Sorry To Keep You Waiting. I Hope You Are Still Here.

Twelve years ago, I introduced this blog early in January with the idea in mind that I could write about race relations so my students wouldn't keep me standing in the parking lot at the university until midnight. I didn't realize at the time that I would shortly be moving from a major city in Florida to a small rural town in Louisiana. I took my photo off the blog and the "Eracism" bumper sticker off my car because I thought they were going to take me out in the woods in Louisiana and nail me to a tree. As it turned out, they didn't. In fact, I found a real niche for myself where I still reside and do my work and socially reproduce myself and even find time to write when I get the chance.

This year, my work involved (besides my full-time job teaching sociology to several hundred students per semester in five classes) organizing and presiding over a conference for 300 sociologists from fifteen countries who met in Havana, Cuba, to talk about the present situation and what -- if anything -- could be done about it. Needless to say, it was an exhilarating experience and I came away with an international reputation for giving a Presidential Address in the Casa del ALBA that took the varnish off the woodwork.

There were other (less pleasant) highlights in my life this year, some of which I outlined in my last post in July. And since that time, besides the conference -- a very demanding undertaking -- I had the flu (not a minor thing at my age) and my mother died. But I also hung out with some brilliant young Black scholars at a conference in Montreal.

And I helped to raise some noise at a Millions for Prisoners March across from the White House, bonding in the process with some other revolutionaries I now anticipate working with in the future.

So despite the funk I've been in this year thanks to the current state of affairs in this country, I am moving toward 2018 with a sense of resolve and focus and a renewed commitment to making the world a better place for all of us. Upward and onward. We can do this, people.