I'm going through another period of being very tired. Maybe I do more than I think I do, because I end up really exhausted sometimes when it seems like I haven't done much. I guess if I sit and take an inventory of my doings over the last three months, I'll find that there has been a great deal of movement. It seems strange, but the thing that is really getting to me is that I cannot seem to stop reading. I have about twenty (maybe more) magazines and another twenty articles that I'm saving right now, because I'm reading other things. I have also contacted a couple of publications about being a contributing writer for their publications. I have articles and essays that I can easily adapt.
Continue reading "INTJ" »
That was the line when I was a kid in the 1960s, and I bought it hook, line and sinker. See, in the 1960s, the saying was: We had a few making it hard on all of us. We knew, and were told, that we had to be smarter, jump higher, run faster, because the odds were against us. Over the years, the message that we have to be better than has been lost. Now, we seem to think that everyone has the time to get to know us and judge us as individuals. Think about that. Because that makes no sense. It will never happen. That's Lalaland thinking. And just as others are often guilty of viewing us as one cohesive group, we do the same: It is also all of them.
Continue reading "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" »
Look, when the OJ Simpson case happened, I believed he was guilty (I lived in California at the time and it did not start off as a front page story), and I still believe he is guilty. I believe Casey Anthony was guilty, too, but also, just like in the OJ case, I don't believe the the prosecution proved its case. (When you cannot determine what to convict someone of, then there is a reasonable doubt?) Now, in this case what convinces me is this: Zimmerman was told not to follow Martin. He was given a direct order. He continued to. That was a civil rights violation right there; we have the right to walk freely, non-impeded. Martin was walking down the street with his bag of Skittles. Further, I believe that 99% of men would have confronted Zimmerman. (Martin was still technically a boy.) A woman would have been too afraid to; she probably would have screamed and ran. And I don't believe that the right to bear arms is the same as the right to shoot.
Continue reading "Look! Okay" »
When I did, the magic was there. I knew I had arrived as a writer and had found my voice. I had tried to write when I was younger, but I always struggled with putting enough of myself, my experiences, into my writing. So I thought I needed a PhD to write nonfiction. What I really needed is for creative nonfiction to come into its own.
