Seressia January 31st, 2007
This coming Sunday, February 4th, catch me and arlequin Blaze author Dorie Graham as we chat at the Roswell Regional Library, 2-4 pm.
Romance is a Many-Splendoured Thing
Saturday, February 17, come to a multi-author event at the Fayetteville Public Library. For more information, download the flyer here:
Seressia January 24th, 2007
I about fell off my chair when I’d heard that Eddie Murphy got an Oscar nod for Dreamgirls. Obviously, I need to go see the movie, which I will do this weekend. I knew Jennifer Hudson had a good chance and Beyonce didn’t. I know Eddie had a huge resevoir of talent, and I’m glad to see him recognized for it. And Forest Whittaker for Last King of Scotland. They will probably give the award to Peter O’Toole, though. Djimon Honsou getting a nod for Blood Diamond corrects the Golden Globe’s amnesia over his always stellar performance. (Okay, not so much in Eragon, but DH wasn’t the only problem with the movie.)
Now, many people are talking about Sundance, and Dakota Fanning’s role in Hounddog. Mostly people are saying her parents should be ashamed, and so should the director and her agent for exploiting her in this movie. The movie is about a 12 year old who get abused, molested and eventually raped.
The head of the Catholic League is calling for a federal investigation to see if any child pornography laws were violated. I will not comment on the irony of that. But I will comment on people commenting and condemning something they haven’t even seen yet. What if the film isn’t about rape (the scene of which supposedly is about 3 seconds long)?
What if it’s a film with a–dare I say it?– message?
What if Hounddog is about how a child, with the help of a caring person, can actually break a cycle of abuse? What if the film clearly shows what the cycle of abuse is, and someone goes to see it and actually recognizes the pattern in their own lives? Afterall, didn’t people start to think differently about AIDS victims after seeing Philadelphia?
The dialogue shouldn’t be about whether the movie should have been made or not. It’s done. We shouldn’t be talking about doing something about the movie, but the movie’s subject matter.
Seressia January 15th, 2007
Jennifer Hudson won–woot! Big ups to her!
And Justin hatin’ on Prince like that–shame on you!
EDIT: And Hugh Laurie just won for HOUSE. I love him! ANd he’s funny!!!
Boo hoo that Masi Oka didn’t win, but I love him anyway. ANd Heroes comes back NEXT MONDAY!!!!
EDIT: Eddie Murphy deafeated Jack Nicolson for the Golden Globe? Is that a sign of Armageddon?
Seressia January 14th, 2007
Since today celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, I was going to post my essay, written back in 1986, as part of a contest celebrating the first MLK holiday. However, your eyes will probably appreciate the real thing even more. I hope wherever you are todya that you think how you’re living your dreams.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hoped that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for whites only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today my friends - so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi - from every mountainside.
Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring - when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Seressia January 6th, 2007
Free Online Library: Oscar Wilde: The Picture Of Dorian Gray: CHAPTER 8
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
-Lord Henry to Dorian
I’m not a person to make resolutions. Lord Henry put it much nicer, but to translate it into American, “Resolutions are checks your mouth writes that your butt can’t cash.”
We make pretty promises to ourselves in January, and we are faithful for about a month. Then Life intrudes, and we tend to forget the oaths to eat better, stop smoking, work out, drink more water, drink less tequila and all that. I say, why put yourself through all that, when December 31st approaches and you realize you forget every single promise to yourself?
I say let’s make ANTI-RESOLUTIONS. I swear that I’m going to tell a lie, go on a bender one night, overeat, think ill thoughts of someone, and probably fart in public at least once this year.
What about you? WHat’s your anti-resolution?
Seressia January 1st, 2007
So I had some very lovely friends over for dinner, and after I got done picking their bones clean….Just kidding. I would never eat my friends–and tell about it.
Anyway, I had a couple of friends over for the traditional Southern-style New Year’s Day dinner of black eyed peas (coins), collard greens (greenbacks), cornbread (gold), and pork loin (no idea what pork is for, but I am ham-med out). It wasn’t until after they’d gone and I was cleaning up the kitchen that I realized that the brand new pot that I had cooked the peas in STILL HAD ITS LABEL taking up the entire side. Just a little charred at the bottom edge.
Dear friends that they were, they obviously waited until I’d closed the door on them to start laughing their asses off. Thanx, guys!
And now you know why I rarely cook. (Let’s not even start on the time I tried to bake cookies in a new oven…)