Some Random Thoughts

Now that winter is here, the one good thing about it is I don't have to worry about a container of ice cream melting before I get home.

Is there an app for locating public restrooms in  New York City?

Maybe one day porn DVDs--gay, straight, and bisexual--will feature audio commentaries by the models and the directors and have behind-the-scenes footage. They already feature trailers. Also, will 3D porn movie theatres be the next craze?

Isaac Hayes and Lou Rawls began some songs with a long monologue. Shouldn't they be considered the first real rappers?

Have the people who call New York the world's greatest city been to every city in the world?  That's like a restaurant having a sign in the window that says "We Have The Best Hamburgers In Town." Have they eaten in every restaurant in town? How do they know?

When a pharmacy puts the word "Chemists" in their name, it sounds like they have test tubes and other lab equipment in a back room.

Mad Men, the dramatic television series about the advertising business in the 1950s and 1960s, during its seven-season run on AMC, took viewers back to a time when men knew how to dress: fedoras, three-piece suits, cuff links, and shoes, not Nike sneakers.

A Black Gay Poet Struggles Against Adversity

 Pressin' My Way (Shady Facts, $10) is a self-published book by Lawrence DeWyatt Abrams containing honest, vivid, and brave poems about what it means to be a double threat in contemporary America--black and gay.

In the lengthy introduction (which could use considerable cutting), a 27-year-old Harlem resident, writes that "it has been my words that have provided a healing salve for my most wounded spaces" and "very often [poetry] is the only thing that stands between me and insanity."

This rising young poet, who heads Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD), has created a book about spirituality, sexual identity, and love.

Among the best poems in Pressin' My Way are the comical "Fairy Queen" ("Take off those high heels/go in the bathroom/find some ivory/and wash your face/'cause blue is not your color."); the terrifying "Edge" ("Razor blade, you and I are old friends"); and "Somewhere Under the Bridge," the beautifully written homage to the late African-American poet Donald W. Woods, Abrams's mentor.

Despite adversity in its many guises, Larry Abrams reveals in this very slim volume (53 pages) that he is more than willing and able to continue to press his way.

Note: This article was originally published in the Manhattan Spirit newspaper on March 15, 1996  as part of its monthly Manhattan Pride lesbian and gay supplement.

Gay And Lesbian Audiobooks

Ron Hall of Seattle [in 1996] launched the first audiobook publishing company in the United States to specialize in gay and lesbian fiction.

The Hall Closet Book Company, thus far, has published only two mystery titles, available for sale or 30-day rental (with an option to buy): Fadeout, Joseph Hansen's first book in the Dave Brandstetter series and Hallowed Murder by Ellen Hart, from her Jane Lawless series.

Among the five books Hall Closet plans to bring out on audiotape this year are The Gifts of the Body by Rebecca Brown (a March release) and Blackbird by the African-American novelist Larry Duplechan.

All of the audiobooks, which Hall calls "dramatic reads" because the readers provide each character with his or her own voice, are unabridged. In a Seattle newspaper interview, Hall, a former bookstore manager, stated that he prefers offering books this way so that "the listener gets every word the author wrote, all the subplots and character developments, settings, and motives. It's a much richer experience."

Unfortunately, none of the tapes were made available for review in this column.

Note: This article was originally published in the Manhattan Spirit newspaper on March 15, 1996 as part of its monthly Manhattan Pride lesbian and gay supplement.

Thomas A. Dorsey, The Father of Gospel Music

Thomas A. Dorsey (1899-1993), who wrote more than a thousand gospel songs, among them "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," "If We Never Needed the Lord Before (We Sure Do Need Him Now)," and "Peace in the Valley," was called "the father of gospel music," a title he rightfully earned.

His most famous composition, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," became Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s favorite. The classic song has been translated into more than fifty languages. Dorsey wrote it following the death of his first wife who died during childbirth. The child too died shortly after birth. The song's words mirrored Dorsey's feelings of grief and depression.

Born in Villa Rica, Georgia, Dorsey, when he was in his teens, played the blues on the piano in bordellos, a fancy name for whorehouses. He later composed several blues and jazz tunes and became known by his stage name, Georgia Tom. According to Wikipedia, "In 1923, he became the pianist and leader of the Wild Cats Jazz Band accompanying Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, a charismatic and bawdy blues shouter who sang about lost love and hard times."

Dorsey created the term "gospel music," merging elements of the blues and the spiritual. So people who consider the blues the Devil's music should be reminded that its presence is in gospel music, thanks to Thomas A. Dorsey.

Note: This blog post is based on an unpublished biographical sketch I recently found. I wrote it on February 15, 1993. Some changes to the original have been made. I hope to do more research on Dorsey's life and musical career.

New York In The Before Times

Watching the marvelous 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada makes me long for the New York of the before times, meaning the pre-COVID-19 New York.

In the movie, starring Meryl Streep, we see people on the streets, in restaurants, fashion shows, art galleries, and in the workplace (the offices of the fashion magazine Runway) without a face covering, without social distancing, without a single hand sanitizer dispenser in sight.

If only we could bring back that New York ASAP!

Donald Trump Will Not Be The Forgotten Man

On the sidewalk at the northwest corner of Broadway and 110th Street and the sidewalk at the northeast corner of Broadway and 106th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, someone wrote with a blue marker pen this message: "IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY 11-07-20." Obviously, it was to commemorate Joe Biden's defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

But despite our elation over Trump's defeat, we shouldn't forget that that doesn't mean he will fade away. It just means he will no longer occupy the White House and that he will no longer be in power.

You can be sure his presence will be felt in other ways via Twitter, rallies, conservative talk radio, etc., criticizing and belittling Biden and the Democrats every chance he gets.

Trump will definitely refuse to go gently off the stage. His enormous ego will not allow it.

Encouraging The Reading Of Books Via A Tote Bag

This past summer, a young black woman stood in line about three or four people ahead of me, outside the Trader Joe's supermarket on Columbus Avenue, near 93rd Street, in Manhattan. She carried a canvas tote bag that was printed on the side with this message: "Reading Can Seriously Damage Your Ignorance." In the center of the words was a drawing of an open book.

Being a book lover, the message struck a chord with me. I thought it was a wonderful way to promote the reading of books and to celebrate the life of the mind.

An LGBT Moon Colony?

Radio talk show host Thom Hartmann, a liberal, once briefly interviewed a scholar who worked at a libertarian think tank. The scholar had written a paper regarding the colonization of the moon as a social experiment.

That idea got me to thinking: what if lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people established a moon colony? Would that society be just and egalitarian or corrupt and totalitarian?

A Flu Epidemic In 1820

On October 24, in the year 1820, according to the U.S. Capitol Historical Society's 2020 calendar entry for that day, "J[ohn] Q[uincy] Adams notes that his father [John Adams, the 2nd U.S. president, 1797-1801] is victim of flu epidemic raging in northern cities."

In light of today's COVID-19 pandemic, I would like to get an answer to the following questions: how did they handle the flu? Who was most at risk back then? How severe was it?

We might be able to draw a lesson or two from this history.

An Emerging Writer Isn't Always Someone Young

 In the November/December 2020 issue of Poets & Writers, you will find the 5th Annual 5 Over 50 profiles of writers age 50 plus who have published a debut book.

I just started my subscription so I was unaware of this annual acknowledgment until now even though I've read Poets & Writers for several years off and on. Somehow I missed those previous 5 Over 50 profiles.

Nevertheless, I was happy to see them. Usually it's a celebration of writers under 30 or under 40 who get most of the ink.

Finally, the 50 plus demographic, of which I'm a member--AARP's constituency--are getting some respect from the literary community, who have been too youth-obsessed when it comes to first-time authors.

As the editors at Poets & Writers have rightly pointed out, " 'new' and 'emerging' are not synonymous with 'young.' "

Can I get an "Amen" to that?

Should Compton Become The New Brooklyn?

 I don't know if Aja Brown, a young African-American urban planner, is still the mayor of Compton, California. Assuming that she is, I will point to an article that appeared on Los Angeles magazine's website dated October 2, 2013. (I accessed the article on February 5, 2019 while looking for anything about the city I once called home in the 1960s.)

What caught my attention, you ask? It was Ms. Brown's prediction, her desire, her belief that Compton will be the new Brooklyn. Disheartened, she said, by "the impact rap has had over Compton for decades," she wants to "rebrand our community."

As any mayor worth his or her salt would do, Ms. Brown touted Compton's many assets: "We're 15 minutes from downtown [it's not clear if she's talking about Los Angeles or Long Beach or both], the port and LAX. We're surrounded by freeways and have light and heavy rail and great institutions....We're ready to have a renaissance."

Let's hope that that renaissance she favors doesn't displace the city's  current residents. I don't know if Ms. Brown has ever been to Brooklyn. But before Compton is turned into a hipster's destination, she should bear in mind the many longtime Brooklynites, like the African-Americans living in the Crown Heights section, who had to leave because the area became too gentrified, too hip, too expensive.

There's an old saying, be careful what you wish for, you may get it. 

We Shouldn't Cherry-Pick History

 The News Briefs column in the January 17-23, 2003 issue of the Gay City News had an item headlined "We Don't Want Him." The him being referred to is none other than Adolf Hitler. The news brief, written by Andy Humm, announced that HBO was "developing a documentary called The Pink Fuhrer" that explored "whether or not Adolf Hitler was homosexual." 

Seventeen years later, the film, which I have not seen, should by now be available on DVD. I would like to see it to judge for myself if what is discussed is credible.

The thing that interests me more is the headline--"We Don't Want Him" instead of "Was Hitler Gay?" I can understand the urge to reject Hitler because of his genocidal, anti-Semitic pronouncements and behavior. But if he was a closeted homosexual, then he becomes part of gay history, like it or not.

Gay history has the tendency to celebrate only those deemed the good guys while ignoring those identified as villains like J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Cecil Rhodes, and the murderers Leopold and Loeb.

If we're going to study gay history, it should be studied like all other histories, warts and all; the good, the bad, and the ugly; the sacred and the profane. By sanitizing and cherry-picking history, it becomes distorted and valueless. Looking at history in its fullness makes it possible for us to more accurately analyze and evaluate people, attitudes, actions, and events.

We can't do that if we hide the historical record. The history exists and we have to deal with it.

A Briticism Used In An American Op-Ed Article

 "Argle-bargle" is a term I've never encountered until I read Jennifer Senior's op-ed piece in The New York Times (September 23, 2020), called "The Ginsburg-Scalia Act Was Not a Farce." The article is about the friendship between Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, who were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Ms. Senior described Justice Scalia as a "hero of the Federalist Society, defender of originalism, dreaded foe of progressive argle-bargle." [Italics mine.]

I looked up "argle-bargle" in my copy of  the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Second Edition (2004), suspecting the term might be a British import. The closest term in the dictionary is "argy-bargy," identified as of British origin and meaning "a dispute or wrangle."

Consulting one of my two battered copies of The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, I found the word "argufy," of no particular origin. It is defined as "to argue or wrangle, esp. over something insignificant." That's about as close to "argle-bargle" as I could get in an American dictionary.

"Argle-bargle" is one of those British expressions that have entered American speech, much like "gobsmacked," "shambolic," and "the full monty."

One clue to the origin of "argle-bargle" is Cockney rhyming slang. Lonely Planet's London guidebook (Lonely Planet Publications, 2012) says that Cockney rhyming slang "may have developed among London's costermongers (street traders) as a code to avoid police attention. This code replaced common nouns and verbs with rhyming phrases." For example, " 'going up the apples and pears' meant going up the stairs, the 'trouble and strife' was the wife, 'telling porky pies' was telling lies and 'would you Adam and Eve it?' was would you believe it?"

In the meantime, maybe I should send a copy of this blog post to Melissa Mohr, who writes the "In a Word" column for The Christian Science Monitor Weekly magazine. Ms. Mohr might be able to shed some light on "argle-bargle." 

Bridging Cultural Differences Via Books

 On my way home from shopping at the Target store in East Harlem, I saw a poster taped to a lamppost on 116th Street. At the bottom of the poster it announced the formation of the Brown Boys Book Club. The aim it said was "to make reading cool" and to promote the reading of "books by us for us." It wasn't clear who the "us" was it was referring to. African-Americans or Hispanics? Or was the reference to both groups?

Going by the name of the club, I think it's safe to assume that membership is exclusively for young males of color. It's a well-known fact that women and girls read more than men and boys. In fact, I've seen more women and girls than males reading on the bus, in the subway, and on park benches. So it's a good idea to encourage boys to be as quick to pick up a book as they are to pick up a basketball.

But I don't think these boys should be limited to reading "books by us for us," especially in a city as racially and ethnically diverse as New York.

I am a lifelong reader and my literary tastes, like my musical tastes, are very broad. As a kid, I read stories about Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes; stories by Edgar Allan Poe; the Hardy Boys mysteries; The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, etc.  My introduction to Truman Capote was in a Reader's Digest Condensed Books volume that contained his The Muses Are Heard, a nonfiction book about a troupe of African-American actors who travel by train across the Soviet Union to perform Porgy & Bess. Years later I began reading James Baldwin, Richard Wright, John A. Williams, Chester Himes, Ernest J. Gaines, Alice Walker, and other African American as well as African writers.

There's nothing wrong with reading about people who look like you and share your ethnic background. But there are other cultures out there to learn about and to learn from. To do otherwise would be to deprive oneself of many wonderfully told stories as well as seeing the world through the eyes and experiences of others. And through literature you can learn that despite our many cultural differences, there are certain characteristics and feelings we all share and can identity with.

Note: There is a Brilliant Brown Boys Book Club in Chicago that was formed earlier this year. It may be the model for the New York book club.

Revisiting TV's First Golden Age

 Ben Brantley, a New York Times drama critic, wrote an article that appeared in the Arts & Leisure section (August 30, 2020) with the headline, "Enjoying Live Theater, Decades Old."

Since Broadway shows are shutdown until January due to COVID-19, Brantley has had to content himself with watching plays that were originally broadcast live in the 1950s during what has been called the Golden Age of Television, via YouTube.

He recalled when he was five years old walking into his family's living room in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and seeing what he later learned was the tail end of Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," starring Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer. He remembered their characters arguing which left him "both upset and enthralled by what I had witnessed."

No doubt this televised performance planted the seed of theatregoing in his mind that later blossomed into a (so far) 27-year career as a drama critic.

His depiction of the racial landscape on television in those long ago days caught my attention: "...the faces on the screen are still overwhelmingly white, a reminder that the United States was still very much a culturally segregated nation."

I think it was the black writer John Oliver Killens who wrote that blacks on TV were so rare that whenever a black performer came on the screen, black people all over America would race to their TV sets to see them.

Accompanying the article were three black-and-white photos (one of them of writer Rod Serling) from the 1950s. The photo I found the most arresting was the one of the actors seated around a table during a rehearsal of "Twelve Angry Men" in 1954. The photo caption says the rehearsal was for CBS's Playhouse 90. Actually, it was for Studio One. According to The Complete Directory to Prime Network TV Shows, 1946-Present by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine Books, 1979), "Reginald Rose contributed teleplays for Studio One and it was Rose's 'The Twelve Angry Men' in 1954 that won Emmys for writing (Rose), direction (Frank Shaffner), and performance by an actor in a drama (Bob Cummings)." 

Behind the actors are three cameras and crouching down behind one of the cameramen is a black man in short sleeves and wearing a headset. Although television back then was "overwhelmingly white," here was this black man (and possibly a second one in a far corner holding what looks like a still camera). But definitely the one behind the white cameraman is black.

Who was he? What was his job title? How did he get hired as a crew member on a major network show? What became of him? Did he encounter racial discrimination and racist comments while on the job? Does his name appear in the end credits? I have so many questions.

Just seeing him in the photo was a pleasant discovery. Who knew there was at least one black person among the crew members working on plays for the anthology series Studio One? He would have been, to reference a James Baldwin essay, a fly in buttermilk.

A Future Science Fiction Writer's Early Beginning

 Writer's Digest in the September 1967 issue published the names of the winners of its Short Story Contest. One hundred and ninety-nine names were selected in five prize categories (plus one Special Award winner).

Looking over the list of names, I spotted one that caught me by surprise--Octavia E. Butler of Pasadena, California. She was the 63rd person of 99 to win Fifth Prize. (Each Fifth Prize winner received a Sheaffer pen and pencil set inscribed with their winning entry).

Butler's fellow winners are long forgotten but she went on to literary fame garnering several science fiction awards as well as a MacArthur "Genius" fellowship.

I would love to know the title and subject matter of her winning short story so I can track it down and read it. Has it been anthologized? Is there a biography of Octavia Butler that identifies this story? It is that story that was the beginning of her literary career. Getting it recognized without doubt spurred her on to continue writing stories and later novels.

The Irresistible Zora Neale Hurston

 I love the following quote from Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), a Harlem Renaissance writer who was also an anthropologist and a folklore scholar. The quote was published in the July 2009 issue of The Sun, a North Carolina-based culture magazine, in its "Sunbeams" section, a roundup of quotations by prominent people.

"Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?"

Isabel Wilkerson, the author of  two nonfiction books, The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste, was asked by The New York Times Book Review (August 2, 2020) which three writers, living or dead, she would invite to a literary dinner party. She named Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Zora Neale Hurston.

I've read the biographies of all three writers and read some of their work. I wouldn't mind being present at a dinner party that included them. No doubt such a gathering of powerful intellects would be a mind and life altering experience. Hurston would especially be a joy with her down home humor, playful inventiveness (she coined the term "niggerati," to describe the Harlem literary set of the 1920s), and knowledge of African-American folklore.

How indeed could anyone with any sense deny themselves Zora Neale Hurston's splendid company?

Unpublished Books Set Aside For Unborn Generations

 There is a fascinating art project mentioned in an article about the English novelist David Mitchell that was published in The Wall Street Journal (July 18-19, 2020 weekend issue). Unfortunately, no one now alive will get to experience it. It's called the Future Library and was described in the article as "the World's Most Secretive Library." Located in Oslo, Norway, the Future Library will contain the unpublished manuscripts of contemporary novelists like Mitchell, whose most recent novel is called Utopia Avenue, about a fictional 1960s rock band. The unpublished manuscript he contributed to the library is called From Me Flows What You Call Time.

These manuscripts won't be published until the year 2114 when, according to the article, they will "be printed from paper derived from the Nordmarka forest, outside the Norwegian capital." That's assuming books will continue to be printed on paper.

I'm curious about who came up with this idea, what they had in mind when it was created, how contributors to the project were selected, what is special about the Nordmarka forest, whether or not the Norwegian government was involved, etc. These are questions to which I hope to get answers.

Mary Trump's Book About Her Uncle, POTUS Donald Trump

About two weeks ago, Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece and the author of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020), appeared on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross in an hour-long interview.

Whereas Michael Wolff in his book on Trump, Fire and Fury, briefly mentioned that Trump's older brother Freddy (and Mary's father) drank himself to death, Mary Trump revealed why that happened. He had not met the high expectations of his real estate mogul father and became an outcast and a family embarrassment. "His father's approval," wrote Mary Trump, "...mattered more than anything."

Mary Trump is a psychologist with a Ph.D so her insights into her uncle's psyche should help readers--and voters--understand why he behaves as he does.

I just started reading the book which I am thoroughly enjoying. Too Much and Never Enough is sure to remain on the bestseller list for a very long time. (Unfortunately, the book contains no family photos.)

In the radio interview, Mary Trump revealed she is a lesbian. That's probably near the end of the book. If it is, I hope she will provide readers with more details about her experience coming out.

Note: This blog post has been slightly altered and originally appeared on my Facebook page on July 26, 2020.

Check Out "Good Reads," A Literary Website

In 2012, I recommended Good Reads to Facebook friend Robert Penn, a writer. He responded, "Thanks for the invite to Good Reads. What is it?"

A few days later, I described Good Reads to him via Facebook as "a website where people rate, recommend, and review books. It's a good place to learn about books you would  otherwise not be aware of. I've already rated several books, giving most four out of five stars. For instance, James Baldwin's 'Giovanni's Room' I gave, if memory serves, four stars. I plan to write short reviews of other books I've read. I hope that answers your question. I also hope you'll decide to join up. If you do, let me know what your experience was like." I don't know if he ever visited the site but I would recommend it to others.

It's been a while since I've posted on Good Reads brief excerpts of reviews I wrote for the Lambda Book Report. (There may be one or two from the Gay and Lesbian Review and the Manhattan Tribune as well.)

I intend to resume posting on the site other book reviews as well as rate books and see what others have posted about books that have piqued my interest.

One book I'm thinking of reviewing is a mystery I recently finished reading. The book, Better Late Than Never by Jenn McKinlay (Berkley Prime Crime/Penguin Random House, 2016), focuses on the 20-year-old unsolved  murder of a popular high school teacher in a small Connecticut town. A book she checked out of the library at the time of her death is returned during the library's first annual fine amnesty day. Was the killer responsible for returning the book? Lindsey Norris, the library director/amateur sleuth, intends to find out.

Today Is National Ice Cream Day! Enjoy!

Guess what?! Today is National Ice Cream Day, the day for celebrating my favorite frozen dessert. During today's heatwave, eating a dish or cone or pint of ice cream of your favorite flavor would be a wonderful way to cool off. (Vanilla is my favorite flavor.)

Hollywood Honesty

From among some old newspaper and magazine clippings, I came across this quote that appeared in a brief news item in TV Guide (December 10, 1988) about actor Scott Valentine, who was a cast member of NBC's Family Ties.

In the article he stated that "Men run the studios and the networks, and that makes it easy to be a white male in this world."

More than thirty years later, people in Hollywood are still talking about the lack of racial and gender diversity, especially behind the camera and in the executive suites.

Finding A Book By Teju Cole

The short story "Modern Girls" is by the Nigerian writer Teju Cole and is set in a girls's school in Nigeria in the early 1970s.

After hearing it read on public radio's Selected Shorts in September 2015, I included his name among the writers I should read.

But it wasn't until a little more than six months ago, after leaving my ophthalmologist's office, that it was my good fortune to find, on top of a garbage bin, a copy of one of his books, Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016). It was the first book of his that I have encountered.

I haven't read it yet. But I intend to. Perhaps I should put it on my summer or fall reading list.

Cole, it should be noted, was a recipient of a United States Artists grant. USA is a nonprofit organization that since 2006, reported Vogue magazine, in 2017, has given "unrestricted grants of $50,000 to individual artists who...use traditional methods and unexpected approaches to speak to a vast range of experience." Cole has also received several awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Known and Strange Things is described on the back cover as "[p]ersuasive and provocative, erudite yet accessible...."

Wishing To Be A Centenarian

I would like to be a centenarian like the Delany sisters, Sadie and Bessie, of Having Our Say book and television movie fame, who lived well past a hundred. (The Delany sisters, now deceased, were the aunts of science fiction writer Samuel Delany.) Living such a long life would enable me to accomplish more of my goals. But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, longevity has its place.

If I do live to see my one hundredth birthday, I want to be a spry and alert one hundred, not one unable to put one foot in front of the other or who doesn't know day from night.

Books Are Still Valued

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many television interviews to take place via Zoom or Skype videoconferencing from the homes of both the interviewer and the interviewee instead of in a broadcast studio. This offers viewers a small glimpse into the home decor of all those involved.

As a book lover, the one thing that caught my attention are the many bookshelves that appear in the background, filled with rows of books. If the physical book is on its way out, you wouldn't know it judging by the screen images shown each night. For example, Judy Woodruff, the anchor of the PBS News Hour, sits each night with her bookcases behind her and Rafael PiRoman, one of the co-hosts of the evening news program, Metrofocus on New York's WLIW, Channel 21, has a massive wall of books that towers behind him. (And I thought I had books.)

True, these bookshelves are in the homes of journalists, politicians, professors, scientists, and others considered as members of the elite. But still it sends a clear message to the rest of America and the world that the printed word in book form continues to have value.

Happy Juneteenth 2020

Today is Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved blacks in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior.

Recently various states, municipalities, and companies have designated Juneteenth as a holiday. It may even become a national holiday.

Books On Race And Racism

In light of all the discussions on television, radio, in the print media, and online regarding racism, white privilege, social inequality, police brutality toward people of color, etc., I picked out the following six books from my bookshelves that I plan to read. It is my hope that they will be food for thought on race and race relations.

1. The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Are Middle Class Blacks Angry? Why Should America Care? by Ellis Cose (HarperCollins, 1993).

2. Einstein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor (Rutgers University Press, 2005).

3. The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call by Carl T. Rowan (Little, Brown and Company, 1996).

4. Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter's Account of the Civil Rights Movement by Simeon Booker with Carol McCabe Booker (University Press of Mississippi, 2013).

5. The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South by Alex Heard (HarperCollins, 2010).

6. Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime by Ron Stallworth (Flatiron Books, 2018). Originally published in 2014 by Police and Fire Publishing. The book was the basis for Spike Lee's film.

A Glaring Historical Error

There's a glaring historical error that I found in James McGrath Morris's otherwise interesting biography of journalist Ethel Payne, Eyes on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2015).

Morris, on the Acknowledgments page, praised Nancy Inglis for her "diligent copyediting and fact checking." Unfortunately, she neglected to fact check when the Watts riots in Los Angeles happened. The riots occurred in August 1965, not August 1964.

At the time, I was living in the nearby suburb of Compton, which experienced some of the looting and burning.

More Books On My Summer Reading List

1. 1984--George Orwell's prophetic dystopian novel.

2. Faggots--The 1978 controversial novel by playwright/novelist/AIDS activist Larry Kramer (1935-2020), who recently died at the age of 84.

3.  Any book in Ellis Peters's wonderful 21-volume Brother Caedfael mystery series set in a 12th-century English monastery. (Peters, whose real name was Edith Pargeter, was a medieval scholar.) The books were the basis for a television series that aired on PBS and starred Derek Jacobi as Brother Caedfael, the monk turned amateur sleuth.

4.  The Woman in the Window--A. J. Finn's thriller that has been made into a major motion picture.

5.  The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume II: 1941-1967, I Dream a World by Arnold Rampersad. I read the first volume but never finished the second one.

6.  Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann. The book is about the 1922 shooting death of film director William Desmond Taylor. I read two previous books on this fascinating true-crime story.

A Very Queer Notion About LGBT Literature

Entertainment Weekly's Pride Double Issue for June 2020 published a Q & A article by David Canfield called "The Library Is Open." These interviews involved four up and coming queer (I hate that term) authors and was conducted via Zoom.  (It should be noted that the authors--Nicole Dennis-Benn, Naoise Dolan, Akwaeke Emezi, and Garth Greenwell--are all under the age of 45.)

Sandwiched between the article title and Canfield's byline is a headnote briefly introducing the
four authors. The headnote immediately makes this startling statement--"There's never been a more exciting time for queer literature." I don't know who to blame for such a false pronouncement, Canfield or one of the magazine's editors. Whoever wrote that statement is clearly unaware of the enormous amount of gay and lesbian literature that came out of the 1980s and 1990s. During those decades, I was writing for the New York Native and the Lambda Book Report and was reviewing some of those books.

In the 1980s and '90s,  there was an explosion of novels, short stories, plays, and poetry coming from black gay writers, for example. Melvin Dixon, Randall Kenan, Thomas Glave, Assotto Saint, and Essex Hemphill are a few black gay names that come to mind. Plus there were several black gay literary journals that were being published back then. Among them were Blackheart, Pyramid Periodical, and Other Countries.

Other gay and lesbian writers included David Leavitt, Christopher Bram, Audre Lorde, Rita Mae Brown, Alice Walker, Felice Picano and his fellow Violet Quill writers.

Anyone who had ever set foot in a gay bookstore like the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore in Greenwich Village and its nearby competitor A Different Light and marveled at the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of LGBT books and periodicals on their shelves would scoff at the idea that today is "a more exciting time for queer literature."

A New Black Gay Literary Voice

Yesterday (May 12), I heard a very interesting interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross (heard in the New York area on WNYC AM and FM). The interview was with a young African-American writer named Michael Arceneaux (pronounced Ar-sin-noh), who in 2018 published a best selling collection of personal essays, I Can't Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I've Put My Faith in Beyonce.

Arceneaux, who is openly gay, has published a new collection of essays called I Don't Want to Die Poor, which he discussed for nearly an hour on Fresh Air.

A 2007 graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C., and now residing in West Harlem, Arceneaux's latest book is about his uphill battle to pay off his student loan of $100,000.

These two books by a new literary voice are ones I plan to look for.

Books On My Reading List

Four books I am eager to read this year, if and when bookstores reopen, are the following: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, a novel written in screenplay format; The Sword and the Shield by Peniel Joseph, a nonfiction book on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.; Girl, Woman, Other by British-Nigerian writer Bernardine Evaristo. The novel was selected as the 2019 winner of the Man Booker Prize along with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale; and Andre Leon Talley's The Chiffon Trenches, a tell-all memoir about the fashion world.

They all sound like must-read books.

Commemorating Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. Yesterday I went to the post office and bought a sheet of 20 postage stamps that commemorate Earth Day.

Let's honor and protect the Earth, our home.

National Poetry Month

A reminder, April is National Poetry Month. So find a good book of poetry, or if you prefer, a good book of fiction, to soothe your frazzled nerves in these days and weeks of a worldwide pandemic. And as you turn the pages, have a relaxing cup of tea or coffee nearby.

Coronavirus Alert

Re: Coronavirus: wash your hands with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer. For more information, visit nyc.gov/coronavirus.

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Note: March is Women's History Month.

The American Cities People Most Want To Say Goodbye To

The website MSN Money posted an article by Doug Whiteman dated June 19, 2019 listing the 19 American cities people are most eager to pack up and leave.

Here is the list of cities in descending order along with the reasons people gave for wanting to get out of town:

19. Indianapolis--bad roads, extreme cold.
18. Spokane,Washington--unemployment high, renters priced out.
17. Richmond,Virginia--bad schools, costly housing.
16. Des Moines, Iowa--unforgiving weather.
15. Eugene, Oregon--housing costs.
14. Champaign, Illinois--Weather stinks, outside of town is nothing but cornfields; Chicago's two to three hours away.
13. Rockford, Illinois-- unemployment high (5.4%);public schools are poor; high crime rate.
12. Houston--unemployment, housing, and living costs are all above the national average; flood prone.
11. South Bend, Indiana--punishing winters; high rates for murder and other violent crime and bad roads. (Pete Buttigieg, are you listening?)
10. Detroit--(current population is 673,000; 1.8 million in the 1950s); high unemployment.
9. Milwaukee--lacks decent schools and public transportation.
8. Hartford, Connecticut--high property tax; unemployment (6.4%).
7. Seattle--housing not cheap; weather is cloudy and rainy.
6. Denver--high cost of housing.
5. Chicago--cold weather; horrid traffic; high cost of property tax and cost of living.
4. Washington, D.C.--high cost of housing and property taxes.
3. Los Angeles--high cost of living; soaring rents and stiff property taxes plus freeway backups.
2. San Francisco--expensive real estate.
1. New York--America's most fled metro area; steep food and housing costs.

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We Need "A Red Record" For The 21st Century

In 1895, while living in Chicago, African-American social activist, journalist, public intellectual Ida B. Wells published A Red Record. In it, writes Iowa State University professor Brian Behnken in his essay,"The Quest for Racial Change," published in Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America (University Press of Mississippi, 2017), "Wells forcefully articulated an intellectual vision regarding how the government could work to end lynching." (Page 83)

We need a similar publication like A Red Record in the 21st century to document the numerous shooting deaths of black men, women, and children across the United States by police officers and non-police individuals.

These shootings have reached such an epidemic level that A Red Record-like publication would help put a human face to these deaths with photographs, background information, and a summary of each shooting incident. They would no longer be just statistics in a newspaper or an evening newscast.

A 900 to 1,000-page record of these deaths would demonstrate to political, civic, religious, and academic leaders that there is a dire need for a solution to this slaughter that's taking place in our urban areas. Gun violence is not just a legal issue, it is first and foremost a public health issue inextricably linked to mental health.

Black History Month Suggestions

Last year (February 4,  2019), Dr. Steve Kussin, the education reporter for WCBS Newsradio Eight-Eighty in New York, did a one-minute segment suggesting ways schoolchildren could celebrate Black History Month.

Below are Dr. Kussin's suggestions:

"Listen to some famous speeches such as Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream'; study the landmark court case Brown versus Board of Ed; read the biographies of famous black people such as Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, and Paul Robeson; research famous African-American inventors and performers who made it in the arts; schedule a concert featuring the music from the Civil Rights Movement; read a novel or short story written by an African-American author; plan a dance festival; schedule a concert; plan an exhibit featuring the work of black artists; hold a food festival; search for photos capturing the civil rights struggles; interview people who were active in the movement; view the CNN series Black America; organize an assembly or design a project supporting a charity important to the African-American community. Quite a list."

Indeed, it is quite a list. And a useful one, too. However, despite Dr. Kussin's good intentions, he, like a lot of people in the media, ignore the fact that Black History Month is not just about the accomplishments of black people in the United States. There are and have been black people in other parts of  the world, including, needless to say, sub-Saharan Africa. And to limit the focus to the United States gives schoolchildren a distorted and incomplete view of black history. It renders non-American blacks invisible and unimportant. To be fair, Dr. Kussin did mention Nelson Mandela but that is only one name from outside the United States.

Overlooking black people from outside the United States ignores the fact that various black-led movements such as the Harlem Renaissance (or the New Negro Movement) influenced, and in turn, were influenced by others in the African diaspora.

It is important to reveal these interconnections and cross-pollinations to get a better understanding of black lives, black thinking, and black accomplishments in all of their diversity.

Note: Kussin is pronounced "kew-sin."

Magazines I Would Like Brought Back

Three magazines that I miss and would love to see revived are Negro Digest (aka Black World), Quinto Lingo, and Book Digest. I have a few issues of each magazine.

Negro Digest published by Johnson Publishing, the publishers of Ebony and Jet, and later renamed Black World, was a magazine that featured articles, essays, short stories, poetry, and book reviews by leading writers and academics like Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka, Addison Gayle, Jr., et al. Despite that, it was accessible to a lay audience. If Black World were around today, I can see Ta-Nehisi Coates, Edwidge Danticat, Walter Mosley, Michael Eric Dyson, among others writing for it for a new generation.

Quinto Lingo was for language enthusiasts. Stories were presented in five languages side by side (hence the magazine's name). Those languages were English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian. There were also English-only articles in each issue focusing on a particular language like the one called "If You Speak Spanish You Can Speak Ladino" (May 1969).

Book Digest was a Reader's Digest for book lovers like myself. Each issue carried a condensed version of fiction and nonfiction books like Peter Straub's supernatural novel Ghost Story (September 1979). Although the books selected were in the best seller category, a contemporary version could also include non-best sellers that would be of interest to bibliophiles.

These magazines are sorely missed by me and I would welcome them back in a heartbeat.

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A Publication For Jazz Lovers

One jazz publication I make it a point to get each month at the Mist Harlem entertainment venue on 116th Street is the New York City Jazz Record. It's a free tabloid-size magazine published on newsprint and contains CD reviews, musician interviews,a calendar of events, a birthday column commemorating day by day musicians (living and dead) born in that particular month, as well as a jazz-related crossword puzzle. The latter is so esoteric and daunting it requires a near encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and its history. For example, the June 2019 issue had the following clues: "'50s Canadian RCA Victor catalogue prefixes";"'70s jazz critic for CODA magazine"; "What Lester did in Britain"; "Gerry Mulligan nickname." If nothing else, it'll encourage me to bone up on jazz history. (Disc jockey Phil Schaap of Columbia University's radio station WKCR could probably complete the puzzle within thirty minutes or less.)

As a longtime jazz lover and CD and record collector, the New York City Jazz Record is an important part of my jazz education and I recommend it to anyone interested in jazz and its practitioners.

I look forward to reading it each month and hope it'll be around for a long time.

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Gays And Lesbians Were A Part Of "The Twilight Zone" Series

In one biography of television writer Rod Serling, it was stated that he was homophobic.If that was true, he obviously didn't let that keep him from hiring for his iconic science fiction/fantasy series The Twilight Zone those who were either gay or lesbian.

For example, Justis Addiss directed episodes for The Twilight Zone and Keogh Gleason designed sets for them. (Addiss's life partner was actor Hayden Rorke of the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.)

Among gay and lesbian actors who appeared in the show were Richard Deacon, Agnes Moorehead, James Daly, James Milhollin, Alan Sues, and Cesar Romero.

So if Serling was homophobic, he was a benevolent homophobe.

Note: Today is the beginning of Black History Month. 

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Rikers Island, New York's Next Hot Neighborhood?

Once New York City's Rikers Island correctional complex closes, the buildings will be torn down and developers will be falling all over themselves while salivating at the chance to fill the vacant land with high-rise condos, boutiques, restaurants, and pricey fitness centers. Thus turning the island into the city's next hot neighborhood or nabe, to use real estate lingo. Rikers Island will then become an extension of Manhattan--overwhelmingly white and wealthy.

Realtors will likely call it Rikersville, Rikers Manor or give it a hipper, trendier, jazzier name to lure the people with deep pockets and to cover up its unsavory past.

They won't have to worry about  displacing longtime residents and businesses. There are none. The only ones affected will be the ones currently incarcerated there. And the inmates will be dispersed to supposedly easier to get to, modern community-based facilities throughout the five boroughs.

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Ida B. Wells's Portrait On The Twenty-Dollar Bill?

At the risk of being labeled an elitist (and to some, a sexist or male chauvinist), I prefer to have the portrait of Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) on the twenty-dollar bill to replace Andrew Jackson's likeness instead of Harriet Tubman (ca. 1820-1913) as many have proposed. (Jackson (1767-1845) was the seventh president of the United States.)

I am not attempting to disparage or dismiss Tubman's efforts and courage in leading Southern black slaves to freedom in the North via the Underground Railroad. But I think Douglass, a fugitive slave himself, would be a better choice. Not only was he an abolitionist and advocate for women's rights, he was also an eloquent, persuasive orator and writer. In addition, he published an influential newspaper, The North Star and had a close relationship with president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).

But if we must have a woman of color on the twenty-dollar bill, then an excellent candidate would be Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). She was a journalist and activist who fought against segregation in the South, especially in Memphis, where she lived and published a newspaper.

One writer called her "a sophisticated fighter whose prose was as tough as her intellect." Another writer described her as "an incredibly courageous and outspoken black woman in the face of innumerable odds," such as intimidation and the threat of being lynched by white segregationists.

To re-evaluate my choice, I went back to listen to a 1949 "lost" episode of  NBC's Destination Freedom that I recorded off the radio in 2018. The half-hour episode called "Woman With a Mission,"written by black dramatist Richard Durham, was about Wells's work as a "famous social welfare worker and woman editor." In the broadcast it was noted that she traveled across the country and abroad advocating for freedom of speech and equal rights for women.

One male voice said she should stay in a woman's place; another described her as having "a tongue like a flaming sword." Such attitudes didn't bother her because she believed her "resistance to tyranny was obedience to God."

For those reasons, I think Ida B. Wells's portrait on the twenty-dollar bill should be considered.

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Note: R.I.P. Jim Lehrer, journalist, novelist, and former co-anchor of public television's The McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and later the sole anchor of The PBS NewsHour. He died today at age 85.

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The New York Public Library's Most Checked Out Books

The New York Public Library, of which I am a longtime card-carrying member, celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.

As part of the celebration, NYPL's librarians have listed in the winter/spring 2020 issue of The New York Public Library Now magazine the ten most checked out books "ever since [they] opened [their] doors" in 1895.

Among these books are To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1984 by George Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.

Below is a list of the ten books:

1. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
2. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
3. 1984 by George Orwell
4. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
8. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
10. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

And one Honorable Mention: Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

An Early Article On "The Twilight Zone"

Charles Beaumont (1929-1967), one of the writers on The Twilight Zone, wrote an article in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine's December 1959 issue about the now classic sci-fi/fantasy CBS television series, which premiered on October 2, 1959.

Beaumont's article revealed the initial resentment of people in the sci-fi community toward the show's creator, Rod Serling (1924-1975), "the eminent TV writer," who they felt was "an outsider." After Beaumont met Serling, he learned of Serling's "love [for] science fiction and fantasy." And when he read the first nine scripts that Serling wrote for The Twilight Zone and discovered their high quality, "I knew," wrote Beaumont, "that Serling was an 'outsider' in terms of experience; in terms of instinct, he was a veteran."

As it turned out, wrote Beaumont, "a circle of excitement surround[ed] the show. People [actors, directors, writers] want[ed] to be associated with it." Furthermore, "Serling and his associates...[did] their best to make this a first rate production."

And as everyone now knows, their efforts created a memorable, revered, thought-provoking, and timeless anthology series of half-hour dramas that examined human nature. "The Twilight Zone," noted the entertainment website IMDb.com, "featured forays into controversial grounds like racism, Cold War paranoia and the horrors of war."

Beaumont's brief article, if it hasn't by now, deserves to be included as a foreword to a Twilight Zone book. It chronicles the attitudes and expectations about the series from someone who was there as an observer and a participant during its creation.

Unprofessional, Abusive FDNY Paramedics

Daniel A. Nigro, Fire Commissioner

FDNY

9 Metro Tech Center                                               Re: FDNY Paramedics

Brooklyn, NY 11201

December 21, 2019

Dear Commissioner Nigro:

There's a saying, no good deed goes unpunished. I learned that lesson last night [December 20].

On 116th Street, near 8th Avenue, in front of what used to be a 7-Eleven store, was an elderly black man lying on the icy sidewalk wrapped in a blue blanket on a night when the temperature was in the mid-twenties. One of his shoes was off.

At 11:44 p.m., I called 911 to report a person in a dangerous situation. Two FDNY paramedics (both white; one male, the other female) arrived in less than five minutes in Ambulance 1358. But I should have expected the worst when it took them nearly five minutes to exit the vehicle. Apparently they were reluctant to get out in the cold air.When they did get out, they took out a stretcher and with the help of another man who had also called them, attempted to get the old man on the stretcher. He was becoming belligerent, using profanities and threatening to "bop" the female paramedic. She responded that she would bop him back. He rolled off the stretcher and onto the sidewalk. They had to lift him by his coat back onto the stretcher.

Then the female paramedic got angry that she had to deal with a resistant old man. She said I should mind my business and then said that I should take him to my apartment, that they couldn't make a person go to the hospital. She was completely out of line and not acting like a professional. I'm trying to do a good deed by saving someone from freezing to death and instead of receiving thanks, I get chewed out for calling 911. I told her she should do her job and that she was ignorant.

To me, instead of calling these two paramedics First Responders, they should be called First Responding Idiots. How can anyone be angry with someone for trying to be a good citizen?

When I got home, I called both 911 and 311 and filed a complaint with the FDNY. If the two paramedics can't deal with the public in a dignified and respectful manner, they should find another line of work.

Their attitude will not stop me from calling 911 when I see someone in a life-threatening situation. These two paramedics, especially the female, are in desperate need of sensitivity training.

Sincerely yours,

Charles M. Smith

CC: Bill Perkins, City Council, 9th District
        Jumaane Williams, Public Advocate

                                                                                      

                                                                                                                               

"Hollywood Babylon" Books On TV?

I don't know if Kenneth Anger published a third or fourth sequel to his books Hollywood Babylon (Straight Arrow Books, 1975) and Hollywood Babylon II (Dutton, 1984), but if he hasn't he should. Both books are sitting side by side in my bookcase.

These books are focused on the dark side of Tinseltown fame--suicides, murders, drug addiction, sex scandals, mental breakdowns, etc.

I'm surprised that HBO, Showtime, the History Channel or one of the other cable networks hasn't done a documentary series based on the Hollywood Babylon books. If they did, I'm certain the number of viewers would be astronomical.

History Repeats Itself

The recent violence against Jewish individuals in the New York metropolitan area is a throwback to an earlier time. In John Strausbaugh's Victory City: A History of New York and New Yorkers During World War II (Twelve/Grand Central Publishing, 2018), he writes: "Through 1942 and 1943 there would be numerous reports in the press of roving gangs of young men, mostly identified as Irish and affiliated with the [Christian] Front [Catholic priest Charles Coughlin's anti-Semitic organization], beating and sometimes even knifing Jews in neighborhoods such as Flatbush, Washington Heights, and the South Bronx, where Irish and Jewish communities abutted. Many shops, synagogues, and cemeteries were vandalized." (Page 155)

On an earlier page, Strausbaugh points out that "The city's police force, which was nearly two-thirds Irish, turned a blind eye [to any violence against Jews or the distribution of anti-Semitic literature on the streets]; some number of them were Christian Fronters themselves." (Page 152)

But unlike what went on back then, today's mayor and police commissioner have responded with a considerable amount of police presence in heavily Jewish neighborhoods of New York City like Crown Heights, Brooklyn to prevent any further attacks.