The Jena 6 happening brought nooses back to the mainstream mindset and we now seem to be in the midst of a media frenzy where nooses are seen everywhere and people are put on edge just waiting to be insulted by a length of knotted rope so they can express their indignant outrage.
Today is Columbus Day — a national holiday in the USA — where we celebrate The Original Immigrant’s discovery of us. I, however, think we should be celebrating an even greater force in America that requires the rediscovery of a whole new nation: The United States of China.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be speaking today at Columbia University in the City of New York — and as a graduate of Columbia — I applaud putting into action the mandate and creed that was embedded and steeped into me from that fine Ivy League university: The Moral Obligation to Listen.
Continue reading → The Moral Obligation to Listen: Ahmadinejad at Columbia
We already know Barack Obama has a castrating wife and 
the pain of public observation grew even more extreme as Jesse Jackson recently accused Barack Obama of “acting White.”
Now we must wonder if being born into Black skin is enough to be considered “Black” in America — or does the droplet still triumph in the polling place?
Or is there a behavior and an attitude that must be sustained in order to carry out the wishes, dreams and hopes of the “Black” experience that defines a man beyond the blood?
Continue reading → White Like Them: Obama Caught Not Being Black
When I was but a wee lad at Columbia University in the City of New York as a freshly married, newly-out-of-college, first year graduate student studying theatre — I was pleased when a “Big Name” agent from a “Bigger Name” international talent agency came to one of the plays I wrote and wanted to “take a meeting” with me about representation. You live for moments like that in the hard life of the theatre.
Am I the only one who still regulates the schedule of living in school semesters?
My life is still strangely and curiously divided into three distinct parts: Fall Semester, Spring Semester and Summer Sessions. Why, it’s as if I never left Columbia University in the City of New York’s Morningside Heights Campus!
We have all been subject to “Brown Paper Bag Experiences” when others evaluate us not by our inner selves — but by our outward appearances — and many times they wrongly judge us by jumping to incorrect conclusions. In my article, Coercing Faith, Gordon Davidescu posted this Brown Bag comment:
I think the best analogy (or at least the one I just came up with now) is this: Say you see a person walking down the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. Given New York’s liquor laws you know that he has some sort of alcoholic beverage inside. However, you don’t know if that alcoholic beverage is a beer or wine, or even a wine cooler – unless it is taken out of the bag. Converting is sort of like removing the bottle from the bag. Being Jewish means you have a Jewish Soul – but not everyone with a Jewish Soul hidden in their paper bag realizes that they are Jewish until they take it out of the bag – converting, that is.
Whether you realize it or not, your schooling brands you — fairly or not — with its historic reputation in the perception of the mainstream, middling, public mind.
Continue reading → School Branding: From Football U. to Ivy League
In a recent article, Every Time I Talk to You, I Hear Sirens, we discussed how sounds define your environment. Today, using the same places described in the previous article, I hope we can investigate if smell is even more strongly related to place and memory than sound.
Is smell more valuable than hearing?
Washington, D.C. – Eastern Market:
We lived near the Eastern Market Metro station. There was a large, indoor, sort of farmer’s market nearby – that gave the train station its name — we passed through every day. The food was always fresh. The smell of raisin scones embedded in your clothes was a warm and welcome scent that perfumed you throughout the work day and reminded you that, no matter what happened, your scones always loved you.
New York City — Columbia University:
When we were living in Morningside Heights near Columbia, The City had a garbage strike. When an urban core has to deal with a garbage strike in the dead of summer things quickly begin to rot on the sidewalk. And in the streets. And in your mouth. And there is no harbor from the stench of six foot mounds of black garbage bags that line every sidewalk and street corner. Even if you breathe through your mouth you still smell the putrid sting of vomit that bleeds into every crevice and populates every pore.
Continue reading → Every Time I Think of You, I Smell Something
When we lived in the Alphabet City part of the East Village in New York City our apartment building was located one block away from a fire station and two blocks from a hospital. Having on-duty firemen and working doctors and nurses as your neighbors was a great comfort in a dangerous city, but one of the requirements of having such close proximity to first responders was dealing with the continuous caw of sirens 24 hours a day.
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