Darker than
Those who know the music of the late, great Curtis Mayfield know that one of the songs on his seminal, eponymous debut album was “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue” (released forty-five years […]
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HOW THINGS LOOK FROM DOWN HERE: One View From Among the Peons, Peasants, Plebeians, and Hoi Polloi
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Saturday,August 1, 2015
What a Coincidence
By its very nature, this city must double as a hometown and a tourist town. Over the years, it has attracted many types of visitors. Occasionally, this has included some of what might be called […]
Read essay →Wednesday,July 1, 2015
Mad
In the last weeks of summer in 2001, I found myself hunting for something in my files, “files” being a euphemism for frayed, yellowing papers stuffed here-and-there. Some idea had come to mind, and I […]
Read essay →Monday,June 1, 2015
Chances Are
One summer evening, after gathering at my apartment in Anacostia, DC, a group of my friends and I piled into someone’s car and headed off to see the group War perform at the DC Armory. […]
Read essay →Friday,May 1, 2015
Running
“…when will they ever learn?” from Where Have All The Flowers Gone by Pete Seeger The one thing that never should be forgotten about men is they used to be boys. With any understanding of […]
Read essay →Wednesday,April 1, 2015
Numbered, Weighed and Divided
(A poem follows this piece) Ours is a species given to naming and numbering people, places and things. “Things” include epochs, eras and ages, though we don’t all agree on how to count. Presently, for […]
Read essay →Sunday,March 1, 2015
Look Up
Walking along Columbia Road in the Columbia Heights section of Washington one summer afternoon long ago, a voice entreated me to “…look up.” In fact, it said “Brother, look up!” I did, and saw a […]
Read essay →Sunday,February 1, 2015
And the walls come tumblin’ down
A one-way thing cannot be “both” ways. If something is absolutely wrong, then it’s wrong – isn’t it? Can it be wrong only sometimes or only for some people? Such a proposition is for the […]
Read essay →Thursday,January 1, 2015
Bliss
A buddy and I sometimes joke about the reasons the Universe has not seen fit to let either of us win THE BIG ONE. It is never because of the staggering odds against it. It […]
Read essay →Monday,December 1, 2014
Dismissed
Several years ago, in the now (I think) defunct magazine Human Behavior, there was an article about a man who – while just listening to NFL games – could tell whether a particular player was […]
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