Beauty and the Beat

After seeing this on Facebook and watching it twice, I showed it to Boxer, who said, "Show it again" and then, "You gotta post this on your blog."

Okay. Here it is.

White Girl sings, "There's must be more than this to a hood rat's life!"

Is there? What do you say?

Have You Heard About The Slaughter?

What if the U.S. military shot to death and disappeared the bodies of more than one thousand Black soldiers at an Army camp in southwest Mississippi in the middle of World World II? I know, I know. But what if it really happened? Would you want to know about it? Would you just shrug and say "let sleeping dogs lie," "don't stir up stuff you can't do anything about," "that was then and this is now"? Or would you hover around the fire to hear the tale told?

I'll be listening to Blog Talk Radio on Sunday, July 1st, at 8:00 p.m. (CST) to hear Antoinette Harrell and her guest, author Carroll Case, talk about The Slaughter ~ An American Atrocity. What about you?

Born to Fight

 The daily demand of In-Your-Face Women is continuing to kick my ass. I'm not complaining, you understand. At least, not most of the time. I'll be half way through the project tomorrow and so far, it's a success. It's now read in nearly one hundred countries (though Why Am I Not Surprised? is read in nearly two hundred, to give you a sense of perspective). And the campus radio station wants to submit recorded segments from IYF Women to the Public Radio Exchange (which will take it global in a whole 'nother medium). Satisfying, indeed.

Nevertheless, if In-Your-Face Women is my mistress, Why Am I Not Surprised? is -- still -- my wife. And for the time being, I will go forward as things are, hoping my "wife" doesn't pack up her shit and drop my cell phone in the garbage disposal on her way out the door.

By way of apology, I'm posting Tracy Chapman this morning, singing in South Africa in 1990, and I'm dedicating it to Albert Woodfox, who I just visited last weekend in prison up in BumFreak, Louisiana. We talked about boxing, our respective relationships, and the campaign to free him and Herman Wallace after forty years in solitary confinement. And we argued about gender relations in the abstract. The usual.

But as I watched this video today, I thought of him, languishing away in a tiny cell year after year. Born to fight. And I hope he knows how many fight beside him.