Cobb

Chris Bowen: First Trumpet

Today's Blackification

Trayvon Martin is a punctuation mark in the book of life. A comma, or perhaps a semicolon. His erasure upsets grammarians, and a bad sentence is a bad sentence, but I'm reading above syntax. 

In fact, for blackification purposes, one might be curious to know that one such as myself is not particularly influenced by the fate of random black teenagers in random southern towns. So I swear to you this moment that I don't know the name of the any of the Jena Six and cannot recall the name of Shaquanda Cotton's Texas town.  It was Texas, wasn't it? Such snuffed candles do not light my path through history with all due respect to John Donne. 

However there are some blackfolks I've been considering of late whose fate seems lost to the hoodie class and their fetish defenders. As I might have mentioned, I'm spending more time thinking about aerospace, rocket science and the long now. A couple weeks ago I bought a 5 disc boxed set of video covering NASA starting with Friendship 7. I recall actually meeting several black astronauts when I was in college when such matters were important to me. But just to remind you where I'm coming from with regard to blackfolks... When I was a freshman, I went to the library and grabbed a copy of Who's Who Among Black Americans. There were something on the order of 35,000 entries in that book. I basically swore that day that my social involvement was done - if the only black people I met were people from that book, I would be perfectly happy. After all, I did have to get married one day. So I did in fact meet Guy Bluford, Ron McNair and Mae Jemison. And then that was done. 

Several others are at Wikipedia which is of course doing a better job of putting such things in front of the public than any of the so-called black leaders. There are 14 who have been in space, 11 more than once. But on any day at any college campus, you'll probably find more professors who can sing the lyrics to Gil Scott Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" than name five black astronauts. Hell, I know the lyrics to Whitey on the Moon and I still haven't memorized the names. But my priorities are straight.

I'm secondarily impressed with the progress of my own family. My son has been accepted into the business program of Cal State Fullerton, which was legendarily run by a woman by the name of Jewel Plummer Cobb. No relation but her biography is no joke. Look it up one day. She too was about the hard sciences. We'll see about Boy, he's recently attracted to economics and Freakonomics in particular. The Scholar is insisting on taking challenging courses for her senior year as she bucks up her already nice GPA, and the Sprite is breaking her own records in track. She's a sprinter, hurdler and long jumper. 

But I've come to meet another branch of the family that goes back to the old days in New Haven, who have been doing quite well for themselves for quite some time. I'll call him Uncle Mack because what I've come to know about him leaves me with little doubt that somewhere in one of his many closets is a full length mink coat. Uncle Mack lives one of the most exclusive suburbs in New Jersey in a castle of his own design. So far as I can tell those ceilings are 20 feet above ground and there's at least 6,000 square feet on the first floor. Uncle Mack wears French cuffs at home and reminesces about the days when Atlantic City was newly revitalized and high rollers actually tucked in their shirts. I brought up the Tyson Spinks fight on my iPad.

There used to be a club on Amsterdam Avenue that was all that when I lived in NY. I met Mike Tyson there and found I was a half inch taller. When you go back to those days, when Eddie Murphy filmed 'Boomerang', there wasn't a black American living who didn't have some metaphor of black power that didn't include Mike Tyson. He was the unstoppable force and the inevitable symbol. Uncle Mack loved to see him fight in Vegas and Atlantic City and had good seats, but not as good as some Jamaican drug dealers. There's always a bigger fish, but not always a better flavor. Uncle Mack has done better with his wealth than Iron Mike.

Finally, I've been considering the possibility that Condi Rice might find herself on Romney's short list for Veep. Either way, I listened to an hour long interview through the Hoover Institute and found how easily she grasps the motions of the geopolitical world. She is one of the great women of our time, who stepped up and made her mark. She has returned with passion to Stanford and is certainly the only living Secretary of State who bothers to teach undergraduates. I'd say the future is bright.

I know why it is difficult for some black Americans to keep their eyes on any prize worth having. They have been distracted by those in control of short attention span theatre, who are by definition not interested in knowledge. But I have plenty of confidence that human nature triumphs and that people will unplug from nonsense when the time is right.  I'm not on a mission any longer to prove something or even exemplify something about a proper blackness. Like Popeye, I yam what I yam. I am a writer, and this is what I'm thinking about black America today.

Oh yeah, and I hear Tiger had a good game, and I realized that Ron Artest lives in my neighborhood, and I'm feeling Lewis Hamilton not being happy with 3rd place.

Utah Republican

Mia Love. Surprised? You shouldn't be.

Key Faith

James Key:

Still, even though the demands of war have put a strain on many families, our troops continue to pull from the same side of the rope as one cohesive body. When Hurricane Irene recently threatened the East Coast, including Washington, D.C., the sentinels at Arlington cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns refused to leave their posts. Their willingness to look beyond personal comfort for the greater good is something from which we all can learn.

As the U.S. works her way out of today's economic turmoil, our nation's leaders and the public should follow the lead of our men and women in uniform: Attack this challenge head-on, but as one. The unified spirit in the aftermath of 9/11 could guide us through the troubled waters we're navigating today.

Jim and I are frat. He and my brother went to middle school together. He has always been one of the most destiny bound men I have known, never questioning his duty to do good. It's good to know he's out there, fighting the good fight.

Gary May

Congratulations go to Gary May who has just been named Dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Gary and I go way back to undergrad days in the mid 80s. He was NSBE chair one of the years that I was on the National Board.  I always knew that he was destined for something like this. Well I've known for about 6 or 7 years.  It has been a while since we hung out and it was about 5 years ago when I had a barbecue over at his place. He's an incredibly level-headed guy and methodical as all get-out. What always struck me about Gary was his sense of humility and dedication to the cause. It was a cause he understood, because he always put in the work, the cause of getting people through their studies. You see Gary was the straight A student who never made a big deal about his brains. It seems like it just never occurred to him that he might be something special or entitled to take advantage. He impressed me as somebody who just had a good discipline and ability to get through the maze and he wanted others to do the same.

Obviously he has learned to play politics, and that is his greater and deeper strength, because he is eminently trustworthy, showing no signs of weakness to temptation, but knowing how to work the back end of everything. I can't say that I necessarily like the way he operates. Me, I guess I'm a sucker for someone who confesses an ulterior motive over bourbon, but you'd never get that kind of banter out of Gary. Or Dr. May as I gather he is called now.

I offer my heartiest congratulations. The good guy won. You won't believe where he will be in 10 years. 

GWB: Up Close & Personal

facebookguests on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

It only takes a moment to see where the man comes alive. Start around minute 11.

Uncle Clyde

R.I.P. Clyde Kerr, Jr.

One of the most influential music teachers in  New Orleans history passed away yesterday.  Like his father before him, Clyde Kerr, Jr. taught several generations of students both the mechanics of music and the spirit behind it.  Social networking sites have been buzzing with tributes to the man since word of his death began circulating.

Kerr, Jr. was a trumpet player who had a beautiful tone.  He released his first and only album, This is Now!, last year.  As an instructor at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts his influence goes back at least thirty years when he taught Wynton and Branford Marsalis.  In recent years, he counted Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and Christian Scott among his hundreds of students.

Kerr, Jr. grew up in the Tremé neighborhood and his childhood home was like a music school.  His father taught a who’s who of an earlier generation of musicians including the great maestro Wardell Quezergue and the saxophonist Alvin “Red” Tyler.  Funeral arrangements are incomplete at this time. (photo by Michael  DeMocker)

Allen West

Exactly what I expected.

Lieutenant Colonel Allen West (US Army, Retired) was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and is third of four generations of military servicemen in his family. His parents instilled in him a very basic principle, love of God and Country. In 2004, when it was time to retire from more than twenty years of service in the US Army, he brought his wife and two young daughters to Broward County, Florida, where he taught high school for one year. He then returned to Afghanistan as an advisor to the Afghan army, an assignment he finished in November 2007.

Allen West received his Bachelors degree from University of Tennessee and Masters degree from Kansas State University, both in political science. He also holds a Master of Military Arts and Sciences from the US Army Command and General Staff Officer College in political theory and military operations.

“Education is the great equalizer,” he says. “With a good education, any child in America can live his dream.”

Allen West knows that for our children to live their dreams, they need to be safe. He has served in several combat zones: in Operation Desert Storm, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was battalion commander for the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and in Afghanistan, where he trained Afghan officers to take on the responsibility of securing their own country.

In his Army career, Col. West has been honored many times, including a Bronze Star, three Meritorious Service Medals, three Army Commendation Medals (one with Valor), and a Valorous Unit Award. He received his valor award as a Captain in Desert Shield/Storm, was the US Army ROTC Instructor of the Year in 1993, and was a Distinguished Honor Graduate III Corps Assault School. He proudly wears the Army Master parachutist badge, Air Assault badge, Navy/Marine Corps parachutist insignia, Italian parachutist wings, and German proficiency badge (Bronze award).

Allen is an avid distance runner, a PADI Master certified SCUBA diver, motorcyclist, and attends Community Christian Church in Tamarac Florida.

Excellence is a West family tradition. His wife, Angela, holds an MBA and PhD. and works as a financial planner. His oldest daughter, Aubrey, attends Archbishop McCarthy HS and his youngest daughter, Austen, attends Parkway Christian School.

The Kinsey Collection: First Thoughts

Bernard Kinsey is one of the most influential men I know. He had been a special inspiration to me as I started my career at Xerox. He and the late Dr. Guy Dobbs were the men I thought I would be - when the arc of my ambition was to be on the management team at Xerox. So when I heard his name mentioned in association with an art collection here in Los Angeles, I had to take the invitation. I got way more than I bargained for.

It turns out that Kinsey and his wife Shirley have been collecting some of the premier artifacts of African American history. I'm not just talking about your standard knick knackery, but extraordinarily rare and precious documents. Among the many precious items he has is the original signed decision of the US Supreme Court for the Brown vs Board of Education case. Yes, it's that deep.

The evening's events took place over in my old neighborhood at the Ebony Rep. I didn't know about the Ebony Rep so much as I did the Ebony Showcase Theatre. It has been a long time and the space has come a very long way. This is a first rate stage in a beautiful building. Even the portrait of Nate Holden, an old pol of extreme repute, looks extra fine and distinguished. 

I had no idea what to expect. I thought I was buying tickets to an exhibit; instead I was treated to 90 minute seminar on black history tidbits of delectable and fine provenance. Kinsey, an ex-executive rattles off history in a phrasing that is altogether new and rare. He plays it like Joe Friday - just the facts without interrupting them with the inspirational implications. He has taken the material which has heretofore served as chitlin circuit fodder of Hoteps exploiting black undergraduate club money to a new level of accuracy and responsibility.  Does he have an artifact from the slave castle? Hell yes he does. Does he dwell on the emotional impact of it like Whitney and Bobby?  Hell no he does not. Kinsey comes correct with an agenda of obsessive love, which is just what you expect from a philanthropic collector. He is not just a dry presenter. Far from it, but he handles the narrative surrounding the meaning of these historical artifacts with the proper respect and responsibility, the right mix of scholarship and passion. He does so without commanding us or insulting our intelligence, and as usually the case for presenters in public buildings on video, he never has enough time.

Kinsey, a classic salesman, tells you what he's going to tell you, tells you, and tells you what he told you. He operates on two basic principles and has a couple ethical rules. It is this framework that channels the same passion he shares with less disciplined and more emotional and racially chauvinistic presenters of similar material.  The rules for life are "From whom much is given much is expected", and "Live a life of no regrets". In their presentations they will not call Africans 'slaves' but always say that they were 'enslaved'. Secondly, they always refer to these historical Africans as brothers and sisters. He summarizes his love and solidarity with his brothers and sisters in the present and the past through the parable of the eagle who thought he was a chicken. For Kinsey, the greatest failure is the wasting of time and consequent missing of opportunity.

These driving forces impel the Kinseys to be collectors of evidence and artifacts of stupendous firsts whose existence defy the chickenheaded stereotypes of black underachievement. Kinsey desires to animate the understanding with verbs and emphasize the animism of history. He clearly engages his subjects on many levels and wants his audience to as well. Now he has made the mark in his years of collecting which signifies him as a world class contributor - his collection is going to be featured at the Smithsonian in October of this year.

In 1987, when I was still working at Xerox and engaged in discussions on its black oriented email distribution, one of the constant conflicts I had was with what I perceived to be the limited scope of recognition of black achievement. It was part and parcel of my gripe with the Talented Tenth and it boiled down to a frustration with the narrow set of heroes and role models highlighted for emulation, past and present. The breadth of the Kinsey Collection is satisfying to me as it covers not only those we know, but many others we never heard of or exist vaguely on the borders of our memory. James Forten was presented by Kinsey as a great businessman - whose sailmaking business was the envy of Philadelphia. His funeral was second in size only to that of Benjamin Franklin. Kinsey also reveals the parentage of Benjamin Bannaker. He tells the story of a white woman who purchased the freedom of two black men and married one of them. Her daughter did the same; purchased two black men, married one and that daughter was the mother of Benjamin Bannaker.

There are all sorts of narratives that are supported by the facts of African American history. I'm most interested in that of institution building and institutional failure. For the singular pressing fact of this thread of history to me is how all of these outstanding individuals came to naught. We know of Henry Ossowa Tanner, but where is the Tanner legacy today? If we didn't go to this particular event on this particular night, what would we know of it? After all, the correct premise is that this material is something that isn't taught in schools.  It is my judgment that America has failed to take up the lessons of their triumph or that somehow their families crumbled. It is a long-standing bias for me, one whose value I am unsure about. In the context of Black History Month, we are inevitably compared to other ethnics and told there is something we must do that we haven't. Kinsey remarks about the 3 billion dollar cotton industry that was, before the Civil War, 55% of the American GDP. And it was through this wealth that great fortunes, including that of the Lehman Brothers, were begun. Where are the black Lehman Brothers, and where is our old boy network? When Reconstruction placed hundreds of blacks into positions of political power, was their intent to endow us with the NBA? No, of course not. Then why is it that is what we have rather than their legacy? The link was somehow lost, broken, stolen, forgotten. I don't know exactly how to feel about this when I give it any thought. Mostly I accept that within African America we have yet to aggregate to a significant Dosh point. We are insecure in our institutions and too much a part of the public. I often wonder if it could be any other way and I don't know the answer, but I think some part of that answer is in Kinsey's mind.

The California Afro American Museum is famously endowed by the State of California, a state whose bonds are rated slightly above junk and are ever on the edge of default. I can remember writing under the influence of Thomas Sowell about how such an overwhelmingly non-private institution could come to naught. I was there the day Mike Woo and Maxine Waters cut the ribbon to the shiny new place thinking that it was all an Affirmative Action supporting a good idea but with other people's money. In that way I couldn't be proud enough and still await that thing I call Aggregation. Or perhaps I simply don't appreciate quite properly that which already exists. But the fact remains that the Kinseys stand alone, and their collection hasn't yet got a permanent home outside of their basement.

I had my 30 seconds with the man last evening at the premier and asked if there is a university sponsor; an unfair question perhaps. I stand to inherit my father's library, and though my ambition has flagged of late, I have always wanted to do what Kinsey has done. But he has the money and I don't. Somebody has the money that Kinsey doesn't and so where might his treasures fall if he should fail? Surely everyone in the house last night would desire to carry on in their bosom this preservation of African American history, whatever the narrative, but who has the Dosh?

Black Hollywood was much in attendance last evening and as I cruised the room I got the distinct feeling that there were a lot more people in that crowd that I should know. It took me quite a while to put the name with a face I instantly recognized - oh yeah finally it was Bill Duke. I stopped a moment to show an old picture to Ron Karenga - he remembered my father. Kevin Ross, of course was in attendance and proving, once again that he is the man to know in this town. A number of other luminaries I won't bother to namedrop were there as well. One in particular, with whom I am especially fond is also part of Kinsey's project. That is Dennis Haysbert. He, along with Angela Bassett are part of the voice talent who narrate the audio tour of the Kinsey Collection.

So there is success in the rush of blood to the heads of many black Americans who breathe deeply this vein of American history and achievement. For the sake of its own preservation, it is my opinion that private hands are best, and we all might hope that the letters of Zora Neal Hurston and the original copy of Equiano's Slave Narrative stay in the properly directed care that the Kinseys would have for it. That would take the sort of money I would be overjoyed to supply if I had my way in this world - that is the sort of Aggregation and old money responsibility that warms my belly to just beneath the point of fire. We all are worthy heirs, but only few of us are worthy curators, of these historical artifacts and their narrative.

We are all familiar with the phrase 'it's a big country'. Kinsey's breadth and depth remind us that it's a big race too. We 40 millions are a big people, a lot bigger than we often get credit for being. But there are only a small number who keep that in mind at all times by being faithful stewards of what has transpired in our sojourns in and out of freedom. It is easy to forget, fixed as our attentions can get on the loud and often debased here and now. Kinseys have taken their share and pulled from every corner of the world and our great nation that which binds us to 500 years of unique triumphs and failures in the cause of our own and everyone's dedication to liberty. The future depends upon our ability to maintain it piece by precious piece.

Yes Bernard and Shirley Kinsey, we follow you. God willing we will find a continuing and permanent home for these great reminders of our humanity and the never ending struggle to maintain liberty and justice for all.

Starting Today

Starting today, I'm going to take on some of my heroes to determine if they merit my attention. And the first I'm going to deal with is Stanley Crouch. Now Crouch is not an active hero. He is one of memory. He wrote Notes of a Hanging Judge and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. That was almost 20 years ago and now I have an opus that's big enough to compile a similar work - except that I'm working in  a different medium.

I have recently been challenged to be more productive with my writing talent, and I am indeed working part-part time on a couple of works.One is an autobiography called 'Up from Freedom' and one is something of an instruction manual on being a proper American. There are others, but both of these relate to Crouch.

You see if you asked me the black American men I would like to be most associated with, by dint of the reputations they have attained in public (not that I know them to be true or not) they would be the cultural conservatives Marsalis, Crouch and Murray. I see them as representing the Old School on the cultural side, whereas I am doing a new bit of exposition on the political side.

Now there's some aspect of political populism that I cannot stand and from what I'm seeing of Crouch's latest hip shots at the GOP it appears to me that he's not engaging anybody but barrelfish. It's his column, and it's possible that I misread him. But I'm going to try to understand this man well enough to build him up or take him down. Or maybe find that he's not worth the effort, or perhaps that I'm not up to the task. Either way, his triumvirate is where I'm aiming, and I'm trying to see how it is that they might be so blind to what political Conservatism is even as they fight to preserve the best of African American literature and music.

My gut tells me that they, like so many other New Yorkers, are assuming that the Black Swans are going to come to them, and that because none have been provided, they don't exist. The Black Swan in this case would be me, and others like me in the Conservative Brotherhood who are a little bit smarter than the average wingnut television news junkie.

I'm not trying to move the crowd. I'm trying to preserve what's right. And when Crouch suggests that the American Right is wrong on principle because of what some of their loudmouth propagandists say, I wonder if he realizes the blackness of his kettle.

I'm raising the profile of the conservative Brotherhood. That needs to be done, with some commercial animus. So I'm noodling on that because I think I have to be the man to do it, my way. There are others whose independence I would not attempt to co-opt as a 'black thang'. So I say more power to the Hiphop Republicans and the John Langston Forum, Project 21 and all the rest of the crowds. But there is a level of discourse that needs to be maintained and addressed - even though I'd rather be playing volleyball. I am cutting way back on my gaming, so there is more time for me.

Oh yeah and I'm turning comments back on. 2010 is ON.

Lee Archer Once Again for D-Day

Lee has always been a hero. This may be the last time we see him on TV.

Ivan Van Sertima: Dead

There is a small crowd of intellectuals in my head who are likely to pass from the scene unnoticed except for some devolved minsunderstanding of the nuance of their complaint. In a world of baller bands signalling logo-wise the exhortation of the famous cycler to LIVESTRONG how can the work of Ivan Van Sertima compete? I don't think it ever will. But it's difficult for me to say that's categorically a bad thing.

Van Sertima was, of course, the biggest of the touring intellects on the old black nationalist college tour. He, the author of, They Came Before Columbus and various other lesser known revisionist histories, was the benchmark against which many undergraduates measured their black consciousness. "We came to America not as slaves but as masters." Gets towards the meat of his oevre which was to give black self doubt some authentic scholarly research in support of ideas that prove that Africans were not all the retards of White Supremacist myth.

Van Sertima unlike many who followed him was significantly dignified and coherent. He occupied the middle realm of black existential coaches. Very few people followed his career path as an historian and anthropologist which demonstrates the great irony of his appeal. Yet almost all of us recall his gift of the recognition of the Olmec head. It's African. Or more to the qualified point it is African enough. Because whether or not you buy into Van Sertima's scholarship, you cannot deny that he was the right man at the right time in the development of black social capital. Before him, you might find men such as John Hope Franklin, C. Eric Lincoln and C. L. R. James. People vaguely recognized by our generation as living and having something scholarly to do with the me-centrism of blackness, but not up close and personal - not in our faces or our media. They wrote those big old books that nobody ever made us read, learn and get tested on. Following Van Sertima was a class of Afrocentrists who continued the soul-lifting exhortations of African greatness, but didn't really bother to write large, deep or often. The likes of Jawanza Kunjufu, LeGrand Clegg and Frances Cress Welsing were greatly derivative of the respect built up by their antecedents. 

Of the lot of these public intellectuals, I preferred Naim Akbar the most. He, unlike the others, was a trained psychologist and dealt with the disorders of black existential dilemmas directly. He needed no racial conspiracy theories, no confrontation with academic power structures or dichotomies of sun people and cave people to deal confidently with those whose need to spend student body money brought them to campus after campus during the 80s and 90s. 

Van Sertima was therefore, right in the middle of our more radical roots, bringing forth a controversial subject with academic credibility on a matter of import that is no longer important. He raised more eyebrows than he raised the race, but was just quite enough Sidney Poitier not to get dismissed. In retrospect, I suppose that it was important that we saw him speak in his unidentifyably sophisticated accent and saw him not get assassinated. He proved that a black man could be scholarly, move around America at will and not be destroyed by anything other than lack of market share. He figured largely in the the weave of the black politics that was, or what I'm now calling the collection of sentiments that was our political attitude. You will hear this echoed in all mentions of him. 

The legacy of Van Sertima is certainly lost. There will be, in our future economies, no sophisticated analysis of the content of African influence in the cultures of the Americas and no need for it. All will be urban, suburban, exurban and indigenous, with the indigenous end rounding down to ever smaller fractions. How ancient cultures came to be will not figure large in their wills to power. In America, the authenticity of race and ethnicity have been deboned by actions of affirmation. Neither La Raza nor the Afrocentrics can withstand the symbolic power of their magical exemplars. All that remains of racially charged and overfreighted anthropology is... well anthropology.

This may be bemoaned by those who studied the academic war between Bernal and Lefkowitz, but only a few of us remember that. And surely there are several handfuls of tenured blackademics who remain to crank that old wheel. But I think an honest assessment of the passing of Van Sertima will close the door on the black consciousness chapter of political revisionist history. 

A Reminder of Who We Are

USNS Carl Brashear

It's not a sin to get knocked down; it's a sin to stay down.
-- Carl M. Brashear

Many of us are familiar with the film Men of Honor starring Cuba Gooding Jr. Well it turns out that the real-life hero of that film, Carl M. Brashear has become more than an icon in film, but that a ship has been named after him and was launched a few weeks ago in San Diego.

Brashear himself was an extraordinary man with a highly distinguished career in the Navy. He was awarded plenty of honors as the Naval History website shows. But having a ship named after him is, by my reckoning the coolest. I don't know if there are other Navy ships named after African Americans, but I suspect that there might be another considering that I didn't read anything about the Brashear that indicated that it was the first. The USNS Carl Brashear is a 210 meter Lewis and Clark class cargo ship. Others of this sort have been named after other great explorers like Peary, Earhart and Alan Shepard. Fine company indeed.

Charles Phillips

Charles Phillips is President of Oracle Corporation and a member of the Board of Directors. He is responsible for global field operations including consulting, marketing, sales, alliances and channels, and customer programs, as well as corporate strategy. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Phillips was a Managing Director with Morgan Stanley in its technology group. Prior to his career on Wall Street, Mr. Phillips was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps. Mr. Phillips holds a BS in Computer Science from the United States Air Force Academy, an MBA from Hampton University, and a JD from New York Law School and is a member of the bar in Washington D.C. and Georgia. Mr. Phillips is on the boards of Viacom Corporation, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, and New York Law School.

Randal Simmons

The LA Daily News reports on the death of SWAT Officer Randal Simmons:

If I had a kid and he told me he wanted to be an officer, I would have told him this is someone you should aspire to be like," said LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, who knew Simmons for 15 years.

"He was the consummate SWAT officer."    

A minister, the 51-year-old Simmons was affectionately called "The Deacon" by fellow officers.    

Born in San Bernardino, he worked in the LAPD for 27 years and was shot in the line of duty early in his career.    

He was often seen playing basketball in the front yard of his Rancho Palos Verdes home, or jogging through the neighborhood.    

"I couldn't believe it when I saw it," neighbor Mary Bobic said. "When I saw his picture, I said, `Oh, my God!' I told my husband. He said, `He's a good man."'

Simmons' father was in the Air Force, and the family lived in Germany and Long Island, N.Y., for a time before relocating to Southern California, said his sister, Valjean Adams of Winona, Minn.    

He graduated from Fairfax High School, Adams said, and was a standout athlete who played football at Washington State University, where there was a moment of silence for him Thursday night before the basketball game against UCLA. He had a tryout with the Dallas Cowboys, but didn't quite make it.

Helping youths    

While Simmons' weekdays were consumed primarily by police work, his weekends were dedicated to helping youths in seven South Los Angeles housing projects as a minister for the Glory Christian Fellowship church in Carson.

When he wasn't doing that, he was coaching his son's football team.    

Janks Morton

Janks Morton made a public service announcement a year ago. It was rather cool, and in fact I made a response to that video. It turns out that Morton has made an entire film. The premise is simple. There is a war of disinformation out there in the mediasphere, and one example of it is that blackfolks believe lies about blackfolks which has undermined their ability to sustain healthy relationships, and most importantly, marriage. Far too many have bought into a simple lie and that demonstrates their vulnerability to a host of stereotypes. Yet another generation is deaf to the sound of the drum. Janks Morton bangs out a rhythm of truth in his independent film 'What Black Men Think'. Nice going.

Going behind the scenes in an interview with Brian Lamb, you get to see a couple extraordinary things. Firstly, Morton demonstrates that a little bit of initiative can go a long way. He was simply inspired to do the right thing and address a complicated question head on. He has done so in a way that shames big media and all of their attempts to deal with issue of interest to African Americans. He was able to take a simple misrepresentation of fact, discover how that myth was promulgated through society, and demonstrate how thoroughly brainwashed so many Americans are.

Secondly, as a filmmaker you're tempted to say that he's the rebirth of Michael Moore, except that he's an order of magnitude more intelligent and one eighth as shameless. By using the power of technologies once only available to pros, he has put together an excellent piece of work single-handedly. He shot a very sweet rip of Morpheus, and of course he was smart enough not to say anything like that, just to set up the red pill of an investigation he was ready to throw down.

Morton strikes me as a guy from my generation who just simply knows too much to stay shut up. He did the math and couldn't let the myth stand. If you're like me, you wonder how it is that we manage in this society of ours to pay millions to Heath Ledger and not get much to a man with a simple question who has a simple answer. Are there more black men in jail or in college? It may not take much to answer that question, but at least the answer takes us somewhere away from dangerous fictions. What good does it do our society to ask if Batman can beat The Joker and provide that answer? Spending on mindless fictions and sustaining dangerous fictions undermines the social contract. We all pay sooner or later.

James Burke says that we are perhaps on the very brink of a revolution of knowing. He has an XRepublic-ish linking factotum he speaks about to Dan Carlin. When enough of these are built, we will come to discover what Burke already knows: our system of education is truly outdated, and extraordinarily inefficient way of getting the billions of minds in our world working with the right set of ideas and facts. It will start with texts and audio and video, and some of us 'amateurs' are going to be stars for asking the right questions and giving memorable, reasonable answers. Janks Morton is one of those stars.

As for the controversy itself, I'm somewhat addressed to it and somewhat beyond it. It is a horrible shame that so many African Americans are not proponents of strong black families. On the other hand, I'm just as likely to buy more Wynton and not give a rat's about who's buying Tupac, if you catch my drift. I'm not sure which is best. Saving the 'black' race from itself is a matter of soul conservation, but I cannot assume that what I'm doing and where I'm doing it is inaccessible and beyond 'their' consideration. I just have to keep writing that which compels me. Begging the question of whether black families are coming apart also begs the question of exactly whom is susceptible to statistical morality BS game that Janks deconstructs. If you will believe the hype, how long should I cry about your ignorance?

But perhaps what Carlin said in another podcast is the right way to go about thinking, and that ties us in with Nulan. Carlin asks with his liberal brain, who is is looking out for the losers? How many losers can our society sustain until they drag us all down too? Put economically, if we do fine with 8% unemployment OK, but what happens when it gets to 16%?, 24%? Sooner or later the whole economy crashes. When African Americans are born 70% without two parent households, some tipping point for the entire nation is imminent. I know it sounds callous to put it in national terms, where is the black love? But black love is already in survival mode. We're already fighting the orientation that challenges the premise of married families. What am I talking about? We're already past the national tipping point. We're already thinking of a National Defense of Marriage Amendment. We're already fighting the Unmarriage Revolution. Sometimes I forget.

This ties us in with Nulan because he's sniffing the air for moments and inflections that signal the collapse of Western Civ, and now that I'm getting more world historical and less political, I'm inclined to hear more of that out, especially given my focus on Plato and other ancient history this month.

Anyway, Janks was over at Booker Rising today and I'm going to add his blog to the roll. He's clear, he's present and he's dangerous to ignorance. I'm on board for sustaining the dialog, of course, and it's always good to welcome another mind into the meld.

Kevin Brooks

There are moments in my life when I go off on tangents and let my mind wander. I'm in one such moment now. Interestingly, at this particular moment I haven't wandered much. I got a short burst of creativity and made a half dozen comics and then I crashed back to practicality.

One of the reasons I think this way, and write this way can be attributed to a brief and friendly encounter with Kevin Brooks from MIT. At that particular moment in my life, circa 1993, I was deeply considering multimedia possibilities. I was a bit fed up with the poetry performance scene and looked to digitize the kinds of narratives that I found lacking in what we now call derisively the 'mainstream media'.

Kevin Brooks was all over that and I knew it within 20 minutes of meeting him:

My academic research evolved over the years into the area new media. I wanted to synthesize a dream out of fragments of memory, pieces of beliefs, sections of personal mythology and theology, and parts of me which I delight in discovering anew.  It represents a period of my life during which I  irreversibly changed, evolved, improved and deteriorated - all at the same time.  But such is the life of a storyteller.

As an undergraduate and masters student I  studied  traditional linear written and cinematic narrative.  The bulk of my doctoral work focused on non-linear narrative and evolved into what I eventually referred to as metalinear story systems. My major research project, entitled Agent Stories, is a story design and presentation environment for metalinear, multiple point-of-view cinematic stories. A metalinear narrative is a collection of small related story pieces designed to be arranged in many different ways, to tell many different linear stories from different points of view, with the aid of a story engine which sequences the story pieces.  Thus, a metalinear story is not one story, but a a collection – a community of stories designed to be recombined from different points of view.  The Agent Stories research endeavored to find new ways in which computational processes can assist in the development and presentation of stories   and  how user input can feed into these processes. Designed   for the writer interested in building stories of multi-variant   cinematic playout, the Agent Stories tool promoted the structuring   and rewriting of metalinear narratives before and as they are   realized in video and audio. My dissertation entitled Metalinear   Cinematic Narrative: Theory, Process, and Tool, was completed in May of 1999.

I wrote a paper on the project called Do Agent Stories Use Rocking Chairs: The Theory and Implementation of One Model for Computational Narrative (pdf). It is published in the proceedings for ACM Multimedia '96 and won best student paper.

I have applied to a gig at Google, trying at last to get my ultimate systems built by some sort of collaborative (and I may end up open sourcing some of it) and I found myself in my retrospective speaking about Kevin. I had no idea that I would mention him directly when I began recording this longish video, but he came up in the story.

Check out his site. He has an enormous amount of reference material to the uses of narrative. Very impressive.

Andrew Olmstead

I never heard of him while he was alive, but he must have been somebody. He's done a damned fine job from beyond the grave.

As passionate as I am about personal freedom, I don't buy the claims of anarchists that humanity would be just fine without any government at all. There are too many people in the world who believe that they know best how people should live their lives, and many of them are more than willing to use force to impose those beliefs on others. A world without government simply wouldn't last very long; as soon as it was established, strongmen would immediately spring up to establish their fiefdoms. So there is a need for government to protect the people's rights. And one of the fundamental tools to do that is an army that can prevent outside agencies from imposing their rules on a society. A lot of people will protest that argument by noting that the people we are fighting in Iraq are unlikely to threaten the rights of the average American. That's certainly true; while our enemies would certainly like to wreak great levels of havoc on our society, the fact is they're not likely to succeed. But that doesn't mean there isn't still a need for an army (setting aside debates regarding whether ours is the right size at the moment). Americans are fortunate that we don't have to worry too much about people coming to try and overthrow us, but part of the reason we don't have to worry about that is because we have an army that is stopping anyone who would try.

Soldiers cannot have the option of opting out of missions because they don't agree with them: that violates the social contract. The duly-elected American government decided to go to war in Iraq. (Even if you maintain President Bush was not properly elected, Congress voted for war as well.) As a soldier, I have a duty to obey the orders of the President of the United States as long as they are Constitutional. I can no more opt out of missions I disagree with than I can ignore laws I think are improper. I do not consider it a violation of my individual rights to have gone to Iraq on orders because I raised my right hand and volunteered to join the army. Whether or not this mission was a good one, my participation in it was an affirmation of something I consider quite necessary to society. So if nothing else, I gave my life for a pretty important principle; I can (if you'll pardon the pun) live with that.

So can I.

Ralph Dumain & The Minds of SCAA

I'm still deleting duplicates out of my Outlook contacts. I'm down to about 6800 names which is about right. Who did I stumble across this morning but Ralph Dumain.

Back in the golden age of SCAA, during the early 90s, there were several standout intellects. I've already talked about Eugene Holman. But he was an island in a sea of calm compared to the tempests that Dumain would stir up. Dumain was a great fan of Ellison. He wrote:

Ellison's significance is manifold.  His place in American history is on a par with that of Richard Wright; the two of them together as cultural figures punctuate 20th century American history. Ellison represents the heroic reach of black modernism, taking Wright's achievement into the realm of cultural philosophy. Wright pulled himself up from the backward environment of the rural south, threw off the smiling mask of submission, and intervened in world culture to place himself and Black America at the very center of the existential and political concerns of the twentieth century, fighting for a secular, humanistic, and rational philosophy of man and warning of the violence to come if the thrust toward freedom were not accommodated.  Ellison reiterated these political and existential themes, but took Black modernism one step further.  I detect three central themes in Ellison that demand recognition today more than ever.  These themes would seem to work against one another but in fact are complementary: (1) the relation of self to environment and the primacy of individual responsibility over collective identification; (2) the Negro (his term) as the cultural and intellectual foundation and avant-garde of American society; (3) the multidimensional, essentially multicultural and non-stereotypical cultural being of the Negro-American.

He wrote of MLK:

Metaphysically, King's major objection to Hegel comes from the influence of Personalism.  King felt that for some thinkers -- Hegel and Spinoza among them -- the individual tended to disappear into the whole.

The section "Dialectical opposition for total truth and freedom" [p. 119-128] explains the influence of Hegel on King.  Most interesting is King's analysis of the dialectical interaction between repression and nonviolent resistance as the motor of progress of the movement for social justice.

With any luck, Dumain might come out and blog with us. The great minds of SCAA are missed, and the security and freedom now afforded by the blogosphere would be greatly enriched by their presence.

If you're out there, Burlinda Radney, James White, Hal Womack,  Pilar Quezzaire-Belle, Ron Buckmire, Rodney Coates, John Alexander Clark, Stephanie McNeal, Rodney Jordan, Darryl Hamilton... give us a hat tip.

I still keep in touch with Charles Isbell, Kenny Crudup, Ed Brown and Lester Spence.

Michael Bowen at Solver

My turn:

LOS ANGELES, CA—September 13, 2007—Solver, Inc., a Business Intelligence solutions provider, has announced that Michael Bowen has joined the company as Vice President of Services. Michael Bowen is a Business Intelligence (BI) industry veteran of 17 years, now working with his fourth-generation of BI tools. As a practitioner he has been responsible for the design and implementation of over 200 data marts into production in various industries.               

“It's always interesting to see new technology enter the BI market. With Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server, Microsoft has the ability to leapfrog a generation of software and bring many more customers into the previously pricey club of Performance Management. I am excited to be at the cutting edge of implementing this next-generation technology which will redefine the size and scope of the BI marketplace. Solver is at the heart of expanding this market and dedicated to excellence. This is the place to be,” says Bowen.

Prior to joining Solver, Bowen’s BI consulting career began at Pilot Software, and has worked at Arbor, Hyperion and his own consultancies. At Hyperion, Bowen was Americas Domain Lead for DW and BI Tools and WW Business Development Manager for eCRM Analytics. Bowen is noted as a keen observer of both business and technical trends in BI having worked C Level Sales and International Channels as well as with DW staff and product engineering groups. Prior to joining Solver as VP of Services, he was Manager of BI Best Practices at Answerthink. 

“Michael’s extensive background from the Business Intelligence Industry is adding significant value to the Solver organization and the overall strategy for delivering quality solutions for PerformancePoint solutions for both Monitoring and Analytics, as well as his strength from large Hyperion implementations will safeguard the quality of the way Solver will be able to deliver high quality  solutions to large Fortune 3000 companies based on Microsoft’s new ground breaking technologies in the Business Performance Management field,” says Per Solli, Co-owner and CEO of Solver, Inc.

Junior (B-Boy Buana)

Stern Faces & Chiseled Chins

I just discovered this, exactly how I don't know. But something went click and I remembered that Baldilocks was talking about Devil Dog Poetry. Heh. Guess what? Same thing. Well I want to have it on my website too. Blam. I can't wait to find the transcripted lyrics.

Details: Staff Sgt Lawrence E. Dean II interviewed here.

Troy A. Stovall

Troy A. Stovall brings over 15 years of experience in the fields of telecommunications, information/communication technology, management consulting, investment management, and non-profit leadership/management. Beginning in July-2004, Mr. Stovall assumed the position of Senior Vice President, Finance & Operations for Jackson State University (JSU) in Jackson, MS. In that role, Mr. Stovall has responsibility for the finances, facilities, construction, auxiliaries, economic development and strategy implementation for a university with over 8,000 students and a budget of over $90M. In addition, Mr. Stovall serves as Treasurer of the JSU Development Foundation and Executive Director of the JSU Educational Building Corporation (EBC). Mr. Stovall is also Managing Member and Founder of LeMaile Stovall LLC, a management consulting/advisory/interim senior management firm targeted at small/mid-size technology firms and economic development agencies looking to enhance their strategic thinking, management team, internal operations and funding sources. Prior to LeMaile Stovall, Mr. Stovall was Co-Founder and CEO of GulfSouth Capital, Inc. and Managing General Partner of GS Ventures (GSV), LLC. At GulfSouth, Mr. Stovall was responsible for overall investment and fund-raising responsibility for $100M+ across 3 funds: GSV, Palmer Foundation (education and the arts in MS) and John N Palmer's (SkyTel Founder and Ambassador to Portugal) personal investment portfolio.

Prior to GulfSouth, Mr. Stovall was a Senior Engagement Manager at the strategy management-consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., where he served firms in the telecommunication services and equipment, computers, specialty chemicals and information technology sectors in areas of operations, organizational design, and strategy. Mr. Stovall was a leader in McKinsey's Telecom Practice where he authored well-reviewed papers on Internet commerce, ISPs and wireless data.

Mr. Stovall has also had experience at Rockwell International, AT&T Bell Labs, and Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (SWBT) in their management-training program, Advanced Management Program (AMP). He received two SWBT Key Awards for Outstanding Service in 1989 and 1991.

Mr. Stovall has held several leadership positions:

* With the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), including National Conference Planning Chair, National Finance Chair, Alumni National Treasurer, and National Advisory Board. Director for Internet America (OTC BB:GEEK.OB).
* Southern Methodist University's (SMU) School of Engineering Executive Advisory Board and SMU's Electrical Engineering Department Advisory Board, from 2000-2004 serving as its first Chairperson.
* Mr. Stovall holds a BS in Electrical Engineering cum laude ('87) from SMU, MS in Computer Science ('89) from Stanford University and an MBA ('94) from Harvard Business School.



Mr. Stovall is married to the former Sonya L Wiggins, they have two children, Zora Lauren and Langston Anthony, and a Shih Tzu named Lucky.

Charles Belk

  Charles Belk has been named to a two year term on the Board of Directors of the University of Southern California Black Alumni Association. Charged with the primary task of raising money for scholarships, Charles Belk's involvement with the BAA continues his 25 year relationship with the university dating back to his sophomore year in college when he was first selected as a Resident Advisor.

Currently, president and chief branding officer of Charles Belk Management, but undoubtedly a USC Trojan for life, Charles Belk's commitment to the university as a student included serving as  president, vice president and treasurer of the USC chapter of NSBE, a Student Senator, a Trojan Knight, and as a member of the Engineering Student Council, the Black Executive Leadership Council, Blue Key, Skull & Dagger and the the Senior Development Committee. Post graduation, Charles Belk continued to be involved with USC from 3,000 miles away, as a member of the Atlanta Alumni Chapter and the South Florida Alumni Chapter; meeting with prospective and incoming students; and placing USC student in summer internships.  A relocation back to southern California earlier this year allowed Charles Belk to re-establish a direct involvement with the university, most recently serving as the key note speaker at the USC School of Engineering Center for Engineering Diversity's 2007 Awards Banquet.

Only a few months back in Los Angeles, Charles Belk,  an avid community volunteer, serves on the 2007 Silver Lake Film Festival Board of Directors and the Chaka Khan Foundation Gala Committee, and is a member of the Los Angeles chapters of the National Black MBA Association and The Recording Academy (Grammy Awards). During his 12 years stint in Atlanta (prior to relocating back to LA), he was on the board of directors of Georgia Court Appointed Special Advocates (GA CASA), Hughes Spaulding Childrens Hospital, Jomandi Theater, House of Love For the Homeless and the Cobb County Transit Advisory Committee.

"Each day, I wake up feeling blessed that God has given me yet another chance, another day, to experience life to it's fullest.  Being involved and giving back is the least I can do, considering all the things that people have given me and done for me." Belk responded when asked how does he finds the time to be so involved.

With a primary mission of providing scholarship funds to support the financial needs of African American students attending USC, the Black Alumni Association has successfully reached out to African American students to provide financial aid and mentoring support for over 30 years.  The USC BAA was founded in 1976 by civil rights activist, the late Dr. Rev. Thomas Kilgore, Jr.

                            

About Charles Belk Management                 Charles Belk Management (www.myspace.com/charlesbelk) is a Los Angeles based entertainment agency that offers artist brand development & awareness and artist management. Services include a complete "branding experience" for up & coming and established recording artists, music producers, actors, models, comedians, directors, on-air personalities and professional athletes.

David E. Garnett

                                                                                   

Mr. Garnett is President of iAM Solutions, LLC (iAM). iAM is a woman and minority owned business enterprise. iAM provides consulting in the areas of: Technology, Go to Market Strategies, business development for start ups, and the development of end to end solutions in the XML, biometric and digital office environment that unite Communities of Practices. iAM’s targeted market is Government, K-16 andFortune 100 clients.

In August 2002, iAM acquired the "Minority Online Information Services" database (MOLIS) from ScienceWise. MOLIS is a one-stop source of in-depth information about the research and educational capabilities of 118 HBCUs and 176 Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). The MSI group is comprised of 130 Hispanic-Serving Instutions (HSIs), 30 Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and other 16 Minority Postsecondary Institutions (OMPIs). MOLIS provides information on the institutions' research centers, research interests and capabilities, facilities, equipment, faculty profiles, statistics on the number of degrees awarded and enrollment figures, scholarship and fellowship information, and federal opportunity alerts. Federal agencies use MOLIS to identify an institution's capabilities so that they can help them build capacity in the area of grants and contracts. In June of 2006 iAM launched its "Communiversity" initiative that extends its database to other webbased tools to uniquely connect the HBCU/MI community to the small business, entrepreneurs, professionals, and Faith Based Organizations.

Prior to iAM, Mr. Garnett was President and CEO of Chrystal Software, a member of Xerox Technology Enterprises (XTE). XTE is a business development arm of Xerox Corporation chartered with the identification, development and successful commercialization of new technologies. David was appointed to this position in January of 2000.

Prior to Chrystal Software, Mr. Garnett was Senior Vice President of Global Accounts where he was responsible for the strategy and operational direction for Xerox’ top 500 accounts worldwide. These accounts represent 52% of the United States revenue and 37% of the worldwide revenues. The strategy comprehended the global delivery of Xerox's entire portfolio of solutions, services and products. During Mr. Garnett's tenure in this assignment the revenue grew at an annualized rate of 10% on a base of $1.7B.

Mr. Garnett joined Xerox in 1978. Since then he has held numerous field positions which included: Office Systems Sales Representative, Midwest Region Systems Training Manager, Branch Manager Systems, Region Systems Operations Manager, Region Agent Manager, District Manager-Oakbrook, National Systems Sales Operations Manager, Western Region General Manager of North American Systems Sales, Vice President of Field Operations - Mid-Atlantic Area, Vice President Xerox Professional Document Services and USCO Vice President of Field Operations - North Atlantic Area.

Mr. Garnett was born in Buffalo, NY. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a member of the Omega Psi Phi and Boule’ Fraternities. He is involved with a number of community activities, including: Children’s National Medical Center-Director, DC Public School Foundation – Former Chairman, Washington Board of Trade- Former Director, Historical Black College Visitation Program-Sponsor, Xerox Foundation. - Former trustee, National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education – (NAFEO) - Chairman of Corporate Advisory Council, Metropolitan A.M.E. Church Senior Steward Board, 2001 Distinguished African American Alumni – University of Pittsburgh; Man of the Year Metropolitan A.M.E. Church 2000; Northern Virginia Urban League – Board of Directors. In November of 2004 he received a "Distinguished Varsity Alumni Award" from the University of Pittsburgh.

He and his wife Sheila, reside in Clifton, VA.  They have two sons, Kevin and David and three grand children

Harold E. Doley Jr.

A distinguished member of the New Orleans business community, Harold Doley, Jr. was the first African-American member of the New York Stock Exchange when he began his career there in 1972. Three years later, Doley founded his own financial firm -- the realization of a dream that began with a childhood curiosity for business fostered inside his father's local grocery store. Doley Securities, Inc., the oldest African American owned investment-banking firm in the nation. Doley Securities, Inc. provides investment products and services to institutional clients. As the lead investment banker for Doley Securities, Inc., Mr. Doley guides the firm's participation in tens of billions of dollars in transactions annually involving federal agencies, state and local governments, international entities, and corporate and institutional clients.

Villa Lewaro, the home of Madame C.J. Walker on the Hudson in Irvington, NY was acquired by Harold E. Doley Jr.,in 1994. He did not disclose the cost. It was designed by the first registered black architect, Vertner Woodson Tandy, at a cost of $250,000.

Originally bequeathed to the NAACP, the estate which is located on two acres of land and contains a thirty-five room house and a carriage houses. Madame Walker selected the site due to its proximity to the estates of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.

Ditra Edwards

  Ditra has centered her life's work on the intention of working with communities of color to fight for justice. A skilled trainer, facilitator, community organizer, fundraisers and strategists, Ditra brings a high level integrity and effectiveness to all of her work.

Over the last year Ditra has served as a consultant in partnership with the Hill Snowdon Foundation, The Center for Applied Research and Technical Assistance, Inc. (CARTA), The Funders Collabrative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) and The Praxis Project. As a consultant, Ditra brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in the areas of organizational and leadership development, community strategy and relationship building.

From 1999 to 2005, Ditra Edwards was on the staff of LISTEN, Inc., serving as Executive Director from 2002 to 2005. Under Ditra's leadership the organization grew tremendously. The organization secured and managed the National Roots Initiative for two years in partnership with the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing. Ditra also won multi-year funding to secure the infrastructure of LISTEN and core support for the grass roots organizations supported by the organization.

As director of Training and Youth Development at LISTEN, Ditra was responsible for the design and implementation of the Global Exchange Program which supported the youth activist from the United States and their counterparts in other countries to learn about leadership and democracy. Ditra was also the catalyst for the content and framework of the organization's leadership and youth development curriculum. At LISTEN, Ditra also helped incubate Youth Education Alliance (YEA), a DC based youth organizing group fighting for equality education in DC Public Schools. YEA has recently transitioned into and independence organization. Finally, during her tenure at LISTEN, Ditra help to co-create the national network of youth workers and organizers called Building Leadership Organizing Communities (BLOC).

Prior to LISTEN, Ditra served as Senior Program Director for Community Programs at the YMCA of Greater Boston. During her tenure at the YMCA, she helped to found and direct the nationally recognized Youth Workers Alliance of Boston. In addition, she was responsible for the vision and direction of the Greater Boston YMCA Youth development Center. As a facilitator for the Academy of Educational Development's (AED) National Youth Workers Training Institute, Ditra is certified to deliver professional development for youth workers in all areas and disciplines.

Ditra has severed on the board of the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing, and presently serves on the Columbia Heights Shaw family Support Collaborative and Emory Beacon of Light Community Development Corporation board of directors. Ditra was the recipient of the Salzburg Seminar Fellowship, Session 366 on Urban Youth and the Smithsonian Institute, Museum Leadership Award

Wendy Y. Carter

Raised in a home filled with poverty, alcoholism and abuse, Dr. Wendy Carter persevered against the odds to earn five degrees from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently serving as a program coordinator for the University of Maryland Baltimore County PROMISE (Maryland’s AGEP) program, Dr. Carter also owns her own company that markets her dissertation completion product, "TA-DA Thesis and Dissertation Accomplished™." TA-DA is a product which she created, developed, and shares with graduate students to help demystify the maze of higher education.

As a result of her personal adversities, Dr. Carter has a passion for helping people succeed.  A strong advocate of higher education, in the midst of her educational trials, Dr. Carter realized that the thesis and the dissertation phase is where fifty percent of students drop-out. In response to this startling statistic, she developed an interactive CD-ROM tutorial product designed to alleviate the high attrition rate among graduate students working on dissertations or theses.

One of five children, this eager young scholar’s parents could not afford to send her to college. Keeping her eyes on the prize, when told something could not be accomplished, Dr. Carter, found the means to succeed despite the obstacles. As a result, Dr. Carter has adopted author Julia Cameron’ s (The Artist’s Way) personal philosophy "Leap and the net will appear," a motto which served Dr. Carter throughout her educational career.

As a student at the rigorous Boston Latin Academy (formerly Girl’s Latin), Dr. Carter was able to attend one of the country’s most demanding preparatory schools and excel both academically and as a leader.  To escape an alcoholic household, she applied to Stanford for her undergraduate program, where she was accepted.  She earned both a B.A. and M.A. from Stanford in six years, in addition to becoming a single parent.

After graduation, Dr. Carter went to work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Unchallenged by her work, Carter applied for and was accepted to Carnegie Mellon’s School of Urban and Public Affairs for their Master’s program in Management and Public Policy.  Acceptance into the program was a stellar accomplishment, but as a single parent without financial aid the news was bittersweet. In keeping with her motto, she "leapt," and the funding net appeared with a Patricia Harris Fellowship.

Again getting funding after her admittance to the doctoral program, Dr. Carter was accepted to the nationally-recognized Ph.D. program in sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Securing a six-year research assistantship, Dr. Carter honed the skills she now markets to become the first in her group to finish her course-work in the doctoral program.  Despite failing her qualifying exams, she succeeded in her second try while suffering from depression and continuing to raise her daughter. Today, her daughter is a senior majoring in Communications at Howard University.

In all, Dr. Carter has identified roadblocks throughout her life, overcome them, and moved forward to advance to new levels of success. As a woman, parent, educator, motivational speaker and business owner, Dr. Carter exemplifies leading by example.

Lewis Hamilton is For Real

OK this one almost caught me by surprise. I say almost because I've actually heard this guy's name before today. Now I'm not one of those folks who actually keeps up with Formula One racing, in fact the sport has been going downhill for a while, and they keep thinking of new ways to revitalize it. Well Lewis Hamilton might be the guy to do that.

Today Hamilton won the US Grand Prix. He's only 22.

Rookie sensation Lewis Hamilton did it again, racing to his second straight Formula One victory in Sunday's U.S. Grand Prix.

   The first black driver in F1's 61-year history has finished all seven races this season in the top three. He now leads Mercedes McLaren teammate and two-time world champion Fernando Alonso by 10 points in the standings.

I'm a car freak, I must admit. OK maybe a car fan, but I really am about the technology, not so much about the thrill of being a fan of the celebrities. But race drivers are no joke in the skills department.
A young, good looking guy like Lewis, who his folks named after Carl Lewis, the sprinter, has a good chance to bring a lot more attention to the sport.

Of course lots of blackfolks are going to claim him in the old ritual. And much bloviation will follow about breaking barriers. Maybe my bow Willie T. Ribbs will get some play out of this. His debut a decade or so at the Long Beach GP where he failed to win any commanding titles left the hoo-rah section a little cold and limp, and of course Ribbs had serious attitude. So he wasn't about to be placed in anybody's poster. That's something rather common about F1 and certainly superbike racers. They are incredible egos, like jet fighter pilots, they simply don't downplay it. So if Hamilton is like other speedsters, and unlike the Aw Shucks crew in NASCAR, then his adolation from the black rank and file may come late if ever. I can't see him trying to get an interview with Tavis or Oprah.

Tavis? Oprah? Where do we get these names?

Anyway, congratulations to Hamilton. Another black person at the top of another pile. Get use to it.

Here is a great interview with Hamilton to give you an idea.

Ursula Burns

According to the Buffalo News, there's going to be a new CEO of Xerox Corporation soon. 

Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy, 54, in April named Ursula Burns, 48, president with the expectation that she would move up when Mulcahy steps down, analysts say.

Burns, who grew up in a housing project in Manhattan, also became the only inside director besides the CEO.

Burns “is to business what Condi Rice is to government, in terms of someone who never grew up expecting to be a president of a major corporation,” said John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan and president of the National Association of Manufacturers, where Burns is a director. “It’s hard, regardless of color and gender, to reach the high level of responsibility she’s reached.”

--

This is not unexpected from Xerox. I learned a lot about management philosophy at Xerox which was my first corporate gig out of school. I had three internships there, in one I built the Affirmative Action and Manpower Planning reporting system. Xerox has always been serious about succession planning and management by objective, rather than by personality. So the culture of advanced meritocracy have always been present. Additionally, the company has had a strong black executive and management presence for decades. Starting with Bernard Kinsey in the 80s.

I have my own little stories about black managers at Xerox and today they are still being written. Congrats to Burns.

Jeremy Clarkson: My Kind of Brit

In speaking about a 185 MPH car, Clarkson writes:

"Think of it as an Aussie from the outback. Maybe he can’t quote Shakespeare. Maybe he’s never heard of Terence Conran. But he can smash all the teeth clean out of your mouth with a single punch. That's the Monaro"

I love this guy. When it comes to lining up ballsy adverbs around the performance of hot cars nobody matches Clarkson. In the wimpified world of American metrosexuality, few people have managed to distinguish between manliness and machismo. I hear that they've got that problem across the pond as well. But Clarkson has managed to keep just the right amount of cave in his manhood, abetted as he his by access to the best sports cars the world has to offer. 

Dorothy Dandridge

Andre Watts Transcendant

I can still remember the day when I heard Andre Watts for the first time. He was playing this, Chopin's Revolutionary Etude Opus 10 #12. I was listening to KUSC, of of LA's two classical radio stations. Around my sophomore year, having finished Godel, Escher, Bach, it seemed to me that I should start listening to...well Bach. And taking the normal route, I started listening for preludes and fugues. I already was familiar with the Brandenburg concertos through Walter Carlos, so I'd expand. KUSC had a night dedicated to that, (remember classical station program guides?) Then out of nowhere comes this incredibly dense, passionate and powerful stuff. Blew my freakin' mind.

It was Watts' live concert that probably went down in history. He broke two strings on the concert piano that night at Lincoln Center and he was up for his second or third encore when he played Liszt's Transcendental Etude #10, another instant favorite.

Somewhere, I still have a cassette tape recording of that very radio broadcast. On the other side of it was the Art of Noise and Malcolm McLaren, my other two musical loves of the early 80s.

'Buked

Roscoe Lee Browne

Roscoe Lee Browne died this weekend in Los Angeles at the age of 81. He was a role model for me.

I think everyone's first reaction to Roscoe Lee Browne was "who does he think he is?". And the more you watch him, the more transfixed you become and then you start doubting yourself for doubting him. As a young man I was always told that every black actor was always more dignified in person than they could ever be allowed to be on the screen. To think that Browne could possibly be more dignified than he appeared on television seemed incredible, it made everything he did even that more impressive.

I've only seen him in the past several years in his role in 'Black Like Me'. He played according to form, something of a stereotype of himself, an 'overeducated' black man in the American South. His voice, his diction were true to form. He was in that very classic way, an actor. Pronounce the long 'o' in the word actor.

Recently, hanging out with relatives the conversation ran to alumni of Lincoln University, where my father first went to study physics. I learned that Browne was an audacious character. He was a quite the track star and ladies' man, I was told. It seemed hard to reconcile Browne cutting such a figure, but that he was. And so I remember him as a man audacious enough to defy those expectations of him, to imbue with unforgettable and undeniable dignity and presence, the small shell of a black actor in 20th century America.

Johnson Beharry

Johnson Beharry is the first recipient of the Victoria Cross since the posthumous awards to Lieutenant Colonel H. Jones and Sergeant Ian John McKay   for service in the Falklands War in 1982. He is the first living recipient of   the VC since Keith Payne and Rayene Stewart Simpson, both Australian, for   actions in Vietnam in 1969, and the first living recipient of the VC in the   British Army since Rambahadur Limbu, a Gurkha, in the Indonesia-Malaysia   confrontation in 1965. As of 26 June 2006, he is one of only 12 living   recipients of the VC, and the youngest.

Beharry was born in Grenada, and has four brothers and three  sisters. He moved to the UK in 1999.

On 1 May 2004, Beharry was driving a Warrior Tracked Armoured Vehicle that   had been called to the assistance of a foot patrol caught in a series of   ambushes. The Warrior was hit by multiple rocket propelled grenades, causing   damage and resulting in the loss of radio communications. The platoon   commander, the vehicle’s gunner and a number of other soldiers in the   vehicle were injured. Beharry drove through the ambush, taking his own crew   and leading five other Warriors to safety. He then extracted his wounded   colleagues from the vehicle, all the time exposed to further enemy fire. He   was cited on this occasion for "valour of the highest order".

While back on duty on 11 June 2004, Beharry was again driving the lead   Warrior vehicle of his platoon through Al Amarah when his vehicle was   ambushed. A rocket propelled grenade hit the vehicle and Beharry received   serious head injuries. Other rockets hit the vehicle incapacitating his   commander and injuring several of the crew. Despite his very serious injuries,   Beharry then took control of his vehicle and drove it out of the ambush area   before losing consciousness. He required brain surgery for his head injuries,   and he was still recovering when he was awarded the VC in March 2005. He   suggested on at least one occasion that he would return to military service if   physically able.

According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, a planned 90-minute drama about Beharry was canceled by the BBC because it was "too positive" and would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

 

Rebecca Walker

Rebecca Walker decided to have a baby.

I'm not sure how old she was when she did, but it was a very difficult decision for her. You see, Walker is a lesbian. Or at least one can say that she was in some sense of the word. Things are only so simple for people who cruise bars.

I finished my bar hopping for the evening and ambled into the bookstore on Rittenhouse Square looking for a hardcover copy of Harlot's Ghost, or a copy of The Satanic Verses, the next books on my reading list. I didn't find Mailer but I did stumble upon this leg of Walker's book tour. As I stood in the rear of the small gathering of quiet voices and anxious questions I found myself becoming more intrigued by the scene, first out of contrast to my previous encounters, second out of nostalgia for the days I regularly attended such soulful gatherings and thirdly out of genuine interest.

The subject was one which I regularly state as one of the axiomatic pillars of the difference between liberalism and conservatism. Conservatism protects the family from corruption of the state. Liberalism uses the state to protect from the corruption of the family. One can almost equally consider it an axiom that emotionally mature conservatives of this sort come from very well managed families. A well-managed family is not necessarily a good or great one, but it is one from whose strength one can reliably depend. Of course in every society families break, some tragically. In a highly individualistic society as ours, folks can depend on long, ugly streaks of isolation and longing when one is damaged in the home. I have a lot of respect for that healing process which is why I recognized the tough love behind Walker. Yeah I'm a bit more experienced as a dad, but I hear her mom vibes loud and clear. It is a secret language understood only by initiates.

Walker's audience was largely comprised of women who have not suffered through the cleansing agony of childbirth, and one could sense their conflict and ambivalence from a distance. Walker is a master of talking to them straight and guiding them gently. She's got a writer's honesty and self-knowledge. As I surfed her website and perused her bio, I found she's got much experience talking to young folks such as these.

There is genuine confusion and empathy. A thousand conversations that cannot occur in bars await the patient author on book tours. I could feel the tender tendrils extending as each young person walked up to the table after the talk. With one in particular whom I seem to recall in a denim skirt, the two women reminded me of my own two daughters whispering to each other. Oh how women talk. And where else could they go but to each other?

They can come to me, because in the end, big brother that I am, I spent most of the evening acquainting myself with a universalized version of this ritual. How can I protect this, I kept asking myself. How can I keep this part of society working? How can I recognize this from the fraud of eclexia? Walker invoked he who is Chesterton in my mind when she expressed that family works and has worked for hundreds and thousands of years, and 'we' shouldn't be so quick to dismiss its value. She recognizes what era she's living in, and said that those are dangerous words in some quarters. I imagine she would know that very well.

What I didn't really know then as I well as I know now is very much the same thing that these young people don't know. That is that the sexier you are and the more you recognize that free instinct, the more you will recognize your nature to be a parent. We just have lives that are so interesting and compelling outside of the basics of childrearing that to sacrifice our personalities and lifestyles seems such a leap. You get fat. You get tired. You stop experimenting with and 'experiencing' life. Instead you start living to protect life. But surely there are many who have grown up in ways that defy that basic element of humanity. And for those whose tastes and fears get the best of them, Rebecca Walker has written a book called Baby Love.

I love babies so much. I love babies so much. I can just write a whole paragraph about loving babies. But I won't. Still, I was distracted by the 14 month old at the back. That's my guess, anyway. He's an adventurous and curious boy. Loving babies is easy, directing children is hard. It takes dedication, but it also takes the mature realization that you have no choice. It's a job you must grow proud of no matter how painful it is. Everyone knows, no matter how many prize winning and brilliant authors we grow, our society cannot endure massive distrust of the business of raising children properly. I expect and hope the young people who heard Walker out will see through their fears. Their children will thank them. They will know.

As for me, my problem is not children nor families. I grew up straight with some very deep understandings about family that became roaringly self-evident to me despite my fascinating young lifestyle. I am completely given over to family and feeling nicely righteous; extra strength is what I feel. I am compelled to protect and serve. It is why I am Conservative. I don't love humanity generically, I watch and respect what people are capable of. I recognize their strengths and weaknesses, in what they do and what they fail to do. People are capable of enormous acts of heroism and tenderness. People are capable of absolute terrifying butchery and savagery. So I'm willing to be bold enough to suggest that the choices many see as their inheritance is not indeed liberty, but unhinged freedom. That knowing what people can do determines some things that some people must do. More heroes please. More tender, heroic parents and leaders please.

I listened to the lyrics to Salt & Pepa's "None of Your Business" last night and I was reminded of the rejection of the idea of a purity ball. I hear that 'It's my life' thing loud and clear. I know why people reject society's opinions. It's a cold, impersonal society out there. People seem to be caught up in minding their own business. But then again a lot of us are minding our own families. There's only so many football games, beach parties, protest marches, shopping malls and book signings you can go to. Public life has its limits; you're not going to get sustaining love out there. That, you have to build yourself.

For all my lefty friends out there, you know this to be true somewhere in your misty minds. You know that there's something awesome about the indigenous woman who gives birth without prepaid health care and prescription drug benefits. Go ahead and admit it. She's more courageous than you. She's more family-oriented than you. She has resisted all of the compelling lifestyle choices you have. She's not trying to juggle the kids, and the Xs, Ys and Zs of your bourgie desire. She falls in love and has babies. Its a good thing. She might even be illiterate and incapable of having a nuanced conversation about a fascinating book about family. But she's got family.

Maybe our society creates the market for psychosis and psychiatry. Some of us are really crazy. But I think most of us just need a shove in the right direction, and assurances that everything is going to be alright. I watched Latigo Flint take himself metaphorically out of the equation. I read about John Perkins' 20 year suicide. I know there are many many young Americans peering into the pool of parenthood, shivering on the deck and deathly afraid of jumping in. I don't want you to take yourselves out. Do it. Give your kid a freaky name and encourage her to pierce her finger-webs and heave a flying bird to the System. Make her even crazier than you, with all that love and sensitivity you have for Gaia. See if you can stand it.

In the meantime the world keeps turning. With or without the healing powers of a thoughtful and generous soul like that of Rebecca Walker, the beat goes on. We brave the dangers and get strength by giving it to our children. My children make me extraordinarily courageous in ways I never imagined I'd be.

Rebecca Walker had a baby. Aren't you glad you can have a baby?

John Backus RIP

John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN died this week. The world loses another old head and builds from his discoveries and work.

I personally had a love hate relationship with FORTRAN. I learned FORTRAN IV in advance of the FORTRAN 77 standard. Yeah I was still a kid in highschool but I recognized flaws with the language when I saw them. I actually tried to build a game in FORTRAN. That's why I hated it. It was just too inflexible. If only I had seen Simula back then.

But I came to love Backus when I learned BNF, and have appreciated him for that, ever since. Rest, great man.

Boy Makes First Class

Oprah's Academy: Shrinking the Gap

I have been asking about the Liberal Impulse as an open set of questions, but there hasn't been much doubt in my mind that there is something we have in the West, in the Functioning Core, in Christian Charity that gives us plenty of good reasons to be do-gooders around the globe. Having been immersed in matters of security, I got a little imbalanced and various other parts of my brain went dead during a fascinating discussion in Baltimore. As soon as I got home from that discussion I remembered that I forgot to 'hew'.

HEW is Health, Education and Welfare, and these are products of the great engines of commerce we spin in America. Since I don't concentrate on these particular matters, although with Health I may begin, I wanted to hear from you all for giving some appeal and flavor to the utopian imperative - doing the most good for the most amount of people. When I speak about the superiority of America, I do so in the context of these liberal benefits which I view as infrastructural to nationhood.

With that background I have to say that what Oprah has done in her gift to South Africa is not only a quintessentially American act of generosity, but it is geopolitically sound too. This is exactly the kind of effort that gives me confidence that at long last Americans will see our potential to change the world for the better.

Oprah has been in this regard, a one woman drop squad. It is a sentiment that I think most successful African Americans harbor - this understanding that at one time in our lives we labored in obscurity waiting and hoping that somebody would recognize our potential and lift us from our sad environments. We have felt this on both sides, as the patron as well. So much effort is spent on an ineffective patronage though. We lack the capital, but not the intent. Oprah, lacking neither has done the absolute right thing. I see her completion in this, and her place in history.

I didn't join the controversy over her decision not to place her academy in the US. I basically have nothing to add on that score. She did right.

Sean O'Sullivan

One more of the thousand points of light doing the right thing to shrink the gap.

O'Sullivan's latest venture is called JumpStart International. JumpStart designs and builds housing developments and rebuilds Iraqi homes one house at a time--sort of like Habitat for Humanity--all with Iraqi labor.

At its peak, JumpStart had 3,500 employees clearing more than 500 destroyed buildings and rebuilding homes at 80 sites. Workers make about $109 a month; the engineers who supervise them make nearly three times that amount, O'Sullivan says JumpStart's salaries are about 20 percent higher than the market wage, for those who can find jobs.

This is another example of American capital and know how working globalization towards just ends.

Lee Archer on Fox

My Kinda Nationalist, Lee Archer, will be on the Oliver North show Sunday night on Fox.

In July of 1941, a small group of Americans, all of them volunteers, gathered at a tiny airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama. Their goal? To build a special fighter unit for the US Army Air Corps. It was not the planes they flew or the weapons they employed that made them unique. It was the color of their skin. In the 1940's our military, like our country, was segregated. And many inside Washington power circles believed black men didn’t have the courage or the skill to fly combat aircraft. Forced to train and serve in a segregated unit, the Tuskegee Airmen would have to prove them wrong. And they did.

 

They overcame racism at home and abroad and by the end World War II, these pilots earned military respect for their air prowess. Nicknamed the "Red Tails" for the color painted on their aircraft, over 1,000 black aviators and thousands of mechanics and technicians were trained at Tuskegee. The Red Tails flew over 15,000 combat missions and destroyed over 250 enemy planes. But perhaps their most impressive accomplishment didn’t involve destruction or death. They saved lives. As you will hear in this Sunday's episode, during Allied escort missions over Europe, these men never lost a bomber to the enemy.

Set your Tivos.

Muhammad Ali At 65

The other night on ESPN Classic, there was a retrospective on Muhammad Ali's career. It's one of the best. It's not complete by a long shot, but it has a certain edge on his career vis a vis the Nation of Islam and his conscientious objection that rub me the right way.

I betrayed my father as a youth by writing to Muhammad Ali telling him that I wished he were my father. I should ask Pops if he remembers. I remember waiting for a reply, and somewhere dimly I think I got one. Ali had that kind of effect on me, he said what he meant and it flowed naturally. Ali's spirit was that of a candid and clear defiance. He defied all that expected him to be anything less than a free and full man, but even looking at that picture one cannot be fully apprised of his greatness. The dialog only goes as far as that narrative of the triumph of a black man over those whites who would deny him whatever.

This post is a reminder of what a champion he was outside of the ring, in profound ways that only a few people have come to understand. Perhaps one day we'll know the rest of the story.

David M. Porter

David is a friend of the family. I forget how lucky I am until I start touching base with friends and family around the holidays..

WASHINGTON, D.C. – David Porter, Director of Graduate Programs for the Howard University School of Business, and a veteran educator, entrepreneur, and consultant to cable diversity groups, has been named Executive Director of the Walter Kaitz Foundation, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), which oversees management of the Foundation.

Porter will commence his position with Kaitz on August 28, 2006 reporting to Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO, NCTA.  He succeeds Debbie Smith, who departed Kaitz earlier this year to join the Human Resources department of Discovery Communications. 

“David has provided inspirational leadership on diversity issues for two decades and has made a significant contribution to the advancement of diversity among large American companies,” noted McSlarrow.  “His expertise and insight, as well as his relationships with diversity leaders across the country, will help strengthen the Kaitz Foundation’s position as the pre-eminent supporter of diversity initiatives in the cable industry.”

“I’ve enjoyed my relationship with cable diversity advocates and have admired the work of the Kaitz Foundation for many years,” said Porter.  “I’m eager to help fulfill the Foundation’s mission to fuel the growth of diversity initiatives for the cable industry, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to expand and enhance the sterling legacy of the Foundation.”   

Porter has served in his position at Howard University in Washington, D.C., since 2003.  Prior to that, he was an assistant professor at the UCLA Anderson School and served as faculty director as well as co-creator of the UCLA African American Leadership Institute. 

At UCLA, Porter helped develop the Executive Leadership Development Program of the National Association of Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC), which in recent years has provided leadership training at the Anderson School to hundreds of NAMIC members and cable executives of color.

Porter also has held professional positions at Amoco, Pacific Bell, and Xerox; served as Treasurer of the National Society of Black Engineers; and consulted with numerous Fortune 500 companies on diversity-related issues.

Porter holds five college degrees:  a PhD in organizational behavior and a Masters Degree in Sociology from Harvard; as well as a Masters Degree in Industrial Engineering, a Masters Degree in Sociology, and a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Engineering, all from Stanford.

A Tribute to Ed Radlauer

I'm a speed freak.

Over the past few years I've recognized the deep gearhead in me coming out. As much as I dig writing and politics and cultural criticism and all that literary stuff, you can bet that a sporty car will always turn my head. There's no question in my mind that much of my engineer's gut was deeply influenced not only by science-fiction writers like Bradbury, Asimov et al, but also by a cat named Ed Radlauer.

I remember Radlauer the same way I remember Edmund Scientific, science sticker books and Danny Dunn, as a staple of my upbringing that raised my parents' eyebrows. Radlauer, however was the one that raised them in concern. When I was in the fifth and sixth grades, my folks thought I should be reading more difficult books. Radlauer's books were large books for kids with extraordinarily bright color photos of drag racers, chopper motorcycles, minibikes, dune buggies, baja trucks, bonneville racers and stock car and short paragraphs appropriate for third graders. But who cared about the paragraphs? It was all about those racing vehicles.

It turns out that Alibris had a decent selection of Radlauer books so I picked up a few. This one brings back so many memories. Maybe they do for you too.

In his way, I think Radlauer along with Evil Knievel, Mickey Thompson and Dan Bricklin were the founders of the extreme sports movement. Sure there are some surfers and boarders in there, but I'd bet they were all influenced by these guys.

Robert K. McFerrin Sr

Baritone Robert McFerrin, the first black male soloist at the Metropolitan Opera, died November 24 at age 85. If you love Bobby McFerrin, then you probably remember his dad singing a piece in the cut 'Discipline' on the Medicine Man album. That's exactly the kind of singing I'm trying to find for my next bout of musical Recovery.  Let Bobby know your love at his website. A great piece can be found at Playbill:

McFerrin, the father of vocalist and conductor Bobby McFerrin, was born in 1921 in Marianna, Arkansas, the fourth of eight children of a Baptist minister. As a child, McFerrin was discouraged from singing anything but gospel music, but when he moved to St. Louis in 1936 he auditioned for the choir at Sumner High School and was introduced to classical vocal music.

He received an undergraduate degree from Chicago Musical College in 1946, then moved to New York. In 1949, he appeared in William Grant Still's Troubled Island at New York City Opera and as Amonasro in Aida with the National Negro Opera Company. He joined the New England Opera Company in 1950.

In 1953, McFerrin won the Metropolitan Opera national auditions and became the first black male to join the company. He made his debut in 1955 as Amonasro, three weeks after contralto Marian Anderson became the first black to sing a principal role at the Met. His other roles at the house were Valentin (in Gounod's Faust) and Rigoletto.

McFerrin also sang the role of Porgy (played onscreen by Sidney Poitier) in the soundtrack of the 1959 film of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. He toured internationally as a recitalist and was also active as a teacher.

There is also info from Shep:

Mr. McFerrin toured internationally, showcasing his rich, baritone voice in concerts and opera houses throughout Europe. He sang with the National Negro Opera Company and appeared on Broadway.

In 1973, Mr. McFerrin moved back to St. Louis, performing regularly at venues such as the Sheldon Concert Hall and the St. Louis Art Museum. Though a stroke in 1989 impaired his speaking ability, he was still able to sing. He continued to perform, teach and tour on a demanding schedule until 1998.

Mr. McFerrin often sang alongside his daughter, Brenda McFerrin of Anaheim, Calif., a recording artist, and his son, Grammy-winning conductor and vocalist Robert “Bobby” McFerrin Jr. of Philadelphia, who is best-known for the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

In 2003, Opera America honored the senior Mr. McFerrin with a lifetime achievement award. He earned a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 2004.

Here was an extraordinary man and father. I'm sure he will be sorely missed. There seems to be nowhere I can find his music. Musicbrains could only locate one track, and there's virtually nothing on the web about the National Negro Opera Company. If anybody knows something, let me know. 

Don't Slow Down

Harry Lennix is the man most familiar to us as Commander Lock, the rival of Morpheus in the Matrix Reloaded. However without question his greatest role on screen has been that of Aaron the Moor in Julie Taymor's adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.

I picked up the DVD recently for a song and I add it to my short collection. Having just finished viewing it for the third time ever, my recollection of its lessons, especially those of Aaron himself are different. The first time, I was impressed by the fates that befall those who do the dirty work of empire, but this time I see Aaron the Moor in a completely different light. He is a force of darkness - the one that takes idle violent energy and channels it into complicated plots of destructive genius. I also saw the Lennix performance in the light of fatherhood. He illustrates a different kind of pride here.

This year he gave a commencement address to Santa Monica College, among his more admirable words were these:

Do Not Stop. Do Not Slow Down.

This is a phrase that had something of an Immaculate Conception for me. It isn’t especially new, in fact it is the result of studying in a limited way the ideas of the most famous scientist of the 2Oth Century: Albert Einstein.

In 1905, while working as a clerk in a patent office in the town of Bern, Switzerland, Einstein imagined what it would be like to travel on a beam of light. If a human being were capable of speeding through space at the rate of 186,000 miles or so a second, what would he see? Would the beam of light become static? Would it appear frozen in place?

Well, the fact is that light is the fastest thing that we can measure in the known universe. And its speed must remain constant. Nothing can catch up to it. Ever. It must always be speeding forward at that enormous rate, consistently at 670 million miles per hour. Particle accelerators have shown us that anything with mass approaching light speed would increase in mass. As it increases in mass, as it becomes heavier and bigger, it takes an infinite amount of energy to keep it moving near that speed. Energy, since it must go somewhere, would be converted to into more mass. Therefore, since the speed of the light beam is constant and inalterable, no matter how fast we are going—it is time itself that must be altered. The faster we go, the slower time goes. A person traveling at light speed would cease to be visible to us, and for that person, time would stand still.

It will come as no surprise to you that I am no Einstein, but perhaps you will agree with this basic conclusion: If you ever find yourself running out of time, when you are too busy or too fatigued to follow through on what must be done--just go faster. Time will slow down, so, in theory, as you accelerate, you will have more time. Always do more. Never stand still. Move faster, travel further, risk more, love harder, tell more truth, fight smarter, and always go forward. Time will cooperate. It’s a fact of physics.

It's not often, in fact I imagine that in these days it is a particularly rare occasion when actors fill their proper roles in reminding us of our potential as human beings and through their art do the great deed of moral instruction and bringing light to wise lessons oft forgot.

David Brewer III: The Transformer

"To everybody in this community, you can expect one thing: I am not a reformer; I am a transformer. I am going to transform this district into — not a No Child Left Behind Act district. That is a low star. This is a global, global economy. This is a world in which our children have to compete globally. We're going to shoot for world-class."
-- David L. Brewer III

David Brewer has a distinguished military career, and now he's transforming into the latest hope for the public schools of Los Angeles. In a rather extraordinary political move, The LA Board of Ed has made their choice for the new Superintendant of the LA Unified School District and as the LA Times reports, they're very excited about him:

"Almost everything we threw at him, it seemed, he was able to relate to some experience he had had," said board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte. "He had a presence, a take-charge attitude…. He talked about potential solutions for many issues and was brutally honest about the few things he didn't know."

Hours later, a giddy board President Marlene Canter announced Brewer as the next superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District.

Brewer's surprise selection culminated a seven-month search that saw scores of candidates — many of them well-known educators considered at the outset to be likely choices — fade, flop or withdraw. Although he was an ostensibly unlikely choice, several board members and others said that by the end, Brewer showed leadership skills, intelligence and a commanding, infectious personality that made him what they considered the obvious choice to lead the nation's second-largest school district.

Everything I've seen about this guy so far, bristles of Old School, and I look forward to see a no-nonsense attitude from this man. He seems feerless and not so worried about politics as he is about results, and when the man says 'world-class' I think he means it.

He promises to go to the communities of sub-standard and dysfunctional and request increasing participation between parents and school. Brewer wants to know what goes on after 6pm. He's a fan of Kozol's book Shame of the Nation. He's also got a 'drop squad' mentality with regard to getting kids outside of their environment and letting them see everything out there so that they become familiar with the world of choices they will have.

On this last point, I agree with him 110%. In his interview he said 'field trips' and he gave some personal examples of experiences that bear him out. It is my experience as well, in doing community service that often the best thing you can do for folks in susbstandard communities is get them out of their comfort zone and show them that they will have to learn how to experience other parts of the world. Even if it scares them to death. My kids here in the Redondo School District all look forward to going to Camp Keep. In the South Pasadena elementary school the kids walked to the Post Office (incidentally in the wake of 9/11, there were a lot of questions about anthrax) But even trips much simpler can be life changing. I still remember field trips I took in elementary school, to a science lab and to a bakery.

You can listen to his interview with Patt Morrison here.

Brewer walks into a politcal poop storm with the usual suspects voicing usual complaints:

The top local teachers union official was in no mood to celebrate. "The idea that he has no grounding in K-12 is disturbing," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. "And the idea that UTLA and the broader community were not consulted. I don't want to hear that his wife and family were teachers. That doesn't do it."

"A classroom is different from a battlefield," he added. "The goals and objectives are completely different. And it's disconcerting to a certain portion of teachers who are fighting against military recruitment on campus."

Others took no issue with Brewer but faulted the process.

"What they did was just another mistake," said Luis Sanchez, executive director of InnerCity Struggle. Board members said they don't need legislation to collaborate, but "there's no collaboration that happened here. They basically told the mayor you have to agree with who we choose."

The Rev. Frederick O. Murph, an African American and a Villaraigosa ally, said that it was a "low blow" for the board to act while Villaraigosa was out of town. But he called Brewer "an excellent choice" and a man of integrity.

So, let us watch and see. This is going to be interesting.

Google Minds Unwasted Minds

Google is sponsoring the UNCF. Tell a friend.

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to advancing computing and technology, we're pleased to tell you that the United Negro College Fund and Google have partnered to create the UNCF/Google Scholarship Program. We hope this program will encourage students to excel in their studies, inspire them to become role models and leaders, and help remove the financial barriers for African-American students wishing to pursue an engineering degree.

On the strength of candidates' academic background and demonstrated leadership, we'll be awarding $5,000 scholarships. Students must be enrolled in their junior year of undergraduate study at a UNCF Member College or University or at a participating Historically Black College or University (HBCU), and pursuing a Computer Science or Computer Engineering major.

Tell your friends, or apply yourself -- the deadline for applications is Friday, October 6.