fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
The teenage girl body slammed by former Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields at Spring Valley High School in Richland County, South Carolina recently lost her mother and is in foster care. In other words, she’s already in one institutional system and now, thanks to her trumped up, over-the-top arrest, she’s in another. Her foster mother has said…
I walked into the SF Jazz Center to see the Wayne Shorter Quartet whistling “Tom Thumb” from Mr. Shorter’s 1967 release Schizophrenia. I mean, why not whistle “Tom Thumb”? However, I held no expectation that the Quartet would play this venerable classic or any other venerable classic from Maestro Shorter’s long and distinguished career. They…
40 years ago I embarked on my shortwave radio adventure and flew headlong into the world of geekdom. Because my radio was built in 1937, I needed to perform periodic maintenance on it, checking vacuum tubes, capacitors, and the like. I had my father’s superior knowledge of electronics to fall back on for assistance. He…
The Kim Davis fiasco continues the pattern of religious conservatives relying on more extreme and desperate measures to retain their image of how the world should work. Ms. Davis would have something of a leg to stand on if she personally refused to serve same-sex couples seeking marriage, but allow others in her office to…
Senator Bernie Sanders opened his speech in LA on August 10 with Black Lives Matter and civil rights issues. He let his new national spokeswoman, Symone Sanders (no relation), begin the program. She is a black criminal justice advocate and a supporter of Black Lives Matter. Also, on his campaign page, Senator Sanders has put up…
Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders, candidate for the US presidency, spoke at the annual Netroots Nation convention in Phoenix, Arizona. By all accounts, it did not go well for him. An organized group of Black Lives Matter protesters called on Senator Sanders to speak to the issue of black women and men being summarily executed…
Lots of manuscript writing has meant that I don’t have as much time for blogging, alas. (I hit 50 — can’t I retire yet?????) But new stuff will come in the fullness of time. Watch this space.
c. 1998 Honey, let’s go to City Hall? Why? So we can register as Domestic Partners with the City of Oakland. Oh! What a lovely idea! c. 2000 I just got laid off. Oh no! Well, my employer grants domestic partnership benefits. If we become state registered domestic partners, we can sign you up for…
In light of the horrible events in Charleston, South Carolina, I was going to shelve this post, which I started writing a couple of days before the shooting. The whole Rachel Dolezal drama seemed particularly trivial by comparison. But actually, it’s not. It speaks to the ways we discuss race, discuss our troubled national history…
The horrific shooting that took place at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina cannot be allowed to exist in isolation. It happened in of one of the oldest black churches in the country, the site of past racial violence. No doubt the killer, Dylann Storm Roof, knew this. The Daily Beast quickly put together a…
