We can all use some space & time for ourselves

When the world gets a little unbearable, I take the time and go to one of the many state, regional and national parks located throughout Colorado. An hour's drive in any direction can put me in the middle of a forest or prairies, or mountains. I experience solitude in these places. Technology is silenced and replaced by natural sounds.

Radical changes need to be made, now!

Education presents a tempting unitary point of influence over a whole host of social problems, with potential downstream effects touching everything from childhood poverty to economic malaise to racial inequity, not to mention existential concerns.

-Sanjay Sarma

Inside out learning (the chess method)
When I was a young soldier stationed in a tiny post in South Korea, I found I had a lot of free time on my hands, and I was bored stiff. We had no computers or television, so I spent a lot of my time playing basketball and reading. A fellow…

Now I have to share my birthday with a national holiday — but that’s fine with me.

Some of my earliest memories of the concept of slavery were in elementary school, where it seems that I first heard that Lincoln freed the slaves. I heard it so much at an early age, if someone said, “Lincoln,” I would finish the sentence, “freed the slaves.” However, I was not the smartest kid in the room, and when I heard …” freed the slaves.” I imagined a bunch of people trapped in a giant cage, and Abraham Lincoln himself opened the door…

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s book is a social & political manifesto sprinkled with star particles.

We can’t get away from it. Racial strife penetrates everything from health, education, law enforcement, and politics. We are divided along deep racial lines, and no matter how you try to get away from it, it’s always there in some form.

The facts do not display the more profound, hidden problems that racism causes. Racial stress can weigh heavily on a Black person. Being Black or watching national news (or because of national news) can be exhausting. I held a belief that there was a place where…

The racism in horror series like Lovecraft Country & Them makes the supernatural demons they encounter as harmless as Sponge Bob.

Years ago I wrote something that I classified as a horror short story. It was about a girl who murdered her step-father because he sexually abused her. The publisher turned it down and stated that the girl's ordeal was horrible for sure, but it was not a horror genre story. He was right, and I understood.

Imagine looking out of your window in the morning and sitting in front of your home are dozens of women cloaked in pastel-colored…

The African American community needs to reconcile history with modern facts, data, and truth.

Haunted by the Past

African Americans have good reason to be skeptical of the medical profession. We have the night doctors’ legendary tales, those bogeymen of African American folklore, which included the needle men’s folklore and the black bottle men. Each of these stories deals with the attack on African Americans’ physical health, who in these urban legends were either poisoned, medically experimented on, or outright murdered. There is no doubt in my mind that each of these legends is based on fact. Health is not…

Almost 100 years ago, African American, Luther Boddy received notoriety for killing two white detectives in Harlem. Over 40,000 police were deployed in a massive three-state manhunt. A look behind the headlines reveals that Boddy faced the same problems that African Americans still face today.

“I cannot understand why some men, immediately on donning a police uniform, become instruments of horror and cruel methods.” Morris Koeing, Luther Boddy’s lawyer, 1922

Luther Boddy, an ex-convict who was known to police in Harlem, for several run-ins with the law, killed two White New York City Detectives, William H. Miller, and Francis J.M…

Private and government sectors have to step in and provide what our schools can’t.

BACKGROUND

The October 2020 Homeland Threat Assessment Report, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security’ stated cybersecurity is the number one threat facing America. This threat is ranked higher than economic security, terrorist threats, illegal immigration, and natural disasters. The cyber threat comes from Federal, state, local, tribal, territorial governments, and the private sector. Ransomware has doubled in the last two years. Additionally, cybercriminal activity was responsible for over 2.7 billion losses in 2018 and had been growing annually. …