Be my guest!

  
                    If you were to be a guest writer on my blog for a day,  what would  your entry (or entries) be about?

Another Flash Back Friday-Ralph Tresvant

Friday Flashback

song in my head

something for the eyes



Yaya Da Costa



Listening to...

A message for my friends

about love-  

"You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect- you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break- her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there. "
                                                --Bob Marley

Today I forgave someone, not for them but for me, so that I could move on.

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“If you’re going to play the game properly you’d better know every rule.”

                      --Barbara Jordan

sometimes

 I Wish...

• I learned French, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese and Chinese when I was younger
• I could leave the backstabbers completely to God
• Some rich person would come along to pay all my bills out of the goodness of their heart
• Marvin Gaye was still alive
• There was a cure for all diseases
• I was at least 6 feet tall
• New York State's adoption records laws weren't sealed.
• Morning wouldn't come so quickly
• J Dilla was still alive
• Prince would produce music as great as those of the 1999 and Purple Rain  era
• Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne and those of that ilk would fade into oblivion.
• Oprah would discover me
• People could show up on time
• Sarah Palin would, as Barbara Bush said, stay in Alaska
• Valentine's Day was further away
• Everyone had food, shelter and clothing
• People weren't so selfish
• Love would hurry the hell up
• I could read minds
• Black producers would come along and produce black dramas that are Oscar-worthy
• I was 10 years younger
• I knew the truth a long time ago
• Omnitrace  would call me with answers to all my questions instead of avoiding me since I paid them in full

Be proud, my race, in mind and soul;

Thy name is writ on Glory's scroll
In characters of fire.
High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky
Thy banner's blazoned folds now fly,
And truth shall lift them higher.
                             --- Part of a  Paul Laurence Dunbar poem, Ode to Ethiopia,  that  was used as a prologue to the fourth movement of William Grant Still's Symphony No.1 "Afro-American."

listening to...

These songs took me back to Washington Dc, when I lived there 10 yrs ago...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

in 1980
Black Entertainment Television {BET} - first black owned company to be listed on the NYSE, begins broadcasting from Washington, DC

Here are a couple clips from The Boondocks, with Aaron Magruder's hilarious, critical, satirical portrayal (with huge bits of the truth) of the network --

Lord, can i have this mercy

Lead me in the right direction,

Lord-

via each prepositional phrase

I’m being proactive-

In

out 

under 

over

about

around

by

through.

through You,

Lord

through you.

Please?

Lord?
I've been good.

may I have this mercy?

                 --alexgeorge

                                                  There are some things one should never forget.
                                                     A betrayal is one of them.

                                                                                Alexgeorge

What a great start to the week !

The new mission- bring the Lombardi Trophy home

The Green Bay Packers, battered early in the season but confident and peaking late, are on their way back to the Super Bowl and feeling like the best team in the NFL.

Friday Flash back - The Temptations, Rick James & A Taste Of Honey

Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

                                           -- 1 John 3:18

Grandpa's Letter

One day, a young man was cleaning out his late grandfather's belongings when he came across a bright red envelope. Written on the front were the words, "To my grandson." Recognizing his grandfather's handwriting, the boy opened the envelope. A letter inside read:

Dear Ronny,

Years ago you came to me for help. You said, "Grandpa, how is it that you've accomplished so much in your life? You're still full of energy, and I'm already tired of struggling. How can I get that same enthusiasm that you've got?"

I didn't know what to say to you then. But knowing my days are numbered, I figure that I owe you an answer. So here is what I believe.

I think a lot of it has to do with how a person looks at things. I call it 'keeping your eyes wide open.'

 First, realize that life is filled with surprises, but many are good ones. If you don't keep watching for them, you'll miss half the excitement. Expect to be thrilled once in a while, and you will be.

When you meet up with challenges, welcome them. They'll leave you wiser, stronger, and more capable than you were the day before. When you make a mistake, be grateful for the things it taught you. Resolve to use that lesson to help you reach your goals.

And always follow the rules. Even the little ones. When you follow the rules, life works. If you think you ever really get by with breaking the rules, you're only fooling yourself.

It's also important to decide exactly what you want. Then keep your mind focused on it, and be prepared to receive it.

But be ready to end up in some new places too. As you grow with the years, you'll be given bigger shoes to fill. So be ready for endings as well as challenging beginnings.

Sometimes we have to be brave enough to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Life isn't just reaching peaks. Part of it is moving from one peak to the next. If you rest too long in between, you might be tempted to quit. Leave the past in the past. Climb the next mountain and enjoy the view.

Dump things that weigh you down emotionally and spiritually. When an old resentment, belief, or attitude becomes heavy, lighten your load. Shed those hurtful attitudes that slow you down and drain your energy.

Remember that your choices will create your successes and your failures. So consider all the pathways ahead, and decide which ones to follow. Then believe in yourself, get up, and get going.

And be sure to take breaks once in a while. They'll give you a renewed commitment to your dreams and a cheerful, healthy perception of the things that matter the most to you.

Most important of all, never give up on yourself. The person that ends up a winner is the one who resolves to win. Give life everything you've got, and life will give its best back to you.

Love always,

Grandpa

by Steve Brunkhorst

I came across this today and loved it and felt I had to share it with you.

Watch for Sonia

 click here

The right hook

Some people play with fire without knowing that the fire is hot.

                                   --George Orwell

(you don’t notice my right hand

but I do.
I can feel it.

you’re too busy trying to stir up shit on a daily basis
on the down-low

to realize

that the palm of my hand is slowly collecting each finger

to form a fist

with your name on it,
on a daily basis.
feeling like a fifty-pound weight.
on a daily basis.

but the fingers on my left hand are peeling back each finger

to shake your hand instead.
on a daily basis. 
you're pretty versatile;
you have  perfected the art of hugging 
while stabbing
but my eyes are open.

&  I’m not about to let everything I worked so hard for go down the drain in seconds,
over you.
and that's all it would take.
seconds-
 5.
that's all.
it's not even a challenge.


so every morning, 
I take a deep breath,
I pray for protection,
&
I continue reciting Isaiah 54:17
until I can smile.

I’m not a violent man-

but I can dream,

can’t I ?

don’t tempt me, though)

Have a nice day!


  :)

--alexgeorge

listening to...

Basement Elevation- Love

Many of us who are looking for love, don't even realize or recognize that we are already loved and cared for.
                                                      --alexgeorge

Let Freedom Ring!

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream... Amos 5:24



Happy MLK Day!

listening to ...

 

for Lisa

My friend Lisa had her final Bon Voyage brunch today with friends before her move to the UK . She asked if I could please bake one last hazelnut fudge marble cake. Here it is. I was impressed with the restaurant Mothers (the name) because Lisa asked if we could have the cake there and the waiter offered to slice it for us and serve it after we were done with brunch for no extra fee. Most restaurants won't do that. I'll have to add them to my brunch list.

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Crosshairs

Friday Flashback- Guy ,Al B Sure & Chuckii Booker

Question of the day

 
  At what point do you decide if someone is playing hard to get or if they just aren't interested in you?

                                                  Do everything in love.  
                                                                                  1 Corinthians 16:14

I remember  being a young boy,  watching my grandfather put shaving cream on his face to shave. I couldn't wait to be old enough to have hair on my face to shave off. He used to lather up my face, and I'd watch him as he shaved and I'd imitate him, shaving my smooth skin.

President Obama's speech in Tucson

Found in a fortune cookie

You will find clarity about something that eluded you previously.

                                   That could be one of so many things about which I am anxious!

eleven eleven eleven

                     I just realized that my birthday, being november 11,  will be 11/11/11 this year!
                      
                    A woman I met on the train yesterday said that 11/11/11 is supposed to mean something. She was an attorney, a single mom, and a numerologist in her spare time. Alot of what she said went in one ear and out the other, but she was very attractive so I listened, wondering if it was worth it to pretend to be interested so I could get her phone number. Or to at least be entertained during my hour-long ride to my job.
                " This year on November 11, 2011, be aware that it is a high vibrational day and your connection to the spiritual realm is heightened. It certainly is within the realm of possibility to have insightful, if not prophetic dreams and even a strong spiritual experience." 
                'Yeah, uhhuh'.
                " Looking back through history, Martin Luther King, Jackie Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Mozart and Edgar Allan Poe are just the tip of the iceburg of famous 11s."
                'Yeah, uhhuh'.

***********
               Friends say I should throw a big party.  Tentatively I intend to be in Paris. When I had spent the last few holidays alone, I decided that next year I'd go some place I've always wanted to go to. I have quite a few friends there who have been asking me to visit over the years. Hopefully, whoever I'm dating at the time will be going with me. 

I was about to say that I had a really strange dream last night, but I always have strange dreams, however, this one was more like a message of sorts, perhaps to push me to stop procrastinating. Sometimes I think that God puts certain people in my dreams to make me take notice. I mean, I can only have so many dreams where both Halle Berry and Janet Jackson  and sometimes Vanessa Williams are fighting over me, right?
Well, in this dream, Victoria Rowell was angry with me.   I'm pretty sure that God chose her because I used to LOVE her when she played Drucilla on The Young & The Restless (yes, I used to watch that show) and I missed seeing her, though I haven't seen or thought about her in years.  Anyway she said:

Victoria:      I'm mad at you
Me:            Why? What did I do?
Victoria:     It's what you're not doing.
Me:            What do you mean?
Victoria:     You're not writing anything for me. You got a whole collection of stories you wrote with Halle
                  in mind. Well I can do them too! I can play a Bipolar mom in an  alternate  uniiverse who's  obsessed with getting her right hand cut off

who has 6 kids who escaped from a fire returning with 7 kids, better than her.
Me:            You just combined 4 of my short stories into one.
Victoria:      And I can play them all!
Then I looked at her again and she was Halle, who smiled at me and said :thank you. now get started.

Seriously. Every story I write is filled  only with black characters in mind, and I write them as if Halle Berry asked me to write a good character story for her. I know it was a dream, but Victoria/ or Halle was right. I need to get started, and work harder on my collection.
 I haven't seen Victoria Rowell or Sanaa Lathan or Gabrielle Union or Angela Bassett or Nia Long or or Alfre Woodard or Taraji P Henson or Cynda Williams or Sheryl Lee Ralph or Tamara Tunie or  Victoria Dillard or N’Bushe Wright or Lisa Gay Hamilton or Merrin Dungey or Troy Beyer or Vanessa Bell Calloway or Tisha Campbell-Martin or Aisha Tyler or Tatyana Ali  or Kellita Smith or Jenifer Lewis or Rochelle Aytes, or Viveca A Fox, etc, in anything, for a while.

Soultight

While
there are those
who,
without thinking,
will gladly lift both hands
to help someone in need,


there are others
who
will bearly lift a finger


(the middle one)
&
those are the relatives.


--Alexgeorge

another oldie but goodie- Sheila E, and the slept on Jill Jones

about courage

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon

 People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.                                 --Soren Kierkegaard

                  Have you started working on your 2011 resolution(s) ?

                                                                        

Friday Flash back - Rose Royce & Earth, Wind and Fire

some Morning Fun

 Vikter Duplaix - Morning Fun, Feat. Common

 Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

                                        --William James 

Question of the day

On New Year’s Eve, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 red-winged blackbirds  fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. One day before, 80,000 to 100,000 fished washed up dead on the banks of the Arkansas River. Then, hundreds of blackbirds fall from sky over Louisiana, days after similar phenomenon in neighbouring Arkansas.

What's going on?

listening to ...

i've been flying blind i need you to come & be my eyes --India Arie

J'ai été me baigner nu dans une mer de méduses, fatigué de se faire piquer ..
à la recherche d'un saumon de nager en amont avec les ...

                                                

A friend told me once. 

 Translated- I've been skinny dipping in a sea of jellyfish, tired of getting stung..

looking for a salmon to swim upstream with...

One word

Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?


For me the word for 2010 was  Adaptable.  
Adaptability means being open to ANY new challenge or changing situation, regardless of your background and skills, and refusing to place preconceived judgments on the challenge or presume it’s something you can’t handle, or won’t like.  Unfortunately most people have a problem with that; they get comfortable in a certain role, whether that’s career or social interactions.  If things are too comfortable for you all the time, ask yourself if you’re avoiding challenges that may make life more interesting and rewarding? Life is all about change, and if you don’t keep pace with that change you will be left behind.Would you want to see a doctor who finished medical school 20 years ago and hadn’t bothered to keep up with all the new findings in the last 20 years? 


For me the word for 2011 is Reinvent.
This word might change in the future, but it's the first word that came to mind when I thought of this blog entry. What I've tried so far here in Oregon hasn't worked, and I have to find a new position; I have to try something new. That's it. 




  What is your one word for 2010 and 2011, and why?

Before I forget

It's hard to believe a decade has come and gone so quickly!  Thanks for reading along for another year. I can't wait to see what 2011 brings!    I want to wish all my fellow bloggers the absolute best year ever, in 2011! I want to thank you for your kindness and your truth, for what I've learned from reading your responses to my blogs and from my reading your blogs. I appreciate blogging as my outlet for posting thoughts that pop in my head, or current events and my reactions to it, or to share something funny or amusing that happened,  to share a poem, or even to share a childhood memory or song. I think I'm a better person, a smarter person, and a more enriched person because of those insights, and for that, I thank you!

 
 

on today

in 1863,

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.
From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.
The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.
The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.
 --courtesy  archives.gov

Bonne Année 2011

Tie up loose ends, be selfish for once,  pay more bills, learn to say no, make new friends, finish what I start, purge those contacts that never respond to my phone calls, texts, or facebook messages, find ways to meet the type of women I wanna date in Oregon, become fluent in French, get published, lose about 50 pounds, work even harder at work and in my personal life,  be comfortable going out even if I'm by myself, and make more money.

& you?

My soul looks back and wonder...

How I Got Over


HAPPY 2011 !

My 2010

At the beginning of 2010, I resolved  the year to be all about love, and for once I held on to a resolution all the way through to the end of the year. Loving is easy.
I blogged about it, I found Bible verses talking about the power of it, and encouraging it. I acted on it. I even encouraged people to consider it. 
2010 wasn't a good year for me.  It was basically a  dead year. It was terrible.

It wasn't a good year for some friends of mine as well. 5 friends filed for divorce this year, and my ex girlfriend, who I've been trying to get out of my system ( so I can move on), had filed for divorce from her husband of 4 months. Though she had to move to Australia to escape his death threats (since he's on the no-fly list, he can't seek his revenge on her),  she's calling me again.
I don't regret this year being about love. Every day should be about love.

If you made any resolutions for 2010, what were they? Were you successful?