fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
25 years ago, either this week or next, I wrote a letter to my family entitled “What James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, and Gregory A. Russell Have In Common.” Sadly I don’t think I have a copy of it anymore, though I don’t think the essay itself was as good as the title I gave it….
I have a jingle going through my head that may or may not be from an old Boy Scouts ad. It went something like, “Join the Boy Scouts of America Today, and together we can form a better USA!” A manly male chorus sang it a cappella, with an echo, giving it an almost hymn-like…
We are all friends here. Or should be; for the laughter of Mordor will be our only reward, if we quarrel. -Gandalf, from “The Two Towers” by JRR Tolkien Chortles undoubtedly rose high in Fairfax, Virginia, along with slapping hands and champaign glasses, after a Republican-led filibuster blocked the much negotiated gun reform bill from…
A pressure cooker loaded with nails and ball bearings. That’s what the FBI now says constituted one of the two bombs that went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. A pressure cooker. Seems sadly appropriate. Our world today is jam packed with imaginary demons and boogeymen. All of them can be described…
My first encounter with Roger Ebert, as with many outside of Chicago, came from his TV programs with the late Gene Siskel. To be sure, none of us really went to the movies that much. But we loved watching the two of them go at it, so their program became a TV watching ritual in…
