I left The Space (see post below) to rush home through our big thunder and lightening storm…headed for Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS…featuring an interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and looking for insights into… Black Churches, Black Theology and American History
James H. Cone’s quotation set the tone of Rev. Wright’s conversation with Moyers:
Black churches […]

“Ironically, our appetite for ‘reality’ fare has created an audience for the phony memoir,” says Rubén Martínez in today’s L.A. Times article “Why we fall for the fakes.” Click here to read the entire, excellent article.

First off, let me say I consider that the reader section on the Amazon book product pages are, for the most part, best termed as “comments” rather than “reviews”—which usually would be rather over-stating the case.
Secondly, I am frequently appalled by the casual way in which readers in these comment sections reveal their ignorance, not […]

Tracking the Fallout of (Another) Literary Fraud By MOTOKO RICH
Click here to read about the author of “Love and Consequences” who confessed she “made up the memoir about her supposed life as a foster child in gang-infested South-Central Los Angeles, the focus turned to her publisher and the news organizations that helped publicize what […]

Here’s a follow-on to my March 22, 2007 post “The Secret: Packaged In America.”

Burying the Secret, by Carol Rutter
Within the framework of responding to Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret,” Carol Rutter’s “Burying the Secret” weaves autobiography, expose, searching cultural commentary, and an analytical compendium of helpful books on important psychological and spiritual issues. If […]

“It almost killed me to do so, but I kept my mouth shut….”
Tell us about a situation in which you found you had to just shut up, or you’d be in really big trouble, one way or another, or just a big bore, or unkind.
For John Flinn, it was that no place is ever as […]

Tonight I just came back from a presentation at my local library; I caught the tail end, and that may have been one of the juicer parts, who can say? The audience was primarily African-American and they were firing questions at the speaker in a hunger to know more about the continent the African part […]

Velda Brotherton and I were chatting under the electronic shade tree, sipping lemonade, trading our pet language peeves one day when we decided we’d post and link on some of them at the same time. Velda’s started her list on her blog “On Being a Writer.”
My top language peeve at the moment is the phrase […]

As part of our 40th reunion we toured new new Alton High School, open just a year now and built at a cost of several millions. Among it’s charms, it boasts a three-court gymnasium. There’s also a beautiful auditorium and stage…a pit for the pit orchestra (I ducked down there for old times sake)…and a […]

As part of my welcome move-in packet for West End Terrace, I recieved a 20 per cent off coupon for a haircut and styling at Lemon, a salon just a few blocks from me up on Euclid. Even with the discount, the price is 1/3 more than I’m used to paying in Lake County in […]