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'Discharged from hospital to recuperate at home after a bout with covid flu. That was no fun. Interesting hospital experience, however. Tended by a flurry of nurses, many of whom were effusive gay men, along with Hispanic cha-chas, misled by my Spanish first name. Indian and Asian doctors, of course. Sistas shuffling round, tellin' me, "you gonna be OK, momma." A very interesting pecking order at this state of the art medical center right around the corner from where I live. Prognosis is OK, all things considered which means my age is a factor. Whatever. If anybody watched the Girot Awards on CBS last night, as black folk, we should've been encouraged! Hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving. 90 is a lot of months away but, I'm tryin to hang in. Luv ya all! Jeeze, this really came out big!

“A complete nincompoop, racist…” or “America’s only hope?” Well which one is it? These views are on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. I don’t think either is true. Starting the debate from these positions is bound to be unproductive. @Stefan the man was the governor of a state and he was a heart beat away from leading the entire country — by definition he is a leader. He is clearly intelligent on some level given his resume. We may disagree with him politically, morally even, but questioning his basic intelligence is extreme and bound to lead to to false conclusions about the man.

I'm starting a major overhaul of the AALBC website. The designers felt it was time for a logo "refresh." Here is an option I'm currently considering. This will be the 4th logo change in 25 years. Here are the previous logos. The logo will inform the look and feel of the new design, so it is important. I considered more radical redesigns but rejected them, as I did not want to stray too far from the current design and make the brand unrecognizable. Let me know what you think.

Back in the 1980s, Irene Cara burst onto the entertainment scene. She was a cutie pie too: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/26/1139275959/fame-flashdance-irene-cara-dies She has passed away at the age of 63. Thanks for sharing your talent. RIP Ms. Cara.

The purpose of the right-wing in trying to INSTALL Herschel "The Walking Zombie" Walker into the Senate, is to DESTROY the powerful and growing Black economic and political base in Georgia. The right-wing racists are looking at the Atlanta area, which is probably the largest concentration of Black wealth and socio-political power not just in the United States but maybe even the Western Hemisphere....and they want to BREAK it. But they can't do it directly because we'd recognize it and push back. So they get one of their dogs...one of their puppets.....to act as a MASK while they will be the actual powers behind him pushing for the destruction of Atlanta's Black political and economic base.

How about a head that reflects all the colours of Blackness

You LOOK great... Live eat drink be merry laugh enjoy have fun and be happy....for Today is Everlasting - NOW.

The World is 90% what you make it....The problem is we often do not realize or know what we are making. The World is not what we want it to be....The World is what We Are - Reflected. In a Nutshell You are what has your ATTENTION. Whatever you commands most of your ATTENTION creates a PERCEPTION of what IS Your PERCEPTION informs your PERSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE becomes MINDSET. MINDSET creates INTENTIONS which leads to ACTIONS/INACTIONS - Reactions

No....Not in my opinion happiness is basically a Skill. Or a State of Mind that has no requirement beyond the ability to choose a particular perspective. Acquisition of Desires is Fulfillment or Achievement....Neither Guarantees Happiness.

The new logo looks good to me.

Man ain't nobody here your B*tch

Blues Highway is a work of historical fiction based on black men who worked the railroads as Pullman Porters. Their story shapes a family's come up during the 1950s-1990s.While Pullman Porters were once widely popularized as symbols of American luxury and service on passenger trains, their contribution toward forging a layer of black middle class prosperity is even more remarkable. In many ways, the day-to-day lives of their children, Janet and Frank, reflect larger stories of success and independence derived from a bit of derring-do. Insightful readers will be drawn to the stories of Pullman Porters themselves, as well as the cities and black communities they help create. This book should inspire broader audiences following the launch of the Pullman National Monument in Chicago in 2020 and the explosive interest in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. Synopsis Janet grew up with a talented mother, an inventive father, and a secret road to success on Chicago’s South Side. Frank excelled in basketball but he couldn’t escape obligations to repay a critical family debt. The origin story of the business and railroad ties of Sidney and Frank Sr. weave a complex web of invention, deception, illicit funds and forged identity. During Sidney’s flight from Jim Crow terror, he changes his name and fortunately finds Lula as a life partner, a bond sealed by the birth of Janet, their only child. Lula leaves her singing act, known as the Brown Sugar Sisters, and starts a pie making business in Chicago. In their bustling barbershop, Janet comes of age in the 1970s, leaving behind her mother’s small pie selling cottage industry. Frank Jr. joins them after learning that his birth mother was once a lover to Sidney, who funded his infancy in New Orleans. Frank Jr. gives up his basketball ambitions to help pay down his family debt to Sidney. He learns the barbering trade while at the same time, Sidney schools him in how to finance the business and keep its ties to a numbers running outfit that initially invests in the shop. America’s history of the black men who worked the railroads as Pullman Porters and their legacy is seen in their family saga, weaving between their roots in the South and their come up during the 1950-1990s. After my early career as a journalist at the Chicago Sun-Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Wall Street Journal and Ebony South Africa, in 2006, I began teaching History and English Literature in Oakland. I took up writing fiction and poetry with support from the Bay Area Writing Project at the University of California-Berkeley in 2013. Excerpts of this manuscript appeared in its Digital Paper. In 2019, an early manuscript was named as a semi-finalist in Hidden River Arts inaugural Tuscarora Award for Historical Fiction. Working with Marlene Connor Literary, the manuscript has been edited, expanded and retitled Blues Highway. The novel has gotten a hearing at book signings in Chicago and at Oakland events. Carla D. Williams ISBN9781669840961 August 12, 2022--publication date

Lol...my religious beliefs changed when I actually READ the Bible for myself. I began to realize most of the preachers and priests of ALL races were wrong and feeding the people misinformation. Religion tends to OVERRIDE what we commonly understand as "common sense". It encourages you to simply believe in something with little or no evidence and often uses fear as a tactic to push you along.

@Pioneer1, American troops are not directly or indirectly involved in nor being threatened by the Ukrainian/Russian dust-up. Just as I'm pro-AfroAmerican, I'm also an American citizen to the core. I know this raggedy azz country (United States of America) could be a lot better but there's no other place on earth I'd rather call home. That doesn't stop me from calling balls and strikes. That dust-up is not our problem until or unless POTUS PJB puts us in it. He won't. It's all political.

I'm not sure if he even qualifies for THAT....lol. Instead of picking up the shit, the nigga is liable to pull out a fake badge and go around flashing it at dogs and threatening to arrest them if they mess on the ground. "Now wait a minute now..... Now HOLD ON now Mista Daauuuwwg. You know you cain't be shittin' all over anywhere ya wants ta down here in Joja! Imma hafta arrest ya up fa dat. I'm da 'Laauuwww-n-oda' candidate!"

It's not the question I'D ask....lol....because I already know the answer to it. Just like Forbes and Trump and others, it was GIVEN to him...or at least he was ALLOWED to accumulate it unencumbered by rules and restrictions that the average Black man would have encountered. I'm impressed by Black billionaires, but not by White ones. I know most of the time they didn't get their money from talent and shrewd business dealings, but they were "bestowed" it by the White racist system for a particular purpose. Just like poor homeless and broke ass White folks are in THAT position for a particular purpose. It all goes to serve the System of Racism that they have established. Now if I had that much money I WOULD rather use it to buy up a small city than to buy Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media platform. Or better yet, build my own from scratch.

@Pioneer1 what happened? When did you start espousing this belief?

We’ll y’all know how i feel about white owned—black Twitter… Musk’s control just highlights the fundamental problem with black Twitter.

Spending 30 billion on a company provides the owner with the freedom to do almost anything with it. That includes crushing competition by any means necessary. The question to ask is how one man has made so much money that he could own a small ciity.

So what? The fact is that Black Twitter has been manipulated buy White Twitter since the beginning. The algorithm only gives the illusion of Freedom. Shadow banning still persists. Only on our on platforms do we have any hope.

NATO should have attacked Ukraine for its attack on Poland. Then it could have annexed it.

ok @Troy Well, US is a Noir science fiction film. Nope is a science fiction mystery. Black Panther is a blaxploitation modern superhero film. The Woman King is one historical fiction. So, which do I prefer. Like with athletes that play different positions < Shaq was a center. Jordan was a shooting guard. Karl Malone was a power forward > I don't like to make preference on films in different genres. For example Che or The Dark Knight came out in 2008, I like both but they are different films. I would prefer Che over JFK or Nixon. I prefer Dark Knight over Batman and Robin or one of the post Lou Gossett Punisher. As for artistic merit... The Woman King made many Black people reassess their comprehension or knowledge or relationship to our enslavement to Whites , across the world. Many men, including Black men, were challenged in their views of Black women in the past and Black women today. Black Panther challenged many Black men in their ideas of ownership. As many Black men felt insult that the Black Panther role didn't get recast. In terms of a historical fiction, the woman king is the prime example of women in stunt work. The training, the fight scenes, was unlike any movie before, in the art world. The plot dealt with the complexity of west african communities during the cusp of the european imperial ownership over the continent. It is historical fiction, but it made thoughtful plot choices. Black Panther Wakanda Forever, like the original presented places that are not mostly white european in look or culture, in the superhero world. Like the outlaw josey whales or thunderheart or skinwalkers or apocalypto, Wakanda Forever addresses the ugly elephant in the room of the american continent. That all of these countries are in spite of the indigenous people who used to live on them. So... artistically both offer various thoughtful or craftful advances. I will say The Woman King is more artful. In comparison, US or Nope are of a smaller scale. Now in immediate defense, US or Nope are smaller budget films. And some things require money. Presentations of Black culture or Indigenous culture , like any culture, ala Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for white asians, or Gladiator for White European culture, require money. But, US or Nope offer audiences something Black Panther or The Woman King don't. Critique to intimate modernity. I love Black History and the worlds Black people can find in Fantasy. But, I do think the modern audience needs its self to see itself, and US or Nope do that. Throughout modern humanity, governments do many things, whose problems are rarely made public until the damage is unrecoverable. Eugenics programs, Syphilis experiments or the like are rampant in history. Who knows the true damage? We all know Hollywood has many thespians who died of cancer doing movies out west. If the FBI/CiA or three letter people are known to have infiltrated every organization in humanity then what does that mean concerning the production choices of hollywood? US is about that. It is more vague than The Woman King or Black PAnther Wakanda Forever, because what common person knows the truth of such actions. But it is generates thought if individuals, especially in the USA are willing to see what they may be afraid to see. As for Nope, I recall weeks ago this year, two thousand and twenty two by the christian calendar, people in media talking about UFO's. Nope is about media, that which is truly unique- the cloud, those who want to be famous- keke palmer, those who are trying to be successful with their character-kaluuya, the raised and lost in media - steven yeun's character <who reflects so many child stars in sports/movies/music>,the true artists whose stubbornness leads to their doom - wincott <hopefully not me one day:) > . In the USA today media is arguably out of control and Nope is a lens to all the players in it. Peele's three works: Get Out/US/Nope are in the spirit of fellow film makers in the past like Ousmane Sembene or Ingmar Bergmane or Hitchcock who used small cast, small sets, less special effects. And had stories with sharp themes. Peele is not necessarily new in said way but he is refreshing. As he isn't doing the black situational comedy/romantic comedy stuff like a tyler perry or similar. So I can argue Get Out/US/Nope are artistically more specific than Wakanda Forever or The Woman King and utilize a filmmaking style that tends to yield films that stand the test of time. Wakanda Forever or The Woman King make grand statements, and in media generated alot of questions within the black community or in the indigenous american community <like the role of indigenous people in latin american media, which to be blunt is atrocious> . The difference between Get Out as compared to US or Nope is the criminal. In US the criminal is the government that at the end is untouched. In Nope the criminal is the media culture. In Get Out, the criminal is the truth of White Europeans who deem themselves allies of Black people or all humanity who in truth have nefarious purpose. That artistic message is so sharp it is easier for all audiences to dissect than US or Nope. Did I answer Troy? @Delano we will see. Many people think enter the dragon is the best Bruce Lee film but I argue, Way of the Dragon or The big Boss is greater. I argue that the influence of an artwork to an individual transcends the quantity who like one particular work. @Pioneer1 hmmm She's Gotta have it/school daze/do the right thing are spike lee's first three directed films Get Out/US/Nope are peele's first three directed films. I argue I enjoyed Peele's first three over spike lee's first three. what say you?

Know what else I take as a no? You actually THINKING about an issue. Karen Bass will not represent just Black Angelenos. She will represent the entire city. I know this a hard concept for you to grasp. You being a "Mike Pence is brilliant" believer and all. You exhorting a view that the U.S. and NATO need to launch nukes in defense of a country whose capital city name you couldn't even pronounce a year ago. You espousing the canard that Black people need to pack up and run away if a group of folks speaking a different language move onto the next block. When you say something that actually makes sense and is DOABLE that will benefit Black people, get back to me. But your defeatist attitude, cowardly outlook and belief that the almighty White man has all the answers is disconcerting to me.

@Stefan, it was definitely a Ukrainian missile gone wrong. They quickly stopped blaming Russia directly for the missile strike but indirectly, it's still their fault because as you mentioned...they're the aggressor.

I never had a problem with police whenever I was in California. And a lone incident may jar me, but never make me write off an entire state or group of people. While too many of us resort to blaming primarily Black men for the ills of Black Americans, this responsibility needs to be apportioned. Because it's incumbent upon all Black men, women and young people to recognize they have obligations and duties regarding the survival and safety of their people. I have no idea why the folks behind Stacey Abrams are steadfastly blaming Black men for her gubernatorial defeat. You cannot run losing candidates a second time without making significant changes to their elective appeal. And none were made on Abrams' behalf. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was a proven incumbent commodity and basked in a positive approval rating this time around and simply beat her. Kemp led Abrams by five points through most of the campaign. Four years ago, after cheating extensively, Kemp eked out a 1.4% victory. Karen Bass was a NEW candidate. Well known as a Congresswoman, but a NEW challenger for the office of Los Angeles Mayor. This made many pay close attention to her words, her ideas and her promises. Her opponent just had a lot of money, a couple of celebrity supporters and the old "I'm Still a White Guy" vibe. It didn't work for him. Hopefully, that won't work for Trump this time either.

Because we are AfroAmericans, identifying, carving out and codifying our culture does not have to be a tall order. Codification begins with knowing our history here in America and the fact that we identify as Black as a tie that binds us together. It's true that AfroAmericans have comingled with other cultures. Some of our people can be all over the place in that regard. But, there's already quite a few things AfroAmericans identify with that are unique to us. We need to built on it. The great that about this period in time and technology is that codification can happen very fast. Just a matter of 1) wanting to do it and 2) taking advantage of the resources available.

Considering the number of AfroAmerican politicians we've had from past to present including a POTUS, I cannot help but to wonder why none of them undertook championing an effort to change the 13th amendment.

Against Mythologizing the Practice of Writing from Amber Sparks I suppose I started writing because it was the easiest way to dump out my imagination and play with it. There were few costs and no barriers to entry, no special tools or equipment or collaborators needed. When I was little and bored, all I needed was a pencil and paper to sketch out an escape plan, another world in all its intricacies and details that I could fly to when I needed it. I could create the friends I lacked in real life on the page. I could pour all my negative feelings into some truly gnarly villains. It was easy, free, and completely satisfying, whether I was writing for five minutes or five hours. I had this easy, casual relationship with writing up through college, largely because I didn’t think of myself as a writer. I was an actor and a musician with a bunch of retail jobs; writing was something I just did for fun, not something I was. So nothing was attached to it, no identity, no expectations, no fanciness. I wrote in the car on vacations, in the breakroom at work, in my notebooks during classes. I wrote and wrote and wrote. But at some point after I started submitting and publishing stories in my late twenties, and met writers, read blogs, did workshops - I started to notice those expectations creeping in, a slow set of mythologies that started to grow in and around my writing practice. For the first time, I started thinking about writing as a deliberate practice, and not just as an almost automatic action. I think this happens to just about every writer at some point between writing for fun and writing for serious. I don’t mean the practice of editing your writing and looking at it with a critical eye - that most likely started when you were young, and obviously if you studied writing or edited a magazine or became a teacher, the practice of critically examining your own work deepened, which is a good thing. No, I’m talking about that other thing - the mythologies around what it means to be A WRITER, to practice and perform the act of writing itself. For example! Every few months, another of those “what my writing day is like” interviews with some famous writer starts circulating on social media, and it usually goes like this: “10 am, emerge lazily from my beautiful French country bedroom wearing a flowing robe that smells slightly of the sea; 11am, sharpen fourteen Blackwing pencils by hand while watching the foxes outside my window feed their young; noon, harvest the day’s honey from my hive of bees while thinking slightly about the characters in my next novel; 2pm, write my ass off; 5pm, drink a glass of port on the veranda while listening to the gentle saw sound of the cicadas and thinking about the impossibilities of life” etc etc. People unusually share these interviews with a screenshot and a comment reflecting wistfulness or jealousy or aspiration or all three. “ME SOMEDAY” or “THE DREAM,” they proclaim, harmlessly enough, while not realizing that these interviews are being woven into their own internal writing mythologies. A real writer lives in the country! Sharpens fresh pencils! Wakes at 10! Keeps bees! And these notions about what a writer is or should be, and what kind of idealized conditions create truly great writing, start subtly to grow around the writer, like stupid vines, and complicate entry into the once simple act of writing itself. Suddenly the writer who has written on their phone on the subway commute, the writer who scribbles on scraps of paper between diaper changes or shift changes - the writer who doesn’t have a practice of their own, or a room of their own, or even a desk of their own, and has never needed one, starts to feel a sense of inadequacy. They must not be a real writer, because they do not take to an isolated cabin for weeks at a time to write, or have a sacred office space with special writing music and office hours to boot. There’s nothing inherently wrong with interviews with very famous and established - usually financially secure - writers, about how they write. That stuff is interesting to know! We love to hear about what kind of pens or pencils or software or notebooks others use to get the job done. It’s fun to read. The real problem happens when early or mid-career writers start to internalize these practices and become aware of what they then perceive to be lacking. Because here’s the thing: most of those interviews are with writers who are older, who have already achieved outsized success, both professional and financial, whose children are grown and who are no longer caring for elderly parents. These same writers almost certainly did much of their own best and most urgent writing while working a day job or three, while raising kids, while riding the Metro and running errands, while living in tiny studio apartments in a crowded city. The way that most writers throughout time have written - through necessity, through poverty, through children crawling on their laps and demanding their attention, through whatever it takes to access that imaginative fire. I would gently suggest (and I tell myself this, everyday!) that these mythologies aren’t really about the practice of writing at all. These “how I write” pieces, for example, have almost nothing to do with being a writer, and the reasons they’re shared have very little to do with being a writer. They’re actually about the dream of being freed from economic anxiety and the wheel of capitalism, and from the various demands on us from our families and loved ones. They’re a dream of “being just a writer,” which is less a dream about writing than a dream about leisure. I see it everyday - despite almost no fiction writer making a living being “just a writer,” emerging writers and mid-career writers alike have made this unlikely reality their goal. It’s no different from planning on winning the lottery as a retirement goal. And I think it not only leads to disappointment and heartache - I think it also leads to less writing. And there comes a point, or at least, there certainly has for me, where you have to start hacking away at the thorny forest of your mythologies (sorry to torture this metaphor) and find the pencil and notebook and the five minutes inside that were all you once needed. That’s your enchanted shit, not the country house and the pencils and the kudzu. It’s not a lesson to be learned just once, either. It’s a lifelong struggle, I’ve found. As a writer, I constantly fight the feeling of “if only,” feeling I could be a brilliant writer if only I had more time, more space, a real desk, a retreat in the woods. I realized, when talking about my last book in interviews, that I wrote most of it on my phone on commutes and very late at night, when my baby was asleep and I was wide awake. I had that fire in me then, and it blazed its way onto the metaphorical page despite my lack of time, or sleep, or solitude. It was the closest I had been in a long time to that deep mystery, that almost primal urge to tell stories that writers seem to be born with. The ur of writing, to be an asshole about it. This last year and a half, we’ve all had plenty of opportunity to experience the frustrations of not-writing, as family obligations increased or loneliness encroached, as escapes (even just to coffee shops) became impossible, as illness and sadness and anxiety stood guard at the door, and our writing practice narrowed to very small windows in time and space. For most of us, the dream went from “spend all my time writing” to “ spend any of my time writing,” and a lot of us lost a year plus of our practice entirely. I’m not going to spin the pandemic as positive in any way - fuck that - but I do think after emerging from the worst of it here in the US, my expectations for what it means to be a writer have changed. I had a disappointing experience last weekend, with a weekend writing retreat I had planned for myself cancelled unexpectedly. I found myself instead where I have been all pandemic, in my apartment bedroom, my child running in and out, writing on a lap desk on my bed. But somehow, I got on with the writing, and somehow, that old feeling, that love of story, that sense of following my characters into the rabbit hole and getting lost with them - it all came back to me and I was no different than me at six or me at sixteen, not being a writer or a Writer, but just spending the time I could with an imaginary world I made. Which is pretty much all I’ve ever wanted to do. https://ambersparks.substack.com/p/against-mythologizing-the-practice?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Lit%20Hub%20Daily:%20June%2011%2C%202021&utm_term=lithub_master_list