Mike Evans and Good Times

Not only did I not know that this guy was from North Cakalacki (North Carolina) -- but I also didn't know that he helped to create the comedy show, Good Times. Born on November 3, 1949 in Salisbury, N.C., Mike Evans, known to many fans as Lionel Jefferson from the television show, The Jeffersons, co-wrote over 130 episodes of Good Times.

When his double duties as actor on one show and writer on the other proved to be too much, Mike Evans focused all of his attention on helping to mold Good Times. He was replaced by Damon Evans (no relation) for several years, until he returned to the cast of The Jeffersons in 1979. I personally preferred Mike to Damon, but both were entertaining and added their own flavor to the show.

Sadly, Mike Evans died of throat cancer, at age 57, on December 14, 2006.

Right Back at Ya, the One Cleopatra: Lil Kim

You can say what you want about Bedford-Stuyvesant's own Lil Kim (Kimberly Denise Jones), but she always manages to land on her feet. Even if I've cringed at some of the content in her songs, I've always loved her delivery – she’s consistently smooth, forceful and precise.

Evidently, a scholar up at Syracuse University saw the magic in Lil Kim’s artistry, as he has developed a whole English and Textual Studies course, which includes Kim’s music as a big part of the class. Greg Thomas, Associate Professor of Global Black Studies in the English Department at Syracuse University, who teaches the class, also wrote a book published in 2009 called, Hip-Hop Revolution in the Flesh: Power, Knowledge and Pleasure in Lil' Kims Lyrics. Thomas’ class is required to (read his book, I assume), watch Lil Kim’s music videos, and study her in-your-face, sometimes pornographic lyrics. I’d imagine class must be pretty exciting at times.

Here’s a description of the course:

Reading Nation and Empire: English and Textual Studies, Syracuse University English Department
Hip-Hop Eshu: QUEEN B@#$H Lyricism 
Tues., Thurs., 3:30-4:50 

Instructor: Greg Thomas 

This course on lyricism is all about Hip-Hop and, necessarily, Black life in Africa’s Diaspora. It is no less about certain “gender” and “sexuality” issues at the center of contemporary Black struggles, cultural and political. Our focus will be on the lyrical texts of one phenomenal figure: Lil' Kim, “Big Momma/Queen B itch.” In place of bourgeois literature and bourgeois criticism, there will be rap audio and lyrics, oral history, musicology, folklore and spoken word, magazine articles, interviews, film and video as well as Black Studies of all kinds: Toni Morrison on the Million Woman March, Angela Y. Davis on Blues women, Carolyn Cooper and Denise Noble on Dancehall Ragga, Cheryl Keyes on female rappers, E. Franklin Frazier on the brown middle-class elite, Sonia Sanchez on Black Puritans, various scholars on Yoruba trickster-god(desse)s, Sylvia Wynter on modern sexual categories, and Ifi Amadiume on African matriarchy and pre-colonial/flexible gender systems. We'll also seriously examine recent work on state repression and “Rap COINTELPRO,” state violence not covered by corporate media. All will be critically engaged to provide ample understanding of Lil' Kim's “Queen B itch” lyricism, her sexual revolution in rhyme, her very own work in the musical revolution that is Hip-Hop. 

Put Your Lighters Up, 2005

(I was impressed when Lil Kim broke out in some Spanish toward the end of the video -- check it out):

 Click here to read about Lil Kim's jail sentence in 2005.

A bit of background on Lil Kim from IMDb.

Tapping the Fierce Warrior Side

I was asked to write a response to this question:

Who is your favorite movie character and why?

Here's my answer:

Beatrix Kiddo, the main character in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series resonates deeply with me. I admire Beatrix’s strong maternal instincts and her fierce warrior side. Beatrix miraculously survived the brutality of her former mate (Bill, who tried to kill her when she was pregnant), overcame physical and emotional scars, and also successfully sought revenge on her many foes. She accomplished all of this with extreme focus, acute attention to detail, determination and discipline. In these tough days of harsh economic woes and escalating callousness, Beatrix is a fitting role model for tough-minded women all over the world.

Alabama Prisoners Practice Meditation and Reflection

I almost pulled the car over when I heard this on NPR. What a phenomenal and powerful program. Praise God.

Deep in the Bible Belt, an ancient Eastern practice is taking root in the unlikeliest of places: Alabama's highest-security prison ...

"For the first three days, the only thing we do is sit and focus on our breath," Young says. "This is to still the mind and get the mind sharp."

"You'll start feeling little stuff moving all around on your body," Young says. "Some guys can't handle this; some guys scream."...

... It's a rude awakening for some prisoners, Vipassana teacher Carl Franz says.

"Everyone's mind is kind of a Pandora's box, and when you have 33 rather serious convicts facing their past and their own minds, their memories, their regrets, rough childhood, whatever, their crimes, lots of stuff comes up," Franz says. ...

... Dr. Ron Cavanaugh, treatment director for the Alabama Department of Corrections, says many inmates put their defenses up, denying responsibility for their crimes and blaming others. But the meditation practice, he says, chips away at those defense mechanisms.

"They have nobody to talk to," Cavanaugh says. "So there's nobody that they can deny stuff with or project everything with."

Cavanaugh says inmates who go through the course have a 20 percent reduction in disciplinary action. But it hasn't been an easy sell in Alabama, a state known for harsh punishment policies like chain gangs and hitching posts.


"The Dhamma Brothers" is a documentary that filmmaker Jenny Phillips made about the prison meditation program.

Salah Jahin: In Egypt's Name

Here's an except from "In Egypt's Name," by Egyptian poet, cartoonist, and playwright Salah Jahin (Dec. 25, 1930 - April 21, 1986)

In Egypt's Name
(Ala Esm Masr)

History may say what it wishes in Egypt's name
Egypt, for me, is the most beloved and most beautiful of things.
I love her when she owns the earth, east and west.
And I love her when she is down, wounded in a battle.
I love her fiercely, gently and with modesty.
I hate her and curse her with the passion of the lovesick.
I leave her and flee down one path, and she remains in another.
She turns to find me beside her in misfortune.
My veins pulsating with a thousand tunes and rhythms.
In Egypt's name.

Raining Dreams

My daughter asked me what I was going to dream about as she was listening to the rain fall outside our window. The rain used to alarm her, but now she says it’s soothing.

I told her that I didn’t know what I was going to dream about – I usually just let whatever dreams come, happen. She told me she was going to dream about the rain.

“I always decide what I’m going to dream about -- I never let my mind decide,” she said.

“You know, that’s really powerful,” I told her. And it is – I think I’ll try that next time.

Another Look at Egypt and Tunisia

Dizzy Gillespie and Arturo Sandoval perform "A Night in Tunisia" (and I mean they really play it!)


And for a taste of Egypt, listen to The Jones Girls croon "Nights Over Egypt" (ohh la la!)

Cascade Festival of African Films



The Athlete, directed by
Rasselas Lakew and Davey Frankel

To see a gold mine of films out of Africa, try very hard to attend the Cascade Festival of African Films, Thursdays through Saturdays, Feb. 4 through March 5 in Oregon at Portland Community College and surrounding venues.

Films from Algeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, USA, and other places will feature and highlight the people of Africa and those who have connections to the continent. Such topics as albinism, present day slavery, romance, and the Olympics are explored in these unique and compelling films. Where else in Ameica could you find such a treasure of cinema?

Watch a clip from the film Stolen, set in Western Sahara:



STOLEN
Directed by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw
From: Australia, Western Sahara, 2009, 75 min.

Directors Ayala and Fallshaw set out to make a simple documentary about family reunions in Saharawi refugee camps controlled by the Polisario Liberation Front. Their project became much more complicated when they discovered that many of the dark-skinned refugees were in fact the slaves of those with lighter complexions. Or were they? Was there really widespread servitude or was it something more culturally subtle? The Polisario denied the filmmakers’ assertions, labeled them cultural imperialists, and tried to stop the project. The result is a powerful, suspenseful film, which raises thought-provoking questions about the possibility of documentary objectivity. The film has provoked an ongoing international controversy. Winner of the Best Feature Documentary Prize at the 2010 Pan-African Film Festival in Los Angeles.

In Hassaniya, Spanish, and English with English subtitles.

Click here to visit the Cascade Festival of African Films Website.

African Proverb: The Sky Sees the Back

OK. I LOVE this one, for reasons I can't fully comprehend just yet. It simply lifts my spirits!


It is the sky that sees the back of the flying bird.
                                                 -- (Nigeria- Igbo)

Healing Passages film on Documentary Film Channel

During a period of 350 years an estimated 15 to 20 million Africans, from all over West Africa, were held on Goreé Island. More than 6 million of them died in captivity on this island, from cruel treatment and deprivation. Twice as many more were put on ships that took them to a life of chattel slavery on the other side of the Atlantic. A growing number of people are beginning to make make a connection between the psychological traumas of slavery and our behavior today.

Goree Island, Senegal
The shipping point where many slaves, brutally treated, were housed
before they took the long and horrific journey to the Americas.

The text above is taken from the Website for the film The Healing Passage: Voices From the Water, which explores the residual impact of the African Holocaust, slavery and its reverberations in the world today. View a clip from the project, directed by filmmaker and journalist S. Pearl Sharp, at http://draft.blogger.com/www.asharpshow.com, and find out where you can purchase this moving film. The Healing Passage features such luminaries and artistic giants as Oscar Brown, Jr., Ysaye Barnwell, Tom Feelings, and Babatunde Olatunji.

The Documentary Film Channel's Suzanne Holmes was kind enough to provide me with the scheduled broadcast dates for “The Healing Passage: Voices from the Water.” Here it is:


Documentary Film Channel
Tue., Feb. 22, 2011 8 p.m.
Tue., Feb. 22, 2011 11 p.m.
Wed., March 9, 2011 9 p.m.
Thurs., March 10, 2011 12 a.m.

From S. Pearl Sharp's Website:

How do we heal from the residuals of The Middle Passage?

Cultural artists, along with historians and healers, look at present day behavior that is connected to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. For more than 300 years Africans were carried from their homeland, across the Atlantic Ocean ("The Middle Passage"), into chattel slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean. The residual impact of this African Holocaust still reverberates in the world today through psychological trauma, genetic memory, personal and community consciousness. The artists use music, dolls, dance, altars, spoken word, visual art and ritual to create paths to healing.

How has the psychological trauma of centuries of slavery affected our lives, souls, and behavior today? The answers to that question have filled thousands of pages in books and hopefully will lead to the intense healing that we still, so desperately, need.

House of Slaves