The battles we fight – the wars we wage.
The tagline of this occasional blog – “The battles we fight, the wars we wage” — closely describes the life of Frederick Douglass, a Black man born in February 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland, a long-established Colonial community where, up until the Civil War, some one-quarter of all residents were of African or Caribbean descent, and were enslaved.
“The purpose of life is not to be happy,” insists Ralph Waldo Emerson. “It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
I, too, sing America.
When I tell people I want to live in a school bus after I retire, reactions run the gamut. But it’s OK. I’ve already driven a bus – the bus I was riding home from school one Spring day in 1972, in 9th Grade. I wasn’t supervised at all, but only watched by the laughing and licensed bus driver who gave me her seat so that I could drive my own bus down my own street. Continue reading “Stop for Flashing Lights”
Jesse Williams – TV, stage, and film actor, and activist – energized the audience at the BET Awards (and well beyond, via social and news media) with his acceptance speech for the award he received for his humanitarian work.
It is truly moving. Continue reading “The Burden of the Brutalized”
Essays Exploring Craft and the Writing Life
"A Word of Substance"
A guide to crafting captivating music, lyrics and performances
The battles we fight - the wars we wage.
Middletown, CT
Breaking free and paving my own way.
Words of War 