Troy

Also Facebook, earlier in the year, killed the ability to syndicate one's facebooks posts. They are starting to raise the walls of their walled garden. With just under 2 billion users, they are have effectively become the Internet.

True, cheating, by definition, is behaving in a way that goes counter to the rules, as in the case with conventional marriage vows. Most "cheaters" I'm aware of don't make much of an effort to cover up their tracks; Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, etc. Reapers simply wrote cheating is "fucked up end of discussion." I wonder what she (you know Guest Reaper is a she), believes we should do with cheaters? Should we execute them? Give them a stern talking to? What? Christian ministers cheat and eternal damnation does not seem to deter them. Public humiliation did not seem to bother Bill Clinton. Losing his family, many millions of dollars, and perhaps his career did not stop Tiger Woods.

No @Mel Hopkins, I have not tried Depop. I actually never heard of it until you mentioned it. I checked out the site and don't have any interest in it. I'm sorry to read that the initial reaction of those that you invited was "that it is nothing but books." I suspect if you probed you'd find there was a different reason because the reality is that the forums were always dominated by non-book conversations. But to your point, I can and will add discussion forum content to the homepage to reflect the conversations that are taking place on these forums. Maybe some variation of this feed:

Human sexuality is complex. I'm not sure why people believe humans are monogamous by nature, particularly since NOTHING in our collective behavior suggests that we are. If two people chose to only have sex with each other and actually accomplish it over a lifetime, and it makes them happy--that is great. To expect most humans to enthusiastically embrace and conform to this behavior is woefully naive and unrealistic.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017 at 6 p.m., Harlem, New York, NY Check it out if you can! The newly inaugurated president has proposed budget cuts that would seriously impact our nation's arts funding. Why are arts and cultural funding so important? What programs benefit from this? How could this potentially affect Harlem's art community and what can we do as, artists, authors, members of the writing world to involve ourselves and protect our arts initiatives? An exclusive talk with the curators and creators of the black literary world, Clarence Reynolds, director of The Center for Black Literature, Ron Kavanaugh, Mosaic Literary Magazine and Troy Johnson, AALBC.com of the Annual Black Pack After Party as part of on-going NY Book Festival on June 1st, 2017. Eartha Watts-Hicks, Senior Harlem World Magazine Editor in Chief, Eartha Watts-Hicks .

Moving Fannie Lou Hamer's page to the new format and I stumbled across her full testimony at the Democratic National Convention, August 22, 1964, Credentials Committee. Previously I'd only heard an excerpt. I can't imagine standing up to overt racism, in the deep south, the way she did. I spend enough time in Florida to have confronted over racism in 2017, but that is nothing compared to 50 years ago. I can't even image sharecropping. I had a job when I was 14 working in Central Park, pulling weeds and stuff like that. It was exhausting work--I can't image a life of that drudgery... Hamer is a remarkable woman brave and a brilliant orator.

I was just now migrating George S. Schuyler's page and discovered a link to a conversation we had about him back in 2004. At that time I had no idea who Schuyler was, but his story is fascinating. http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/23046/23797.html The book Black Empire, "...where this Black Doctor raises money by pimping and killing white women and selling dope, uses it to finance an Army by which he drives the colonial powers out of Africa and then uses biological warfare to exterminate the Italians, among others," is probably worth taking a look at: Black Empire by George S. Schuyler “Imagine W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and Marcus Garvey rolled into one fascist superman, and there you have Dr. Henry Belsidus…[The novels] are an Afrocentrist’s dream.”Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York Times Book Review

Seriously, look into the malware on your website--it will hurt the reach of everything that links to it--even your own social media. Do I have all of the books you’ve published on your page? My goal is to provide information on all Black-owned imprints, past and present, on the website.

Hey man congrats on the praise! Are you pubbing his book? Send me the info if you do. Also, with all of those links why don't you support a Brother and add AALBC.com: https://aalbc.com/authors/imprint.php?imprint=Ghettoheat Actually, I'll also give you some advice; from an SEO perspective, you actually hurt websites when you post so many hyperlinks. In your case the first hyperlink I checked as broken--which is MUCH worse. ....I actually checked your homepage ghettoheat.com and my operating system says it has a virus. At this point, I'm going to edit your post and remove all the links. Point to a site with a virus is SEO death, so please sort that out as soon as you can. I suggest you pick a few links and get rid of all the rest. make a webmaster's life easier... seriously.

Good find. I'm familiar with Terrance's work as a poet, in fact, he was nominated for a National book award a couple of years ago. However, Terrance did not write this book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education was written by Christopher Emdin. As a teacher, I think much of the failure in the classroom has less the student (or their families) and more to do with the administration. The can squash a potentially good teacher, demoralize and force good teachers how, and fail to hold crappy teachers accountable. My experience tells me if you give good teachers a decent wage and an opportunity to do their thing they will shine and the students will benefit. I can't speak to this book, but reinventing the pedagogical wheel has not helped Black boys since we relinquished responsibility.

Humm.. it looks like you have made my point Pioneer. Thanks!

No, it's not you--it's me

...or maybe Time Magazine looked beyond the superficial points you describe @Pioneer1 and evaluated these sistaz on their cultural, artistic, and business influence. Perhaps these two ladies are movers and shakers, making decisions behind the scenes that impact our lives in ways you are unaware. Now, of course, I do not believe Time actually did that; I think they just came up with a list to attract the most attention and conversation. I was unaware of the list and have not interest in it, but here I am talking about it. I'm certain one of the lurkers reading this conversation will be prompted to see who else is on the list, driving revenue to the site--mission accomplished. Pioneer maybe you should come up wth a published your own list. I'll help share it. @Cynique, I'm surprised Oprah did not make the list. I would put Steve Harvey, Wendy Williams, and Al Sharpton on my list of 100 most influential Black people.

Sexual harassment is most political correctness run amok. As you mentioned depending on the situation and the people involved the statement could be funny or obscene. A son saying it to his grandmother is completely different than a young man saying it to a young woman that he knows very well. Still, unless something has changed dramatically Black men should err on the side of caution when it comes to joking around in the office. I would never have said something like that to any woman in the office unless I knew her well enough to know she would not go to the man and sell me out. I would have cautioned my man to exert more discretion in the future.

Listening to this lets me know just how little I know about, or understand, this sport.

@Pioneer1 Canada seems to have a good system to taking better care of their people. Australia does too. As well as many European countries like Denmark. Now none of these countries have put a car on Mars, created a device to tell you what to wear, or made a website like Twitter, but that is fine.

Pioneer that long story and you didn't even say what the Brother did what's up with that? That and not answering Del's question... that sheds some light on how you think ;-)

Is this a trick question? In order to answer the question, you have to think about it It is always a problem when the thing you are trying to evaluate requires the thing itself. Often solutions to problems just come to me. Sometimes when I'm trying to do something with this website, I'll just "sleep on it" and the solution comes to me as if it was obvious. I don't even rack my brain anymore when a problem presents itself that I can't immediately resolve. I just wait for it to come to me. I guess my initial reaction is that I don't know how I think. I feel like any answer I'd come up with would just be a story I've conjured up to fill in the blanks of what I don't or perhaps can't know.

This was an article I published just a few years ago . It lists 50 websites for book lovers. It includes corporate websites and large indies sites well, not are Black owned, expect my site. While checking the links I discovered more than 1/3 were not longer active. Honestly, this does not come as a surprise, because I know Black book websites have been clobbered and white-owned websites are not completely immune to the challenges that plague Black sites, they just have a much larger audience and broader support. Still, the loss of so many sites is a troubling because, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it just reflects a trend of the online book world becoming increasingly dominated by a couple of ultra-powerful companies; Amazon and Google, A major site like Shelfari is gone, taken over by Amazon and then shut down. Amazon already owns Goodreads. There are some really cool sites left. One of the things I planned to do during my 6-month boycott of social media was to begin networking on indie websites the way I did on social media.

Yeah it is great to see talented singers and musicians perform. I also saw Dizzy play. It was at a Jazzy club called the Blue Note in Greenwich village. I was close enough to touch him. He even winked at me--a very charismatic guy. The Blue Note was the club where I saw Ray Charles. Again, I sat at a table next to the stage. Ray was some performer too; He had 25 people on the stage, which for the Blue Note is a ton of people. It was a terrific show! The Bue Note is tight, but one of my favorite venue for catching a show. Moving away from Jazz Recently Cuba Gooding Sr. passed (RIP), I saw him perform at a small club in he city. Sharon Jones (RIP) and the Dap KIngs were very entertaining too. Hey, Del that concert where I ran into you when the Ohio Players were playing for free in the park. That was one of my favorite concerts. I'd seen the Ohio Player perform before but they did not have a horn section and used a keyboard instead. But that funk concert in Prospect park, sitting on blankets, drinking beer and listening to my favorite tunes performed live by musicians was sublime. I'm glad I remember a time before boasting over looped samples while pacing back and forth across the stage became so popular.

Sure technology is great, but in the hands of greedy people, it becomes a perversion like everything else from religion to our presidency. That really is the problem with capitalism; it has been perverted, perhaps beyond the point of no return....

I discovered Living Colour in San Antonio. A band was covering one of their songs and I went up after the set asked the name of the song, they told me who the song was by and I purchased the CD the next day this was the summer of 1991. Years later I learned they were from the city and I've seen them or Corey several times. Most recently during a free concert walking distance from where I live. Waddya mean BB doesn't not sing? I met Nacy Wilson once. She struck me as classy, fine-looking, older lady. I never heard her sing live, Actually, I'm not sure if can still perform. She must have been something to see in her prime. Cynique I would have LOVED to see all the folks you saw live, in their prime--I can't image. When you saw Ellington and Basie, were they on a bandstand? Where you and your husband sitting at little tables drinking and smoking, and able to dance when they performed--you know like you see in the movies?

@Cynique,my problem with the use of "Primitive," in this context, is not specific to you, but how we use the term collectively. The suggestion that a lifestyle different from ours must be primitive and therefore worse. I think "we" do have a say so in how capitalism is exercised. We just choose not to exercise it. The quote, "I've been poor and I've been rich..." besides being glib, presents a false dichotomy. We can all be doing very well, much better than we are doing now without being poor or rich. We also know being rich does not make you happy, and there are many poor people who are very happy. I'm not sure people would be so willing to give up their technology to become more in tune with nature. I think must younger people would find nature boring. Again, this is part of the problem. @Pioneer1 , you've been here long enough to know Cynique is not gonna take your side, however rare that may be, out of pity, At the end of the day, it is more profitable to capitalize off a weak, insecure, and ignorant people than it is to profit off those who are strong, conscious and informed (woke). As a result, corporations have no incentive to uplift us--even if they are an educational institution (think Trump University). As a direct consequence governments, who do the bidding or corporations, don't do anything to stop them and often HELP corporations exploit people as in the case of Amazon, who is thriving wildly under capitalism, while people become increasingly less well off. The system is broken, and to suggest there are no other better alternative makes no sense, when history demonstrates that there are.

Nice list. I only got to see three of the ten above I've seen. Prince Phyliss Hyman Herbie Hancock James Brown Issac Hayes BB King Bobby Blue Bland Ray Charles Al Jarreau Gil Scott-Heron