Troy

Well lying politicians are nothing new, we don't have any journalists you will or able to keep them in check. They are too busy worrying about ratings, or traffic to care about providing a desperately need public service.

Cynique was that said in your Nancy Reagan, "Just say no" voice? You, and for the most part I, grew up at a time when people cooked at home. We NEVER ate out. After I got into college my family started to go out to restaurants, but this was typically for special occasions. Today many people in places like NYC never cook and eat dinner out every night. Overindulging in processed foods just did not happen. An overweight kid in my day was unusual, not the norm. A child with adult onset diabetes are unheard of. Today it is much harder to avoid these foods. I know you'be heard of food desserts, but actually exist. Even if fresh produce is available, it costs too damn much, and will not satiate you as easily has some good 'ole American fast food. Marketers target kids and get them hooked at an early age--using the same tactics cigarette company's use. At the end of the day, I agree with you Cynique, but I also know for many people making the right choice is often very hard, if not altogether impossible. Avoiding gluttony sounds simple on paper, but in practice it is completely different story. People don't want to be fat any more than they want to be hooked on drugs. Also the food is manufactured in such a way that you don't have to necessarily be a glutton, the same number of calories compared to unprocessed food will result in additional weight gain--for some more than others. But again Coke is cheaper than water and tastes better. They sell it schools directly to children. You can go to a movie theater or 7-eleven and buy a cup of coke the size of a bucket--with free refills. We are programed to consume, not to be concerned with our health. And a lack of education makes it much easier to become a victim of this corporate programming.

Charter schools are a money grab, at the expense of children, usually the ones with darker complexions. It is beyond pathetic. People with money simply send their kids to private schools.

I dunno Chris they could be sharing it as an April Fools joke. I don't think there have been any comments though. The giveaway should have been this is the first time I posted on Facebook, in a couple of years, where I did not have a link back to a website. I wonder what would happen if people just started sharing false rumors on social media... nevermind that pretty much is what is happening now.

Chris I just visited your site: http://www.cbpublish.com/ is loads very quickly from what my vantage point. But if you really want to get into optimizing your website for speed check out this page. If I were you would would definitely take advantage of compressing your images and caching. You can download plugins to take advantage of both of these.

@Pioneer1, no problem. Please do direct people to this site if they are interested in romance of any other genre I'm sure they will find something that the will like, There are almost 2,200 writers and their books profiles on this website, all manually curated, so there is a lot of quality literature to chose from. Like you I'm not a big fan of romance, but I listen to people who are, and of course Brenda tops the list. Omar too is popular and has been publishing books for over 2 decades.

61st Day of #BlackHistoryMonth: 10 years ago today, April 1, 2006, Bob Johnson, Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan, pool resources to create a fund to provide startup capital to support independent Black owned businesses.

I believe it, but I also believe white folks abuse the system even more. As with anything else Black people are prosecuted more frequently, penalized more harshly, and more weakly represented by attorneys in our criminal justice system. But stealing money that should go to students is wrong no matter what the so called race of perpetrator is. It is unfortunate, though that Black folks suffer more as victims and victimizers. It is all connected

LOL! @Pioneer1, if you started off with "God Told me..." I'm leaving the room. It would be sufficient to say "I believe...." that would be more accurate. Often people try to bolster an argument by relating the mind of God. Misinterpreting the mind of God gets people killed every day. Pioneer, where are all these plums and bananas growing where you can just walk up a pick it off a tree? What world are you envisioning the Garden of Eden? In the real worl, before industrialization and certainly agriculture, the vast majority of our time was spent looking for food. In order to produce those Bananas, you take for granted they have, to be cultivated. To cultivate them in the volume and price that most people will consume them, takes a lot of fossil fuels for framing, transportation, storage, etc, and slave like labor to work the fields. The production of meat is even worse. As far as infant mortality and the related life expectancy. I don't need to argue about that the data is readily available. Your personal experiences while interesting are certainly not extendable to entire populations. Also, I'm not aware of any documented evidence of anyone living to be 150 years old. I'm certain you can not produce any, so that is not worth arguing about either. @Cynique, modern processed food is developed to appeal to us. Seriously, there are scientists working in laboratories, every day, trying to concoct something that will taste so good that it will hook us. Of course nowadays there is a bit more pressure to produce something that will not also kill us--but not nearly enough if you ask me. The food tastes good, it is artificially cheap (though still remarkably profitable), readily available, so we over consume. Of course we get all the associated weight related diseases as a result. I can go into mcdonalds today buy two hamburgers, and a large Coke for $3.00. That is far cheaper that it would cost me to go to the supermarket buy the ingredients and prepare that meal myself. Plus I'd save a lot of time. If you are under educated, overweight, poor, and over 50 you are almost certainly diabetic. But no one cares cause treating diabetes is profitable and Black people get it disproportionately--though we are no more susceptible than anyone else. But the real kicker is that as we get fatter and fatter, rather the dealing with the problem in our food supply celebrate our new found obesity. Thick is the new fat. Skinny girls are evil.

Get rid of the language. There is no such thing as "white" people. The definition is subjective and not based upon science. At least one culture allowed one to buy whiteness. In the U.S. Italians, Jews and Irish people did not start out as white, but now they would be considered white by some but not all. The Supreme Court even upheld a decision, that a man with 1 Black great grandparent and 7 white great grandparents was Black and therefore could be legally thrown out the white section of a train. I agree with Pioneer on #2 you can't treat people equally, but you should strive to be fair. Indeed that, by itself would go a long way to eliminating racism. But people are tribal, so racism is a very hard thing to change. But greed trumps tribalism and I always said our country's problems have much more to do with greed than racism. Racism is the tool of the greedy. Today we see increasingly white people become the victims of this greed. They are the ones who lost their homes in the mortgage crisis. They are the ones increasingly addicted to heroin and prescription drugs. They are the ones who can't afford pay for school, and will suffer from student debt only to get a degree that will land them on the unemployment line. They are the ones in jeopardy of not collecting a single penny of the social security they are paying into. For Black folks treatment like this is par for the course. ...and people wonder why whites folks are embracing a Donald Trump. It is not really racism, they are reacting to being victims of greed from people of their own race--other white folks. Of course Donald will not help them any more than Obama helped Black folks... Black, white, red, yellow, unless you have some serious paper in this country, the system is rigged against you and you're simply ass out.

Hey Chris post a link to the Blog post about press this. Can you don't have to live with the length I provided. You can customize the length of the widget. The code I posted has the site set at 1500 pixels, but the code I actually pasted in the sample above is using 400. You can set that number to suit you site. Just change the height parameter, to something that works for your page. height:1500px The width is set at 100%, that way it will use the available space will work nicely on mobile optimized websites (viewable at a narrow width).

The site could be loading slowly because of the plugins you are running did you install one, or a few, recently? You could also be jammed up by too many requests (process trying to hack your site), check your server logs for unusual activity.

THIS CODE IS NO LONGER SUPPORTED Here is all the code you need. This code will also work if your website used secure communication “https://.” <iframe src="https://aalbc.com/events/list-widget.php" style="border:none;width:100%; height:1500px"></iframe> Paste the single line of HTML code above on your website and you will be able to show, an automatically updated, events calendar on your website. The font size and color will follow that of your website's style. The height parameter may be modified, to suit your website as well. 2017 events will added shortly. Events that have occurred will roll off this display after the last day of the event, automatically. The video below shows you how easy it is to add the our events to your website or blog Or course if I'm missing an important event or festival. Please let me know (post the information below). My goal is to ultimately include English language events from around the world. Right now all of the events are in the United States and Caribbean. Enjoy! Oh creating this widget was @Mel Hopkins's idea If you run into any problems using this widget let me know. The events calendar widget code is used directly below. I changed the height parameter from 1500px to 400px so that less vertical space is used. I have added it to my Edit 1 (manuscript editing service) website too.

I visited Fisk the first time I went to Nashville. The legacy was impressive, the current state not so much. I can only image what that community must have been like during better times. You lived it Cynique :-) I got the same feeling when I read the Delany Sisters book Having Our Say. I have family that lived directly across the street from the school where the Delany Sister's father taught, Shaw University. My earliest memories were in that community. However I would be much older before I realized what Shaw was or how close it was to where I visited so many times as a kid. By the time I was of college age I would have zero interest in going to a Shaw or a Fisk. But is an indication of a much bigger problem, and perhaps helps explains why Fisk, Shaw and HBCU's in general are struggling to survive...

@Pioneer1, coincidentally I just posted, just this morning a link to Brenda Jackson page. She has written 100+ romance novels and I have more than have of them on the site: http://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Brenda+Jackson I see I have to really do a better job of helping people understand the scope of the content this site contains. There is tons of content about romance books, I stopped creating "sections" on this site, because "sections" are a physical construct that that would be very limiting when applied to a website. If you are interested in the Romance, just do a search on "Romance" that will keep you busy for a while

Pioneer you know all the examples and symptoms you described, eyeglasses, clothing, and cars, none of those thing cause and are diseases. I seriously doubt anyone who needs eye-glasses would agree with or care about your assertion that they cause weakness , not would any one who needs clothing to protect them from the weather or a car to transport them. Man lets keep thing in perspective. So called western civilization despite all of its ills has improved the quality of life, certainly if you measure it by life expectancy and infant mortality in particular. There are scientists you argue that modem man evolved because we cook food, not the other way around. Cooking food actually reduces greatly the amount of energy we need to exert in order to consume it. Man can consume meat just fine, we are adapted to do it. The whole notion that homo spaiens evolved to eat only vegetables flies in the face off all the available science, despite what some vegetarians might have you believe. Those vegans have the luxury of being vegetarians because they can go down to the Whole Foods and buy this stuff with relatively little effort. If these "nuts" were in the wild they would die from starvation or malnutrition come the first winter. Whenever someone starts a sentence with, "I believe God...." I stop listening, because what man know the mind of God? Who would presume to know what God knows. That is like an amoeba presuming to know what Einstein knows. Of course man was meant to eat meat. We are omnivorous.

Brenda Jackson bestselling author of more than 100 novels (yes 100!): we have 53 of 'em!

59th Day of ‪#‎BlackHistoryMonth‬: Nella Larsen was the first AA woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing Died March 30, 1964

Classic Cynique. Sure bring your kid to work once or twice but everyday is too much. Some people are just inconsiderate. I hope the baseballer had good luck finding a team to indulge him.

Human trash makes for great ratings. But I would not call anyone "human trash." Mark is the natural outcome of being raised in America.

Yes both deals are still available @Dr T Looking forward to having your work on the website.

Sara I do recall reading something you wrote indicating that you were a NY Times Bestselling author. Things like that tend to catch my attention. But I can't find a record of the statement. Indeed I can't even find a a post that I could have misinterpreted. There are few possibilities including I was completely mistaken, the post I read was altered or removed, or I simply can't find it. But whatever the case, I'll take you at you word, that you are not a NY Times Bestselling author, and that you never wrote that you were. But again, it would be interesting to learn who you are. Sara is your name on this list: http://aalbc.com/authors/authors.php

Guest that is a very reasonable reaction, assuming everything you wrote is true. We know that Bill beat Denise, but we don't know which other women he beat. Just because we have not heard about him beating his second wife, does not mean he never laid a hand on her. She just may have simply chosen not to make that information public. In general, if a man that hits a woman, in the face, hard enough to blacken her eyes, he has probably hit other women. The vast majority of men simply don't beat don't beat anyone, let alone a weaker woman. But Bill came from the tail end of a time when wives where more like property or children, and it was acceptable to kick their butts when the needed it. Of course that behavior is frowned upon today, even when the wife ticks you off Bill will always be loved and admired for the music he made. Denise was written our of his biography, I doubt anyone under 40 knows who she is today.

....so it looks like neither Cynique or Sara will allow the other to have the last word. As long as either was dissed, made fun of or in any way slighted. Neither are willing to simply let it go. I do have to admit I would love to know who Sara is in real life. First, I would make sure all of her books are on my website--that is a courtesy I give to any active participant on these forums. But I'm also curious because a Black NY Times bestseller, I would have to know her, or at least have met her. But I understand if she wants to maintain her anonymity I understand.

Ian Randle Publishers, one of Jamaica's great publishing houses bringing great book from the Caribbean to the world! I was invited to attend the Kingston Book Festival and had the pleasure of meeting a wide variety of accomplished publishing professionals and talented writers. After doing events like this it becomes even clearer to me that there should be no barriers. We have opportunities globally. Availing ourselves of these opportunities will be crucial to our survival. I spoke with Ian for a bit. He is a really cool dude, very laid back, unpretentious (like everyone else), and has hundreds of books in print.