Troy

Sometimes lines from books just strike you. I'm been posting interesting lines from books (well this is only my second time doing it. Continuing to tweak what I share on social media. This quote is from the true story, Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B. Tyson I shared an interesting video on the book's page, of Tyson giving a talk about racism in the south. He is a historian and provides an interesting perspective, but he is literally preaching to the choir. The folks who need to hear his message I'm sure are not listening. Perhaps use of the word "nigger" in my post will attract the attention of people who could most benefit from his words.

“Growing titties takes focus.” So goes the opening line of Terris McMahan Grimes' bestselling Novel, Smelling Herself: Listen to Terris read the first chapter:

Today on a whim I decided to see how much effort it would take to compile a list of all the Black writers to win a Pulitzer Prizes in the book-related categories. My list even includes the awards for drama, since all of the plays are available in book form. Since they have been giving the award away for a century, I figured this effort would take considerable effort to complete. Sadly, it took a few minutes—a slight exaggeration—but far less effort than I expected because the list so short. It took over 70 years for the to award to be given to more than a handful of Black writers. It is possible I may have missed a few. If anyone notices any omissions please let me know. I also included Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I don't actually know if he self-describes as "Black," or of "African descent." At any rate, the books that have won at all worth checking out. Although Manning Marable's book got a lot of hate from some critics. You just can't go around writing about Malcolm X's sexual relationship with some a white dude and not expect some blow back...

Poets and Writers Article by Elizabeth Nunez, "Widening the Path: The Importance of Publishing Black Writers " "Many black writers have not been as fortunate. It was not a renaissance after all, that booming interest in books by black writers in the 1990s. It was a passing fad, like last season’s fashionable style in clothes, replaceable when publishers, their eyes on the exotic, “discover” an untapped ethnic group among writers of color." The above quote, from the article, about the rise in the popularity of Black books during the 1990s being a “fad” was interesting. I guess given how short-lived the so-called renaissance was, the term is appropriate. But if the surge in the popularity of Black literature in the 90's was merely a fad, perhaps the Harlem Renaissance was fad for all the same reasons. The only true renaissance in Black literature, can not be dependent upon white largess, otherwise what we get are passing fads.

Fiction by Black Writers: Who are the Readers? Tuesday, February 21, 6:30 pm The Brooklyn Historical Society 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, NY 11201 718-222-4111 The Brooklyn Historical Society will host a panel discussion on assumptions about the marketability of books by black writers and solutions to increase readership with Essence Magazine book editor Patrik Bass; Vice President, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of new-old Random House imprint One World Chris Jackson; novelist and President of the Authors Guild Roxana Robinson, and Ibrahim Ahmad, senior editor at Akashic Books. The panel will be moderated by Elizabeth Nunez. Click for more information.

A Terrific Bookstore in Tampa's Ybor City, Best Books Rich Treasures they feature New, Used, and Rare Books. I've become friendly with these booksellers over the last couple of years. I found them to be cool people as they always expressed their gratitude in my efforts to help them. On my most recent visit. Gigi, one of the co-owners who is also a genealogist was telling me about her book, Thomas the Melungeon: His Locust Family of Free Persons of Color Civil and Revolutionary War Patriots. As we were discussing the book, it became clear we had relatives in the same region of North Carolina. As budding genealogist myself I happened to have my DNA available and we compared our DNA and found the genetic link--we are kin! Our ability to find the shared ancestry is possible because my maternal grandmother's people were never enslaved. Wilder still, I'm also related to her husband, thought the family ties are less clear because the likely connection is through my paternal ancestor the "Johnson" line was lost due to slavery in the deep south... @Delano, I think this qualifies as magic Family or not, I still would have created this video highlighting the store. If you are in the area, check them out and tell 'em, "Cousin Troy" sent you!

@Delano, sure given that definition of magic--absolutely! I can give you many examples. But closer to home, meeting you is an example. Some might call it serendipity others might say coincidence, still other may say it is if no consequence. But I think it is more than that... My connection with @Mel Hopkins and @Cynique is more of the same. I agree with Cynique in that prayer, meditation and other similar practices are our attempts to realize what you call magic. Unfortunately the dogma of religion and people who exploit spirituality for profit pervert our attempt to connect with the universe. I'm reading a book on native Americans and their closeness with nature... they seem be wiser that those with advanced degrees Sadly corporations have exploited technology that could help bring people closer and turned it into our obsession for their profit.

@Delano are these alligences you see forming for or against Trump?

Discover the best black books coming out February 2017, and more in our January eNewsletter.

Correct! Derek Walcott, Toni Morrison, and Wole Soyinka of St. Lucia, America, and Nigeria respectively were the only Black people to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. I attended the conferences Clarence mentioned in which Morrison and Walcott were honored.

Mel the minimum wage as increased incrementally before many of the Occupy protestors were even born. The link you provided says that NY State will increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2021! This does not seem like a resounding win worth boasting about and that is assuming that you can attribute the change solely to Occupy (the article did not make this assertion). I have protested in the past. We even occupied on an office building on Syracuse University's campus. But I was less of an activist and more of young adult experimenting, learning who I was. Real, substantive change only seems to come by force. America was founded by force, slavery ended by force, Hitler was stopped by force. Power only answers to force. I have little hope that marching will change anything-- unless the changes you are looking for is a few extra bucks phased in over several years.... Right now the powerful are boldly snatching even more power. The republican legislators who the marchers are supposedly influencing were completely impotent as Trump bum-rushed their party. They are useless; marching to influence them is a waste of time--unless some serious financial pressure can be brought to bear.

Humm reminds me I didn't get this book yet ;-)

In the case Mel, my comments are based on what I thinking at the moment. This is both; subject to change, based upon additional information; and subject to critique, which I obviously welcome. In the case, I was thinking about the impact marching as on individuals who support Trump and Trump himself. There is nothing I've seen that is capable of swaying Donald Trump's mind other than money and power, none of which the protestors are offering. Indeed Trump and his people are not above making shit up out of thin air and calling them "alternate facts" that Cynique points out. The idea that the media even entertains these lies is sickening. Does anyone think anything that the marcher will effect Trump in a positive way? I don't and that is my point. Since the Trump supporters can easily tune out the marchers are consume media that completely denounces them as out of touch limousine liberals I don;t see these marches affecting them either. Now @Mel Hopkins I had not considered the impact on legislators. I don't have much hope on this front either. The Occupy Movement did a boat load of protesting and Wall Street is more dominant than ever. I'll look at the research nonetheless. With the benefit of hindsight can anyone point to a single piece of legislation that was impacted Occupy's protracted protesting? Surely we can all describe Wall Street increased influence over government, capped by the election of Trump.

OK maybe you two are right... I've modified my position on this issue.

MLK and the people around him would have been on Twitter trying to figure out how to reach an audience. They would have been rendered mute in today's world; where popularity is determined by corporate entities revenue rather than what nurtures their auduence. Right now the flavor of the day is Black Lives Matters, corporate media can't wrap their stubby little fingers around the concept of more than one activist organization at a time.

In places like NYC and DC, this marching is "a thing" as they say. In places like Tampa, which is part of Hillsborough County (who voted for Hillary), and not exactly the sticks; you don't hear any talk about marching. This is more big city folks from the coasts talking to each other. Maybe holding some demonstrations in the rust belt and other places where Trump had the most influence might be more impactful. It is the same reason the press completely missed Trump's reach, they interact and reported in the very same bubble the marchers are in. The really very crazy thing is that I don't think writing to politicians will have an impact either. They are part the problem. In fact, Trump who ridiculed Hillary as being owned by Goldman has now made these very some people part of his cabinet. I don't hear any Trump supporters complaining about this. I'm not convinced they even understand what this means... You can't complain about the rich when the government is a plutocracy. All you can really do is, do the best you can. You could also fight for radical change, but not enough people have the stomach for it. Youngsters who normally drive this sort of radical change are too distracted by social media; as if griping about Trump's tweets will make a difference. Kinda make what the Panthers, SNCC, SCLC and other organizations did so much more impressive. These organization despite the charismatic Brothers we hear most about, were really were run by women.

The Tampa Bay Black Heritage Festival is an annual, cultural arts & music festival that takes place over the course of 10 days in Tampa Bay, Florida. They host an Author Village which I checked out on Saturday and met a bunch of authors. I was only armed with an old cell phone, but I managed to shoot a couple of videos and a bunch of photos.

OK let me know where you find the answer.

Two out of three is not bad :-)

Hey Del would you define magic? For example, would waving a wand over someone who died 100 years ago and resurrecting them be considered magic? How about extracting DNA from a dead person and cloning them, would that be considered magic? Something that was considered magic 100 years ago is simply science today. Perhaps the same could be considered for whatever you consider magic today. I'd define magic as an occurrence which can not be explained scientifically. So I believe in magic. What we perceive as magic is often the result of an over active imagination or tricks and quirks in human perception.

Del I meant to write I did "not" run the numbers (I corrected what I originally wrote). Unifying and divisive are antonyms, so it is not clear what you mean using these terms to describe the president.

I don't disagree. That line, "Perhaps the American public is more afraid of sexual advances from Hillary than Trump." was rich LOL. BTW, the number of women was not a sample; it was the entire electorate dude. Honestly, I did not run the numbers. But we do know the majority of white women voted for Trump. If we eliminated all the votes cast by white women, it is possible that difference could have swung the election the other way. It would not take too much heavy lifting to figure that out if that is indeed the case.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle Del, it will have zero impact on Trump. It will, however, help galvanize people in such a way that they thwart anything bad Trump might do and prevent this shit from happening again.

Last night after, writing the post above, I began running a new poll. To ask the question Where did you buy your last book. Of course, the software available to collect this information is far superior to what I used back in 1999. I was able to find and implement a new poll in a matter of minutes. The company I used is called Get Site Control. I never heard of them prior to looking for poll taking tool software. Get Site Control also provide a variety of other widgets for your site or Blog. Creating a feature rich website is much easier than ever before, but we have much less diversity on the web because massive corporate sites dominate. It really is a great loss of creativity, but I digress... Here are the results of the Where did you buy you last book? question thus far: Of course, given Amazon's dominance, I don't expect any relations with this question. The main purpose is to contrast the responses with those given 17 years ago. I also recognize that since this question is posted on this website, that there are inherent biases, so I would not extend these answers to the general population. But given the fact that internet penetration is so much higher today compared to Jan 2000 when the question was first asked. The survey is probably less biased than the one taken 16 years ago. Finally, it will be interesting to see if I get 856 responses and how long it takes.

NY Dems plan on Boycotting Trump's Inauguration. @Delano, you may want to follow this story to understand the thinking about what a boycott can do.