The institution of school would like you to sit in your seat now. They would like to teach you half truths. They would like to prepare you for a world that doesn’t exist. They would like you to be quiet. They would like you to sit still. They would like you to obey. They offer pills if you cannot follow their rules. To you, my boy, I say be WILD, keep MOVING, and do not…
We cannot see the gift in what we resist. Throughout the Pandemic folks have been wringing their hands about gaining Covid 19 pounds, and I was one of them. I can’t blame Covid-19 for my weight gain though, mine started two years ago. Well, let’s back up – more like four years ago because as soon as I started losing it, I started gaining it back. I had gone to see my endocrinologist at Ochsner.…
I was speaking to a dear friend last night who had just come from her parents’ house on the corner of a street lined with tall sycamore and oak trees in Atlanta. The contents of the house were laid out on tables for an estate sale as the house is being sold. For more years than I can remember, I’ve called my friend just as she was getting ready to mow the large lawn for…
“Don’t let your passion project bankrupt you.” These were the words spoken to me by Malcolm White, head of the Mississippi Arts Commission when I first bought the 100 Men Hall. I tried to heed the warning during the first year of resurrecting the nonprofit but found myself caught up in the momentum of potential. Then a pandemic halted my momentum. The Hall’s St Joseph’s Altar was cancelled, Chapel Hart was cancelled, Alvin Youngblood Hart…
Yesterday, the casinos opened back up in Hancock County. Half the information I hear is that we are moving too fast into more trouble ahead. Half the messages I read is that we are returning to normal. I keep my guard up for normal’s arrival. It’s only now in the long morning walks and evening bikes rides that I have come to realize why normal is elusive. I grew up out of step, out of…
When the quarantine began, I was at a crossroads with work. Not the 100 Men Hall, which I had managed to get on a monthly music schedule and had been pushing towards self sufficiency, but rather work that pays my bills. On March 15, everyone and everything stopped and it’s as if the world stepped back to where I had been standing all along. I’m not going to lie, it felt good to not be…
When Tin was six years old, his school had a Poem in your Pocket day. I was two years into having lost my job, hair and then moved out of my dream house. So the poem I picked for Tin that day was Mother to Son by Langston Hughes. Well, son, I’ll tell you:Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.It’s had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the…
A while ago I got embroiled in a situation with an ex that caused me to ask repeatedly, ad nauseam, beating a dead horse style, “Why Me?” It took many meditations, consultations, therapies, and a come to Jesus to get me to a place where I realized I was asking the wrong question (read: assholes happens). So instead of Why Me? I began asking how do I handle this situation? I learned through meditation, perambulation,…
From my mid twenties to thirties, I thought to myself, I’m not really going to be a writer until I have a child. Where this idea came from I have no idea, but I had asked my grandmother and my mother on separate occasions what had made them happy and they both told me it was their children. I was not surprised by my grandmother’s response, but my mother’s answer shocked me. I grew up…
Around Bay Saint Louis, there are signs everywhere of people and businesses returning to normal. I walked into Claiborne Hills yesterday and didn’t see anyone wearing a mask. As much as grocery shopping used to be meditative to me, I have only gone a handful of times in the past two months and each time was stressful. I’m on a Facebook thread of merchants here and over the past two weeks, each post about reopening…