was. The HUD would just show you instruments. The VDI would show you the ground return — in other words, if it was jungle you were flying over, or mountains. After Kaiser, I kicked around the semiconductor industry for a while. I was in between marketing, and I was also in engineering applications. BE: How were the job prospects for a black engineer in those days? Did your race affect that in any way? JL: Oh yeah, it always did. It could be both a plus and a minus. Where it could be a plus is that, in some regard, you got a lot of, shall we say, eyes watching you. And as a result, if you did good, you did twice as good, ’cause you got instant notoriety about it. Consumer Electronics and Fairchild BE: Do you think that people in the aerospace industry and military defense had a lot of influence in computer development? Was there any cross-pollination between folks like you who went from working on military electronics to consumer products? JL: Yeah, because what happened was we got to use technologies that were not, shall we say, consumer-type stuff. But yet, we were on the leading edge of pushing the state of the art so that things would become more practical. For example: there was no [DB-9] connector for high volume use in computers. The DB-9 connector originally cost an arm and a leg. But when the computer and consumer industries came along, it became plastic, it became higher volume, and it became a reality to use. Before then, it was used in military all the time. That was a cross-over kind of a thing. The semiconductor content got cheaper and cheaper because of volume. The military components were not that high volume, but they were very stressful, they were high-reliability parts. But however, you take that same part and use it over and over again in a consumer product — you know, one of the things I used to always say, I said, “Military was good training for consumer, because consumer products actually have to be stronger than military.” Everybody said, “Get out of here!” I said, “Nah. Just think about it for a second.” I said, “If I did a military product, I can train the individual how to use it. If he decides to tamper, destroy, or mal-use it, I can bring him up to charges, can’t I? I can insist that he reads, that he’s trained in how to turn and turn it off, right?” They said, “Yeah.” “Try that with a consumer.” BE: Instead they hit it with a hammer and dunk it in the toilet, right? JL: Yeah, I’ll tell you what happened. The first year we put out the Fairchild video game, I made the mistake of going to work the day after Christmas. The day after Christmas in the consumer business is called “Hell day.” Why it’s called “Hell day” is because that is when everything comes back to the store, and the person couldn’t use it. So I start getting calls — there’s nobody in the factory except the guard and me. I’m there in the plant to take care of some paperwork. He starts transferring calls to me. They had one guy call me, and he wanted to know where the batteries go. I said, “There is no batteries.” He took the thing apart looking for a battery in there! One guy called up and said, “Dog urine hurt the game.” The dog lifted his leg and peed on it! And one of the things that really cracked me up is that I was starting to get really jaded by answering the phone, right? One woman called up, really irate, and she said, “My game hums! Do you know why?” And I said, “‘Cause it doesn’t know the words, lady.” BE: Good answer. JL: And even the guard said, “All right, Jerry, I won’t give you any more calls.” I said, “That’s a good idea.” [laughs] BE: That’s a great story. So how did you end up at Fairchild? JL: Fairchild was gonna start this brand new thing called freelance engineering. They wanted somebody to be able to go around and help customers with designs. I was available, and they knew I was an apps guy. They gave me two opportunities. They said, “You could either go inside in our linear department and work there in marketing, or you can go in the field. If you go in the field, it’s a brand new deal; you’re the first guy.” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll take that.” When I was there for the first six months, I said, “You know, there’s a problem here. The problem is that Fairchild is not known for being helpful for customers. And I’ve got an image to overcome: how the heck to break down that image they have.” Me and a sales guy got together, and I wrote a proposal called “Take Fairchild to the Customer.” And the heart of that proposal was a 28-foot van — mobile home. And I wanted to tear it down and put in product demos, literature — a laboratory on wheels. They went for it. I went to a company called Formetrix, and they built the inside of it, and it looked like something from James Bond. It even had a rear-projection screen that came out of the ceiling. It turned out to be an overwhelming success, so they came back to me and said, “We want you to do it again.” So I went to FMC, and they had a brand new coach they built. The rear-end was the Bradley differential for a tank. It had a 485 cubic inch engine, a 50-gallon gas tank, four air condition units, and it drove like a car. The wheels were in tandem, next to each other. That thing was somethin’ else. One time, my daughter wanted to ride in it. I said, “Oh, ok.” So I got her in it. The guys at FMC said they had just tried out a brand new cruise control for it. I said, “Oh that’s nice.” They said, “Let us know how you like it.” I got out on the highway and pushed the cruise control; it took over. I went to disengage, and it wouldn’t disengage. And I went, “Oh my god.” I slammed on the brakes, and it was riding the brakes. I came around, and there was a truck and some cars parked at a light, and I was trying to figure out which one of these vehicles I’m going to rear end, right? Just then, I reached down and pulled all the wiring out. It cut the engine off. I brought it back in a slow walk and said, “You clowns.” And I told them what happened and they said, “Oh my God, it didn’t disengage?” I said, “No.” There at the Beginning — Atari and Apple BE: What year did you start working at Fairchild? JL: 1970, I think. BE: What were Fairchild’s main products at the time? JL: Oh, they had everything: memories, linear devices. They had LED devices. They were a full-line semiconductor place. They even had a microprocessor they brought out called the F8, which is the one I incorporated into the game. Two kinds of games: I made a game in my garage called Demolition Derby in oh, ’73? ’72? BE: When you did that, had you seen Pong or any other games? JL: When they started to work on Pong, there was a gentleman — I went in to see him one time, and he worked at a company called “Syzygy.” The guy’s name was Alan Alcorn. The name of the two other guys were Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was the beginning of Atari. BE: Did you know those guys? JL: Yep, very well. BE: Did you help them with any projects? JL: Not really — I tried to sell Alan a character generator. He showed me the way he was doing it, which was much simpler, and I said, “Heck, there’s no sense using a character generator.” ‘Cause what he did was he decoded segments to make block lettering, numbering for score keeping [in Pong]. He really didn’t have need for anything else that was character oriented. The first Pong machine was put into a beer joint. And Alan told me the first week that thing was in, coins were flopping out on the floor. The game I did using the F8 microprocessor was put into a pizza parlor down in a place called Campbell, California. And one of the features that it had was a coin jiggle function. One of the things the [Atari] guys were telling me was that kids were coming in with piezoelectric shockers and shocking the machine to give them free games. Or they would take in a wire and jiggle it down in the coin slot. So he said he would love to have a way where that wouldn’t happen anymore. What we did was take coins — it goes through the coin device and it hits a microswitch. It stays on the microswitch for a certain period of time before it drops down, right? We’d time that point of time that it would go through the microswitch, so the microprocessor on board would know whether it was a coin or somebody jiggling the switch. That was the way we had a coin defeat for it. BE: Was that for your Demolition Derby? JL: Yeah, that was for mine. BE: When was the first time you saw a video game? Was it Pong, or… JL: No, it was Nolan’s game called Computer Space. It looked like a big phone. And there was some talk about a game that was kept at the student union at Stanford — I never did see that one, though. It used a computer and some graphics functions — way too expensive to be in a consumer product. BE: It’s really interesting that you were there at the birth of arcade games. JL: I was also there when two gentlemen showed up — we used to have a computer club [The Homebrew Computer Club –ed.] that was in the Stanford Linear Accelerator auditorium once a month. And the two guys that used to come there all the time with their little toys — one guy was named Steve Jobs, and the other guy was named Steve Wozniak. There during the beginning. BE: Did you attend any of those computer club meetings? JL: Yes, I went to most of them. BE: Did you talk to Steve Jobs and Wozniak back then? JL: I was not impressed with them — either one, in fact. What happened was that when I had the video game division [at Fairchild], and I was the chief engineer, I interviewed Steve Wozniak for a job to work for us. Well, my guys were kind of impressed with him at first, and I said I wasn’t. Never had been. [Update (2021): In a 2017 interview on my Culture of Tech podcast, Steve Wozniak denied that he ever applied to work at Fairchild and has no memory of ever meeting Lawson or seeing him at the Homebrew Computer Club. This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but Wozniak doesn’t remember it.] BE: Were you the only black guy at those computer club meetings? JL: Yes. BE: Did you know any other black people in that field at the time? JL: There was a guy who was around that time, and he’s dead now. His name was Ron Jones. He ended up pushing all kinds of side things. He was around. He was not in the industry, per se. BE: So you said you weren’t impressed with Wozniak at the time. What was your impression of Jobs and Wozniak back then? JL: Jobs was kind of a sparkplug. He was more business — he was more “push-this, push-that” kind of a thing. I think that his motivation is still there, the same way. He’s the sparkplug of Apple, right? Wozniak never was. But the guy who was the real hero that never gets mentioned is a guy named Mike Markkula. Mike Markkula was a multi-millionaire. In fact, he was one of the original founders of Intel. He also built Incline Village in Tahoe, and he ran Apple for a while. BE: Mike gave them their first investment — their first seed money, right? JL: Yes, he did. He is filthy rich, but a good guy. Really good guy. BE: What position were you interviewing Steve Wozniak for at Fairchild? JL: Just as an engineer. We had a bunch of engineers that were already there. BE: What year was that? JL: It was about the same time, ’73 or ’74. BE: So he just didn’t get the job or you picked somebody else? Is that what happened? JL: He was going to go away to — [his HP division] was moving to Corvallis [Oregon]. He was working for HP, and he was looking for a job to get away from HP. That was before they even started Apple up. Before they were on their own. Video Games at Fairchild BE: Lets get back to your career at Fairchild. How did the whole video game thing at Fairchild get started? JL: I did my home coin-op game first in my garage. Fairchild found out about it — in fact, it was a big controversy that I had done that. And then, very quietly, they asked me if I wanted to do it for them. Then they told me that they had this contracted with this company called Alpex, and they wanted me to work with the Alpex people, because they had done a game which used the Intel 8080. They wanted to switch it over to the F8, so I had to go work with these two other engineering guys and switch the software to how the F8 worked. So, I had a secret assignment; even the boss that I worked for wasn’t to know what I was doing. I was directly reporting to a vice president at Fairchild, with a budget. I just got on an airplane when I wanted to go to Connecticut and talk to these people, and I wouldn’t have to report to my boss. And this went on, and finally, we decided, “Hey, the prototype looks like it’s going to be worth something. Let’s go do something.” I had to bring it from this proof of performance to reality — something that you could manufacture. Also, a division had to be made, so I was working with a marketing guy named Gene Landrum, and sat down and wrote a business plan for building video games. I was the number one employee. My set task was to work on the prototype and hire a bunch of people to work with me, most of which came from Fairchild. In fact, the big man asked me, “Where did these people come from?” And I said, “They were working here all the time.” He said, “They were?” I said, “Mmm hmm. All they needed was a reason to do something.” I just went out and talked to them. So, it was an interesting thing, because the memory we used — 4K RAMS, dynamic RAMs — I would use four of them per system. Now, in making the pricing up, I used to go to MOS (even though Fairchild also made these things), and they were throwing out the ones that weren’t passing their tests. And I would go up there — literally with a little red wagon and two cardboard boxes — and I would load them up with RAMs: they’re throw outs, they’re garbage. And I’d take them to an outside test lab, and I got 90% yield out of their garbage can. So I was sitting there going, “Great, it’s for free!” [MOS] heard I was doing it for free, so they got in there and decided, “Uh uh, you’re going to pay for them!” I said, “You dirty rats.” So the vice president I was working for, Greg, gets involved and said “I’ll take care of the negotiations over this.” He got in there and did a great negotiator job of two dollars per unit that we had to pay. Well, one day I got tired of taking my engineers off their work to prove that the parts MOS were delivering were garbage, or no good. I was getting really pissed at them. Finally, one day they couldn’t deliver anything. So I asked for permission to go to Intel, who made the part too. One day, I walked into the vice presidents office and I said, “Want to see something?” He said, “What?” “Look at this. You are paying two dollars a piece for garbage that we can’t get. I can get them from Intel for a dollar ten.” He said, “What?” “Uh huh, you’re being taken.” BE: And he was the one who did the negotiating, right? JL: Yeah, right. I kept trying to tell him when I was in the ranks, “You know, our pricing is way too high. That’s one of the reasons why we get our lunch taken out. You don’t know how to make product cheap enough.” The First Cartridge System BE: When you started that video game prototype at Fairchild, was it always intended to be a home product, like a video game console for a TV set? JL: It was always intended to be a home game. BE: Had you seen the Magnavox Odyssey? JL: Yep. BE: And you perhaps wanted to do a product like that? JL: Nope. The Odyssey was a joke, as far as I’m concerned. It was the plug board thing — it had no intelligence. And it had overlays, remember? They put things the screen to play different games. What was paramount to our system was to have cartridges. There was a mechanism that allowed you to put the cartridges in without destroying the semiconductors. The mechanical guys that worked on that did a very good job. BE: So that was a big issue at the time: plugging and unplugging a cartridge might… JL: …cause an explosion on the semiconductor device — break down static charge, that kind of thing. We were afraid — we didn’t have statistics on multiple insertion and what it would do, and how we would do it, because it wasn’t done. I mean, think about it: nobody had the capability of plugging in memory devices in mass quantity like in a consumer product. Nobody. BE: It was completely new then, wasn’t it? JL: Yeah. We had no idea what was going to happen. And then we also had to stop putting [the chips] in packages. We had to put them on little boards where we’d put the chip down and we’d bond the chip to the board, then put a glob top on it. The package was a waste. BE: Whose idea was it to do the cartridge in the first place? JL: I always had that idea. We had a lot of people that did. [Editor’s Note – 2/21/2015 – We now know that the initial idea for a video game cartridge actually came from two men, Wallace Kirschner and Lawrence Haskel, who worked for Alpex Computer Corporation and licensed the technology to Fairchild. After Fairchild licensed Alpex’s technology, a team that included Ron Smith, Nick Talesfore, and Jerry Lawson refined the technology and turned it into a practical, commercial product. So the credit for the first cartridge should technically be shared among these five men — and not by Lawson alone, as many have misinterpreted since I published this interview in 2009.] BE: It seems that — from what I know, RCA released a system that had cartridges around the same time as the Channel F. JL: RCA was behind us. In fact, it was a piece of junk. I’ll tell you a funny story about RCA. We introduced our game, and RCA followed six months later in the Winter CES show. At that show in Chicago, RCA presented their Studio II. I had an invitation that said, “Hey, the RCA game is here.” Well, I wanted to see that. It was being shown in a suite. And I went up to the suite and walked in. They had their game there, and this guy looks up and sees me with a Fairchild badge on, right? And I’m 6’6″, 280 pounds. This clown charged me and tried to wrestle me to the ground. And I banged him on his head! I said, “If you want me to leave, I’ll leave!” And what I saw was a laugh. They had this game — it was in black and white. It looked horrible. So, the next day, he came down to our booth. And when he came down to our booth, I jumped the counter, heading for him. And he started running! [laughs] I said, “Ah, there he goes.” BE: You said that Channel F had already been released, right? JL: Oh yeah. Well, the biggest part of getting the Channel F released was getting through the FCC. That was a job in itself. It was the first microprocessor device of any nature to go through FCC testing. And I — believe me, I got some gray hairs over that. The FCC was really hard on us. And Al Alcorn came down — it was funny when they first saw it — Al, Nolan, and the [Atari] president then — at the Chicago show. They came down to me and said, “Lawson! It’s cool, except the only thing we dig is the hand controllers.” And Al told me, he said, “Oh, boy, that little noise you’ve got there on the screen, boy, you’re really going to have to get rid of that — you’re gonna have trouble with the FCC.” And I had to leave the show early to go to the FCC. Because the FCC — oh boy — it cost, at that point, a thousand dollars, and the spec they had was one microvolt per meter of spurious signals you couldn’t overcome. And if you had any more than that, you were in trouble. The problem was — Texas Instruments, years later, couldn’t make that spec. So guess what they did? They lobbied and got them to change the law. I was so mad, I couldn’t see straight. ‘Cause that was what keeping a lot of people from jumping in the market, including RCA. They couldn’t pass the test. We had to put the whole motherboard in aluminum. We had to make an aluminum case for it, we had to have bypasses on every lead going in and out of the thing. It was unreal, some of the stuff we had to do. We had a metal chute that went over the cartridge adapter to keep radiation in. Each time we made a cartridge, the FCC wanted to see it, and it had to be tested. BE: Wow. Every single cartridge? JL: Every single cartridge. BE: By ’77, when the Atari VCS was released, do you think they had to get their cartridges tested, or was that out the window? JL: I’m sure they had to. BE: What did you think about the Atari VCS when it came out? JL: The VCS had some good features in it, but by and large, as far as for graphical display, it was substandard. They had ways of doing things with — you use things known as sprite technology. They could make high resolution characters, but they couldn’t put a bunch of stuff on the screen at the same time. So, as a result — one of the games they tried to compete with us, and they did a very bad job, was Blackjack. Blackjack looked horrible. Of course, they did things that tried to offset that. You can’t blame them for that, right? And their first game had a beautiful sky and objects running across it. It looked very cool. But it really wasn’t anything. But it was the best graphic looks that the game [could do]. Ours looked like little players, and things, you know. BE: How much total RAM did the Channel F have in it? JL: 16K [kilobits] [Editor’s Note: As it turns out, the Channel F had 64 bytes of main RAM and 16 kilobits (or 2 kilobytes of video RAM). During the interview, I misunderstood that Lawson was speaking of kilobits and not kilobytes.] BE: Really? 16K? That was a lot at the time. I think the VCS had 128 bytes of RAM. JL: See, our memory was used as a screen. The screen was memory. What you were doing when you played our game, you were actually putting symbology in a memory, and that memory was being displayed on screen. What you looked at when you were looking at the screen was an array of memory so-many-bits high by so-many-bits deep. In fact, when we had to move a character around, we had a thing we called “self-erasing characters.” Now what we would do is black out a square — say eight by eight — and around that eight by eight would be a border or background, and the symbology was put inside of it. So every time it moved, it would automatically erase the previous position. If we hadn’t done it that way — like we tried to fill it in — each time we moved it, we’d have to erase the last position it was in. If we did it that way, we ended up having objects that look like they’re jumping around and flashing. A lot of little things we used to do were different. Our hand controllers were special. They were analog equivalent, but they were digital. And somebody asked how we did that. Well, we would drive the objects. In other words, when the [switch] closed in a direction, we would send the object in that direction. We’d send it fast, then we’d slow it down, so that it would have a kind of a hysteresis curve. We needed to do that for the human factors of using the hand controllers. The hand controllers had a lot of — nobody has duplicated one yet. They’ve used them in other things. The hand controller had eight positions: up, down, left, right, forward and backward left and right. Eight positions. BE: Do you know the history of Atari’s joystick and how it compared to the Fairchild hand controller? Who made the first home console joystick? Was it Fairchild? JL: Yep. Ours was digital. Digital meaning there was no fixed position. If you had a regular hand controller that is run with resistors or pots, you move the hand controller and leave it alone, that object would say, “OK, I’m staying in that position.” Ours would not. In other words, every time you’d move it, and let go, it would stay where it is However, the hand controller would be back in neutral position again. So you had to get used to that operation, knowing how to operate it. BE: Who designed the controller for the Channel F? JL: I designed the prototype. The original controller was designed by a guy named Ron Smith. Mechanical guy. The case of the controller was designed by a guy named Nicholas Talesfore, an industrial designer. BE: What was your official title or position when you were working on the Channel F? JL: I was director of engineering and marketing for Fairchild’s video game division. I was in charge of all the new cartridges, how they were made, and what the games were. BE: What was the atmosphere of your office like at Fairchild when you were developing the Channel F? JL: Well, I was always considered to be a renegade. I mean, I had many people from Fairchild’s operation up in Mountain View come down and tell me how to operate a business. I’d send ’em home with their tails wagging. One of the things I told them, very simply, was that some of the biggest problems any company has in development is having all these tin gods that come down and tell you how to do things. And one of the reasons they can never develop anything is because of these tin gods. It’s not enough to say, “Here’s a business. Run this business.” You have all these people telling you what you should do and how you should do it. IBM was smart enough that when they developed the PC, they put a whole group in Boca Raton and left them alone. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t ever had a PC. It would have come out looking like a machine that needed to be in somebody’s office, not somebody’s home. BE: Did you have any contact with Ralph Baer or Magnavox in the ’70s? JL: I met Ralph Baer maybe 6-7 years ago — maybe more than that — at the Classic Gaming Expo. I met him there on a panel. In fact, what they did is that I was a big secret a lot of times, because people didn’t know who I was. And what happened was they had me come there introduced by this Japanese guy that was with the group, and he said, “You guys want to meet the person who started the cartridge business? Jerry, stand up.” And I stood up and joined them on the dais. In fact, there’s one cartridge that’s really funny. The guy paid — we did a cartridge when I had my own company called Videosoft. It was a 2600 cartridge — it was a color bar generator. BE: Like a TV test pattern kind of thing? JL: Yep. At the vintage show in San Jose, a guy comes up to me and he says, “Hey! You’re Videosoft, aren’t ya? You got any more of those Color Bar cartridges?” I said, “Nah, I haven’t got one.” He found one at the show, and he came up to me and said, “Autograph this for me?” I said, “Yeah, sure.” He got a silver ink pen, and I autographed it. The next day, I was giving a talk from the dais, and another guy said, “Hey, did you autograph a cartridge yesterday?” I said, “Yeah. Why, did you buy it?” He said, “Yeah. Since it’s got your autograph on it, I paid $500 for it.” Holy Jesus, right? My wife was sitting there going, “You got any more of those?” [laughs] BE: Yeah, that would be a good business to get into. Impact of Race on Profession BE: Did you experience any difficulties in your career because of your race? JL: Oh yeah. There’s two ways I used to experience it. First of all, I’m a big guy. So not too many people confronted me face to face. But I’ve had instances where I’ve walked into places where they didn’t know I was black. I’ll give you an example. Not that the guy was a racist, but a guy named John Ellis, who was one of the Atari people. In about, oh, 1996 or 7, a law firm in Texas hired me as a consultant. And they were going to sue Nintendo. And they told me they want to bring John Ellis in too, ’cause he’s from Atari, and I go, “Oh, fine.” They said, “You know John Ellis?” I said, “I know John — very well.” So the next day, John comes in the room, sees me, and says, “Hi Jerry.” And he looked kind of strange. I said, “What’s the matter with you, John?” He said, “I’ve always known you as Jerry Lawson. I didn’t know you were the same video game guy Jerry Lawson — I didn’t know you were black!” And I said, “Huh?” He said, “Al Alcorn, Nolan Bushnell, talked about you — all of them talked about you — Joe Keenan. But they never said you were black.” I said, “Well, I am.” He said, “I don’t know whether they did you a favor or not.” I said, “Well I don’t go around telling everybody I’m black.” I just do my job, you know? With some people, it’s become an issue. I’ve had people look at me with total shock. Particularly if they hear my voice, because they think that all black people have a voice that sounds a certain way, and they know it. And I sit there and go, “Oh yeah? Well, sorry, I don’t.” BE: Why do you think there’s so few black people working in engineering? JL: I think what has happened is that engineering is a thing that has never really appealed to black people directly, because they’ve never had… You see, I grew up in a different environment. My mother — she invented busing. When she went to a school, she would interview the teachers, the principal, and if they didn’t pass her test, I didn’t go to that school. She once put me in a school called P.S. 50. Turns out Mario Cuomo went to that school. He was a little older than me, and I didn’t know him at the school, but he went to the same school. My mother — now get this now — the school was 99% white. My mother was the president of the PTA. We didn’t even live in the neighborhood. I had a phony address, I used to go halfway cross town to go to school and to go home. I went up ’til the 6th grade, then I went to a junior high school that turned out to be really bad. I was in there for six months, and my mother came to school one day. She talked to the principal, talked to the teacher, and walked in the classroom. She nodded toward me, and I go, “Oh well, that’s it.” And I wasn’t going to stay in that school. So I went to another school. But one of the things she had long since said was that the black kids were put under an aroma of “you can’t do something.” It was something that she felt would not help them with any kind of inspiration to go anywhere. When I was in P.S. 50, I had a teacher in the first grade — and I’ll never forget that — her name was Ms. Guble. I had a picture of George Washington Carver on the wall next to my desk. And she said, “This could be you.” I mean, I can still remember that picture, still remember where it was. Now, the point I’m getting at is, this kind of influence is what led me to feel, “I want to be a scientist. I want to be something.” Now, I went to another black school and talked to kids who were in the neighborhood, and they did nothing like this. They never went out anywhere, they never knew anything. The kids I worked with, and went around with, and played with — they did different things, right? They were looking through microscopes. They’d go outside in a field — do something, right? These would not do that. All they did was play baseball or football. So I think my mother had a lot to do with it. She was very effective at the board of education, because she would tell them off. She’d tell ’em, “Look. My school needs this, and that’s it.” She’d long since found that the squeaky wheel gets all the oil. She was president of the PTA for about four years. BE: And that was in the 1950s? JL: The ’50s, yeah. So anyhow, my mother was very key to that. In fact, she died a very young age. It was the part of the eulogy I gave her about some of the things she had accomplished. I remember as a kid, I wanted to get an atomic energy kit. Gilbert Hall of Science made one. It had a Geiger counter and a Wilson cloud chamber. A hundred bucks. My mother tried to get it for me for Christmas, but finally sat down and told me, “I can’t do it.” I understood. But she got me a radio receiver, a [Hallicrafters] S-38. That’s what got me into amateur radio. From then on, I built converters, antennas, everything else. That is the heart of what I started out with. I ran into one black man who did help me, and his name was Cy Mays. Cy worked as a motorman in the subway system in New York. He was a buddy of one of the guys who ran Norman Radio. And I used to come in to Norman Radio and — I used to have a red baseball cap — and they said, “Red Cap’s here!” And he came out and saw me and said, “Why you getting all this stuff?” I said, “I just got my license.” “You just got your ham license?” “Yeah.” “Have you got a car or some kind of conveyance, or something?” I said, “Yeah, my dad does.” He said, “Ok, here’s my address. Come around this Sunday.” He had more stuff in his garage and his basement…it was like going through a goodie land. “Take whatever you need.” BE: What advice would you give to young black men or women who might be considering a career in science or engineering? JL: First of all, to get them to consider it in the first place. That’s key. Even considering the thing. They need to understand that they’re in a land by themselves. Don’t look for your buddies to be helpful, because they won’t be. You’ve gotta step away from the crowd and go do your own thing. You find a ground, cover it, it’s brand new, you’re on your own — you’re an explorer. That’s about what it’s going to be like. Explore new vistas, new avenues, new ways — not relying on everyone else’s way to tell you which way to go, and how to go, and what you should be doing. You’ll find some people out there that will help you. And they’re not always black, of course. They’re white. ‘Cause when you start to get involved in certain practices and certain things you want to do, you’re colorless. In fact, one of the funny stories about is that for years, people heard me on the radio, and didn’t know I was black. In fact, Hal — a good friend of mine who just passed way — took me to what is called a “bunny hunt.” A bunny hunt is where a guy has a hidden transmitter, and you try to locate where he is. The people trying to find him all go to a diner and talk to each other; they call it “having an eyeball.” Well, I went with Hal one time, and a bunch of guys all over the diner came down to see him. One of them says, “Hey Hal, how ya doing?” And Hal says, “Oh, fine.” And he said, “How are you, sir?” And I said, “I’m fine.” And he said, “What did you say?” “I said ‘I’m fine.'” And he goes, “Jerry? K2SPG Jerry?” He went running down the end of the bar and came back with everybody. And they all went, “You’re Jerry?” I was like, “Yeah. And this one girl, she said, “Oh God, I had a picture of you — I was in love with your voice.” “Oh, you were?” “And I had a picture of you, and you were about 5’7″, blond hair and blue eyes.” “God, you’re way off on that, aren’t you?” [laughs] BE: So I guess you have to be brave in some ways to be a black scientist. It seems like it would go against the tide of culture. JL: The point of anything by yourself is that you have to be brave to go by yourself, don’t you? You’re not going to get reinforcement from peers, right? Except for the new peers you find as a result of going through this. I mean, normally, the guys on the corner that go play basketball are not gonna be your buddies in that. And that’s how they mark things too. It’s unfortunate that they all think they’re gonna be members of the NBA. I try to tell them, “be.” BE: How many kids do you have? JL: Two: a son and a daughter. BE: Did any of them follow you into engineering or something similar? JL: One is now following me, and that’s interesting. He went through Morehouse in Atlanta and graduated as a programmer. Computer science. Just recently, he decided to go back, because he wanted to do electronics. He’s taking his master’s and he’s becoming an A-student at Georgia Tech. And he calls me — he does microprocessor work now and all these things that really appeal to him, and he says, “You know, pop? I like this stuff, and my wife calls me Little Jerry.” My daughter — she was an athlete that kinda blew it. ‘Cause what happened, is when she was ready to go to the Olympics, she got all fouled up. The girl that she was racing against ended up in the Olympics — but she beat ’em all. She has three track & field records at the high school she went to; they still stand. BE: How do you feel about Obama as President? JL: Let me put it this way: Obama was the best qualified guy, period, of any color. Obama was put in that office position not because he’s black, but because he’s the best qualified, and a lot of white people put him there. If it wasn’t for the white people, he wouldn’t have been there, because the black people can’t put you in that office. If anybody thinks that because he’s black, he’s going to turn around and make everything black, he’s not. It’s not his way. And his heritage is half-white anyhow, right? So it’s not even that — even if he was an all-black man, he still wouldn’t do that. Obama is needed because, all of a sudden — I think — it’s amazing how much people have changed their attitude about what’s going on in this world. I’m hoping that he can straighten out a lot of things with his attitude. Because one of the things that the government does, or the man at the top does, is to set the tone of what’s gonna happen. Lawson Today BE: What are you up to these days? JL: Well, I used to work with Stanford in the mentor program, working with kids to put two satellites in space already. Other than that, I do laser work, and I’m getting ready to write my book. BE: Have you played any video games since the 1970s? Have you kept up with video games? JL: I don’t play video games that often; I really don’t. First of all, most of the games that are out now — I’m appalled by them. They’re all scenario games considered with shooting somebody and killing somebody. To me, a game should be something like a skill you should develop — if you play this game, you walk away with something of value. That’s what a game is to me. If I was to say intelligence was a weight and say, “Let’s take intelligence, weigh it in pounds, and say it’s a hundred pounds.” The way we measure intelligence today is if I have a hundred pounds of intelligence and I get from you 99 pounds, you’re considered bright, right? My feeling is what “bright” is or what “genius” is — if I give you a hundred pounds of intelligence, you give me back 120. That means you take what you’ve taken and gone beyond that. You’ve learned other things, correlated the pieces, and put it together and added something to it. That’s genius. And what’s wrong many times today is that we don’t have any basis for teaching that correctly. See, we’re taking away from children’s imaginations. Video games today — they don’t even want to see anything unless the graphics are completely high-toned, right? It used to be, “Oh, well that looks like a car.” Well, looks like one, you know? No, they want to see a car, they want to see wheel spinners on it, and all the detail — infinite detail. BE: How has being a designer on the Fairchild Channel F changed your life? JL: It made me go into business for myself — I can tell you that. Videosoft I had for a couple years, I started that. We did cartridges for the 2600 and for Milton Bradley. Also, I remember one time I was in Las Vegas, walking down the strip. A black kid came up to me and said, “Are you Jerry Lawson?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Thanks.” And shook my hand and walked on past me. And I thought I may have inspired him. My son actually nominated me as a fellow at the Computer Museum. Whether or not it goes anywhere, I don’t know. But I feel that I’ve got to get that done. I’m writing my story because I think that when kids go there — black kids — and they see somebody black, it will make a big difference on them. — [ Update: 2/21/2015 – For more on the creation of the Channel F, read “The Untold Story of the Invention of the Game Cartridge” by Benj Edwards at FastCompany.com. ] VIDEOSOFT GAME LISTING https://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Video_Soft Video Soft (incorporated on May 7, 1982, as Video-Soft, Inc.) was based in Santa Clara, California, and founded and headed by Jerry Lawson [1], previously the chief engineer behind the Fairchild Channel F system. The company made games for Amiga, CBS, Mattel, Milton Bradley, and Parker Brothers. [2] Research Methods: Online resources 2600 3-D Genesis (unreleased) (Amiga) [Dan McElroy, Jerry Lawson] 3-D Ghost Attack (unreleased) (Amiga) [Mike Glass, Jerry Lawson] 3-D Havoc (unreleased) (Amiga) [Frank Ellis, Jerry Lawson] Atom Smasher (unreleased) (Video Soft) Color Bar Generator Cart (US Publisher: Video Soft) [Dan McElroy, Jerry Lawson] Depth Charge (unreleased) (Amiga) [Jerry Lawson] Golf Diagnostic [Dan McElroy, Jerry Lawson] For use with an interactive golf simulator In Search of the Golden Skull (unreleased) (Mattel) [Jerry Lawson] [3] Mogul Maniac (US Publisher: Amiga) Off Your Rocker (unreleased) (Amiga) [Frank Ellis] S.A.C. Alert (unreleased) (Amiga) [Jerry Lawson] Scavenger Hunt (unreleased) (Amiga) [Mike Glass] Spitfire Attack (US/CA Publisher: Milton Bradley) [Frank Ellis] [4] Strafe (unreleased) (Amiga) Surf's Up (unreleased) (Amiga) [Chip Curry] Atari 8-bit Mogul Maniac (US Publisher: Romox) secondary listing https://www.digitpress.com/video-game-guide/?title=&dollars_loose=&dollars_complete=&scarcity_loose=&scarcity_complete=&Designer=&Developer=Video+Soft&Mfr=&PartNo=&Released=&mode=Search

I read the introduction from OpenAI I remember learning about browser design and I told my friends a browser that can go into a web page and extract will be very useful. I still think that is true but I also comprehend the level of security problems this leads to. OpenAI clearly comprehends a lawsuit can hit them so they have started using this through ChatGPT, and show one financial issue as it is only for people who pay for ChatGPT pro. But they plan to expand to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users. So the goal is for this to be a paid service. Now what functionalities are stated: scrolling on a webpage/interacting[typing or clicking] on a webpage [to fill out forms/ordering groceries {which means a users financial data}/creating memes{are they original ?}] When I think of OpenAI firm or the computer programs they created, and the larger community of firms or computer programs that modify themselves based on human input to mimick human interaction, what some call AI [which it is not], I am reaffirmed of the value private data has. The internet and its public data model, is how OpenAI and others were, in my legal view, able to illegally access enough data to get their computer programs to modify themselves strong enough to be convincing mimicks while not paying the financial price of accessing that data. Now, with Operator and others, the free internet information will be sifted through. So, I argue the future of the internet will be walls. Walls is the only answer to offer security in the future. This doesn't mean the world wide web will end. It means that it will break up into webs within the larger internet. Data crossing the webs will become expensive, big firms can pay. In Europe a number of cities already have city based internets, where aside of the world wide web, the city residents have their own city wide web which is only accessed by locals and doesn't allow for intergovernmental or interregional(regions under the same government) access. I wonder if someone has built a computer program on the same principles as the large language model to deter access by other computer programs based on the large language model. The best answer will be the advance in basic memory storage from the quantum computers or other technologies but that technology is more expensive in all earnest. OpenAI suggest they want it to be safe but it has an auto dysfunction they can't control. Humans. I can tell from their literature below, they see this as a corporate tool in the near future very much so, yes paid customers, but they are wary of the truly public internet, because anything connected can be manipulated and having a system that users will use as a heavier crutch while traveling throughout the internet picking up various little programs here or there will make every user of this more damaging to the security of the system. Now OpenAI will do its best to be as secure as possible, but the reality is, no one can defeat the dysfunction of the internet itself, which is its public connectivity. So , walls will be needed, a counter internet movement where some will have private data stores with units that can access only through wire and they will be specifically engineered. Maybe even quantum computing wire connections. Local webs supported by private information stores while isolated intentionally from the world wide web. I end with one point, human design inefficiency is at the heart of all of this. The internet itself, was allowed to grow corrupt or dysfunctionally by humans who: saw it as an invasive tool [governments/firms] , saw it incorrectly as a tool for human unity [idealism of many colleges or psychologist or social scientist]or as a tool to mirror science fiction uses of computers absent the lessons from the stories[star trek primarily, whose shows computers show the guidelines that computers + computer programs should have today that... welll ] IN AMENDMENT Black people from the americas[south/central/north/caribbean] , africa, asia, love using chatgpt. I do blame frederick Douglass for starting with the camera, suggesting an infatuation with tech that is embedded in the black populace in humanity. I don't use any of it. I only use deviantart dreamup and that is only because i pay for it, and sparsely. But relying on a tool isn't bad but one can over rely. And for the arts, the walls going up will be positive. At first negative, because audiences will be shocked. The first three phases of the internet [Basic era/world wide web era/ Large Language Model era] trained humans to see art in three ways: free +comforting+ idolic. Free meaning, people love art that is free. Free to make, free to acquire, free to access, free to whatever. Paying for art has become uncommon for the masses. This is why from porn to music videos to any literature, the money is little. The money in the arts is in live performance. Adult stars who perform live on livestream or do live events at conventions, musicians live concerts , literature being composed live. Is the profit angle. Comforting in that, art that doesn't provide what is expected is rejected more grandly. Give it a chance is not dead but has so few who do it and with no one in need of doing it, as the internet allows your artistic tastes to be eternally supported, you don't ever need to consider a different angle in any art. Lastly, Idolic, if an artist is popular these are the best of times. All the computer programs in media are designed to flow to the most popular, you see this in sprot stars/musicians/writers. The problem is the artist who isn't popular hahaha, has to find a way to become popular and it is more than commerciality. I know too many artists who have tried to be commercial and failed to suggest all an artist need do today is follow trends:) no... ARTICLES Introducing Operator A research preview of an agent that can use its own browser to perform tasks for you. Available to Pro users in the U.S. https://operator.chatgpt.com/July 17, 2025 update: Operator is now fully integrated into ChatGPT as ChatGPT agent. To access these updated capabilities, simply select “agent mode” from the dropdown in the composer and enter your query directly within ChatGPT. As a result, the standalone Operator site (operator.chatgpt.com) will sunset on in the coming weeks. Today we’re releasing Operator⁠(https://operator.chatgpt.com/ ), an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you. Using its own browser, it can look at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling. It is currently a research preview, meaning it has limitations and will evolve based on user feedback. Operator is one of our first agents, which are AIs capable of doing work for you independently—you give it a task and it will execute it. Operator can be asked to handle a wide variety of repetitive browser tasks such as filling out forms, ordering groceries, and even creating memes. The ability to use the same interfaces and tools that humans interact with on a daily basis broadens the utility of AI, helping people save time on everyday tasks while opening up new engagement opportunities for businesses. To ensure a safe and iterative rollout, we are starting small. Starting today, Operator is available to Pro users in the U.S. at operator.chatgpt.com⁠(opens in a new window). This research preview allows us to learn from our users and the broader ecosystem, refining and improving as we go. Our plan is to expand to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users and integrate these capabilities into ChatGPT in the future. How Operator works Operator is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent (CUA) [ https://openai.com/index/computer-using-agent/ ] . Combining GPT‑4o's vision capabilities with advanced reasoning through reinforcement learning, CUA is trained to interact with graphical user interfaces (GUIs)—the buttons, menus, and text fields people see on a screen. Operator can “see” (through screenshots) and “interact” (using all the actions a mouse and keyboard allow) with a browser, enabling it to take action on the web without requiring custom API integrations. If it encounters challenges or makes mistakes, Operator can leverage its reasoning capabilities to self-correct. When it gets stuck and needs assistance, it simply hands control back to the user, ensuring a smooth and collaborative experience. While CUA is still in early stages and has limitations, it sets new state-of-the-art benchmark results in WebArena and WebVoyager, two key browser use benchmarks. Read more about evals and the research behind Operator in our research blog post. How to use To get started, simply describe the task you’d like done and Operator can handle the rest. Users can choose to take over control of the remote browser at any point, and Operator is trained to proactively ask the user to take over for tasks that require login, payment details, or when solving CAPTCHAs. Users can personalize their workflows in Operator by adding custom instructions, either for all sites or for specific ones, such as setting preferences for airlines on Booking.com. Operator lets users save prompts for quick access on the homepage, ideal for repeated tasks like restocking groceries on Instacart. Similar to using multiple tabs on a browser, users can have Operator run multiple tasks simultaneously by creating new conversations, like ordering a personalized enamel mug on Etsy while booking a campsite on Hipcamp. Ecosystem & users Operator⁠(https://www.stocktonca.gov/ ) transforms AI from a passive tool to an active participant in the digital ecosystem. It will streamline tasks for users and bring the benefits of agents to companies that want innovative customer experiences and desire higher rates of conversion. We’re collaborating with companies like DoorDash, Instacart, OpenTable, Priceline, StubHub, Thumbtack, Uber, and others to ensure Operator addresses real-world needs while respecting established norms. In addition to these collaborations, we see a lot of potential to improve the accessibility and efficiency of certain workflows, particularly in public sector applications. To explore these use cases further, we’re working with organizations like the City of Stockton⁠(opens in a new window) to make it easier to enroll in city services and programs. By releasing Operator to a limited audience initially, we aim to learn quickly and refine its capabilities based on real-world feedback, ensuring we balance innovation with trust and safety. This collaborative approach helps ensure Operator delivers meaningful value to users, creators, businesses, and public sector organizations alike. Safety and privacy Ensuring Operator is safe to use is a top priority, with three layers of safeguards to prevent abuse and ensure users are firmly in control. First, Operator is trained to ensure that the person using it is always in control and asks for input at critical points. Takeover mode: Operator asks the user to take over when inputting sensitive information into the browser, such as login credentials or payment information. When in takeover mode, Operator does not collect or screenshot information entered by the user. User confirmations: Before finalizing any significant action, such as submitting an order or sending an email, Operator should ask for approval. Task limitations: Operator is trained to decline certain sensitive tasks, such as banking transactions or those requiring high-stakes decisions, like making a decision on a job application. Watch mode: On particularly sensitive sites, such as email or financial services, Operator requires close supervision of its actions, allowing users to directly catch any potential mistakes. Next, we’ve made it easy to manage data privacy in Operator. Training opt out: Turning off ‘Improve the model for everyone’ in ChatGPT settings means data in Operator will also not be used to train our models. Transparent data management: Users can delete all browsing data and log out of all sites with one click under the Privacy section of Operator settings. Past conversations in Operator can also be deleted with one click. Lastly, we’ve built defenses against adversarial websites that may try to mislead Operator through hidden prompts, malicious code, or phishing attempts: Cautious navigation: Operator is designed to detect and ignore prompt injections. Monitoring: A dedicated “monitor model” watches for suspicious behavior and can pause the task if something seems off. Detection pipeline: Automated and human review processes continuously identify new threats and quickly update safeguards. We know bad actors may try to misuse this technology. That’s why we’ve designed Operator to refuse harmful requests and block disallowed content. Our moderation systems can issue warnings or even revoke access for repeated violations, and we’ve integrated additional review processes to detect and address misuse. We’re also providing guidance( https://openai.com/policies/using-chatgpt-agent-in-line-with-our-policies/ ) on how to interact with Operator in compliance with our Usage Policies.( https://openai.com/policies/usage-policies/ ) While Operator is designed with these safeguards, no system is flawless and this is still a research preview; we are committed to continuous improvement through real-world feedback and rigorous testing. For more on our approach, visit the safety section of the Operator research blog. Limitations Operator is currently in an early research preview, and while it’s already capable of handling a wide range of tasks, it’s still learning, evolving and may make mistakes. For instance, it currently encounters challenges with complex interfaces like creating slideshows or managing calendars. Early user feedback will play a vital role in enhancing its accuracy, reliability, and safety, helping us make Operator better for everyone. What's next CUA in the API: We plan to expose the model powering Operator, CUA, in the API soon so that developers can use it to build their own computer-using agents. Enhanced Capabilities: We’ll continue to improve Operator’s ability to handle longer and more complex workflows. Wider Access: We plan to expand Operator⁠(opens in a new window) to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users and integrate its capabilities directly into ChatGPT in the future once we are confident in its safety and usability at scale, unlocking seamless real-time and asynchronous task execution. Authors OpenAI Foundational research contributors Casey Chu, David Medina, Hyeonwoo Noh, Noah Jorgensen, Reiichiro Nakano, Sarah Yoo Core Andrew Howell, Aaron Schlesinger, Baishen Xu, Ben Newhouse, Bobby Stocker, Devashish Tyagi, Dibyo Majumdar, Eugenio Panero, Fereshte Khani, Geoffrey Iyer, Jiahui Yu, Nick Fiacco, Patrick Goethe, Sam Jau, Shunyu Yao, Stephan Casas, Yash Kumar, Yilong Qin XFN Contributors Abby Fanlo Susk, Aleah Houze, Alex Beutel, Alexander Prokofiev, Andrea Vallone, Andrea Chan, Christina Lim, Derek Chen, Duke Kim, Grace Zhao, Heather Whitney, Houda Nait El Barj, Jake Brill, Jeremy Fine, Joe Fireman, Kelly Stirman, Lauren Yang, Lindsay McCallum, Leo Liu, Mike Starr, Minnia Feng, Mostafa Rohaninejad, Oleg Boiko, Owen Campbell-Moore, Paul Ashbourne, Stephen Imm, Taylor Gordon, Tina Sriskandarajah, Winston Howes Leads Aaron Schlesinger (Infrastructure), Casey Chu (Safety and Model Readiness), David Medina (Research Infrastructure), Hyeonwoo Noh (Overall Research), Reiichiro Nakano (Overall Research), Yash Kumar Contributors Adam Brandon, Adam Koppel, Adele Li, Ahmed El-Kishky, Akila Welihinda, Alex Karpenko, Alex Nawar, Alex Tachard Passos, Amelia Liu, Andrei Gheorghe, Andrew Duberstein, Andrey Mishchenko, Angela Baek, Ankush Agarwal, Anting Shen, Antoni Baum, Ari Seff, Ashley Tyra, Behrooz Ghorbani, Bo Xu, Brandon McKinzie, Bryan Brandow, Carolina Paz, Cary Hudson, Chak Li, Chelsea Voss, Chen Shen, Chris Koch, Christian Gibson, Christina Kim, Christine McLeavey, Claudia Fischer, Cory Decareaux, Daniel Jacobowitz, Daniel Wolf, David Kjelkerud, David Li, Ehsan Asdar, Elaine Kim, Emilee Goo, Eric Antonow, Eric Hunter, Eric Wallace, Felipe Torres, Fotis Chantzis, Freddie Sulit, Giambattista Parascandolo, Hadi Salman, Haiming Bao, Haoyu Wang, Henry Aspegren, Hyung Won Chung, Ian O’Connell, Ian Sohl, Isabella Fulford, Jake McNeil, James Donovan, Jamie Kiros, Jason Ai, Jason Fedor, Jason Wei, Jay Dixit, Jeffrey Han, Jeffrey Sabin-Matsumoto, Jennifer Griffith-Delgado, Jeramy Han, Jeremiah Currier, Ji Lin, Jiajia Han, Jiaming Zhang, Jiayi Weng, Jieqi Yu, Joanne Jang, Joyce Ruffell, Kai Chen, Kai Xiao, Kevin Button, Kevin King, Kevin Liu, Kristian Georgiev, Kyle Miller, Lama Ahmad, Laurance Fauconnet, Leonard Bogdonoff, Long Ouyang, Louis Feuvrier, Madelaine Boyd, Mamie Rheingold, Matt Jones, Michael Sharman, Miles Wang, Mingxuan Wang, Nick Cooper, Niko Felix, Nikunj Handa, Noel Bundick, Pedro Aguilar, Peter Faiman, Peter Hoeschele, Pranav Deshpande, Raul Puri, Raz Gaon, Reid Gustin, Robin Brown, Rob Honsby, Saachi Jain, Sandhini Agarwal, Scott Ethersmith, Scott Lessans, Shauna O’Brien, Spencer Papay, Steve Coffey, Tal Stramer, Tao Wang, Teddy Lee, Tejal Patwardhan, Thomas Degry, Tomo Hiratsuka, Troy Peterson, Wenda Zhou, William Butler, Wyatt Thompson, Yao Zhou, Yaodong Yu, Yi Cheng, Yinghai Lu, Younghoon Kim, Yu-Ann Wang Madan, Yushi Wang, Zhiqing Sun Leadership Anna Makanju, Greg Brockman, Hannah Wong, Jerry Tworek, Liam Fedus, Mark Chen, Peter Welinder, Sam Altman, Wojciech Zaremba URL https://openai.com/index/introducing-operator/ Computer-Using Agent Powering Operator with Computer-Using Agent, a universal interface for AI to interact with the digital world. oday we introduced a research preview of Operator⁠(opens in a new window), an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you. Powering Operator is Computer-Using Agent (CUA), a model that combines GPT‑4o's vision capabilities with advanced reasoning through reinforcement learning. CUA is trained to interact with graphical user interfaces (GUIs)—the buttons, menus, and text fields people see on a screen—just as humans do. This gives it the flexibility to perform digital tasks without using OS-or web-specific APIs. CUA builds off of years of foundational research at the intersection of multimodal understanding and reasoning. By combining advanced GUI perception with structured problem-solving, it can break tasks into multi-step plans and adaptively self-correct when challenges arise. This capability marks the next step in AI development, allowing models to use the same tools humans rely on daily and opening the door to a vast range of new applications. While CUA is still early and has limitations, it sets new state-of-the-art benchmark results, achieving a 38.1% success rate on OSWorld for full computer use tasks, and 58.1% on WebArena and 87% on WebVoyager for web-based tasks. These results highlight CUA’s ability to navigate and operate across diverse environments using a single general action space. We’ve developed CUA with safety as a top priority to address the challenges posed by an agent having access to the digital world, as detailed in our Operator System Card. [ https://openai.com/index/operator-system-card/ ] In line with our iterative deployment strategy, we are releasing CUA through a research preview of Operator at operator.chatgpt.com⁠(opens in a new window) for Pro Tier users in the U.S. to start. By gathering real-world feedback, we can refine safety measures and continuously improve as we prepare for a future with increasing use of digital agents. How it works CUA processes raw pixel data to understand what’s happening on the screen and uses a virtual mouse and keyboard to complete actions. It can navigate multi-step tasks, handle errors, and adapt to unexpected changes. This enables CUA to act in a wide range of digital environments, performing tasks like filling out forms and navigating websites without needing specialized APIs. Given a user’s instruction, CUA operates through an iterative loop that integrates perception, reasoning, and action: Perception: Screenshots from the computer are added to the model’s context, providing a visual snapshot of the computer's current state. Reasoning: CUA reasons through the next steps using chain-of-thought, taking into consideration current and past screenshots and actions. This inner monologue improves task performance by enabling the model to evaluate its observations, track intermediate steps, and adapt dynamically. Action: It performs the actions—clicking, scrolling, or typing—until it decides that the task is completed or user input is needed. While it handles most steps automatically, CUA seeks user confirmation for sensitive actions, such as entering login details or responding to CAPTCHA forms. Evaluations CUA establishes a new state-of-the-art in both computer use and browser use benchmarks by using the same universal interface of screen, mouse, and keyboard. Evaluation details are described here ( https://cdn.openai.com/cua/CUA_eval_extra_information.pdf ) Browser use WebArena⁠( https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.13854 ) and WebVoyager⁠( https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13919 ) are designed to evaluate the performance of web browsing agents in completing real-world tasks using browsers. WebArena utilizes self-hosted open-source websites offline to imitate real-world scenarios in e-commerce, online store content management (CMS), social forum platforms, and more. WebVoyager tests the model’s performance on online live websites like am*zon, GitHub, and Google Maps. In these benchmarks, CUA sets a new standard using the same universal interface that perceives the browser screen as pixels and takes action through mouse and keyboard. CUA achieved a 58.1% success rate on WebArena and an 87% success rate on WebVoyager for web-based tasks. While CUA achieves a high success rate on WebVoyager, where most tasks are relatively simple, CUA still needs more improvements to close the gap with human performance on more complex benchmarks like WebArena. Computer use OSWorld⁠( https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07972 ) is a benchmark that evaluates models’ ability to control full operating systems like Ubuntu, Windows, and macOS. In this benchmark, CUA achieves 38.1% success rate. We observed test-time scaling, meaning CUA’s performance improves when more steps are allowed. The figure below compares CUA’s performance with previous state-of-the-arts with varying maximum allowed steps. Human performance on this benchmark is 72.4%, so there is still significant room for improvement. The following visualizations show examples of CUA navigating a variety of standardized OSWorld tasks. CUA in Operator We’re making CUA available through a research preview of Operator, an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you. Operator is available to Pro users in the U.S. at operator.chatgpt.com⁠(opens in a new window). This research preview is an opportunity to learn from our users and the broader ecosystem, refining and improving Operator iteratively. As with any early-stage technology, we don’t expect CUA to perform reliably in all scenarios just yet. However, it has already proven useful in a variety of cases, and we aim to extend that reliability across a wider range of tasks. By releasing CUA in Operator, we hope to gather valuable insights from our users, which will guide us in refining its capabilities and expanding its applications. In the table below, we present CUA’s performance in Operator on a handful of trials given a prompt to illustrate its known strengths and weaknesses. Category Prompt Success / attempts Note Interacting with various UI components to accomplish tasks Turn 1: Search Britannica for a detailed map view of bear habitats Turn 2: Great! Now please check out the black, brown and polar bear links and provide a concise general overview of their physical characteristics, specifically their differences. Oh and save the links for me so I can access them quickly. 10 / 10 View trajectory CUA can interact with various UI components to search, sort, and filter results to find the information that users want. Reliability varies for different websites and UIs. I want one of those target deals. Can you check if they have a deal on poppi prebiotic sodas? If they do, I want the watermelon flavor in the 12fl oz can. Get me the type of deal that comes with this and check if it's gluten free. 9 / 10 View trajectory I am planning to shift to Seattle and I want you to search Redfin for a townhouse with at least 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and an energy-efficient design (e.g., solar panels or LEED-certified). My budget is between $600,000 - $800,000 and it should ideally be close to 1500 sq ft. 3 / 10 View trajectory Tasks that can be accomplished through repeated simple UI interactions Create a new project in Todoist titled 'Weekend Grocery Shopping.' Add the following shopping list with products: Bananas (6 pieces) Avocados (2 ripe) Baby Spinach (1 bag) Whole Milk (1 gallon) Cheddar Cheese (8 oz block) Potato Chips (Salted, family size) Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa, 2 bars) 10 / 10 View trajectory CUA can reliably repeat simple UI interaction multiple times to automate simple, but tedious tasks from users. Search Spotify for the most popular songs of the USA for the 1990s, and create a playlist with at least 10 tracks. 10 / 10 View trajectory Tasks where CUA shows a high success rate only if prompts include detailed hints on how to use the website. Visit tagvenue.com and look for a concert hall that seats 150 people in London. I need it on Feb 22 2025 for the entire day from 9 am to 12 am, just make sure it is under £90 per hour. Oh could you check the filters section for appropriate filters and make sure there is parking and the entire thing is wheelchair accessible. 8 / 10 View trajectory Even for the same task, CUA’s reliability might change depending on how we are prompting the task. In this case, we can improve the reliability by providing specifics of date (e.g. 9 am to 12am vs entire day from 9 am), and by providing hints on which UI should be used to find results (e.g. check the filters section …) Visit tagvenue.com and look for a concert hall that seats 150 people in London. I need it on Feb 22 2025 for the entire day from 9 am, just make sure it is under £90 per hour. Oh and make sure there is parking and the entire thing is wheelchair accessible. 3 / 10 Struggling to use unfamiliar UI and text editing Use html5editor and input the folowing text on the left side, then edit it following my instructions and give me a screenshot of the entire thing when done. The text is: Hello world! This is my first text. I need to see how it would look like when programmed with HTML. Some parts should be red. Some bold. Some italic. Some underlined. Until my lesson is complete, and we shift to the other side. ... Hello world! should have header 2 applied The sentence below it should be a regular paragraph text. The sentence mentioning red should be normal text and red The sentence mentionnihg bold should be normal text bolded Sentence mentioning italic should be italicized The final sentence should be aligned to the right instead of the usual left 4 / 10 View trajectory When CUA has to interact with UIs that it hasn't interacted much with during training, it struggles to figure out how to use the provided UI appropriately. It often results in lots of trial and errors, and inefficient actions. CUA is not precise at text editing. It often makes lots of mistakes in the process or provides output with error. Safety Because CUA is one of our first agentic products with an ability to directly take actions in a browser, it brings new risks and challenges to address. As we prepared for deployment of Operator, we did extensive safety testing and implemented mitigations across three major classes of safety risks: misuse, model mistakes, and frontier risks. We believe it is important to take a layered approach to safety, so we implemented safeguards across the whole deployment context: the CUA model itself, the Operator system, and post-deployment processes. The aim is to have mitigations that stack, with each layer incrementally reducing the risk profile. The first category of risk is misuse. In addition to requiring users to comply with our Usage Policies, we have designed the following mitigations to reduce Operator’s risk of harm due to misuse, building off our safety work for GPT‑4o( https://openai.com/index/gpt-4o-system-card/ ) : Refusals: The CUA model is trained to refuse many harmful tasks and illegal or regulated activities. Blocklist: Operator cannot access websites that we’ve preemptively blocked, such as many gambling sites, adult entertainment, and drug or gun retailers. Moderation: User interactions are reviewed in real-time by automated safety checkers that are designed to ensure compliance with Usage Policies and have the ability to issue warnings or blocks for prohibited activities. Offline detection: We’ve also developed automated detection and human review pipelines to identify prohibited usage in priority policy areas, including child safety and deceptive activities, allowing us to enforce our Usage Policies. The second category of risk is model mistakes, where the CUA model accidentally takes an action that the user didn’t intend, which in turn causes harm to the user or others. Hypothetical mistakes can range in severity, from a typo in an email, to purchasing the wrong item, to permanently deleting an important document. To minimize potential harm, we’ve developed the following mitigations: User confirmations: The CUA model is trained to ask for user confirmation before finalizing tasks with external side effects, for example before submitting an order, sending an email, etc., so that the user can double-check the model’s work before it becomes permanent. Limitations on tasks: For now, the CUA model will decline to help with certain higher-risk tasks, like banking transactions and tasks that require sensitive decision-making. Watch mode: On particularly sensitive websites, such as email, Operator requires active user supervision, ensuring users can directly catch and address any potential mistakes the model might make. One particularly important category of model mistakes is adversarial attacks on websites that cause the CUA model to take unintended actions, through prompt injections, jailbreaks, and phishing attempts. In addition to the aforementioned mitigations against model mistakes, we developed several additional layers of defense to protect against these risks: Cautious navigation: The CUA model is designed to identify and ignore prompt injections on websites, recognizing all but one case from an early internal red-teaming session. Monitoring: In Operator, we’ve implemented an additional model to monitor and pause execution if it detects suspicious content on the screen. Detection pipeline: We’re applying both automated detection and human review pipelines to identify suspicious access patterns that can be flagged and rapidly added to the monitor (in a matter of hours). Finally, we evaluated the CUA model against frontier risks outlined in our Preparedness Framework⁠(https://cdn.openai.com/openai-preparedness-framework-beta.pdf ), including scenarios involving autonomous replication and biorisk tooling. These assessments showed no incremental risk on top of GPT‑4o. For those interested in exploring the evaluations and safeguards in more detail, we encourage you to review the Operator System Card, a living document that provides transparency into our safety approach and ongoing improvements. As many of Operator’s capabilities are new, so are the risks and mitigation approaches we’ve implemented. While we have aimed for state-of-the-art, diverse and complementary mitigations, we expect these risks and our approach to evolve as we learn more. We look forward to using the research preview period as an opportunity to gather user feedback, refine our safeguards, and enhance agentic safety. Conclusion CUA builds on years of research advancements in multimodality, reasoning and safety. We have made significant progress in deep reasoning through the o-model series, vision capabilities through GPT‑4o, and new techniques to improve robustness through reinforcement learning and instruction hierarchy( https://openai.com/index/the-instruction-hierarchy/ ). The next challenge space we plan to explore is expanding the action space of agents. The flexibility offered by a universal interface addresses this challenge, enabling an agent that can navigate any software tool designed for humans. By moving beyond specialized agent-friendly APIs, CUA can adapt to whatever computer environment is available—truly addressing the “long tail” of digital use cases that remain out of reach for most AI models. We're also working to make CUA available in the API⁠(https://platform.openai.com/ ), so developers can use it to build their own computer-using agents. As we continue to iterate on CUA, we look forward to seeing the different use cases the community will discover. We plan to use the real-world feedback we gather from this early preview to continuously refine CUA’s capabilities and safety mitigations to safely advance our mission of distributing the benefits of AI to everyone. Authors OpenAI References Introducing computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku⁠(https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use ) Model Card Addendum: Claude 3.5 Haiku and Upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet⁠( https://assets.anthropic.com/m/1cd9d098ac3e6467/original/Claude-3-Model-Card-October-Addendum.pdf ) Kura WebVoyager benchmark⁠(https://www.trykura.com/benchmarks ) Google project mariner⁠( https://deepmind.google/technologies/project-mariner/ ) OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environments⁠(https://os-world.github.io/ ) WebVoyager: Building an End-to-End Web Agent with Large Multimodal Models⁠(https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13919 ) WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agents⁠( https://webarena.dev/ ) Citations Please cite OpenAI and use the following BibTeX for citation: http://cdn.openai.com/cua/cua2025.bib URL https://openai.com/index/computer-using-agent/ OpenAI’s new AI browser could rival Perplexity — here’s what I hope it gets right Story by Amanda Caswell OpenAI is building a brand-new web browser, and it could completely change how we search, browse and get things done online. According to recent leaks and an exclusive report from Reuters, the company behind ChatGPT is working on a Chromium-based browser that integrates AI agents directly into your browsing experience. Internally codenamed “Operator,” this new browser is expected to go far beyond search to offer smart, memory-equipped agents that can summarize pages, complete actions (like booking travel) and eventually handle full web-based tasks for you. If this sounds like Perplexity’s Comet, you’re right. The recently launched AI-powered browser integrates search and sidebar answers directly into the page. OpenAI’s browser will likely compete with Chrome and Comet, but hasn’t launched yet. It’s rumored to be rolling out first to ChatGPT Plus subscribers in the U.S. as part of an early beta, possibly later this summer. As someone who tests AI tools for a living, I’ve tried nearly every smart assistant and search engine on the market. And while Perplexity’s Comet offers a solid first look at the future of AI browsing, here’s what I’m most excited for from OpenAI’s take, and what I hope it gets right. 1. A truly proactive browsing assistant Perplexity is great at answering questions. But what I want from OpenAI’s browser is something more autonomous; an assistant that doesn't just wait for a prompt but actively enhances the page I'm on. Imagine browsing am*zon and having the assistant automatically suggest product comparisons or pull in real reviews from Reddit. Or reading a news article and instantly seeing a timeline, source context and differing viewpoints, but with zero prompting. That level of proactive help could turn passive browsing into intelligent discovery and I’m totally here for it. 2. Built-in agents that take action OpenAI’s “Operator” agents are rumored to handle full tasks beyond search or summarization. For instance, filling out forms, booking tickets or handling customer service chats will all be done for you. If that’s true, it’s a major leap forward. While Perplexity’s Comet is great for pulling in answers, OpenAI’s approach may introduce a new category of browser-based automation powered by memory, context and reasoning. 3. Cleaner answers, better sources Let’s be honest: search engines today are filled with AI-generated slop, vague product listicles, SEO junk and misleading clickbait. Perplexity tries to solve this by pulling answers from verified sources and citing them in real time. OpenAI could go even further, drawing from its own training data and web browsing capabilities to offer cleaner, more nuanced summaries with source-level transparency. If they can combine the conversational intelligence of ChatGPT with web accuracy, it could help reverse the search spam crisis. 4. One tab to rule them all If OpenAI’s browser integrates with ChatGPT’s existing multimodal tools, including everything from image generation to spreadsheet analysis and file uploads, it could become the first true all-in-one productivity browser. That would give creators, students and professionals a seamless way to write, code, search, design and automate within one interface. The bottom line Perplexity’s Comet browser is a strong first step toward smarter web browsing. But OpenAI’s rumored browser has the potential to go further by offering a more intelligent, personalized and action-ready browsing experience. I’ll be watching closely for the beta invite to drop. And if it delivers on the promise of proactive agents, real web automation and a cleaner, more useful internet, this could be the most exciting browser launch since Chrome. URL https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/openai-s-new-ai-browser-could-rival-perplexity-here-s-what-i-hope-it-gets-right/ar-AA1Iou29?ocid=BingNewsSerp

IF YOU VIEW RICHARD MURRAY THOUGHTS AFTER 9/1/2020 PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING LINK https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/249-richard-murray-thoughts-version-2/?do=findComment&comment=945 Archive Richard Murray's ThoughtCloud pia sundhage in brasil , USSoccer vs NWSL , corporate joga bonito , FIFAWWC expansion , mannschaft 2014 , atleti preseason 2019 , financing in womens sport, iwobi/zaha at arsenal , inter women maximin , South African Womens national league first announcement/initiation , COSAFA Womens Championship 2019 group results , UEFA women advertisement variance , gender equality or bonding , African Premier LEadership Awards , Balotelli in brazil , Futsal in japan , Female players in Kenya , Banyana Banyana win COSAFA 2019 cup , Nat King Cole and female athletes , referee quality, aritz aduriz begin the la liga 2019-2020 season , pregnant athlete pay , a case for china, DTigress 2019 afrobasket champs, BlackQueens future , coachcam , the sister clubs , corinthians feminino , Ai Kesen, Chelsea ladies and the banning of female soccer players, Bayelsa queens 2019 NWFL champion , 23 year and younger , Ol feminin 2019 to the future , SWNL begins , Neymar transfer window closing 2019 , Hasaacas ladies and pay scales , Brasilian womens champions a2 2019 , UEFA champions league group stage 2019-2020 , Neymar continues his time at PSG , fff female friendly 8312019 , Belgian grnad prix 2019 opening lap , womens soccer, flag weeks, under reported transfers , Womens soccer news 952019 , sereias de vila photos 9/8/2019 , دخترآبی and the rest of the world plus some soccer , atleti in uefacl 9122019 , Neymar at PSG 2019/2020 , The Fate to Ansu Fati , the law versus negative bias from eniola aluko , the health of the female player , Russian Grand Prix 2019 , Japanese Grand Prix 2019 , Lebron on Morey , venting ussoccer , do you know the military world games , Brasil women olympics , Caf women have no cup of nations host a clarification to Julia Wanjeri , part 2 to Wanjeri , state based relpro in the usa , uefa champions league 2019/2020 group stage end results , uefa cl 2019-2020 r16 europa league r32 , Mourinho and tactics and tuschel , Phil Schoen side Mark Lincir , Sporting Money during the corona Virus , Women must own to control , PSG+pogba 2020 , Black ownership has no excuse, ? Audioblog Season 2 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , ? Copa Libertadores 2020 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , ? Copa Libertadores 2019 1 , 2, 3, 4, 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10, 11 , 12 , ? UEFA Champions League 2019/2020 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ,10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15, ? Matches OL vs Monaco 892019 , OM vs Reims 8102019 , Chelsea vs MUFC 8112019 , 2019 uefa supercup , OL vs Montpellier 8272019 , Atletico Madrid vs Eibar 912019 , Copa do Brasil 2019 leg 1 , Braga vs PSG UEFAWCL 9122019 , Copa do BRasil 2019 leg 2 , Corinthians vs Independiente del Valle Copa Sudamericana , Club America vs Club LEon LigaMX femenil , Juarez vs PUMAS LigaMXFemenil , pumas atletico san luis ligamxfemenino , toluca vs guadalajara , Tigres vs Club Tijuana LigaMXFemenino , Atletico Madrid vs Mallorca La Liga , independiente vs corinthians , Colon vs Atletico Mineiro copa sudamericana , Tigres vs Necaxa LigaMXFemenil , NWSL semifinals 2019 , NWSL 2019 final , Atletico Madrid vs Alaves 10292019 , Galatasaray vs Rizespor , Dijon vs PSG , PSG vs ASse , PSG vs Monaco , PSG vs Monaco part 2, psg/reims coupe de france 2020 , atleti vs Valencia 2142020 , Recopa 2020 leg 1 , galatasaray vs fenerbache 2232020 , Recopa 2020 leg 2 , PSG OL 343030 , bayern munich vs borussia monchengladbach , barcelona vs mallorca 6132020 , real madrid vs Eibar 6142020 , atletico madrid vs osasuna 6172020, barca/celtavigo 6272020 , atleti vs alaves 6272020 , Real MAdrid vs Espanyol 6282020 , atleti vs barca 6302020 , Real MAdrid vs Valencia 7162020 , PSG vs Atalanta 8122020 , ? Weekends 8-17-2019 , 8-18-2019 , 8-24-2019 , 8-25-2019 , 8-31-2019 , 9-14-2019 , 9/21/2019 , 9/22/2019 , 9/28/2019 , 10/5/2019-10/6/2019 , 10192019 , 10-26-2019 , 10-27-2019 , 11-2-2019 , 11-9-2019 , 11-10-2019 , 11-22-2019 , 11-23-2019 , 12/1/2019 , 12-7-2019 , 12-14-2019 , 12/15/2019 , 1/4/2020 , 1/25/2020 , 1/26/2020 , 2/1/2020 , 2/8/2020 , 2/15/2020 , 2/16/2020 , 3/1/2020 , 3/8/2020 , ? NB Sports Braga vs PSG 9122019 , ? Womens Soccer NEws Roundups 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , ? PHotos 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , ? Prior ThoughtCloud : 8/9/2019 , CURRENT IS ABOVE

In modernity many Black people speak to finding roots or gaining reparations or many other thing offline that require a collective power that does not exist or an individual power that does not exist. I am not suggesting said power will not become to a black group or black individual offline. But, I am certain it is easier for a black collective or individual task online to be successful. To that end, I cognize a nice way to show who black people are today, that can have value tomorrow , collectively or individually, is through individual sigils. The data storage for the sigils will be linked at the postend to this article. The comments to this post will be links to each sigil made, which is composed of the graphic, name, and url to main place online. https://photos.app.goo.gl/HXbBwMv3DtSogJnh7

My second story collection, Looking West and West, is a collection of 18 stories followed by 18 poems; in the work, 18 story is to the most lifefull in their heart fore 18 poem to those mature in body or will; it is the second in my story collection series, the first being Sunset Children Stories. In Sunset Children Stories two part exist: fables and tales. A preview is available for the ebook on the official kobo page. Check it out and at some time, leave your review on the official kobo page. Any question or thought, you can respond in this blog. If you want to hear an excerpt from Sunset Children Stories, use the following audio stream Below is an excerpt from another book, The Janidogo If you want to check out my writing style, or just enjoy a free book, please utilize the following Sunset Children Stories: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sunset-children-stories Looking West and West: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/looking-west-and-west Janidogo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-janidogo The Gospel of Joseph: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gospel-of-joseph The Nyotenda FREE : https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-nyotenda Includes a comic. The following link is an excerpt LINK

Leah Cutter has this idea for a island map where you use the coordinates for the genre you write in and make these islands So I first had to list my work, I chose only the work I have published on Kobo, I didn't choose everything I have ever written or had accepted in this that or the other. While that would be fair, to be honest, my mindset is, if I incorporate those things that I may have to add another axis and I didn't want this to be muddled too much. If you ever tried to graph a function having five variables by hand you comprehend me, in the visual imbalance to that. As it is, I first listed each work I have in Kobo or I am working on this year, and labeled them next to it Gospel of Joseph- Religious fiction Kings of London Epic Poem CFC 2012-2013 sport Poetry/sport Comic/Sport Assessment Kings of London Epic Poem CFC 2013-2014 sport Poetry/ sport Comic/Sport Assessment Kings of London Epic Poem CFC 2014-2015 sport Poetry/sport Comic/Sport Assessment Looking West and West - Story Collection - Fantasy Lucky 13 - unfinished science fiction Richard Murray Thoughts Round 1 to 8 and ongoing /Sport Assessment/sport Poetry Sunset Children Stories Fable Collection/ Story Collection The Janidogo Fantasy Script The Nyotenda Science Fiction Script The Visasiki Story Collection FREE intro Richard Murray Poetry Collection- Fantasy poetry/Social critique poetry Richard Murray public paths- Fantasy/Science Fiction For me, what I see is quite a bit of poetry and story collections If I use two axis- one for poetry the other for prose, the poetry can go from sport to fantasy(red) the prose from sport assessment to fantasy either have social critique or religious fiction in the center (green) I came up with the grid in the following ...Before I created it I knew it would not be good enough, the graphical scheme needed a change for me. I added Roman numeral index to the list and applied the numerals into the graph but I then went at it again I Gospel of Joseph- Religious fiction II Kings of London Epic Poem CFC 2012-2013 sport Poetry/sport Comic/Sport Assessment III Kings of London Epic Poem CFC 2013-2014 sport Poetry/ sport Comic/Sport Assessment IV Kings of London Epic Poem CFC 2014-2015 sport Poetry/sport Comic/Sport Assessment V Looking West and West - Story Collection - Fantasy/adult riddles VI Lucky 13 - unfinished science fiction VII Richard Murray Thoughts Round 1 to 8 and ongoing /Sport Assessment/sport Poetry IIX Sunset Children Stories Fable Collection/ Story Collection IX The Janidogo Fantasy Script X The Nyotenda Science Fiction Script XI The Visasiki Story Collection XII Richard Murray Poetry Collection- Fantasy poetry/Social critique poetry XIIV Richard Murray public paths- Fantasy/Science Fiction So I was more rigid, placing an alphanumeric next to each representing a book next to each book that applied going down the line adding in Fiction- Religious 1 Poetry-Sport 2347 Prose- Sport 2347 Comic- Sport 234 Fantasy- short story 58B Adult-riddles 5 Science Fiction- unfinished 6 Fable 8 Fantasy -script 9 Science fiction - script A Fantasy poetry C social critique poetry C Fantasy fiction D science fiction D Then I remade the categories to focus on genre, I excluded audio which is unfair since i added the comics. But, the audio is akin to the text. Religious fiction 1 Sport poetry 2347 Sport prose 2347 sport comic 234 Fantasy - short story 58B Adult- riddles 5 Science fiction unfinished 6 Fable 8 Fantasy - script 9 Science fiction- script A Fantasy poetry C Social critique poetry C Fantasy Fiction D Science Fiction D Then the true boundaries came to light. I have fiction: religious/Fantasy-short story/fable/fantasy script/science fiction script/fantasy/science fiction Sport: poetry/prose/comic Adult: riddles poetry: fantasy/social critique if I combine riddles into poetry, which is not literally true, a riddle need not be a poem but the adult riddles in looking west and west are poetic, i should know:), then I have three shapes Fiction is a septagon Sport is a trigon and the poetry is a trigon but then i realized the shapes don't merge functionally , fiction needs to be an nonagon, to include sport and nonfiction; sport must be a quadgon to include nonsport, and poetry must be a quadgon to include nonpoetry, and I index them fiction(green): I religious/ II Fantasy-short story/ III fable/ IV fantasy script/ V science fiction script/ VI fantasy/ VII science fiction/ IIX sport/ IX nonfiction (yellow) Sport(red): I poetry/ II prose/ III comic/ IV nonsport (blue) Poetry(black): I fantasy/ II social critique/ III adult riddle/ IV nonpoetry (brown) So the following is the second attempt, I made the shapes and then placing the alphanumeric described above. For example, the gospel of joseph is religious fiction. So I placed digit one under the appropriate green line, using purple. For some books where I do multiple I made purple lines connecting, thus making islands, if you will on top of each other in the air that are see through except for the border. But this proves how some work I do have multifaceted and some does not. The first thing is obvious I learn about my writing, a lot of poetry. More than I even considered, spanning various genres, which makes my first poetry book this year, common sense. But it also shows how much of my poetry is dominated through sport and not beyond into the fantastic thus the poetry book this year will be about the fantastic. I also have not settled on a favorite fiction genre I like to write in. well, as it is , can you make your own graph and share with all what you have learned about your writing I was inspired by this post https://kobowritinglife.com/2017/03/09/writing-all-over-the-map-leah-cutters-island-sampler/

The Text Based Zenith Power Collage can be accessed using the following link. Tell me what you think and if you will like to see the Legend Collage below in audio form? https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/179-richard-murray-collages/?tab=comments#comment-513 CLICK anywhere in the image above and it will take you to a story, click on the tale to go back Richard Murray Collages Book 2 The following Collage ebook ,similar content to the slide above,is based on the 1985 film legend. The Collage was interesting as the themes of Evil/Love/Fairies/Demons encircled each other. Legend source story is more romantic and the Evil is not as straightforward as some will like to think, to be fair it is darkness not evil. Like the prior week , Please use the kobo mobile app to view. Please tell me your thoughts in private message if you are part of my email list or in guest comment here... Lastly, I am pondering what the next collage book should reference, the private collage series will involve black stories like john henry or three the hard way getting the treatment, so any ideas to another non black story you will like me to collage? https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/richard-murray-collages-book-2 Links exist below to view the film or read the scripts. the film for those that do not know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M7N_TSZdic Legend first script- one of the finest scripts I have ever read in terms of flat out imagination and beauty. the opening scene with the princess needed to be made http://www.figmentfly.com/legend/script3a.html Legend second script with the truest darkness- the black unicorn, lovely http://www.figmentfly.com/legend/script3b.html Legend third script made into the film http://www.figmentfly.com/legend/script3c.html COLLAGES LIST THE FIRST POWER LEGEND - look above ? Who is next, give me a suggestion

A friend of mine inspired this project, this is version 1, more are coming Version1- Yellow means a draw, blue means computer won, brown means you the user won. R means Rock, P means Paper, S means Scissors. Click start to start the game. Stop to end it. You can click the R, P, or S button to set your value, the computer chooses its own away from your eyes:) but the results will be shown Version 2- suggestions from angelalita about showing what the computer is doing and my own trim with the tile like dominoes. Tileshift can be accessed at anytime but the wisest thing is to start it after you have stopped the rock paper scissors game. Version 3

THANK YOU SO MUCH for everything you're done for us. How can I give back to your love for us. What I can do is not much but hope I can give you back what's good and being beautiful to your eyes. Hope I can live my life to do your work and be of help even if it is a bit. THANK YOU GOD that you have trained me and guide me patiently until I came to where I am and what I am to be. God, I love you so much as much as you do. I am just a small human being but all I wish is to work with you and express myself in your hands to make beautiful messages together so that people will see you through my post and my videos, and even in my photos, too. THANK YOU for blessings my new family and friends of the family. Hope one day we finally reach the level of more wiser and better human beings from the way what God want us to be. And hope one day, we return to our God and become one. I wish love and luck and peace to all the people on earth who live today. Especially during the Christmas season, I wish everyone love and joy in life. Much love and my best gratitude from deepest of my heart. Amin Parker パーカー・アミン

Here is the character list and after it is the image. Find your favorite CHARACTER LIST: (️=Claimed =Finished) ️1) Mario - Nicostud916 ️2) Donkey Kong - SunbeamStone ️3) Link - ShimoDuck ️4) Samus - Joker2735 ️4e) Dark Samus - SolarBiscuit96 ️5) Yoshi - Little-Papership ️6) Kirby - InnocentBunny101 ️7) Fox - VixDojoFox ️8) Pikachu - KoraNight ️9) Luigi - Waluigi-Wah ️10) Ness - Geekster1984 ️11) Captain Falcon - EmmaWolves2020 ️12) Jigglypuff - Raymanimations ️13) Peach - StellarFairy ️13e) Daisy - NowLookHere ️14) Bowser - sonicexeartist567 ️15) Ice Climbers - onjikun ️16) Sheik - Hakonechloa ️17) Zelda - PrincessSkyler ️18) Doctor Mario - fall2landers ️19) Pichu - DarkSunshine92 ️20) Falco - Mayelis ️21) Marth - GameArtist1993 ️21e) Lucina - Duckyy8 ️22) Young Link - psykuanta ️23) Ganondorf - FrancoisL-Artblog ️24) Mewtwo - cerealncookies ️25) Roy - CristalMomoStar ️25e) Chrom - HeavenBunny95 ️26) Mr. Game & Watch - MagmaMTMBFan ️27) Meta Knight - dancingfancycat ️28) Pit - Mumbles-Pear ️28e) Dark Pit - Corovusin ️29) Zero Suit Samus - Cyanymph ️30) Wario - Jradical2014 ️31) Snake - NeomiahPVart ️32) Ike - Kat-Naps ️33-35) Pokemon Trainer (Squirtle/Ivysaur/Charizard) - TunesLooney ️36) Diddy Kong - Shishinarts ️37) Lucas - Absbor-Phamtusin ️38) Sonic - RainbowReaderDrawzYT ️39) King Dedede - JustAGhosty ️40) Olimar - Arty-PURRchardy2002 ️41) Lucario - Erry ️42) R.O.B. - Zhoid ️43) Toon Link - Parastatic ️44) Wolf - NazoKG ️45) Villager - platinum-starz ️46) Mega Man - SirFrancis ️47) Wii Fit TRAINER - AlloyAHY ️48) Rosalina & Luma - PrismaticArts ️49) Little Mac - Ry-Spirit ️50) Greninja - phantomfox04 ️51-53) Mii Fighters (Brawler/Swordfighter/Gunner) - jazz-convoy ️54) Palutena - MisterNeedlem0use ️55) Pac-Man - goofymonk ️56) Robin - GoddessPrincessLulu ️57) Shulk - novamallow ️58) Bowser Jr - NateDog73 ️59) Duck Hunt - Lime-o-Bunny ️60) Ryu - DarkWolfKnight00 ️60e) Ken - burgar ️61) Cloud - ChrissRegularArtDA ️62) Corrin - Lushies-Art ️63) Bayonetta - HDdeviant ️64) Inkling - ARaccoonNamedPeacock ️65) Ridley - ankolosaurus ️66) Simon - CatBunny404 ️66e) Richter - KurdossArt ️67) King K.Rool - DingoPizza ️68) Isabelle - Frogat0 ️69) Incineroar - Sparky-94 ️70) Piranha Plant - JJSponge120 ️71) Joker - Mystery--Mist ️72) Hero - fuyubareluna ️73) Banjo Kazooie - wonderingwellow ️74) Terry - Retro7 ️75) Byleth - @MaxxieMousePJMasks ️76) Min Min - CatsumiCatsumadness ️77) Steve - KATEtheDeath1 ️78) Sephiroth - MrMcDeathCorporation ️79-80) Pyra/Mythra - ItzPinkiePlayz ️81) Kazuya - SweetGluttonyArt ️82) Sora - LadyYomi Image original, use as a map The complete image Finished collab image https://www.deviantart.com/ry-spirit/art/Super-Smash-Bros-Collab-981894855 Collab page https://www.deviantart.com/ry-spirit/journal/Big-Smash-Bros-Art-Collab-974447631 Pokemon Collab Bayonetta - my entry in the collab in full https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Bayonetta-super-smash-collab-2023-Color-980504646 the coloring page https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Bayonetta-super-smash-collab-2023-BW-980503498 Black Games Elite article https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/394-bayonetta-of-a-super-smash-bros-collab-is-done/

some small things are absolutely brilliant if you don't know prior entry

Got a question for the cast of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves? They may have answers! Submit your questions here < https://entertainment.tumblr.com/ask > , and tune in for their Answer Time on March 30th at 11am PT / 2pm ET, before the film opens wide on March 31st. U.R.L. https://entertainment.tumblr.com/post/711937110429532160/got-a-question-for-the-cast-of-dungeons-dragons In Amendment many black people love video games, love board games, love card games, and yet, I have never seen a board game like dungeons and dragons implemented by black people. Yes, Dungeons and dragons has an open world structure meant for any human to play in it, but rivals for games are made all the time. Just wondering. Also, will you ask a question ?I placed mine below Do any of you play the Dungeons and Dragons board game and will you play a character like the one you play in the movie or another? What do you think about a version of the Dungeons and dragons board game based on the movie, upon success and sequels, will it be an uncommon synergy between film and games? Honor among thieves seems a introduction to a world but not an origin story, am i wrong or right, and will that make sequels/derivative works more fun or creative?

Enjoy the design. I will make a design all mine for the second and for the third I will do a star trek 3d chess. Any suggestions or thoughts, please and all are welcome to join in. I used, Figuro to create and hosted on SKetchfab. Richard Murray Chesstable 01 by richardmurray3d on Sketchfab

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Religious and Moral Poems, by Phillis Wheatley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Religious and Moral Poems Author: Phillis Wheatley Release Date: January, 1996 [EBook #409] Last Updated: February 24, 2019 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGIOUS AND MORAL POEMS *** Etext produced by Judith Boss HTML file produced by David Widger POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. By Phillis Wheatley (Negro Servant To Mr. John Wheatley, Of Boston, In New-England) 1771 CONTENTS PREFACE. TO THE PUBLIC. P O E M S TO M AE C E N A S. O N V I R T U E. TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, IN NEW-ENGLAND. TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. 1768. ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA. ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. DR. SEWELL, 1769. ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. MR. GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 1770. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY OF FIVE YEARS OF AGE. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN. TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND. G O L I A T H O F G A T H. THOUGHTS ON THE WORKS OF PROVIDENCE. TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF THREE RELATIONS. TO A CLERGYMAN ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. AN HYMN TO THE MORNING AN HYMN TO THE EVENING. ISAIAH lxiii. 1-8. ON RECOLLECTION. ON IMAGINATION. A FUNERAL POEM ON THE DEATH OF C. E. AN INFANT OF TWELVE MONTHS. TO CAPTAIN H———D, OF THE 65TH REGIMENT. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH O D E T O N E P T U N E. TO A LADY ON HER COMING TO NORTH-AMERICA WITH HER SON, FOR THE RECOVERY OF HER HEALTH. TO A LADY ON HER REMARKABLE PRESERVATION IN AN HURRICANE IN NORTH-CAROLINA. TO A LADY AND HER CHILDREN, ON THE DEATH OF HER SON AND THEIR BROTHER. TO A GENTLEMAN AND LADY ON THE DEATH OF THE LADY’S BROTHER AND SISTER, AND A CHILD OF THE NAME OF AVIS, AGED ONE YEAR. ON THE DEATH OF DR. SAMUEL MARSHALL. 1771. TO A GENTLEMAN ON HIS VOYAGE TO GREAT-BRITAIN FOR THE RECOVERY OF HIS HEALTH. TO THE REV. DR. THOMAS AMORY, ON READING HIS SERMONS ON DAILY DEVOTION, IN WHICH THAT DUTY IS RECOMMENDED AND ASSISTED. ON THE DEATH OF J. C. AN INFANT. AN H Y M N TO H U M A N I T Y. TO S. P. G. ESQ; TO THE HONOURABLE T. H. ESQ; ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER. NIOBE IN DISTRESS FOR HER CHILDREN SLAIN BY APOLLO, FROM OVID’S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK VI. AND FROM A VIEW OF THE PAINTING OF MR. RICHARD WILSON. TO S. M. A YOUNG AFRICAN PAINTER, ON SEEING HIS WORKS. TO HIS HONOUR THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR, ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. MARCH 24, 1773. A FAREWEL TO AMERICA. TO MRS. S. W. A REBUS, BY I. B. AN ANSWER TO THE REBUS, BY THE AUTHOR OF THESE POEMS. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON, THE FOLLOWING P O E M S ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. BY HER MUCH OBLIGED, VERY HUMBLE AND DEVOTED SERVANT. PHILLIS WHEATLEY. Boston, June 12, 1771. PREFACE. THE following POEMS were written originally for the Amusement of the Author, as they were the Products of her leisure Moments. She had no Intention ever to have published them; nor would they now have made their Appearance, but at the Importunity of many of her best, and most generous Friends; to whom she considers herself, as under the greatest Obligations. As her Attempts in Poetry are now sent into the World, it is hoped the Critic will not severely censure their Defects; and we presume they have too much Merit to be cast aside with Contempt, as worthless and trifling Effusions. As to the Disadvantages she has laboured under, with Regard to Learning, nothing needs to be offered, as her Master’s Letter in the following Page will sufficiently show the Difficulties in this Respect she had to encounter. With all their Imperfections, the Poems are now humbly submitted to the Perusal of the Public. The following is a Copy of a LETTER sent by the Author’s Master to the Publisher. PHILLIS was brought from Africa to America, in the Year 1761, between seven and eight Years of Age. Without any Assistance from School Education, and by only what she was taught in the Family, she, in sixteen Months Time from her Arrival, attained the English language, to which she was an utter Stranger before, to such a degree, as to read any, the most difficult Parts of the Sacred Writings, to the great Astonishment of all who heard her. As to her WRITING, her own Curiosity led her to it; and this she learnt in so short a Time, that in the Year 1765, she wrote a Letter to the Rev. Mr. OCCOM, the Indian Minister, while in England. She has a great Inclination to learn the Latin Tongue, and has made some Progress in it. This Relation is given by her Master who bought her, and with whom she now lives. JOHN WHEATLEY. Boston, Nov. 14, 1772. TO THE PUBLIC. AS it has been repeatedly suggested to the Publisher, by Persons, who have seen the Manuscript, that Numbers would be ready to suspect they were not really the Writings of PHILLIS, he has procured the following Attestation, from the most respectable Characters in Boston, that none might have the least Ground for disputing their Original. WE whose Names are under-written, do assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page,* were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them. His Excellency THOMAS HUTCHINSON, Governor. The Hon. ANDREW OLIVER, Lieutenant-Governor. The Hon. Thomas Hubbard, | The Rev. Charles Chauncey, D. D. The Hon. John Erving, | The Rev. Mather Byles, D. D. The Hon. James Pitts, | The Rev. Ed. Pemberton, D. D. The Hon. Harrison Gray, | The Rev. Andrew Elliot, D. D. The Hon. James Bowdoin, | The Rev. Samuel Cooper, D. D. John Hancock, Esq; | The Rev. Mr. Saumel Mather, Joseph Green, Esq; | The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead, Richard Carey, Esq; | Mr. John Wheat ey, her Master. N. B. The original Attestation, signed by the above Gentlemen, may be seen by applying to Archibald Bell, Bookseller, No. 8, Aldgate-Street. _________________________________________________________ *The Words “following Page,” allude to the Contents of the Manuscript Copy, which are wrote at the Back of the above Attestation. P O E M S O N V A R I O U S S U B J E C T S. TO M AE C E N A S. MAECENAS, you, beneath the myrtle shade, Read o’er what poets sung, and shepherds play’d. What felt those poets but you feel the same? Does not your soul possess the sacred flame? Their noble strains your equal genius shares In softer language, and diviner airs. While Homer paints, lo! circumfus’d in air, Celestial Gods in mortal forms appear; Swift as they move hear each recess rebound, Heav’n quakes, earth trembles, and the shores resound. Great Sire of verse, before my mortal eyes, The lightnings blaze across the vaulted skies, And, as the thunder shakes the heav’nly plains, A deep felt horror thrills through all my veins. When gentler strains demand thy graceful song, The length’ning line moves languishing along. When great Patroclus courts Achilles’ aid, The grateful tribute of my tears is paid; Prone on the shore he feels the pangs of love, And stern Pelides tend’rest passions move. Great Maro’s strain in heav’nly numbers flows, The Nine inspire, and all the bosom glows. O could I rival thine and Virgil’s page, Or claim the Muses with the Mantuan Sage; Soon the same beauties should my mind adorn, And the same ardors in my soul should burn: Then should my song in bolder notes arise, And all my numbers pleasingly surprise; But here I sit, and mourn a grov’ling mind, That fain would mount, and ride upon the wind. Not you, my friend, these plaintive strains become, Not you, whose bosom is the Muses home; When they from tow’ring Helicon retire, They fan in you the bright immortal fire, But I less happy, cannot raise the song, The fault’ring music dies upon my tongue. The happier Terence* all the choir inspir’d, His soul replenish’d, and his bosom fir’d; But say, ye Muses, why this partial grace, To one alone of Afric’s sable race; From age to age transmitting thus his name With the finest glory in the rolls of fame? Thy virtues, great Maecenas! shall be sung In praise of him, from whom those virtues sprung: While blooming wreaths around thy temples spread, I’ll snatch a laurel from thine honour’d head, While you indulgent smile upon the deed. *He was an African by birth. As long as Thames in streams majestic flows, Or Naiads in their oozy beds repose While Phoebus reigns above the starry train While bright Aurora purples o’er the main, So long, great Sir, the muse thy praise shall sing, So long thy praise shal’ make Parnassus ring: Then grant, Maecenas, thy paternal rays, Hear me propitious, and defend my lays. O N V I R T U E. O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach. I cease to wonder, and no more attempt Thine height t’ explore, or fathom thy profound. But, O my soul, sink not into despair, Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand Would now embrace thee, hovers o’er thine head. Fain would the heav’n-born soul with her converse, Then seek, then court her for her promis’d bliss. Auspicious queen, thine heav’nly pinions spread, And lead celestial Chastity along; Lo! now her sacred retinue descends, Array’d in glory from the orbs above. Attend me, Virtue, thro’ my youthful years! O leave me not to the false joys of time! But guide my steps to endless life and bliss. Greatness, or Goodness, say what I shall call thee, To give me an higher appellation still, Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay, O thou, enthron’d with Cherubs in the realms of day. TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, IN NEW-ENGLAND. WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write, The muses promise to assist my pen; ’Twas not long since I left my native shore The land of errors, and Egyptian gloom: Father of mercy, ’twas thy gracious hand Brought me in safety from those dark abodes. Students, to you ’tis giv’n to scan the heights Above, to traverse the ethereal space, And mark the systems of revolving worlds. Still more, ye sons of science ye receive The blissful news by messengers from heav’n, How Jesus’ blood for your redemption flows. See him with hands out-stretcht upon the cross; Immense compassion in his bosom glows; He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn: What matchless mercy in the Son of God! When the whole human race by sin had fall’n, He deign’d to die that they might rise again, And share with him in the sublimest skies, Life without death, and glory without end. Improve your privileges while they stay, Ye pupils, and each hour redeem, that bears Or good or bad report of you to heav’n. Let sin, that baneful evil to the soul, By you be shun’d, nor once remit your guard; Suppress the deadly serpent in its egg. Ye blooming plants of human race divine, An Ethiop tells you ’tis your greatest foe; Its transient sweetness turns to endless pain, And in immense perdition sinks the soul. TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. 1768. YOUR subjects hope, dread Sire— The crown upon your brows may flourish long, And that your arm may in your God be strong! O may your sceptre num’rous nations sway, And all with love and readiness obey! But how shall we the British king reward! Rule thou in peace, our father, and our lord! Midst the remembrance of thy favours past, The meanest peasants most admire the last* May George, beloved by all the nations round, Live with heav’ns choicest constant blessings crown’d! Great God, direct, and guard him from on high, And from his head let ev’ry evil fly! And may each clime with equal gladness see A monarch’s smile can set his subjects free! * The Repeal of the Stamp Act. ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA. ’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew, Some view our sable race with scornful eye, “Their colour is a diabolic die.” Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train. ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. DR. SEWELL, 1769. ERE yet the morn its lovely blushes spread, See Sewell number’d with the happy dead. Hail, holy man, arriv’d th’ immortal shore, Though we shall hear thy warning voice no more. Come, let us all behold with wishful eyes The saint ascending to his native skies; From hence the prophet wing’d his rapt’rous way To the blest mansions in eternal day. Then begging for the Spirit of our God, And panting eager for the same abode, Come, let us all with the same vigour rise, And take a prospect of the blissful skies; While on our minds Christ’s image is imprest, And the dear Saviour glows in ev’ry breast. Thrice happy saint! to find thy heav’n at last, What compensation for the evils past! Great God, incomprehensible, unknown By sense, we bow at thine exalted throne. O, while we beg thine excellence to feel, Thy sacred Spirit to our hearts reveal, And give us of that mercy to partake, Which thou hast promis’d for the Saviour’s sake! “Sewell is dead.” Swift-pinion’d Fame thus cry’d. “Is Sewell dead,” my trembling tongue reply’d, O what a blessing in his flight deny’d! How oft for us the holy prophet pray’d! How oft to us the Word of Life convey’d! By duty urg’d my mournful verse to close, I for his tomb this epitaph compose. “Lo, here a man, redeem’d by Jesus’s blood, “A sinner once, but now a saint with God; “Behold ye rich, ye poor, ye fools, ye wise, “Not let his monument your heart surprise; “Twill tell you what this holy man has done, “Which gives him brighter lustre than the sun. “Listen, ye happy, from your seats above. “I speak sincerely, while I speak and love, “He sought the paths of piety and truth, “By these made happy from his early youth; “In blooming years that grace divine he felt, “Which rescues sinners from the chains of guilt. “Mourn him, ye indigent, whom he has fed, “And henceforth seek, like him, for living bread; “Ev’n Christ, the bread descending from above, “And ask an int’rest in his saving love. “Mourn him, ye youth, to whom he oft has told “God’s gracious wonders from the times of old. “I too have cause this mighty loss to mourn, “For he my monitor will not return. “O when shall we to his blest state arrive? “When the same graces in our bosoms thrive.” ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. MR. GEORGE WHITEFIELD. 1770. HAIL, happy saint, on thine immortal throne, Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown; We hear no more the music of thy tongue, Thy wonted auditories cease to throng. Thy sermons in unequall’d accents flow’d, And ev’ry bosom with devotion glow’d; Thou didst in strains of eloquence refin’d Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind. Unhappy we the setting sun deplore, So glorious once, but ah! it shines no more. Behold the prophet in his tow’ring flight! He leaves the earth for heav’n’s unmeasur’d height, And worlds unknown receive him from our sight. There Whitefield wings with rapid course his way, And sails to Zion through vast seas of day. Thy pray’rs, great saint, and thine incessant cries Have pierc’d the bosom of thy native skies. Thou moon hast seen, and all the stars of light, How he has wrestled with his God by night. He pray’d that grace in ev’ry heart might dwell, He long’d to see America excell; He charg’d its youth that ev’ry grace divine Should with full lustre in their conduct shine; That Saviour, which his soul did first receive, The greatest gift that ev’n a God can give, He freely offer’d to the num’rous throng, That on his lips with list’ning pleasure hung. “Take him, ye wretched, for your only good, “Take him ye starving sinners, for your food; “Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream, “Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme; “Take him my dear Americans, he said, “Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid: “Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you, “Impartial Saviour is his title due: “Wash’d in the fountain of redeeming blood, “You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.” Great Countess,* we Americans revere Thy name, and mingle in thy grief sincere; New England deeply feels, the Orphans mourn, Their more than father will no more return. But, though arrested by the hand of death, Whitefield no more exerts his lab’ring breath, Yet let us view him in th’ eternal skies, Let ev’ry heart to this bright vision rise; While the tomb safe retains its sacred trust, Till life divine re-animates his dust. *The Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Mr. Whitefield was Chaplain. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG LADY OF FIVE YEARS OF AGE. FROM dark abodes to fair etherial light Th’ enraptur’d innocent has wing’d her flight; On the kind bosom of eternal love She finds unknown beatitude above. This known, ye parents, nor her loss deplore, She feels the iron hand of pain no more; The dispensations of unerring grace, Should turn your sorrows into grateful praise; Let then no tears for her henceforward flow, No more distress’d in our dark vale below, Her morning sun, which rose divinely bright, Was quickly mantled with the gloom of night; But hear in heav’n’s blest bow’rs your Nancy fair, And learn to imitate her language there. “Thou, Lord, whom I behold with glory crown’d, “By what sweet name, and in what tuneful sound “Wilt thou be prais’d? Seraphic pow’rs are faint “Infinite love and majesty to paint. “To thee let all their graceful voices raise, “And saints and angels join their songs of praise.” Perfect in bliss she from her heav’nly home Looks down, and smiling beckons you to come; Why then, fond parents, why these fruitless groans? Restrain your tears, and cease your plaintive moans. Freed from a world of sin, and snares, and pain, Why would you wish your daughter back again? No—bow resign’d. Let hope your grief control, And check the rising tumult of the soul. Calm in the prosperous, and adverse day, Adore the God who gives and takes away; Eye him in all, his holy name revere, Upright your actions, and your hearts sincere, Till having sail’d through life’s tempestuous sea, And from its rocks, and boist’rous billows free, Yourselves, safe landed on the blissful shore, Shall join your happy babe to part no more. ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN. WHO taught thee conflict with the pow’rs of night, To vanquish satan in the fields of light? Who strung thy feeble arms with might unknown, How great thy conquest, and how bright thy crown! War with each princedom, throne, and pow’r is o’er, The scene is ended to return no more. O could my muse thy seat on high behold, How deckt with laurel, how enrich’d with gold! O could she hear what praise thine harp employs, How sweet thine anthems, how divine thy joys! What heav’nly grandeur should exalt her strain! What holy raptures in her numbers reign! To sooth the troubles of the mind to peace, To still the tumult of life’s tossing seas, To ease the anguish of the parents heart, What shall my sympathizing verse impart? Where is the balm to heal so deep a wound? Where shall a sov’reign remedy be found? Look, gracious Spirit, from thine heav’nly bow’r, And thy full joys into their bosoms pour; The raging tempest of their grief control, And spread the dawn of glory through the soul, To eye the path the saint departed trod, And trace him to the bosom of his God. TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND. GRIM monarch! see, depriv’d of vital breath, A young physician in the dust of death: Dost thou go on incessant to destroy, Our griefs to double, and lay waste our joy? Enough thou never yet wast known to say, Though millions die, the vassals of thy sway: Nor youth, nor science, not the ties of love, Nor ought on earth thy flinty heart can move. The friend, the spouse from his dire dart to save, In vain we ask the sovereign of the grave. Fair mourner, there see thy lov’d Leonard laid, And o’er him spread the deep impervious shade. Clos’d are his eyes, and heavy fetters keep His senses bound in never-waking sleep, Till time shall cease, till many a starry world Shall fall from heav’n, in dire confusion hurl’d Till nature in her final wreck shall lie, And her last groan shall rend the azure sky: Not, not till then his active soul shall claim His body, a divine immortal frame. But see the softly-stealing tears apace Pursue each other down the mourner’s face; But cease thy tears, bid ev’ry sigh depart, And cast the load of anguish from thine heart: From the cold shell of his great soul arise, And look beyond, thou native of the skies; There fix thy view, where fleeter than the wind Thy Leonard mounts, and leaves the earth behind. Thyself prepare to pass the vale of night To join for ever on the hills of light: To thine embrace this joyful spirit moves To thee, the partner of his earthly loves; He welcomes thee to pleasures more refin’d, And better suited to th’ immortal mind. G O L I A T H O F G A T H. 1 SAMUEL, Chap. xvii. YE martial pow’rs, and all ye tuneful nine, Inspire my song, and aid my high design. The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write, The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight: You best remember, and you best can sing The acts of heroes to the vocal string: Resume the lays with which your sacred lyre, Did then the poet and the sage inspire. Now front to front the armies were display’d, Here Israel rang’d, and there the foes array’d; The hosts on two opposing mountains stood, Thick as the foliage of the waving wood; Between them an extensive valley lay, O’er which the gleaming armour pour’d the day, When from the camp of the Philistine foes, Dreadful to view, a mighty warrior rose; In the dire deeds of bleeding battle skill’d, The monster stalks the terror of the field. From Gath he sprung, Goliath was his name, Of fierce deportment, and gigantic frame: A brazen helmet on his head was plac’d, A coat of mail his form terrific grac’d, The greaves his legs, the targe his shoulders prest: Dreadful in arms high-tow’ring o’er the rest A spear he proudly wav’d, whose iron head, Strange to relate, six hundred shekels weigh’d; He strode along, and shook the ample field, While Phoebus blaz’d refulgent on his shield: Through Jacob’s race a chilling horror ran, When thus the huge, enormous chief began: “Say, what the cause that in this proud array “You set your battle in the face of day? “One hero find in all your vaunting train, “Then see who loses, and who wins the plain; “For he who wins, in triumph may demand “Perpetual service from the vanquish’d land: “Your armies I defy, your force despise, “By far inferior in Philistia’s eyes: “Produce a man, and let us try the fight, “Decide the contest, and the victor’s right.” Thus challeng’d he: all Israel stood amaz’d, And ev’ry chief in consternation gaz’d; But Jesse’s son in youthful bloom appears, And warlike courage far beyond his years: He left the folds, he left the flow’ry meads, And soft recesses of the sylvan shades. Now Israel’s monarch, and his troops arise, With peals of shouts ascending to the skies; In Elah’s vale the scene of combat lies. When the fair morning blush’d with orient red, What David’s fire enjoin’d the son obey’d, And swift of foot towards the trench he came, Where glow’d each bosom with the martial flame. He leaves his carriage to another’s care, And runs to greet his brethren of the war. While yet they spake the giant-chief arose, Repeats the challenge, and insults his foes: Struck with the sound, and trembling at the view, Affrighted Israel from its post withdrew. “Observe ye this tremendous foe, they cry’d, “Who in proud vaunts our armies hath defy’d: “Whoever lays him prostrate on the plain, “Freedom in Israel for his house shall gain; “And on him wealth unknown the king will pour, “And give his royal daughter for his dow’r.” Then Jesse’s youngest hope: “My brethren say, “What shall be done for him who takes away “Reproach from Jacob, who destroys the chief. “And puts a period to his country’s grief. “He vaunts the honours of his arms abroad, “And scorns the armies of the living God.” Thus spoke the youth, th’ attentive people ey’d The wond’rous hero, and again reply’d: “Such the rewards our monarch will bestow, “On him who conquers, and destroys his foe.” Eliab heard, and kindled into ire To hear his shepherd brother thus inquire, And thus begun: “What errand brought thee? say “Who keeps thy flock? or does it go astray? “I know the base ambition of thine heart, “But back in safety from the field depart.” Eliab thus to Jesse’s youngest heir, Express’d his wrath in accents most severe. When to his brother mildly he reply’d. “What have I done? or what the cause to chide? The words were told before the king, who sent For the young hero to his royal tent: Before the monarch dauntless he began, “For this Philistine fail no heart of man: “I’ll take the vale, and with the giant fight: “I dread not all his boasts, nor all his might.” When thus the king: “Dar’st thou a stripling go, “And venture combat with so great a foe? “Who all his days has been inur’d to fight, “And made its deeds his study and delight: “Battles and bloodshed brought the monster forth, “And clouds and whirlwinds usher’d in his birth.” When David thus: “I kept the fleecy care, “And out there rush’d a lion and a bear; “A tender lamb the hungry lion took, “And with no other weapon than my crook “Bold I pursu’d, and chas d him o’er the field, “The prey deliver’d, and the felon kill’d: “As thus the lion and the bear I slew, “So shall Goliath fall, and all his crew: “The God, who sav’d me from these beasts of prey, “By me this monster in the dust shall lay.” So David spoke. The wond’ring king reply’d; “Go thou with heav’n and victory on thy side: “This coat of mail, this sword gird on,” he said, And plac’d a mighty helmet on his head: The coat, the sword, the helm he laid aside, Nor chose to venture with those arms untry’d, Then took his staff, and to the neighb’ring brook Instant he ran, and thence five pebbles took. Mean time descended to Philistia’s son A radiant cherub, and he thus begun: “Goliath, well thou know’st thou hast defy’d “Yon Hebrew armies, and their God deny’d: “Rebellious wretch! audacious worm! forbear, “Nor tempt the vengeance of their God too far: “Them, who with his Omnipotence contend, “No eye shall pity, and no arm defend: “Proud as thou art, in short liv’d glory great, “I come to tell thee thine approaching fate. “Regard my words. The Judge of all the gods, “Beneath whose steps the tow’ring mountain nods, “Will give thine armies to the savage brood, “That cut the liquid air, or range the wood. “Thee too a well-aim’d pebble shall destroy, “And thou shalt perish by a beardless boy: “Such is the mandate from the realms above, “And should I try the vengeance to remove, “Myself a rebel to my king would prove. “Goliath say, shall grace to him be shown, “Who dares heav’ns Monarch, and insults his throne?” “Your words are lost on me,” the giant cries, While fear and wrath contended in his eyes, When thus the messenger from heav’n replies: “Provoke no more Jehovah’s awful hand “To hurl its vengeance on thy guilty land: “He grasps the thunder, and, he wings the storm, “Servants their sov’reign’s orders to perform.” The angel spoke, and turn’d his eyes away, Adding new radiance to the rising day. Now David comes: the fatal stones demand His left, the staff engag’d his better hand: The giant mov’d, and from his tow’ring height Survey’d the stripling, and disdain’d the fight, And thus began: “Am I a dog with thee? “Bring’st thou no armour, but a staff to me? “The gods on thee their vollied curses pour, “And beasts and birds of prey thy flesh devour.” David undaunted thus, “Thy spear and shield “Shall no protection to thy body yield: “Jehovah’s name———no other arms I bear, “I ask no other in this glorious war. “To-day the Lord of Hosts to me will give “Vict’ry, to-day thy doom thou shalt receive; “The fate you threaten shall your own become, “And beasts shall be your animated tomb, “That all the earth’s inhabitants may know “That there’s a God, who governs all below: “This great assembly too shall witness stand, “That needs nor sword, nor spear, th’ Almighty’s hand: “The battle his, the conquest he bestows, “And to our pow’r consigns our hated foes.” Thus David spoke; Goliath heard and came To meet the hero in the field of fame. Ah! fatal meeting to thy troops and thee, But thou wast deaf to the divine decree; Young David meets thee, meets thee not in vain; ’Tis thine to perish on th’ ensanguin’d plain. And now the youth the forceful pebble slung Philistia trembled as it whizz’d along: In his dread forehead, where the helmet ends, Just o’er the brows the well-aim’d stone descends, It pierc’d the skull, and shatter’d all the brain, Prone on his face he tumbled to the plain: Goliath’s fall no smaller terror yields Than riving thunders in aerial fields: The soul still ling’red in its lov’d abode, Till conq’ring David o’er the giant strode: Goliath’s sword then laid its master dead, And from the body hew’d the ghastly head; The blood in gushing torrents drench’d the plains, The soul found passage through the spouting veins. And now aloud th’ illustrious victor said, “Where are your boastings now your champion’s “dead?” Scarce had he spoke, when the Philistines fled: But fled in vain; the conqu’ror swift pursu’d: What scenes of slaughter! and what seas of blood! There Saul thy thousands grasp’d th’ impurpled sand In pangs of death the conquest of thine hand; And David there were thy ten thousands laid: Thus Israel’s damsels musically play’d. Near Gath and Edron many an hero lay, Breath’d out their souls, and curs’d the light of day: Their fury, quench’d by death, no longer burns, And David with Goliath’s head returns, To Salem brought, but in his tent he plac’d The load of armour which the giant grac’d. His monarch saw him coming from the war, And thus demanded of the son of Ner. “Say, who is this amazing youth?” he cry’d, When thus the leader of the host reply’d; “As lives thy soul I know not whence he sprung, “So great in prowess though in years so young:” “Inquire whose son is he,” the sov’reign said, “Before whose conq’ring arm Philistia fled.” Before the king behold the stripling stand, Goliath’s head depending from his hand: To him the king: “Say of what martial line “Art thou, young hero, and what sire was thine?” He humbly thus; “The son of Jesse I: “I came the glories of the field to try. “Small is my tribe, but valiant in the fight; “Small is my city, but thy royal right.” “Then take the promis’d gifts,” the monarch cry’d, Conferring riches and the royal bride: “Knit to my soul for ever thou remain “With me, nor quit my regal roof again.” THOUGHTS ON THE WORKS OF PROVIDENCE. A R I S E, my soul, on wings enraptur’d, rise To praise the monarch of the earth and skies, Whose goodness and benificence appear As round its centre moves the rolling year, Or when the morning glows with rosy charms, Or the sun slumbers in the ocean’s arms: Of light divine be a rich portion lent To guide my soul, and favour my intend. Celestial muse, my arduous flight sustain And raise my mind to a seraphic strain! Ador’d for ever be the God unseen, Which round the sun revolves this vast machine, Though to his eye its mass a point appears: Ador’d the God that whirls surrounding spheres, Which first ordain’d that mighty Sol should reign The peerless monarch of th’ ethereal train: Of miles twice forty millions is his height, And yet his radiance dazzles mortal sight So far beneath—from him th’ extended earth Vigour derives, and ev’ry flow’ry birth: Vast through her orb she moves with easy grace Around her Phoebus in unbounded space; True to her course th’ impetuous storm derides, Triumphant o’er the winds, and surging tides. Almighty, in these wond’rous works of thine, What Pow’r, what Wisdom, and what Goodness shine! And are thy wonders, Lord, by men explor’d, And yet creating glory unador’d! Creation smiles in various beauty gay, While day to night, and night succeeds to day: That Wisdom, which attends Jehovah’s ways, Shines most conspicuous in the solar rays: Without them, destitute of heat and light, This world would be the reign of endless night: In their excess how would our race complain, Abhorring life! how hate its length’ned chain! From air adust what num’rous ills would rise? What dire contagion taint the burning skies? What pestilential vapours, fraught with death, Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath? Hail, smiling morn, that from the orient main Ascending dost adorn the heav’nly plain! So rich, so various are thy beauteous dies, That spread through all the circuit of the skies, That, full of thee, my soul in rapture soars, And thy great God, the cause of all adores. O’er beings infinite his love extends, His Wisdom rules them, and his Pow’r defends. When tasks diurnal tire the human frame, The spirits faint, and dim the vital flame, Then too that ever active bounty shines, Which not infinity of space confines. The sable veil, that Night in silence draws, Conceals effects, but shows th’ Almighty Cause, Night seals in sleep the wide creation fair, And all is peaceful but the brow of care. Again, gay Phoebus, as the day before, Wakes ev’ry eye, but what shall wake no more; Again the face of nature is renew’d, Which still appears harmonious, fair, and good. May grateful strains salute the smiling morn, Before its beams the eastern hills adorn! Shall day to day, and night to night conspire To show the goodness of the Almighty Sire? This mental voice shall man regardless hear, And never, never raise the filial pray’r? To-day, O hearken, nor your folly mourn For time mispent, that never will return. But see the sons of vegetation rise, And spread their leafy banners to the skies. All-wise Almighty Providence we trace In trees, and plants, and all the flow’ry race; As clear as in the nobler frame of man, All lovely copies of the Maker’s plan. The pow’r the same that forms a ray of light, That call d creation from eternal night. “Let there be light,” he said: from his profound Old Chaos heard, and trembled at the sound: Swift as the word, inspir’d by pow’r divine, Behold the light around its Maker shine, The first fair product of th’ omnific God, And now through all his works diffus’d abroad. As reason’s pow’rs by day our God disclose, So we may trace him in the night’s repose: Say what is sleep? and dreams how passing strange! When action ceases, and ideas range Licentious and unbounded o’er the plains, Where Fancy’s queen in giddy triumph reigns. Hear in soft strains the dreaming lover sigh To a kind fair, or rave in jealousy; On pleasure now, and now on vengeance bent, The lab’ring passions struggle for a vent. What pow’r, O man! thy reason then restores, So long suspended in nocturnal hours? What secret hand returns the mental train, And gives improv’d thine active pow’rs again? From thee, O man, what gratitude should rise! And, when from balmy sleep thou op’st thine eyes, Let thy first thoughts be praises to the skies. How merciful our God who thus imparts O’erflowing tides of joy to human hearts, When wants and woes might be our righteous lot, Our God forgetting, by our God forgot! Among the mental pow’rs a question rose, “What most the image of th’ Eternal shows?” When thus to Reason (so let Fancy rove) Her great companion spoke immortal Love. “Say, mighty pow’r, how long shall strife prevail, “And with its murmurs load the whisp’ring gale? “Refer the cause to Recollection’s shrine, “Who loud proclaims my origin divine, “The cause whence heav’n and earth began to be, “And is not man immortaliz’d by me? “Reason let this most causeless strife subside.” Thus Love pronounc’d, and Reason thus reply’d. “Thy birth, coelestial queen! ’tis mine to own, “In thee resplendent is the Godhead shown; “Thy words persuade, my soul enraptur’d feels “Resistless beauty which thy smile reveals.” Ardent she spoke, and, kindling at her charms, She clasp’d the blooming goddess in her arms. Infinite Love where’er we turn our eyes Appears: this ev’ry creature’s wants supplies; This most is heard in Nature’s constant voice, This makes the morn, and this the eve rejoice; This bids the fost’ring rains and dews descend To nourish all, to serve one gen’ral end, The good of man: yet man ungrateful pays But little homage, and but little praise. To him, whose works arry’d with mercy shine, What songs should rise, how constant, how divine! TO A LADY ON THE DEATH OF THREE RELATIONS. WE trace the pow’r of Death from tomb to tomb, And his are all the ages yet to come. ’Tis his to call the planets from on high, To blacken Phoebus, and dissolve the sky; His too, when all in his dark realms are hurl’d, From its firm base to shake the solid world; His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole, And trembling nature rocks from pole to pole. Awful he moves, and wide his wings are spread: Behold thy brother number’d with the dead! From bondage freed, the exulting spirit flies Beyond Olympus, and these starry skies. Lost in our woe for thee, blest shade, we mourn In vain; to earth thou never must return. Thy sisters too, fair mourner, feel the dart Of Death, and with fresh torture rend thine heart. Weep not for them, and leave the world behind. As a young plant by hurricanes up torn, So near its parent lies the newly born— But ‘midst the bright ehtereal train behold It shines superior on a throne of gold: Then, mourner, cease; let hope thy tears restrain, Smile on the tomb, and sooth the raging pain. On yon blest regions fix thy longing view, Mindless of sublunary scenes below; Ascend the sacred mount, in thought arise, And seek substantial and immortal joys; Where hope receives, where faith to vision springs, And raptur’d seraphs tune th’ immortal strings To strains extatic. Thou the chorus join, And to thy father tune the praise divine. TO A CLERGYMAN ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. WHERE contemplation finds her sacred spring, Where heav’nly music makes the arches ring, Where virtue reigns unsully’d and divine, Where wisdom thron’d, and all the graces shine, There sits thy spouse amidst the radiant throng, While praise eternal warbles from her tongue; There choirs angelic shout her welcome round, With perfect bliss, and peerless glory crown’d. While thy dear mate, to flesh no more confin’d, Exults a blest, an heav’n-ascended mind, Say in thy breast shall floods of sorrow rise? Say shall its torrents overwhelm thine eyes? Amid the seats of heav’n a place is free, And angels open their bright ranks for thee; For thee they wait, and with expectant eye Thy spouse leans downward from th’ empyreal sky: “O come away,” her longing spirit cries, “And share with me the raptures of the skies. “Our bliss divine to mortals is unknown; “Immortal life and glory are our own. “There too may the dear pledges of our love “Arrive, and taste with us the joys above; “Attune the harp to more than mortal lays, “And join with us the tribute of their praise “To him, who dy’d stern justice to stone, “And make eternal glory all our own. “He in his death slew ours, and, as he rose, “He crush’d the dire dominion of our foes; “Vain were their hopes to put the God to flight, “Chain us to hell, and bar the gates of light.” She spoke, and turn’d from mortal scenes her eyes, Which beam’d celestial radiance o’er the skies. Then thou dear man, no more with grief retire, Let grief no longer damp devotion’s fire, But rise sublime, to equal bliss aspire, Thy sighs no more be wafted by the wind, No more complain, but be to heav’n resign’d ’Twas thine t’ unfold the oracles divine, To sooth our woes the task was also thine; Now sorrow is incumbent on thy heart, Permit the muse a cordial to impart; Who can to thee their tend’rest aid refuse? To dry thy tears how longs the heav’nly muse! AN HYMN TO THE MORNING ATTEND my lays, ye ever honour’d nine, Assist my labours, and my strains refine; In smoothest numbers pour the notes along, For bright Aurora now demands my song. Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies, Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies: The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays, On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays; Harmonious lays the feather’d race resume, Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume. Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display To shield your poet from the burning day: Calliope awake the sacred lyre, While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire: The bow’rs, the gales, the variegated skies In all their pleasures in my bosom rise. See in the east th’ illustrious king of day! His rising radiance drives the shades away— But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong, And scarce begun, concludes th’ abortive song. AN HYMN TO THE EVENING. SOON as the sun forsook the eastern main The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain; Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing, Exhales the incense of the blooming spring. Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes, And through the air their mingled music floats. Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dies are spread! But the west glories in the deepest red: So may our breasts with ev’ry virtue glow, The living temples of our God below! Fill’d with the praise of him who gives the light, And draws the sable curtains of the night, Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind, At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d; So shall the labours of the day begin More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin. Night’s leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes, Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise. ISAIAH lxiii. 1-8. SAY, heav’nly muse, what king or mighty God, That moves sublime from Idumea’s road? In Bosrah’s dies, with martial glories join’d, His purple vesture waves upon the wind. Why thus enrob’d delights he to appear In the dread image of the Pow’r of war? Compres’d in wrath the swelling wine-press groan’d, It bled, and pour’d the gushing purple round. “Mine was the act,” th’ Almighty Saviour said, And shook the dazzling glories of his head, “When all forsook I trod the press alone, “And conquer’d by omnipotence my own; “For man’s release sustain’d the pond’rous load, “For man the wrath of an immortal God: “To execute th’ Eternal’s dread command “My soul I sacrific’d with willing hand; “Sinless I stood before the avenging frown, “Atoning thus for vices not my own.” His eye the ample field of battle round Survey’d, but no created succours found; His own omnipotence sustain’d the right, His vengeance sunk the haughty foes in night; Beneath his feet the prostrate troops were spread, And round him lay the dying, and the dead. Great God, what light’ning flashes from thine eyes? What pow’r withstands if thou indignant rise? Against thy Zion though her foes may rage, And all their cunning, all their strength engage, Yet she serenely on thy bosom lies, Smiles at their arts, and all their force defies. ON RECOLLECTION. MNEME begin. Inspire, ye sacred nine, Your vent’rous Afric in her great design. Mneme, immortal pow’r, I trace thy spring: Assist my strains, while I thy glories sing: The acts of long departed years, by thee Recover’d, in due order rang’d we see: Thy pow’r the long-forgotten calls from night, That sweetly plays before the fancy’s sight. Mneme in our nocturnal visions pours The ample treasure of her secret stores; Swift from above the wings her silent flight Through Phoebe’s realms, fair regent of the night; And, in her pomp of images display’d, To the high-raptur’d poet gives her aid, Through the unbounded regions of the mind, Diffusing light celestial and refin’d. The heav’nly phantom paints the actions done By ev’ry tribe beneath the rolling sun. Mneme, enthron’d within the human breast, Has vice condemn’d, and ev’ry virtue blest. How sweet the sound when we her plaudit hear? Sweeter than music to the ravish’d ear, Sweeter than Maro’s entertaining strains Resounding through the groves, and hills, and plains. But how is Mneme dreaded by the race, Who scorn her warnings and despise her grace? By her unveil’d each horrid crime appears, Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears. Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe! Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know. Now eighteen years their destin’d course have run, In fast succession round the central sun. How did the follies of that period pass Unnotic’d, but behold them writ in brass! In Recollection see them fresh return, And sure ’tis mine to be asham’d, and mourn. O Virtue, smiling in immortal green, Do thou exert thy pow’r, and change the scene; Be thine employ to guide my future days, And mine to pay the tribute of my praise. Of Recollection such the pow’r enthron’d In ev’ry breast, and thus her pow’r is own’d. The wretch, who dar’d the vengeance of the skies, At last awakes in horror and surprise, By her alarm’d, he sees impending fate, He howls in anguish, and repents too late. But O! what peace, what joys are hers t’ impart To ev’ry holy, ev’ry upright heart! Thrice blest the man, who, in her sacred shrine, Feels himself shelter’d from the wrath divine! ON IMAGINATION. THY various works, imperial queen, we see, How bright their forms! how deck’d with pomp by thee! Thy wond’rous acts in beauteous order stand, And all attest how potent is thine hand. From Helicon’s refulgent heights attend, Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend: To tell her glories with a faithful tongue, Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song. Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies, Till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes, Whose silken fetters all the senses bind, And soft captivity involves the mind. Imagination! who can sing thy force? Or who describe the swiftness of thy course? Soaring through air to find the bright abode, Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God, We on thy pinions can surpass the wind, And leave the rolling universe behind: From star to star the mental optics rove, Measure the skies, and range the realms above. There in one view we grasp the mighty whole, Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul. Though Winter frowns to Fancy’s raptur’d eyes The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise; The frozen deeps may break their iron bands, And bid their waters murmur o’er the sands. Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign, And with her flow’ry riches deck the plain; Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round, And all the forest may with leaves be crown’d: Show’rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose, And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose. Such is thy pow’r, nor are thine orders vain, O thou the leader of the mental train: In full perfection all thy works are wrought, And thine the sceptre o’er the realms of thought. Before thy throne the subject-passions bow, Of subject-passions sov’reign ruler thou; At thy command joy rushes on the heart, And through the glowing veins the spirits dart. Fancy might now her silken pinions try To rise from earth, and sweep th’ expanse on high: From Tithon’s bed now might Aurora rise, Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies, While a pure stream of light o’erflows the skies. The monarch of the day I might behold, And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold, But I reluctant leave the pleasing views, Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse; Winter austere forbids me to aspire, And northern tempests damp the rising fire; They chill the tides of Fancy’s flowing sea, Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay. A FUNERAL POEM ON THE DEATH OF C. E. AN INFANT OF TWELVE MONTHS. THROUGH airy roads he wings his instant flight To purer regions of celestial light; Enlarg’d he sees unnumber’d systems roll, Beneath him sees the universal whole, Planets on planets run their destin’d round, And circling wonders fill the vast profound. Th’ ethereal now, and now th’ empyreal skies With growing splendors strike his wond’ring eyes: The angels view him with delight unknown, Press his soft hand, and seat him on his throne; Then smilling thus: “To this divine abode, “The seat of saints, of seraphs, and of God, “Thrice welcome thou.” The raptur’d babe replies, “Thanks to my God, who snatch’d me to the skies, “E’er vice triumphant had possess’d my heart, “E’er yet the tempter had beguil d my heart, “E’er yet on sin’s base actions I was bent, “E’er yet I knew temptation’s dire intent; “E’er yet the lash for horrid crimes I felt, “E’er vanity had led my way to guilt, “But, soon arriv’d at my celestial goal, “Full glories rush on my expanding soul.” Joyful he spoke: exulting cherubs round Clapt their glad wings, the heav’nly vaults resound. Say, parents, why this unavailing moan? Why heave your pensive bosoms with the groan? To Charles, the happy subject of my song, A brighter world, and nobler strains belong. Say would you tear him from the realms above By thoughtless wishes, and prepost’rous love? Doth his felicity increase your pain? Or could you welcome to this world again The heir of bliss? with a superior air Methinks he answers with a smile severe, “Thrones and dominions cannot tempt me there.” But still you cry, “Can we the sigh forbear, “And still and still must we not pour the tear? “Our only hope, more dear than vital breath, “Twelve moons revolv’d, becomes the prey of death; “Delightful infant, nightly visions give “Thee to our arms, and we with joy receive, “We fain would clasp the Phantom to our breast, “The Phantom flies, and leaves the soul unblest.” To yon bright regions let your faith ascend, Prepare to join your dearest infant friend In pleasures without measure, without end. TO CAPTAIN H———D, OF THE 65TH REGIMENT. SAY, muse divine, can hostile scenes delight The warrior’s bosom in the fields of fight? Lo! here the christian and the hero join With mutual grace to form the man divine. In H——-D see with pleasure and surprise, Where valour kindles, and where virtue lies: Go, hero brave, still grace the post of fame, And add new glories to thine honour’d name, Still to the field, and still to virtue true: Britannia glories in no son like you. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM, EARL OF DARTMOUTH His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North-America, &c. HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: The northern clime beneath her genial ray, Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, While in thine hand with pleasure we behold The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms unfold. Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies She shines supreme, while hated faction dies: Soon as appear’d the Goddess long desir’d, Sick at the view, she languish’d and expir’d; Thus from the splendors of the morning light The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night. No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land. Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast? Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d: Such, such my case. And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway? For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due, And thee we ask thy favours to renew, Since in thy pow’r, as in thy will before, To sooth the griefs, which thou did’st once deplore. May heav’nly grace the sacred sanction give To all thy works, and thou for ever live Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, Though praise immortal crowns the patriot’s name, But to conduct to heav’ns refulgent fane, May fiery coursers sweep th’ ethereal plain, And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God. O D E T O N E P T U N E. On Mrs. W———‘s Voyage to England. I. WHILE raging tempests shake the shore, While AElus’ thunders round us roar, And sweep impetuous o’er the plain Be still, O tyrant of the main; Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray, While my Susanna skims the wat’ry way. II. The Pow’r propitious hears the lay, The blue-ey’d daughters of the sea With sweeter cadence glide along, And Thames responsive joins the song. Pleas’d with their notes Sol sheds benign his ray, And double radiance decks the face of day. III. To court thee to Britannia’s arms Serene the climes and mild the sky, Her region boasts unnumber’d charms, Thy welcome smiles in ev’ry eye. Thy promise, Neptune keep, record my pray’r, Not give my wishes to the empty air. Boston, October 12, 1772. TO A LADY ON HER COMING TO NORTH-AMERICA WITH HER SON, FOR THE RECOVERY OF HER HEALTH. INDULGENT muse! my grov’ling mind inspire, And fill my bosom with celestial fire. See from Jamaica’s fervid shore she moves, Like the fair mother of the blooming loves, When from above the Goddess with her hand Fans the soft breeze, and lights upon the land; Thus she on Neptune’s wat’ry realm reclin’d Appear’d, and thus invites the ling’ring wind. “Arise, ye winds, America explore, “Waft me, ye gales, from this malignant shore; “The Northern milder climes I long to greet, “There hope that health will my arrival meet.” Soon as she spoke in my ideal view The winds assented, and the vessel flew. Madam, your spouse bereft of wife and son, In the grove’s dark recesses pours his moan; Each branch, wide-spreading to the ambient sky, Forgets its verdure, and submits to die. From thence I turn, and leave the sultry plain, And swift pursue thy passage o’er the main: The ship arrives before the fav’ring wind, And makes the Philadelphian port assign’d, Thence I attend you to Bostonia’s arms, Where gen’rous friendship ev’ry bosom warms: Thrice welcome here! may health revive again, Bloom on thy cheek, and bound in ev’ry vein! Then back return to gladden ev’ry heart, And give your spouse his soul’s far dearer part, Receiv’d again with what a sweet surprise, The tear in transport starting from his eyes! While his attendant son with blooming grace Springs to his father’s ever dear embrace. With shouts of joy Jamaica’s rocks resound, With shouts of joy the country rings around. TO A LADY ON HER REMARKABLE PRESERVATION IN AN HURRICANE IN NORTH-CAROLINA. THOUGH thou did’st hear the tempest from afar, And felt’st the horrors of the wat’ry war, To me unknown, yet on this peaceful shore Methinks I hear the storm tumultuous roar, And how stern Boreas with impetuous hand Compell’d the Nereids to usurp the land. Reluctant rose the daughters of the main, And slow ascending glided o’er the plain, Till AEolus in his rapid chariot drove In gloomy grandeur from the vault above: Furious he comes. His winged sons obey Their frantic sire, and madden all the sea. The billows rave, the wind’s fierce tyrant roars, And with his thund’ring terrors shakes the shores: Broken by waves the vessel’s frame is rent, And strows with planks the wat’ry element. But thee, Maria, a kind Nereid’s shield Preserv’d from sinking, and thy form upheld: And sure some heav’nly oracle design’d At that dread crisis to instruct thy mind Things of eternal consequence to weigh, And to thine heart just feelings to convey Of things above, and of the future doom, And what the births of the dread world to come. From tossing seas I welcome thee to land. “Resign her, Nereid,” ’twas thy God’s command. Thy spouse late buried, as thy fears conceiv’d, Again returns, thy fears are all reliev’d: Thy daughter blooming with superior grace Again thou see’st, again thine arms embrace; O come, and joyful show thy spouse his heir, And what the blessings of maternal care! TO A LADY AND HER CHILDREN, ON THE DEATH OF HER SON AND THEIR BROTHER. O’ERWHELMING sorrow now demands my song: From death the overwhelming sorrow sprung. What flowing tears? What hearts with grief opprest? What sighs on sighs heave the fond parent’s breast? The brother weeps, the hapless sisters join Th’ increasing woe, and swell the crystal brine; The poor, who once his gen’rous bounty fed, Droop, and bewail their benefactor dead. In death the friend, the kind companion lies, And in one death what various comfort dies! Th’ unhappy mother sees the sanguine rill Forget to flow, and nature’s wheels stand still, But see from earth his spirit far remov’d, And know no grief recals your best-belov’d: He, upon pinions swifter than the wind, Has left mortality’s sad scenes behind For joys to this terrestial state unknown, And glories richer than the monarch’s crown. Of virtue’s steady course the prize behold! What blissful wonders to his mind unfold! But of celestial joys I sing in vain: Attempt not, muse, the too advent’rous strain. No more in briny show’rs, ye friends around, Or bathe his clay, or waste them on the ground: Still do you weep, still wish for his return? How cruel thus to wish, and thus to mourn? No more for him the streams of sorrow pour, But haste to join him on the heav’nly shore, On harps of gold to tune immortal lays, And to your God immortal anthems raise. TO A GENTLEMAN AND LADY ON THE DEATH OF THE LADY’S BROTHER AND SISTER, AND A CHILD OF THE NAME OF AVIS, AGED ONE YEAR. ON Death’s domain intent I fix my eyes, Where human nature in vast ruin lies: With pensive mind I search the drear abode, Where the great conqu’ror has his spoils bestow’d; There where the offspring of six thousand years In endless numbers to my view appears: Whole kingdoms in his gloomy den are thrust, And nations mix with their primeval dust: Insatiate still he gluts the ample tomb; His is the present, his the age to come. See here a brother, here a sister spread, And a sweet daughter mingled with the dead. But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside, And let the fountain of your tears be dry’d, In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain, Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain, Your pains they witness, but they can no more, While Death reigns tyrant o’er this mortal shore. The glowing stars and silver queen of light At last must perish in the gloom of night: Resign thy friends to that Almighty hand, Which gave them life, and bow to his command; Thine Avis give without a murm’ring heart, Though half thy soul be fated to depart. To shining guards consign thine infant care To waft triumphant through the seas of air: Her soul enlarg’d to heav’nly pleasure springs, She feeds on truth and uncreated things. Methinks I hear her in the realms above, And leaning forward with a filial love, Invite you there to share immortal bliss Unknown, untasted in a state like this. With tow’ring hopes, and growing grace arise, And seek beatitude beyond the skies. ON THE DEATH OF DR. SAMUEL MARSHALL. 1771. THROUGH thickest glooms look back, immortal shade, On that confusion which thy death has made: Or from Olympus’ height look down, and see A Town involv’d in grief bereft of thee. Thy Lucy sees thee mingle with the dead, And rends the graceful tresses from her head, Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast. Too quickly fled, ah! whither art thou gone? Ah! lost for ever to thy wife and son! The hapless child, thine only hope and heir, Clings round his mother’s neck, and weeps his sorrows there. The loss of thee on Tyler’s soul returns, And Boston for her dear physician mourns. When sickness call’d for Marshall’s healing hand, With what compassion did his soul expand? In him we found the father and the friend: In life how lov’d! how honour’d in his end! And must not then our AEsculapius stay To bring his ling’ring infant into day? The babe unborn in the dark womb is tost, And seems in anguish for its father lost. Gone is Apollo from his house of earth, But leaves the sweet memorials of his worth: The common parent, whom we all deplore, From yonder world unseen must come no more, Yet ‘midst our woes immortal hopes attend The spouse, the sire, the universal friend. TO A GENTLEMAN ON HIS VOYAGE TO GREAT-BRITAIN FOR THE RECOVERY OF HIS HEALTH. WHILE others chant of gay Elysian scenes, Of balmy zephyrs, and of flow’ry plains, My song more happy speaks a greater name, Feels higher motives and a nobler flame. For thee, O R——-, the muse attunes her strings, And mounts sublime above inferior things. I sing not now of green embow’ring woods, I sing not now the daughters of the floods, I sing not of the storms o’er ocean driv’n, And how they howl’d along the waste of heav’n. But I to R——- would paint the British shore, And vast Atlantic, not untry’d before: Thy life impair’d commands thee to arise, Leave these bleak regions and inclement skies, Where chilling winds return the winter past, And nature shudders at the furious blast. O thou stupendous, earth-enclosing main Exert thy wonders to the world again! If ere thy pow’r prolong’d the fleeting breath, Turn’d back the shafts, and mock’d the gates of death, If ere thine air dispens’d an healing pow’r, Or snatch’d the victim from the fatal hour, This equal case demands thine equal care, And equal wonders may this patient share. But unavailing, frantic is the dream To hope thine aid without the aid of him Who gave thee birth and taught thee where to flow, And in thy waves his various blessings show. May R——- return to view his native shore Replete with vigour not his own before, Then shall we see with pleasure and surprise, And own thy work, great Ruler of the skies! TO THE REV. DR. THOMAS AMORY, ON READING HIS SERMONS ON DAILY DEVOTION, IN WHICH THAT DUTY IS RECOMMENDED AND ASSISTED. TO cultivate in ev’ry noble mind Habitual grace, and sentiments refin’d, Thus while you strive to mend the human heart, Thus while the heav’nly precepts you impart, O may each bosom catch the sacred fire, And youthful minds to Virtue’s throne aspire! When God’s eternal ways you set in sight, And Virtue shines in all her native light, In vain would Vice her works in night conceal, For Wisdom’s eye pervades the sable veil. Artists may paint the sun’s effulgent rays, But Amory’s pen the brighter God displays: While his great works in Amory’s pages shine, And while he proves his essence all divine, The Atheist sure no more can boast aloud Of chance, or nature, and exclude the God; As if the clay without the potter’s aid Should rise in various forms, and shapes self-made, Or worlds above with orb o’er orb profound Self-mov’d could run the everlasting round. It cannot be—unerring Wisdom guides With eye propitious, and o’er all presides. Still prosper, Amory! still may’st thou receive The warmest blessings which a muse can give, And when this transitory state is o’er, When kingdoms fall, and fleeting Fame’s no more, May Amory triumph in immortal fame, A nobler title, and superior name! ON THE DEATH OF J. C. AN INFANT. NO more the flow’ry scenes of pleasure rife, Nor charming prospects greet the mental eyes, No more with joy we view that lovely face Smiling, disportive, flush’d with ev’ry grace. The tear of sorrow flows from ev’ry eye, Groans answer groans, and sighs to sighs reply; What sudden pangs shot thro’ each aching heart, When, Death, thy messenger dispatch’d his dart? Thy dread attendants, all-destroying Pow’r, Hurried the infant to his mortal hour. Could’st thou unpitying close those radiant eyes? Or fail’d his artless beauties to surprise? Could not his innocence thy stroke controul, Thy purpose shake, and soften all thy soul? The blooming babe, with shades of Death o’er-spread, No more shall smile, no more shall raise its head, But, like a branch that from the tree is torn, Falls prostrate, wither’d, languid, and forlorn. “Where flies my James?” ’tis thus I seem to hear The parent ask, “Some angel tell me where “He wings his passage thro’ the yielding air?” Methinks a cherub bending from the skies Observes the question, and serene replies, “In heav’ns high palaces your babe appears: “Prepare to meet him, and dismiss your tears.” Shall not th’ intelligence your grief restrain, And turn the mournful to the cheerful strain? Cease your complaints, suspend each rising sigh, Cease to accuse the Ruler of the sky. Parents, no more indulge the falling tear: Let Faith to heav’n’s refulgent domes repair, There see your infant, like a seraph glow: What charms celestial in his numbers flow Melodious, while the foul-enchanting strain Dwells on his tongue, and fills th’ ethereal plain? Enough—for ever cease your murm’ring breath; Not as a foe, but friend converse with Death, Since to the port of happiness unknown He brought that treasure which you call your own. The gift of heav’n intrusted to your hand Cheerful resign at the divine command: Not at your bar must sov’reign Wisdom stand. AN H Y M N TO H U M A N I T Y. TO S. P. G. ESQ; I. LO! for this dark terrestrial ball Forsakes his azure-paved hall A prince of heav’nly birth! Divine Humanity behold, What wonders rise, what charms unfold At his descent to earth! II. The bosoms of the great and good With wonder and delight he view’d, And fix’d his empire there: Him, close compressing to his breast, The sire of gods and men address’d, “My son, my heav’nly fair! III. “Descend to earth, there place thy throne; “To succour man’s afflicted son “Each human heart inspire: “To act in bounties unconfin’d “Enlarge the close contracted mind, “And fill it with thy fire.” IV. Quick as the word, with swift career He wings his course from star to star, And leaves the bright abode. The Virtue did his charms impart; Their G——-! then thy raptur’d heart Perceiv’d the rushing God: V. For when thy pitying eye did see The languid muse in low degree, Then, then at thy desire Descended the celestial nine; O’er me methought they deign’d to shine, And deign’d to string my lyre. VI. Can Afric’s muse forgetful prove? Or can such friendship fail to move A tender human heart? Immortal Friendship laurel-crown’d The smiling Graces all surround With ev’ry heav’nly Art. TO THE HONOURABLE T. H. ESQ; ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER. WHILE deep you mourn beneath the cypress-shade The hand of Death, and your dear daughter laid In dust, whose absence gives your tears to flow, And racks your bosom with incessant woe, Let Recollection take a tender part, Assuage the raging tortures of your heart, Still the wild tempest of tumultuous grief, And pour the heav’nly nectar of relief: Suspend the sigh, dear Sir, and check the groan, Divinely bright your daughter’s Virtues shone: How free from scornful pride her gentle mind, Which ne’er its aid to indigence declin’d! Expanding free, it sought the means to prove Unfailing charity, unbounded love! She unreluctant flies to see no more Her dear-lov’d parents on earth’s dusky shore: Impatient heav’n’s resplendent goal to gain, She with swift progress cuts the azure plain, Where grief subsides, where changes are no more, And life’s tumultuous billows cease to roar; She leaves her earthly mansion for the skies, Where new creations feast her wond’ring eyes. To heav’n’s high mandate cheerfully resign’d She mounts, and leaves the rolling globe behind; She, who late wish’d that Leonard might return, Has ceas’d to languish, and forgot to mourn; To the same high empyreal mansions come, She joins her spouse, and smiles upon the tomb: And thus I hear her from the realms above: “Lo! this the kingdom of celestial love! “Could ye, fond parents, see our present bliss, “How soon would you each sigh, each fear dismiss? “Amidst unutter’d pleasures whilst I play “In the fair sunshine of celestial day, “As far as grief affects an happy soul “So far doth grief my better mind controul, “To see on earth my aged parents mourn, “And secret wish for T——-! to return: “Let brighter scenes your ev’ning-hours employ: “Converse with heav’n, and taste the promis’d joy” NIOBE IN DISTRESS FOR HER CHILDREN SLAIN BY APOLLO, FROM OVID’S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK VI. AND FROM A VIEW OF THE PAINTING OF MR. RICHARD WILSON. APOLLO’s wrath to man the dreadful spring Of ills innum’rous, tuneful goddess, sing! Thou who did’st first th’ ideal pencil give, And taught’st the painter in his works to live, Inspire with glowing energy of thought, What Wilson painted, and what Ovid wrote. Muse! lend thy aid, nor let me sue in vain, Tho’ last and meanest of the rhyming train! O guide my pen in lofty strains to show The Phrygian queen, all beautiful in woe. ’Twas where Maeonia spreads her wide domain Niobe dwelt, and held her potent reign: See in her hand the regal sceptre shine, The wealthy heir of Tantalus divine, He most distinguish’d by Dodonean Jove, To approach the tables of the gods above: Her grandsire Atlas, who with mighty pains Th’ ethereal axis on his neck sustains: Her other grandsire on the throne on high Rolls the loud-pealing thunder thro’ the sky. Her spouse, Amphion, who from Jove too springs, Divinely taught to sweep the sounding strings. Seven sprightly sons the royal bed adorn, Seven daughters beauteous as the op’ning morn, As when Aurora fills the ravish’d sight, And decks the orient realms with rosy light From their bright eyes the living splendors play, Nor can beholders bear the flashing ray. Wherever, Niobe, thou turn’st thine eyes, New beauties kindle, and new joys arise! But thou had’st far the happier mother prov’d, If this fair offspring had been less belov’d: What if their charms exceed Aurora’s teint. No words could tell them, and no pencil paint, Thy love too vehement hastens to destroy Each blooming maid, and each celestial boy. Now Manto comes, endu’d with mighty skill, The past to explore, the future to reveal. Thro’ Thebes’ wide streets Tiresia’s daughter came, Divine Latona’s mandate to proclaim: The Theban maids to hear the orders ran, When thus Maeonia’s prophetess began: “Go, Thebans! great Latona’s will obey, “And pious tribute at her altars pay: “With rights divine, the goddess be implor’d, “Nor be her sacred offspring unador’d.” Thus Manto spoke. The Theban maids obey, And pious tribute to the goddess pay. The rich perfumes ascend in waving spires, And altars blaze with consecrated fires; The fair assembly moves with graceful air, And leaves of laurel bind the flowing hair. Niobe comes with all her royal race, With charms unnumber’d, and superior grace: Her Phrygian garments of delightful hue, Inwove with gold, refulgent to the view, Beyond description beautiful she moves Like heav’nly Venus, ‘midst her smiles and loves: She views around the supplicating train, And shakes her graceful head with stern disdain, Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes, And thus reviles celestial deities: “What madness drives the Theban ladies fair “To give their incense to surrounding air? “Say why this new sprung deity preferr’d? “Why vainly fancy your petitions heard? “Or say why Caeus offspring is obey’d, “While to my goddesship no tribute’s paid? “For me no altars blaze with living fires, “No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires, “Tho’ Cadmus’ palace, not unknown to fame, “And Phrygian nations all revere my name. “Where’er I turn my eyes vast wealth I find, “Lo! here an empress with a goddess join’d. “What, shall a Titaness be deify’d, “To whom the spacious earth a couch deny’d! “Nor heav’n, nor earth, nor sea receiv’d your queen, “Till pitying Delos took the wand’rer in. “Round me what a large progeny is spread! “No frowns of fortune has my soul to dread. “What if indignant she decrease my train “More than Latona’s number will remain; “Then hence, ye Theban dames, hence haste away, “Nor longer off’rings to Latona pay; “Regard the orders of Amphion’s spouse, “And take the leaves of laurel from your brows.” Niobe spoke. The Theban maids obey’d, Their brows unbound, and left the rights unpaid. The angry goddess heard, then silence broke On Cynthus’ summit, and indignant spoke; “Phoebus! behold, thy mother in disgrace, “Who to no goddess yields the prior place “Except to Juno’s self, who reigns above, “The spouse and sister of the thund’ring Jove. “Niobe, sprung from Tantalus, inspires “Each Theban bosom with rebellious fires; “No reason her imperious temper quells, “But all her father in her tongue rebels; “Wrap her own sons for her blaspheming breath, “Apollo! wrap them in the shades of death.” Latona ceas’d, and ardent thus replies The God, whose glory decks th’ expanded skies. “Cease thy complaints, mine be the task assign’d “To punish pride, and scourge the rebel mind.” This Phoebe join’d.—They wing their instant flight; Thebes trembled as th’ immortal pow’rs alight. With clouds incompass’d glorious Phoebus stands; The feather’d vengeance quiv’ring in his hands. Near Cadmus’ walls a plain extended lay, Where Thebes’ young princes pass’d in sport the day: There the bold coursers bounded o’er the plains, While their great masters held the golden reins. Ismenus first the racing pastime led, And rul’d the fury of his flying steed. “Ah me,” he sudden cries, with shrieking breath, While in his breast he feels the shaft of death; He drops the bridle on his courser’s mane, Before his eyes in shadows swims the plain, He, the first-born of great Amphion’s bed, Was struck the first, first mingled with the dead. Then didst thou, Sipylus, the language hear Of fate portentous whistling in the air: As when th’ impending storm the sailor sees He spreads his canvas to the fav’ring breeze, So to thine horse thou gav’st the golden reins, Gav’st him to rush impetuous o’er the plains: But ah! a fatal shaft from Phoebus’ hand Smites thro’ thy neck, and sinks thee on the sand. Two other brothers were at wrestling found, And in their pastime claspt each other round: A shaft that instant from Apollo’s hand Transfixt them both, and stretcht them on the sand: Together they their cruel fate bemoan’d, Together languish’d, and together groan’d: Together too th’ unbodied spirits fled, And sought the gloomy mansions of the dead. Alphenor saw, and trembling at the view, Beat his torn breast, that chang’d its snowy hue. He flies to raise them in a kind embrace; A brother’s fondness triumphs in his face: Alphenor fails in this fraternal deed, A dart dispatch’d him (so the fates decreed:) Soon as the arrow left the deadly wound, His issuing entrails smoak’d upon the ground. What woes on blooming Damasichon wait! His sighs portend his near impending fate. Just where the well-made leg begins to be, And the soft sinews form the supple knee, The youth sore wounded by the Delian god Attempts t’ extract the crime-avenging rod, But, whilst he strives the will of fate t’ avert, Divine Apollo sends a second dart; Swift thro’ his throat the feather’d mischief flies, Bereft of sense, he drops his head, and dies. Young Ilioneus, the last, directs his pray’r, And cries, “My life, ye gods celestial! spare.” Apollo heard, and pity touch’d his heart, But ah! too late, for he had sent the dart: Thou too, O Ilioneus, art doom’d to fall, The fates refuse that arrow to recal. On the swift wings of ever flying Fame To Cadmus’ palace soon the tidings came: Niobe heard, and with indignant eyes She thus express’d her anger and surprise: “Why is such privilege to them allow’d? “Why thus insulted by the Delian god? “Dwells there such mischief in the pow’rs above? “Why sleeps the vengeance of immortal Jove?” For now Amphion too, with grief oppress’d, Had plung’d the deadly dagger in his breast. Niobe now, less haughty than before, With lofty head directs her steps no more She, who late told her pedigree divine, And drove the Thebans from Latona’s shrine, How strangely chang’d!—yet beautiful in woe, She weeps, nor weeps unpity’d by the foe. On each pale corse the wretched mother spread Lay overwhelm’d with grief, and kiss’d her dead, Then rais’d her arms, and thus, in accents slow, “Be sated cruel Goddess! with my woe; “If I’ve offended, let these streaming eyes, “And let this sev’nfold funeral suffice: “Ah! take this wretched life you deign’d to save, “With them I too am carried to the grave. “Rejoice triumphant, my victorious foe, “But show the cause from whence your triumphs flow? “Tho’ I unhappy mourn these children slain, “Yet greater numbers to my lot remain.” She ceas’d, the bow string twang’d with awful sound, Which struck with terror all th’ assembly round, Except the queen, who stood unmov’d alone, By her distresses more presumptuous grown. Near the pale corses stood their sisters fair In sable vestures and dishevell’d hair; One, while she draws the fatal shaft away, Faints, falls, and sickens at the light of day. To sooth her mother, lo! another flies, And blames the fury of inclement skies, And, while her words a filial pity show, Struck dumb—indignant seeks the shades below. Now from the fatal place another flies, Falls in her flight, and languishes, and dies. Another on her sister drops in death; A fifth in trembling terrors yields her breath; While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain, Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain. One only daughter lives, and she the least; The queen close clasp’d the daughter to her breast: “Ye heav’nly pow’rs, ah spare me one,” she cry’d, “Ah! spare me one,” the vocal hills reply’d: In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny, In her embrace she sees her daughter die. * “The queen of all her family bereft, “Without or husband, son, or daughter left, “Grew stupid at the shock. The passing air “Made no impression on her stiff’ning hair. * This Verse To The End Is The Work Of Another Hand. “The blood forsook her face: amidst the flood “Pour’d from her cheeks, quite fix’d her eye-balls “stood. “Her tongue, her palate both obdurate grew, “Her curdled veins no longer motion knew; “The use of neck, and arms, and feet was gone, “And ev’n her bowels hard’ned into stone: “A marble statue now the queen appears, “But from the marble steal the silent tears.” TO S. M. A YOUNG AFRICAN PAINTER, ON SEEING HIS WORKS. TO show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent, And thought in living characters to paint, When first thy pencil did those beauties give, And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, How did those prospects give my soul delight, A new creation rushing on my sight? Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue, On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire! And may the charms of each seraphic theme Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame! High to the blissful wonders of the skies Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes. Thrice happy, when exalted to survey That splendid city, crown’d with endless day, Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring. Calm and serene thy moments glide along, And may the muse inspire each future song! Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless’d, May peace with balmy wings your soul invest! But when these shades of time are chas’d away, And darkness ends in everlasting day, On what seraphic pinions shall we move, And view the landscapes in the realms above? There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow, And there my muse with heav’nly transport glow: No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs, Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes, For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, And purer language on th’ ethereal plain. Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night Now seals the fair creation from my sight. TO HIS HONOUR THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR, ON THE DEATH OF HIS LADY. MARCH 24, 1773. ALL-Conquering Death! by thy resistless pow’r, Hope’s tow’ring plumage falls to rise no more! Of scenes terrestrial how the glories fly, Forget their splendors, and submit to die! Who ere escap’d thee, but the saint * of old Beyond the flood in sacred annals told, And the great sage, + whom fiery coursers drew To heav’n’s bright portals from Elisha’s view; Wond’ring he gaz’d at the refulgent car, Then snatch’d the mantle floating on the air. From Death these only could exemption boast, And without dying gain’d th’ immortal coast. Not falling millions sate the tyrant’s mind, Nor can the victor’s progress be confin’d. But cease thy strife with Death, fond Nature, cease: He leads the virtuous to the realms of peace; * Enoch. + Elijah. His to conduct to the immortal plains, Where heav’n’s Supreme in bliss and glory reigns. There sits, illustrious Sir, thy beauteous spouse; A gem-blaz’d circle beaming on her brows. Hail’d with acclaim among the heav’nly choirs, Her soul new-kindling with seraphic fires, To notes divine she tunes the vocal strings, While heav’n’s high concave with the music rings. Virtue’s rewards can mortal pencil paint? No—all descriptive arts, and eloquence are faint; Nor canst thou, Oliver, assent refuse To heav’nly tidings from the Afric muse. As soon may change thy laws, eternal fate, As the saint miss the glories I relate; Or her Benevolence forgotten lie, Which wip’d the trick’ling tear from Misry’s eye. Whene’er the adverse winds were known to blow, When loss to loss * ensu’d, and woe to woe, Calm and serene beneath her father’s hand She sat resign’d to the divine command. No longer then, great Sir, her death deplore, And let us hear the mournful sigh no more, Restrain the sorrow streaming from thine eye, Be all thy future moments crown’d with joy! Nor let thy wishes be to earth confin’d, But soaring high pursue th’ unbodied mind. Forgive the muse, forgive th’ advent’rous lays, That fain thy soul to heav’nly scenes would raise. A FAREWEL TO AMERICA. TO MRS. S. W. I. ADIEU, New-England’s smiling meads, Adieu, the flow’ry plain: I leave thine op’ning charms, O spring, And tempt the roaring main. II. In vain for me the flow’rets rise, And boast their gaudy pride, While here beneath the northern skies I mourn for health deny’d. III. Celestial maid of rosy hue, O let me feel thy reign! I languish till thy face I view, Thy vanish’d joys regain. IV. Susanna mourns, nor can I bear To see the crystal show’r, Or mark the tender falling tear At sad departure’s hour; V. Not unregarding can I see Her soul with grief opprest: But let no sighs, no groans for me, Steal from her pensive breast. VI. In vain the feather’d warblers sing, In vain the garden blooms, And on the bosom of the spring Breathes out her sweet perfumes. VII. While for Britannia’s distant shore We sweep the liquid plain, And with astonish’d eyes explore The wide-extended main. VIII. Lo! Health appears! celestial dame! Complacent and serene, With Hebe’s mantle o’er her Frame, With soul-delighting mein. IX. To mark the vale where London lies With misty vapours crown’d, Which cloud Aurora’s thousand dyes, And veil her charms around. X. Why, Phoebus, moves thy car so slow? So slow thy rising ray? Give us the famous town to view, Thou glorious king of day! XI. For thee, Britannia, I resign New-England’s smiling fields; To view again her charms divine, What joy the prospect yields! XII. But thou! Temptation hence away, With all thy fatal train, Nor once seduce my soul away, By thine enchanting strain. XIII. Thrice happy they, whose heav’nly shield Secures their souls from harms, And fell Temptation on the field Of all its pow’r disarms! Boston, May 7, 1773. A REBUS, BY I. B. I. A BIRD delicious to the taste, On which an army once did feast, Sent by an hand unseen; A creature of the horned race, Which Britain’s royal standards grace; A gem of vivid green; II. A town of gaiety and sport, Where beaux and beauteous nymphs resort, And gallantry doth reign; A Dardan hero fam’d of old For youth and beauty, as we’re told, And by a monarch slain; III. A peer of popular applause, Who doth our violated laws, And grievances proclaim. Th’ initials show a vanquish’d town, That adds fresh glory and renown To old Britannia’s fame. AN ANSWER TO THE REBUS, BY THE AUTHOR OF THESE POEMS. THE poet asks, and Phillis can’t refuse To show th’ obedience of the Infant muse. She knows the Quail of most inviting taste Fed Israel’s army in the dreary waste; And what’s on Britain’s royal standard borne, But the tall, graceful, rampant Unicorn? The Emerald with a vivid verdure glows Among the gems which regal crowns compose; Boston’s a town, polite and debonair, To which the beaux and beauteous nymphs repair, Each Helen strikes the mind with sweet surprise, While living lightning flashes from her eyes, See young Euphorbus of the Dardan line By Manelaus’ hand to death resign: The well known peer of popular applause Is C——m zealous to support our laws. Quebec now vanquish’d must obey, She too much annual tribute pay To Britain of immortal fame. And add new glory to her name. F I N I S. 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Didn't know magnavox was bought out in 1974 , they were making versions of their game system until 1978. interesting. Didn't know coleco meant the conneticut leather company:) Photo information in 1977, magnavox/atari/coleco all USA based companies dominated the gaming market. A telling thing that all three corporations are gone. in 1982, Atari was the distanced leader, while three other usa based makers , mattel had joined, aside japan's nintendo were all equal as second. Atari is an interesting story. 1985, all the usa makers plans with their systems all were negative,in comparison to nintendo's vision. this is the key year. all four Atari/Coleco/Magnavox/MAttel needed to come together and make one system or at least rethink their strategy together as they are all based in the usa and are losing significantly to a non statian firm. 1987, when you look at Sega or NEC they came in as Nintendo had an unrivaled competitor. the usa firms for various reasons were mismanaged in their strategy or finance and wasn't competing and thus it opened the market for more japanese firms to get involved. 1992, this has been very helpful to see the industrial change. in 1992 by console sales, Atari was still the third biggest maker in the gaming industry... A firm based in NYC. Born in the west coast but by now, owned by a firm in nyc. 1994, when you look at the video gaming industry today and you realize that Magnavox/Coleco/Mattel/Atari ,all are usa based and all are losing to a group of japanese led firms in Nintendo/Sega/NEC and Sony starting that year, it says alot about industrial management. Why couldn't they come together to try something, something. wow! The owners quit on the idea didn't they? 1996, Nintendo/Sega/Sony all japanese dominate the video gaming market. Atari is still 4th. Hell, Atari join with NEC. I have real problem with the 4th biggest firm in a market , not having any sort of viable plan. 2002, microsoft came in, but I am looking at Atari/Coleco/Mattel/Magnavox/NEC , I don't recall Microfot involving them at all. 4 usa based firms, with properties, video game properties, Microsoft didn't think they warranted getting their properties or working with them or former engineers developers from their time. I even include NEC, why not. you are the last entry, coming real later. Consider that Microsoft was founded in 1975. So they were founded in an era when usa gaming companies was at the top. It took them a long time to want to join the video gaming industry? odd and explains with their lack of interest in aligning with older competitors the fact that they have not made a dollar on consoles. 2006 Sony accepted selling playstation three with a lose of 240 dollars per console, that is over half the price of the system. Very bad business model in my view. And I think sony has never stopped trying to make some high priced system be worth so much even the affordable buyer risks getting it 2019, a great lesson in industrial history here, thanks to MErgirl Dunne of Black Games ELite

Hello to the late readers, Yes mind reading... In the year 2020, I said to myself, I will make a video game. It is not a hard task in all earnest. It is also not an easy task. The greatest challenge is... fun. Yes, the greatest challenge in making a video game is fun. When I was in college I made games few , excluding me, could master or have fun playing. I took the Will Wright masterclass on Video Game design. The best idea I garnered from it was the 365 game a day challenge. I thought to myself cool. But, I hit the snag I had in college. What is that snag you say?! I started on intricate, complicated games, absent an idea of fun. Who will have fun with the games I had begun developing. Then, 24 hours before this post was created, I realized I was making the same error, as in the past. So, I rebooted my structure. What if I went for simplicity. 365 simple games to test the waters, what people like. This will allow the BlackGamesElite group to engage better. At least I hope so:) ... Without further rambling, I introduce the MSinChe project. 365 games in 365 days. The goal of the project is to Engage the BlackGamesElite members on creating games ourselves Find out what games we actually like to design as a group or individually Create a code base for the future for the group to use Have fun! I will add a forum entry for the MSinChe project , but this post will hold the simple list of games per day. I hope all the members have fun and those not members, I hope are inspired to create. 1. KumRan playable link Comment link 2. NyoKuun Playable link Comment link 3. HazMin Playable Link 4. MoyoSaa Playable Link 5. VuaKal Playable Link 6. ?

This is my Q&A to Jessica Amadi , Rivers Angels FC media officer When did you start as the media officer to Rivers Angels F.C. ? August 28, 2015 Is there any media officer to a sporting team or organization that you admire? That would be the former media officer of defunct Dolphins, China Acheru The Nigerian league is the strongest womens league in C.A.F. , what should it emulate from other leagues media-wise to grow? It should get closer to the communities and always respect player’s contracts. Many say big clubs around the world in the men’s game have lost their communal feeling, do you have any idea how that can be stopped in the women’s game? Like I said, our female teams should get closer to the communities since women football in the country is not as strong as that of the men. If games will be taken to either the Universities or community fields, trust me, the awareness will be enormous What is the best advertisement/commercial/promotional for soccer you know of in each confederation: C.A.F./U.E.F.A./A.F.C./Con.Me.Bol./Co.N.C.A.C.A.F.? I really don’t have any in particular but think I’ll go with the Nike Airport 98’ What question did I not asked that you wanted me to? We have Continental competitions for the male league clubs in Africa…..why isn’t there one for the female clubs? What book are you reading now? If none, what was the last book you finished and when did you finish it? Act Like a Lady, Think like a Man Say one thing you know that few do? Ah!! Nothing more than gossip….lol If you have a chance to speak to one forebear, describe them as you want: who will it be, what will the topic be, and what will be the setting? My Grandmum, Topic: Too Soon! You should have waited to teach me more about our culture and those special delicacies of yours. When you have a chance to speak to the spirit to all that is or is not, what will you say? Always follow your heart and never give up on your dreams! Jessica Amadi online social pages https://twitter.com/Isiokpobabe https://www.instagram.com/isiokpobabe_/

Hello Football lovers, I am a fan to football crazy on BEINsport and they have this chant that I love to listen to , for the fun of it. Listen to "footballcrazy may1st/2nd weekend football chant possibilities" on Spreaker. The first past is for Alcacer who scored the winning goal for FC Barcelona against Grenada. It is referenced from Oyo como va from Tito Puente Oyo como va? Mi tarja Bueno pa' crec' en <Bueno para crecer en> Granada How is it going? My tally Good for growing in Granada Oyo como va? Granada Bueno pa' gozar Alcacar How is it going? Granada Good for enjoying Alcacer The second part is for Higuain aka Judain in Napoli. It refer to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida from Iron Butterfly In the garden San Paolo, I am cursed to never score again In the garden San Paolo, Juve please never play me again Ne'l giardin di San Paolo, io son maledett de non se-gnare di pui Ne'l giardin di San Paolo, Juve preg' non giocare a me, di, nuovo Here is my chant for Lukaku of Everton https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/139-lukaku-chant/ Here is my Kings of London epic poem series, a poem for every match of the Chelsea FC season in the year stated Kings of London 2014-2015 https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/kings-of-london-epic-poem-cfc-2014-2015 Kings of London 2013-2014 https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/kings-of-london-epic-poem-cfc-2013-2014 Kings of London 2012-2013 https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/kings-of-london-epic-poem-cfc-2012-2013

Episode 20 Listen to "Weekend Thoughts from richard murray" on Spreaker. I have spoken to Washington Spirit many time; looking to the end of the national womens soccer league regular season I find a few simple point, to them. First, the Washington Spirit had a woeful off season organizationally. The players like Krieger they let go, the desire to get Pugh they sacrificed for long term is an example to a gamble. this coming off season, I want to see what the plan is to build around Mallory Pugh for the Spirit, if they don't truly build around Pugh then next season will be filled with as many losses as the current. To that point, Pugh is a midfielder. She is not a winger cause she does not have the speed absent the ball for that. She is not a forward cause she does not have the strength or speed against the most athletic defenders for that. She is a midfielder who can play center left or right or cut into the forward area. Thus, Washington spirit need a powerful number 9 atop Pugh. You need at least one aerial outlet. They need wide players in defense or midfield to maintain width no matter where Pugh end up and who offer overlapping play or moving targets between the lines for Pugh's passing. WashSpirit need at least one enforcer in midfield. Whenever any team play a player in a free role that player leaves defenses gaps that will require termination. We shall see what Washington do over the winter break. Portland Thorns is a team built to lift trophies. Christine Sinclair, the historically dominant number 9 in the N.W.S.L. only bettered by Sam Kerr who is having a breakout season. Amandine Henry the U.E.F.L. Champions League winner in Olympique Lyonnais. Nadia Nadim a hard midfield worker who loves to cut into the opposing lines and make cutting passes, who is a high quality penalty taker. Allie Long or the currently injured Tobin Heath who are box to box midfielders that when healthy offer the best midfield balance to Amandine Henry. Portland as a team is athletic/mature/has the goal bug. In terms of administration, what Portland places on the field is an administrative superiority to Washington Spirit and thus the match result. Each goal was inevitable if you watch Washington Spirit. A penalty earned by the spirit keeper behind a slow to react back line. A reaction goal from Sinclair. A free header from a corner. None the Spirit defended well and each was straight forward for the Thorns. Aly Wagner side Jenn Hildreth or Dalen Cuff on Lifetime television said it best. The speed off the ball, the free flowing passing from Portland was what they needed before, aside Nadim or Henry fit and in sync to the squad. Portland have no excuse to compete till the end. Enjoy this weekly thoughts, all for free on Kobo LINK Enjoy my poetry and comics concerning the London Blue https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/kings-of-london-epic-poem-cfc-2012-2013 https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/kings-of-london-epic-poem-cfc-2013-2014 https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/kings-of-london-epic-poem-cfc-2014-2015

Round 15 Audio LINK Listen to "Richard Murray Fanatacism Audible" on Spreaker. The Status to the Audible... it is closed and audio blogging will continue in other ways going forward. My search to find a better way to be a pundit. Transcripts R1 , R2 , R3 , R4 , R5 ,R6 , R7, R8 , R9, R10, R11 , R12, R13, R14, R15 Articles Botafogo Star: Pereira guidance , ? GoalChatter: Women's clubs must survive , ? Thoughts Egypt in the 2018 world cup , Argentina in the 2018 world cup, Query or list of ideas to get Conmebol, Caf, AFc, CFU to block UEFA or NAFU from winning the Qatar world cup or getting to the final , Sarri in Chelsea summer 2018 , Did Africa win the world cup when France did to you? , Non Futebol Best 11, why do we not blame owners for fiscal problems , UEFA Champions LEague 2018-2019 group stage predictions, ? Richard Murray Thoughts Series Kings of London Epic Poem Series Women Soccer Players Say Paper Richard Murray's Fanatacism Paper

One Trillion Dollars! Earlier this month, Apple executives announced their 42-year-old company is worth One trillion dollars. For those unsure how to write one trillion dollars, there is a one followed by 12 zeros. Today, some believe Apple changed the world with its products. Still, there are quite a few who get along fine without Apple. For the rest, the company is a game-changer. Apple went public in 1980, and for $22, anyone could buy a share. During the company's initial public offering, a middle-aged professor, who taught at a university in Brooklyn, bought a few of the more than four million shares available. He encouraged a young widow who'd just inherited a half-million dollars to buy some too. Her goal was to leave a financial legacy for her children, their children, and generations to come. Not knowing much about the stock market or IPOs, she was skeptical about making a purchase. She passed on the offer. Instead, she kept her money tied up in real estate and her family. She thought that would be a safer deal. It wasn't. Today, most of her family is gone. She and the bank own her one home. There are a lot of reasons, why she isn't wealthy today but mainly it's because "we become what we do." There can be hundreds of articles on how Apple hit trillion dollars in valuation. The reason is this; Apple is run by people whose goal is to make money by any means. So, if you find you're in a place far different than you'd envisioned for yourself. Stop doing what you've always done. Lose the fear and make money whatever it takes to allow you to live your dreams.

As Black Americans struggle against the rise of white nationalism led by an overt racist president; and as we fight against the injustice of legalized police murder and systemic mass incarceration of our young Black men and while as a unit we search hard to find a strong and positive voice of leadership for our children and to lessen the burden of the Black plight, the B.E.T. Network continues to find its pleasure in rolling exploits of the Black experience, 24/7. B.E.T. Has Perpetually Failed Black America

Kween Yakini Reaching A New Milestone

I am learning why I must be patient when it comes to planting the seeds. For some seeds take a long time to grow like trees from the roots out of the ground until they touch the sky, and some are like bulbs that sprout up after a few weeks. Some need more water than others and some only need a few drops, but I still need to give them the time that they require to grow. For example, as I was going about my day having my first book signing event, I ran into another soul. And, this soul recognized me and knew that we would work together. My point is take every opportunity because they are the bread crumbs that will lead you to your destiny. So now I sit back and wait for my seeds to grow into what ever they are meant to be for me. The lesson has been learned, and patience is indeed a virtuous trait to have. Peace!

We all realize that the media really knows how to do a good job at painting Black people in a certain light. They are good at convincing us to hate on each other, and good at convincing us that nothing will ever change. But I disagree, because I was able to create a profound change in my own life by using the power of my mind. And I know without a doubt that we all have the power to change, if that is what we truly desire. So, I published my book to show them the truth about who we are, and that one of our greatest powers is the ability to change. "Woke: A Poetic Journey" (available on Amazon.com) is my testimony. So, I really hope you will read it with an open mind and heart, and let it touch your soul. Thank you, Kween Yakini Poet Writer Spoken Word Artist Blogger Self-Published Author

SHE IS A MAN EATER BUT SHE KILLS THEM WITH KINDNESS She Said: I am Impressed by your Confidence And you must be the Bravest of Hearts If you dare enter my Room Some men never come this close For they fear it will be their Doom Because this is the place where a Lion’s Heart may be consumed And most men can’t fathom all the Hidden Galaxies That I have planted inside my Sacred Womb But I see you're bravely standing here before me Trying to Taunt me with your Dark and Very Long Spear Tell me King is it your Burning Hunger that draws you near? But please beware Beloved for your Pride has No Sanctuary here Yes in due time you will surrender All your Love without any Fear And like a Queen I will give you Flames of Passion And show you all the Mercy my Sweet Darling Dear…

As long as black women need to get their hair "did", and black men need to get lined up, we will always come together in the "Shop" or around kitchen tables to share the latest news. No matter how many social networks like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter spring up they will never replace Low tech media such as The Barbershop,The Beauty Salon & Kitchentalk. On this video, Software and Mobile App developer Anari Sengbe, illustrates this point when after his days of disrupting Silicon Valley, he returns to the village to talk about cryptocurrency. I've been following this tech guru since he came up with the GoVote app that would allow volunteers to wait in line for others who couldn’t afford the long wait time to vote I was updating ads on my blog and I came across a story I "pressed" on him last year. As you can tell, from the name of this blog, I look for interesting "characters" and so I followed up with him on LinkedIn to find out the latest. Earlier this year, Anari Sengbe launched OWO (Yoruba-English translation: Money). OWO.world is a digital platform that has a suite of applications from social to gaming with a twist that allows users and developers to earn/exchange cryptocurrency. I'm working my way up the learning curve to understand this digital currency, but I like the questions these brothers ask because when you teach you learn. And Sengbe is able to answer these bitcoin questions in a way that s easy to understand. By the way, Gaming is included in the Trillion-dollar Media & Entertainment industry but I don't think the government did an assessment that includes bitcoin mining. My head is spinning trying to make sense of all this but you only get old when you stop learning.

The Israeli military said 20 rockets were fired at its positions in the occupied Golan Heights overnight. It responded by launching what a spokesman called "one of the broadest aerial operations in recent years". There was no immediate comment from Iran, whose deployment of troops to Syria to back the government in the country's civil war has alarmed Israel. Iran has repeatedly called for an end to the existence of the Jewish state. Israel's military had been anticipating an attack by Iranian forces after reportedly carrying out a number of strikes on their facilities in Syria in recent months. They included one on an airbase in April that killed seven Iranian troops.

https://kweenyakini.blogspot.com/ Creative Minds Have the Power to Heal By: Kween Yakini Creative minds were born to be different For our purpose is to touch others with our light And creative thinkers will continuously evolve Because we are the ones who make the others think And we usually have awareness of many things Because we always take notice of our surroundings So, our perspectives are constantly expanding We are inspired by things like moon lit nights And the beauty of the sun Creative minds are the music writers Because there is music in our souls And Art is the fuel that drives us Performing feels like church to us So, we give each other praise And we will face our fears So that we can bare our souls Even if it feels like our heart is about to bust out of our chest Because that is what we were meant to do Creative thinkers interpret their feelings And recite their thoughts We are magnetic to other souls They feed off our energy Because there is force inside us Creative minds are unique spirits And we were made to heal souls

Love is truly like the wind. You can't see it, yet you feel it against your skin as though you are constantly walking with a gentle breeze across your face. When a woman is in love... that's when stuff becomes completely amazing. She is never so fascinating. She gleams kaleidoscopic like diamonds under sunlight. Her smile, so childlike as though keeping a secret, could stop your heart. I saw a woman in love once and the only thing I could think of is how could any man wanna take that away from her. How could the man she loves ever risk losing sight of that.

Definitely not American. Our society has a long way for this "unthinkality." Just imagine, "500 Americans have so far been killed in Chicago this year..." It's almost laughable. It’s unimaginable, grouping us all together in this fashion. But shouldn’t we be? American is simply, White American. Let’s face it, it is. But I do have hope, I never imagined having a Black President.... African-American. To me it's like the new "negro." Non-threatening, soft, 'light in the ass.' This term diminishes the strength of Black people and I believe the media uses it specifically for that purpose. There are many Blacks in America without African ties (that’s not taking into account we’re ALL from Africa, but that’s a whole 'mother' story) so the African part just refers to ‘having Black skin.’ And also, African-American has no cultural value. Unlike Italian-American, Asian-American, Native American, Blacks have no heritage or motherland to connect to to display pride and unification throughout the world. Blacks, in general, are the newest breed of humans on the planet. Now, BLACK. The term Black has historically been condemned. The rhetoric of blackballed, blacklisted, blackmail, black lie, black prince, black heart, etc. as negativity, evokes a scornful look, or frown, upon anyone that uses any term that involves the word ‘Black.’ So think about it, in the english language, adjectives precede nouns so any use of the word Black before the noun, has already produced a negative effect. Black man, Black woman, Black child, etc. The same thing. Not all cultures and languages utilize this method. But here in America, it’s taught. And that teaching has instilled a lasting negativity that has been embedded in our cultural DNA. James Brown, "Say it loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud!" Black for me. Why? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise." What say you?

To understand the current war Black America is fighting against white America's attempt to resurrect white supremacy, you must first understand the weapons being used against us. The foremost weapon is fear, backed by threats of death by violence and confinement by imprisonment. These are the main weapons whites have used most against Blacks throughout history. Whites base their entire existence and authority on the use of violence and confinement or the mass murder of people who are not white, using weapons of war, violence, and laws that justify and reinforce inhumane sentences against other human beings and nations. To disarm whites by taking away their guns and places of incarceration, the white race would be a weak people, if all they had to survive on was their intelligence. But seeing it almost an impossible task to disarm their foreign and domestic military and paramilitary structure, or to tear down their walls and fences of confinement or even change their thinking to a more rational compassion toward humanity, there is only one other way to completely defeat their reign of terror on people of color without retaliation by using their own weapons of war. Bravery is the key....Read More

https://relevantmagazine.com/slice/jury-finds-police-officer-not-guilty-in-shooting-death-of-philando-castile/ I had to give this post a moment of silence. I really thought this case would be a slam dunk. The gun was on Castile's hip, a 4yr old child was in the back seat, the mother in the drivers seat. What was the terror in that? This man is Stupid and Free to gloat to everyone he encounters just like Zimmerman about how he killed a black man and got away with it. Just a few Days a go I ironically compared this to King because that was the 1st time we got to see first hand what was going on behind those who are suppose to protect and serve. I was too young and naive then to understand the magnitude of what that meant. As an adult, sadly I know all too well. The tactics the nonsense games law enforcement plays in order to incarcerate our loved ones for B.S. charges. I can imagine what the family feels like, my heart goes out to them and all those who are involved in the movement. Hopefully it's not violent. It's absolutely necessary that we get our voices heard. Even if it's one Blog at a time. One march at a time. Cop or no cop, if you do wrong you should be held accountable. I feel that if these police were held responsible it would a total destruction of what law enforcement means, is. So the justice system lets them off, another innocent man dies. A couple cities Riot, act a Fool then another Black man dies. Another person of color brutalized. Life continues to go on. Keeping the discussion open keeps it real, purposeful. Just like the media shoves celeb gossip, BS politics down our throats to the point it changes our own behavior. Lets discuss topics that matter. Maybe if we bring it up enough it might make a difference. Castile will always be the inspiration to my Blog. Holding positive memories is what keeps hope and Faith alive. Isn't that why we get up everyday? maybe something good will happen.... until next time Shocked and Beyond hurt Ms Ty

Got a Copy! A day after the release... I've been waiting for this follow up for a long time... I'm not gonna Vent right now I'm gonna share one of my Fave authors and one of favorites... The Gideon Series. Anybody else a Fan?... uggh wont allow me to Upload Image too Big it Cried!!!

I heard somewhere one in five people knows a celebrity before they hit it big. So today, while driving, I got to thinking about what would happen if I actually became a celebrity. My hands tingled and I filled with a curious kind of joy thinking about certain peoples reaction. Specifically, my old co-workers who in my humble opinion, were already haters, and my former bitch-ass boss. My grin was a mile wide as I imagined myself on the previews of primetime television walking out to the talk shows that would be airing later in the week and even better, them in the theater gathering their belongings when my name rolls up in the credits for having written a movie. #Bowdownbitches But, I was enjoying this fantasy alone. As Erykah Badu says, “the studio audience in my head" was not with me on this one. It was just me, in my car gawking stupidly at a stupid self-made fantasy. You see, the little voice in my head said, when someone does something to you, as foul as it may be, they do it and MOVE ON. You, the proposed victim are in fact elevating them to celebrity status when you constantly feed them with your energy. AIN’T NOBODY WORRIED BOUT YOU!!! Wasn’t that made clear by their actions? Damn it self! Sigh. I get it. Write that movie, that play, that book, that blog, because that’s what you want to do, not for the reaction! Do what you want because you want to, not because of what you think people will do in response. You were moved so that you could realize your star power, your magic, harness it, perfect it, grow in it, for you. It takes elbow grease to get something to shine, stop looking to see your reflection in other peoples tables and put that elbow grease to you own. #AINTNOBODYTHANKINBOUTYOU!

I am an avid reader, writer, poet, looking to share my world with those who share the same passion. God Bless and Much Success to all!!

Based on the actions Darren Wilson said Michael Brown took, Michael Brown committed suicide by cop. If Wilson's story is truthful, why did Michael Brown commit suicide by cop? Was Michael Brown suicidal? Did Michael Brown have a history of mental illness? Was Michael Brown suffering from depression? I ask these questions because they would explain Brown's actions on that tragic day. I just can't imagine a young black man attacking a cop, attempting to disarm him, telling the cop that he's too vagina (my word) to shoot him, and then charging toward the cop after already being shot by the cop. These actions are not actions of a sane person. Was Brown insane? These actions sound like the actions of a person who is suicidal. Was Brown suicidal? These actions sound like the actions of a person that just committed a serious crime. What serious crime did Brown commit? These actions sound like the actions of a person on hard narcotics. What narcotics did Brown have in his system? Brown's actions, according to Wilson, were completely irrational and violent. Some people would like to point to the store robbery as proof that Brown was acting irrationally and violently that day. But when we observe the tape, we see Brown restraining himself from pummeling the clerk: the clerk attempted to stop Brown from leaving the store, on the clerk's second attempt, Brown walked toward the clerk in an intimidating manner and then exited the store. Indeed, Brown was acting irrationally, but clearly he wasn't acting extremely violent. According to WIlson, Brown's actions were contrary to what we see on the store's surveillance tape. According to Wilson, why did Brown's actions go from irrational to completely irrational, violent, and suicidal? Did Brown have a history of violence? These are questions that could have been asked in a trial. What are your thoughts?

The Master's Legacy. A slave Novel and civil war novel. Are people still interested in reading of the antebellum days in Georgia? How does one educated slaves against Georgian laws? I started the research. I had to ask the following questions as I began. Did the Georgian planters free their slaves? What if one of their sons/kin intermarried into the slave race unknowingly? What if fate or destiny led one to help the slaves despite their social convictions to society? Can you write a slave novel using some realistic characters and facts and then use fictional characters as well? how do you make such a story flow? My first attempt at writing a historical fiction will be a challenge.

Peace, what is it? Peace, where is it? Found sitting on the corner block of yesterday's memories. Ocean water rapid moves of thoughts that say much of nothing. The sun can only shine when the sky is blue, really? So it goes to say that underneath the stones of faces marked with dispare, marked with the etchings of time lost. Peace, found it in the middle of the rain soaked filters of urban bliss. Inside that passion is the peace twisted with north winds blowing south. Stretching upward, reaching open and as wide as the horizons. There is peace, there is oh yes peace, inside you. And So It Goes