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November 2001 Issue |
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Vol. 1 No. 7 | |
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Guest Columnist: Michelle Stevens Article by Lee E. Meadows
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November is what I call the “transition” month. By that I mean it’s a month offering seasonal transition. For those of us in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, November is generally a month that brings cold and warm days. Some days you may need your heat and some days you may need a fan. I suspect it’s transitional for other parts of the country as well. It is also the month that begins the traditional holiday season in the United States, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. Of all the winter holidays, I enjoy Thanksgiving the most. It is devoid of the pressures of gift giving and all the other commercial expectations that go along with most of the other holidays. It’s a time to give thanks to God and focus on our spirituality. In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, I want to bring two projects to the attention of our readers. Prolific Writers of Durham, North Carolina, under the direction of Linda Dominique Grosvenor, author of Like Boogie on Tuesday, is sponsoring their 2nd Annual Sock Drive. This project will distribute socks to needy men, women and children. A complete description of the project is detailed in LitLine. Please support this worthwhile project. More... Michelle Stevens Frustrated, seeking a career change after almost 10 years of agonizing physical and mental labor as a working salon owner, SHE searched her soul deep for an immediate solution. Tired of listening to women complaining and making excuses for the obvious, she was always compelled to SUGGEST advice about their depressing personal relationships. Suddenly, she realized that they not only marveled her expertise, the encouraging words from a sole proprietor who seemed to be maintaining a phenomenal situation with ease WITHOUT A COMMITMENT were most inspiring. As a result of her good nature, without realizing, she had become a motivational speaker--even to herself sometimes. Those who took heed and were COURAGEOUS enough to expedite an EXCLUSIVE PLAN to deliver themselves from their OPPRESSION returned smiling, floating on air, bearing a gift of thanks--most eager to share the details of how they overcame their OPPOSITION. Others who lost their identity--obviously because of LOW SELF-ESTEEM, LACK OF SELF-LOVE, DESPERATE FOR ANY TYPE OF COMPANIONSHIP, returned sad masked, hoping that one day they too will gain strength from her talks to enable them to lift the boulder off their shoulders. More... |
 Rev.
Cornelius R. WheelerCo-Pastor, Vermont Avenue Baptist Church Washington, DC
The dastardly events of September 11 have brought rise to me doing a lot of listening. I listened on that dreadful morning as the disseminators of information detailed each second of the terror and horror of what hate can do to life. I listened to the cries and wails of the thousands most affected by hands of evil intent. I listened to the giants of heroism as they labored in their vain efforts to discover some life among the dead and some remnant amidst the devastation. I listened to the healers when they, as Rudyard Kipling might suggest, seeing the things we given our lives to broken, stooped and built them up with worn out tools. I listened as our nation gathered and prayed for wisdom and guidance and comfort. I listened as the cheerleaders for patriotism fumed at the thought that non-American, non-Christian zealots would have the audacity to strike a blow against the strongest, most powerful nation in the world on their own shores. I listened as the bulldozers and earthmovers unforgivingly scraped away what were once symbols of the architectural skill and military might of our nation. I listened as the medal-laden masters of our martial dominance resolutely assured us that revenge was in the making. I listened to our neophyte national authority figure admonish our alleged adversaries and issue his final warnings to hand over the leaders of their national guile and deceit or face the consequences. More...
Lee E. Meadows Unlike their predecessors, the African-American Private Investigator as a central character, had no early 20th century novelized model, but essentially came into existence through the characters John Shaft (Tidyman, 1970) and Clio Brown (Komo, 1970). Though Tidyman was not the first non-African-American to write about a fictional African-American character (Ball, 1966 et.al.), he could trace his roots to Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones, but unlike their tough counterparts, these characters worked outside the established legal system relying more on wit and daring. Armed with a fine sense of street wisdom, razor sharp dialogue and social rebellion, these protagonists were dispensers of justice and hard-boiled social insight.
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