Oct 13

HISTORY & WHO TELLS IT

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
The picture above was taken in 2015 around Thanksgiving. The shadows you see are my mother and me. We’re watching what’s left of our home being torn down. It’s a complete surprise to us. We both thought when she sold it to a nice young white couple for a great deal less than she imagined, the house … our house would be there forever. It just wouldn’t belong to us any longer. Two other unique houses built by the first Black families to live in this township, just outside of Akron, Ohio, were gone too. My home and my history as well as the homes and histories of the two other Black doctors had been torn down and buried in the in the grassy earth. Permit me to explain by going a bit backwards. My mother sold our home eight years ago in 2010. She’d been trying to sell the ranch-style home for years. She couldn’t get the asking price for it. Since the area my mother lived in had been zoned for commercial as well as residential use, she thought it would be easier to sell her house. Unfortunately for my mother, Ohio was one of those states that […]
Oct 06

COLUMBUS DAY

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I wrote this blog post in 2016. I think it still applies today. When I was a kid, I really liked celebrating Columbus Day. The schools were closed on that day. While there weren’t yet any parades commemorating the day, any time I didn’t have to go to school was great a day for me. An added plus was that the man himself had such a cool little ditty attributed to him. You know the one I mean. “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue …. blah, blah.” I thought it was such a nifty to remember historical dates. In elementary school, my classmates and I memorized it without question. It was a good way to remember the date history books say Columbus discovered America. Nobody asked how America got “lost” or why it needed to be “discovered” by somebody who didn’t look a thing like me or the Natives already living on the land the man named Christopher Columbus “discovered.” Back then, I didn’t understand a tribe or a country or a world’s history is always a matter of who conquers who. Conquerors always gets to tell the story on their terms. The conquered listen to the lies or […]
Oct 01

I’M YOU BABY TONIGHT, but what about tomorrow?

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Suppose you could be anybody that you wanted for one night. You could dress up in a magical costume and party ‘til the sun came up. Nobody not even your mother, if you had a mother, would know it was you. Suppose you learned a woman that you’d always wanted but had rejected you a million times, was attending the party, too. What do you do? Would you go to the party? If you went, who would you be and what would you wear? How would you recognize her when she won’t even talk to you? (5th Anniversary Edition) I’m Your Baby Tonight is a romantic comedy with a cast of African American women with diverse personalities, each of whom is yearning to find that one-in-million perfect partner. Preorder now. Available 10/2/19 ASIN: B07Y6WG1NJ (Kindle Version $2.99) ASIN: 1694647544 (Print Version $8.99) ASIN: 978-1694647542 (Print Version $8.99) Here are the links for: (5th Anniversary Edition) I’m Your Baby Tonight, but what about tomorrow? Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y6WG1NJ Kindle Print: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y4LQLRP Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/959433 Book trailer: http://youtu.be/-nJslQYMpL8 Ask David: http://askdavid.com/books/10892
Sep 22

WHY I WROTE: AVA & PATIENCE, A purple love story

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
As I was writing another novel, “Me and Mrs. Jones,” I introduced two characters I really liked a lot. In fact, I liked them so much, I stopped writing “Me and Mrs. Jones” to begin creating “Ava and Patience, a purple love story.” I usually wait until I’m further along in one novel before I begin writing a new novel. If it’s a sequel or one of a series of reoccurring characters novels, I usually wait at least a year or longer before I begin. I don’t know why I do that. I just know that I do. A bit of self-analysis and an educated guess says, I needed time to step away from the primary characters to get a feel for the secondary characters. I needed to hear the two secondaries talking to me and telling me their stories. Yes, I admit it. My characters do talk to me and I do listen. Enough of my confessions, I wondered if I could create two female characters whose common love of purple was their first connection. Once my characters discovered they shared a commonality for purple, they decided to see what else they shared if anything. On the outside, the […]
Sep 15

PLAYGROUND GAMES

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
As a kid, if anybody asked me what my favorite elementary school class was, I’d always answer how much I loved recess. My mother would interrupt the conversation to correct me. She’d say recess wasn’t a class, but I remained steadfast. I’d mumble under my breath, “If recess isn’t a class, it oughta be.” The reason I loved recess in the wintertime so much was that I had the freedom to release the tomboy I felt screaming to be outside. That part of me wasn’t allowed be out any other time. I should explain. I came from a family and a time when young girls were expected to wear dresses to school, at home, at church, and even at play. Girls wore dresses everywhere. Of course, since girls dressed like miniature ladies, they were supposed to act like them as well. That meant no ball playing, including foot races, baseball, football, or basketball. In my elementary school, nobody knew what soccer was, so I didn’t play that game either. Girls could play dodgeball, red rover, jump rope, tag, hide ‘n’ seek, and jacks, but no marbles, a game in which I excelled, and other games that didn’t involve the running […]
Sep 01

MY LABOR DAY WISH

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I’m sitting on a bench across the street from my house in Riverside Park. It’s a short walk from my apartment to the children’s playground area. I’m watching children run around the yard; swing on the monkey bars; climb up the jungle gym; slip down the slides then run into the sprinkler. On such a sizzling hot and humid day, the shockingly ice-cold water feels good to sweaty, super-heated skin. It makes the all the children playing in it, scream, shout, giggle with glee and throw water on each other. They remind me how good it is to be young, filled with wonderment and allowed to act silly. Watching children at play, always relaxes me and I let my mind drift off. I’m still trying to come up with a Labor Day tale worthy of posting on my blog and FB page. Suddenly I had an idea. White I’m no great admirer of the man in the White House, his comments have made me rethink the meaning of many things. I consider myself to be one of the luckiest workers in America. While I’m retired now, I got a job working for a New York City housing agency in 1978. […]
Aug 26

WHY I WROTE THE PRISONER & THE LAWYER

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
  You, your kid brother and your grandmother are the only family you have after your parents die. At 18, you leave home and join the military figuring you’ll see the world and get a great education too. Your grandmother dies. Your kid brother goes into foster care. You feel guilty when you don’t take the discharge offered to you and get your brother out of foster care to raise. You love the army too much to do that and so you re-up for many more tours. For a long time, you just throw money at your brother’s problems. You bail him out of jail for the petty crimes he commits while on drugs. But this one time, with this one serious crime, you can’t run away. Neither can your brother. What do you do? How much are you willing to do for your brother? Would you give up your freedom for him? Would you serve his time? Or would you simply throw money at him again; ignore his calls and pretend nothing happen? I wanted to see how much a sister would do for her only brother when he was waist deep in life-altering trouble. I wanted to see […]
Aug 19

CALLING ME OUT MY NAME

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
As a kid, my mother would take me and my siblings shopping for clothes in local department stores. Anything my mother, a home economist and a bit of a tailor, couldn’t make for us, she’d buy when we had the money. I remember how excited my mother was when women were allowed to have store charge cards linked to their husband’s money. My mother’s first store charge card resembled an army dog tag. It was rectangular, made of metal, and smaller than the plastic encrypted credit cards of today. Hers had an assigned number. Her card also contained her first and last names along with her address, stamped into the metal face of the card. Whenever my mother used the card to pay for something, a salesclerk stuck it into a small manual charge machine face up. Then the clerk placed a small, rectangular, handwritten paper invoice with triple carbon layers on top of the charge card. She slid a roller-like attachment over the invoice and the card so my mother’s information would appear on the invoice. The salesclerks were always white women (back then, the sales staff wasn’t integrated) and usually a great deal younger than my mother. When […]
Aug 05

102 YEARS OLD. She’s over a century.

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I don’t normally do five essays in a month. I also don’t dedicate any of them to somebody’s birthday either. This month, I decided to change what I normally do and make an exception. My mother turns 102 years old on the second week of this month. She doesn’t do Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Instagram or Snapchat so she’ll never read this tribute. I thought I should do something special online for her, sort of a permanent digital record that she existed on this earth for the last 102 years. I read somewhere that the number of folks over 100 isn’t so rare nowadays and the number of centenarians is actually increasing. Try as I might, I can’t imagine what she’s seen during her lifetime. I know she missed WWI but lived through the depression. She spoke about how she and my aunt sold bread and cookies from a wagon. My stepfather lost a janitor job during the depression but tried to make up for it by setting a home bakery because he loved to bake. My mother said she got to practice subtraction and addition as she and her sister sold bread and rolls my step-grandfather baked. She watched her […]
Jul 29

WHY I WROTE: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
In this day and age of social media, short-term relationships and instant gratification, I wondered what a long-term, lesbian friendship of 20 years looked like. How did the women meet? What would the women involved be like? Would they be saint-like women? Once these saints were engaged or married, they never ever looked at another woman and thought. “I want me some of that!” Or would the two friends be devilish women who wanted to sleep with every woman they saw? And tried to do so. What attracted the two women to each other in the first place. Why did they decide to become friends? The two women in question dated 20 years ago. They became friends when the dating thing didn’t work out for them. One of the women, Bianca was an attractive, charming single philanderer who loved women and lots of them. She dated Ernestine who later became her best friend and several other women simultaneously. Bianca’s unfaithful behavior hurt Ernestine who believed Bianca was the marrying kind. When Ernestine discovered Bianca’s infidelities, she decided she couldn’t trust another partner ever again. She became lucky in business but distrustful in her life. Meanwhile Bianca never wanted to be […]
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