Category Archives: Uncategorized

The power of the one. That’s what Bootsie Collins was talking about in a recent interview on WNYC. He was speaking of his latest album of the same name. Bootsie’s 69. I felt he’d been around so long he had to be older – or even dead. But he is exceptionally alive, and generous andContinue reading ““The True Essence of the Funk is the Power of the One””

Well a whole bunch of us just felt like Whitney Houston in Waiting to Exhale. I mean just because we exhaled, not because we sing like her, or that her character in the movie is all that applicable. Because her man never left his marriage for her, but we just somehow got out of oneContinue reading ““Joy and Pain Are Like Sunshine and Rain”*”

Let’s agree to disagree. Some of the most annoying words you will hear these days, am I right? Or is it just me? I mean we can agree to disagree on which Housewives show is the best (and by best I mean worst) or whether dark chocolate tastes better than milk chocolate (it does). ButContinue reading “What Does Agreement Smell Like?”

Politics is not a bad word in and of itself. It started out meaning “affairs of the cities” when Aristotle first introduced the term, politiká. But we all know how powerful connotations are, and the word has become burdened with an identity of contention, greed, and backroom dealing. When we don’t get a promotion weContinue reading “Whose City Is It?”

There is so much on my mind right now that I can’t seem to zero in on a particular subject. And I just did yoga, which is supposed to center me. Which it did, while I was staring up into the waving branches of a Southern California black walnut tree. I was meditating on sacrificing,Continue reading “A Forest of Thoughts”

My Sunday blog is happening on Monday because I spent most of the day Sunday unpacking bags, boxes, and other receptacles full of things I didn’t think I owned. Because I thought I was a minimalist. Well, after this move, it is clear that that was a false identity I was clinging to. So, forgiveContinue reading “Unpacking the New”

I was watching the documentary, Toni Morrison: the Pieces I Am last night and was feeling incredibly inadequate. Now of course as a writer I would feel that way. I mean she’s Toni Morrison. And the way she writes, the way she approaches the same words we all have access to and then sets themContinue reading “What’s *Your* Call?”

Patrice Khan-Cullors said yesterday that being an African American in the U.S. right now is to be “hunted.” She was speaking on her new book collaboration with asha bandele, When They Call You a Terrorist (Young Adult Edition): A Story of Black Lives Matter and the Power to Change the World. This was part ofContinue reading “No Hunting”

“I’m in a new place.” We say that a lot, right? Like when we are trying to shift our mindset, move past something difficult perhaps. Once accomplished, we truly have traveled to that new place — or space as academics might say. Because academics like to appropriate simple words to substitute for other simple wordsContinue reading “Moving Out”

I’m in a Best Western Hotel in Sterling, Colorado right now. I wasn’t planning on writing this week, but I also didn’t want to let my fans down. Fan. Well, really, I just felt like writing about some things I’ve been thinking on the road, having driven my car for approximately 24 hours these lastContinue reading “Thoughts from Route 80”