23 September, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Hart Hanson: Bones (TV Series) Michael Hittman: Corbett Mack, The Life of a Northern Paiute

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
William Blake

17 September, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Dick Wolf: Law & Order, Special Victims Unit Greg McKeown: Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.”
–Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 1872 

10 September, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Prince: Sign O' The Times Randall Robinson: The Debt

“I feel like I slept in a washing machine.” (To say after a bad night’s sleep.)
Croatian Traditional Saying

3 September, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Prince: Purple Rain Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States

“You look like a cow mushed your clothes.” (to say to someone when they are dressed sloppily)
Croatian Traditional Saying

27 August, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Nico & Vinz: Am I Wrong Eric Foner: Reconstruction, America's Unfinished Revolution

“We deny magnificence because the self-concept of being a failure or selfish etc makes it easier for us to stay in a small version of what it means to be human.”
–Unknown

20 August, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Nina Simone: I Put A Spell On You Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

“Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”
–C
esar Chavez

From Tragedy to Comedy: Three Green Travelers on Horseback

A friend named Sally, saw a play I wrote years ago and said “I think comedy is the highest art form, much harder to write than tragedy.”  Perhaps it was a not so subtle hint – my play was about African immigrants being killed in London in the mid 19th century. But I didn’t think too much about the comment and went on with life.

I’ve watched over the years as my taste has changed. Now I mostly watch comedies on TV, I love a good joke, I’m most attuned to the unusual, the startling, the unexpected in life. My friend Vice said to me once “the world is depressing enough, when I write,I want to bring hope.” And I thought of course, it’s true, shouldn’t we all?

For years I have had a Congolese fetish statue on my desk (pictured above).  I bought the statue because it spoke to me, and I thought myself brave for showing this truth: down with hypocrisy! Show the nails and arrows!

But thanks to a change encounter in Dakar last week,  my little man has been replaced by three green riders on horseback. Phew. . . why’d it take me so long?! I look at them each day and I literally laugh.  Who are they?  Why have they all clambered onto the same horse?  Where the heck are they going?  I have no idea, and they bring me great joy.

Sally and Vice are right. The funny, the unexpected, the possible, that’s what matters. Let’s climb on the green horse and go for a ride!

5 August, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Reggie Rock Bythewood and Gina Prince-Bythewood: Shots Fired Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton: American Apartheid

“The fight is never about grapes or lettuce, it’s always about people.”
–Cesar Chavez

29 July, 2017

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Quote of the week:

Netflix, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Aeschylus: Aeschylus II, The Oresteia

“I grew up not knowing I could have a dream and if I did, that I could actually achieve it. You grew up thinking the sky is the limit.”
–A Togolese colleague, having a heart to heart at work