If you're not sure which finger and which motion to give someone, check out the Field Guide to the North American Bird.

My man, Mike, did the illustrations. He also laced me and my wife with some artwork.

Yes, Paul Krugman is at it again. I look forward to his columns.

Check this one out:
Noonday in the Shade

June 22, 2004
By PAUL KRUGMAN

John Ashcroft seems to be neglecting real terrorist threats
to the public because of his ideological biases.

Full Article

I heard about this story a while back, perhaps on AlterNet.

(Reminds me of my friend, Timothea, who predicted the DC snipers were probably driving around in a Cadillac while everyone was on alert for a "white box truck".)

If we continue to think extremist Islamist elements are the problem, we will never solve the problem of extremist elements.

Some days you have to pull out the Jungle Brothers and just deal with the fact you're old, and reminisce about "the good ol' days" of rap.

Nostalgia tends to romanticize, but I know you can make the argument that rap's commercialization was already in full effect by the time the JB's dropped Done by the Forces of Nature. I'll grant you that.

Just don't ask me to stop smiling when I hear "Doin Our Own Thang".

Because that was 1989... "a number/ another summer (git down!)/ sound of a funky drummer/ music hittin ya hard/ cuz i know ya got soul! (brothers and sisters)/" and at age 16, I was diggin' the Native Tongues.

Now, in my old age (31), I've moved from Chuck D on wax to Chuck D on Air America Radio.

"Say word. Word, I'm sayin" (dialogue from Prince Paul's "A Prince Among Thieves").

Ted Rall's got some cool comics. But what I'm talkin' about today is his op-ed on Ronald Reagan.

"reagan haiku"
sometimes collective
memory lies, erasing
what really happened

I remember my mom working in a battered women's shelter through the reagan years, wondering whether federal funding would be renewed. I remember first seeing homeless people, first hearing of AIDS, never hearing government could be part of the solution. I remember documentaries about the Berkeley free speech movement, accounts of Reagan's naming of names during the McCarthy era. I remember that Reagan negotiated to keep Americans as hostages until he was inaugurated. I remember Central America's death squads, and Negroponte's wink-nod alliance with killers. I remember air traffic controllers/working people getting shafted. I remember a lot more than "the Gipper" or the "Great Communicator". I remember nuclear attack drills in elementary school.

As an adult, I've learned a lot more about his administration than I care to believe America let happen-- but history doesn't lie. The man won two terms. I believe that says more (terrible things) about the American voting public than about Reagan's supposed greatness. Guess we get the rulers we deserve (Jefferson?).

Kai's link seems too good to pass up without passing it on...

You also need to get up on Wild Style and Scratch.

I watched "Scratch" on the train from DC to NYC, on my way to my friend's wedding. The X-ecutioners, Scratch Picklz and all the originators put the art form in perspective for those who don't know, and accentuate it for those who do.

Head noddin' acceptable...

I'm on a listserv for The League of Independent Voters.

Are you?

I have a copy of How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office.

Do you?

Whatever your choice in November '04-- VOTE!

Paul Krugman in the NY Times (which didn't deliver my damn Sunday paper yesterday!).

Yeah, it's agitprop. So what?

Check out the trailer for Fahrenheit 9/11. Some shit's about to jump off when the film opens, June 25th! Can't wait till next year's Oscar speech.

Remember what Moore said last year? Get ready for more Moore.

(I wish I'd saved the link to an article where Moore said he made this film because he didn't want to leave it up to the Democrats to fuck it up and lose the election. If it weren't after 1am, and I was a teenager, I'd search for it. But for now, I have to say, "Goodnight, Dick".)

mo' betta...

for Pearlie and Johnny Will Jones, Sr.

we listened to cicadas sing that afternoon, sitting on the porch
looking across the road named after Grandpa toward Cousin Huey’s
fields. as the darkening sky thundered, rain and wind cooler than
inside ceiling fans chased humidity off to the swamps, past the
clearing and log camp, around by the Flying Eagle

where you two sold 'shine and fish sandwiches. hard to believe you
ever set foot in a jook joint, but Uncle Charles and Uncle Leroy drove
me and Huey and Spanky past the spot last time we had a reunion.
Up the road, near Bogalusa, we all stood by the tree Grandpa hit
when the Klan ambushed him. Fools thought they could kill a deputized
veteran moonshining farmer easy as that? Imagine if Grandpa had two legs.

almost a century since you married, decades since you passed we Joneses
have become Grahams and Saintens and more, left and returned, fought in
wars, buried our young and old. We no longer work the land, citified and
spread in every direction; but we still depend on those roads to bring us home, on the rain and wind to stave off heat, on those trees to sing with cicadas
on afternoons like the ones we shared before you went home to God

I don't know where exactly I'm going with this. Any comments? Click the "send props or gripes" link above. Thanks.

for Pearlie Jones

you were here the last time. sitting on the porch, looking
across the road named after grandpa to cousin huey's fields
and the darkening sky. we listened to the

afternoon ricochet between earth and heaven. cicadas
thundered and the rains came cooler than inside
ceiling fans caked with dust.

testimonial

my man knew Un-American
oxymorons better than
they knew themselves

and did not edit
his words in margins
of errant ideology

I have a cynical streak mitigated by a sense of humor, as exemplified in this poem by Roque Dalton:

OAS

The President of my country
is called for the moment Colonel Fidel Sanchez Hernandez
But General Somoza, President of Nicaragua,
also is President of my country.
And President Stroessner, President of Paraguay,
is also a little the President of my country, though less
than the President of Honduras, namely
General Lopez Arellano, and more than the President of Haiti,
Monsieur Duvalier.
And the President of the United States is more President of my country
than the President of my country,
that one who, as I said, is for the moment
called Colonel Fidel Sanchez Hernandez.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes with fire, not ink or binary code. I've enjoyed/winced at his stuff for years. So it comes as no surprise that Bill Cosby gets lit up in the Village Voice after waxing ridiculous about "the lower economic people" last week at a gala event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

(On background: earlier Coates articles)

Here's a nice little story about a movie I won't see for a while (no cable, friends): Something the Lord Made. It's about the first successful open heart surgery, performed by a white surgeon and a black lab technician.

Or, was it Dr. Daniel Hale Willliams who performed the first successful open heart surgery? That's what I always heard, about once a year, usually during Black History Month.

(NOTE: This post was inspired by NPR)

nudistry

clad in shadows
stitched with fear,

i hear you
coax me to the light.

threadbare, i
give my cloke

to you, with
love, nakedly

(see Matthew 5:39-40)

There's this big ol' San Diego Experience Map that I brainstormed last year. It includes about a eighty bulleted items in four categories: family, family friends, friends, and memories.

The idea is to write a poem or sketch an idea for each bulleted item. Here's an extended sketch of Mr. Sweet. I'm still undecided whether I'll go with liking or not liking him in the poem. As of this writing, I'm trying to have it both ways.

The Ice Cream Man Cometh
Mr. Sweet lied to us
(used an alias)
gave us candy
our parents said not to eat
rotted out our teeth and made
us go to the dentist
left sticky fingers, wrappers
and stained shirts in his wake

but I still felt sorry for Mr. Sweet
when Papa Joe rolled into the
neighborhood with big fresh hot
glazed chocolate filled donuts

Mr. Sweet was no gentleman, lying as he did to children through an alias of confection. Against our parents’ orders, he contrived to shove candy down our throats, rot our teeth, ruin our appetite for dinner, and to make us spend what little allowance we got on his grab bags, sour balls, and pixie sticks. Mr. Sweet was a menace.

I didn’t feel sorry for Mr. Sweet when Papa Joe rolled into the neighborhood with fresh, glazed donuts and enough candy to make Willy Wonka blanch. We all rushed across the street from Mr. Sweet’s jalopy to crown our new king. A twinge of guilt I failed to stop made me turn and look, let me see Mr. Sweet crying. But I didn’t go back, and now Mr. Sweet is dead.

I’m sorry I ditched you, Mr. Sweet, so I could stand at Papa Joe’s window and smell the fresh donuts that were only really fresh for the first few stops in the neighborhood. And his grab bags cost more for less; I never got army men with a parachutes or whistle-pops, just a lot of pixie sticks and rock hard gum. He didn't remember our names, or make us laugh like you did. I don't need to know your real name to know how nice you were to me, to all of us, before that charlatan lured us away.

"clinical poetry"

inertia exhausting as
depression, dizzying as fear.

i pass out and come to
without blinking, dust off

and start again, running
through dense fog

that seems stronger
than any sun i ever knew.

A work in progress...
“untitled”

we have all run away:
from the law in St. Louis to a new name
in the Louisiana bayou;
from the farm to metropoles and military tours
in every war of the 20th Century.

we have all run away:
great-grandpa’s steed; grandpa’s bootleg-mobile;
grandmas from their fathers’ homes,
but never from their children, who could not bear to stay;
shotgun houses turned to kindling

when they ran away:
tired of always running; generations running on empty,
in place, in circles, out of breath;
almost run-down. always running into walls they could feel,
but not touch.

I was sent this link as part of one of those emails you receive at work, that has nothing to do with work, that actually leads to a deviation from work. You know the type.

If you are at work reading this, click on and take a break... 3rd Grade Test.


I haven't gone back and edited the Feb. 17th poem yet. I look at it now and see how sad and resigned I was at the time I wrote it. What I'm searching for, through that poem, is the hope that underlies the momentary loss of hope. It's there, and I'll find it. And I'll write it, too.

Peace.

State of the District 2004 (draft)
for Jahkema Princess Hansen (14) and James Richardson (17)

there's nothing new about this story
nothing new about parents rushing to a
DC public school where one student has been shot,

another killed. we know that beefs lead
to tragedies, that the coldly inspired
find ways around security checkpoints.

sadly enough, the shock seems familiar
as again, the victims' essential goodness
and potential could not shield them

from the bullets, or stop the blood, or
prevent the screaming friends' trauma, or
help us hope this won't happen again

especially when the next day cops stop a fourteen
year old child driving a car who carries a handgun
and a mac-11 with a full clip tucked in his sweatshirt

while the mayor, school board president, council
members and school officials sit in Ballou's gym
fielding questions from residents whose grief-stricken

pleas embody the real State of the District