Your Blues is Like Mine

I have been collaborating with a Macedonian hiphop Dj and producer named Goce (pronounced GO SEE AH). He began to talk about why hip hop was resonant with him and Macedonian people. He sees hip hop as a dissident art, as he came into consciousness of it in 1989 when socially conscious groups like...

The Global Reach of Blackness

Today I presented about Fannie Lou Hamer. This is a presentation I’ve done many times now, but because of the audience it was quite different. Because the audience was European and specifically people from the Balkan Peninsula, I stopped much more frequently to explain terms. I spent time on “sha...

“Friend is Worth More than a Dollar”

Today I rose super thankful for not having to sleep in the airport, and then slog through an eight hour flight, a two hour flight, and then a two and half hour drive . . . unwashed.   My grandmother used to say, “A friend is worth more than a dollar.”  Her reasoning being, if […]...

The Number One Reason the Orlando Shooter was not a “Deranged Loner, and Why We’re More Like Him Than Not

        Almost as soon as the Orlando shooter was identified, he began to be described as a “loner.” This description is often used to describe the personality of mass shooters. If we look back at the headlines surrounding many of the men who perpetrate mass shootings, the descriptor, “lone...

A Special FATHER’S DAY episode of the FEMININE PRONOUN Series (#19)

This is a “very special episode” of the FEMININE PRONOUN Series. Father’s Day is coming up and I am the daughter of a Poet. Eugene B. Redmond is a foundational Black Arts Movement poet, professor emeritus, cultural griot, and author of Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro American Poetry. I may be bia...