Nov 12

STOP 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 […]
Oct 31

WHAT IT MEANS TO KNEEL

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Sports have been the place to make the biggest statements about the myth of group supremacy and the hope for social equality, writes Sims [Take a Knee, by John Sims/Wilson Palacio, 2017] Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) were the forefathers of the recent protest movement of taking a knee during the national anthem. (Mike McCarn/AP). Originally published September 22, 2016 at 8:57 pm in The Seattle Times. This is short essay is not about celebrating the national anthem not is it about whether kneeling is patriotic or not. Taking a knee is about no longer standing for violating Black folks’ right to life in these United States. In addition to not being killed for your beliefs or your race or gender, these rights include: The right to free speech which means the right to protest. The right to protest includes the freedom to “take a knee” during the national anthem or at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier without penalty such as job loss or loss of life. As Carol Hanisch said in an 1969 essay she wrote and was published in 1970, “The Personal Is Political.” The essay and others that followed, made the connection between everyday […]
Oct 23

WHY I WROTE BED 4 SALE

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
You are in a deep funk. You are so depressed you nearly quit your living. You convince yourself that you have good reason for your depression. Your family is gone. Both of your boys, twin sons, died in a bus accident nearly a year ago. You took family leave after the funeral. Now it’s time for you to return to work. You decide to remove all reminders of your children by selling their furniture and personal items through the want ads and internet. A charming woman, a stranger, offers to buy the beds and desks. She comes to your house to see the youth beds for sale. She senses something is wrong with you, but she doesn’t pry. She seems decent. She makes you laugh for the first time in a long, dark time. She takes pity on you and cooks the first hot meal you’ve had in months. One thing leads to another the two of you end up in bed together. The sex is extraordinary, but you know it’s a once-in-a-lifetime meeting. You’ll never see her again no matter how much you want it. Ha! Fate kicks you in the butt. Come Monday morning, guess who your new […]
Oct 16

TIGHT SPACES & ME

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I wasn’t going to write about this. It was too scary for me to contemplate but every time I took the subway, I saw her desperate face so I had to put fingers to keyboard and punch out this story. I’d left work near the Brooklyn Bridge as usual and caught a west-side train at Chambers Street. I like to walk so I strolled through the park at City Hall with its magnificent fountain and old-fashioned faux gas lighting, crossed several streets and headed west on Chambers Street. I could take the express train uptown to upper Harlem, renamed Hamilton Heights but I like to wound down before I get home and shake off the day’s events so I caught the Number One Local. The ride was slower than usual but I didn’t mind, catching the Number One that far downtown usually yields a seat. I had a good book to read and seat at the train’s door so I was happy. At 50th Street and Broadway, the train lurched to a stop. The doors opened but we sat there until an announcement came over the PA about traffic on the line. The dispatcher was holding us in the station. […]
Oct 08

FUNNY THING ABOUT CARS

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
So I get this early morning phone call from my kid. “Hi, Mom.” “Why are you calling me at two in the morning?” I say. I think, Early morning calls are never good news. It’s how I learned of my father’s death. “Don’t get mad, Mom; I was in an accident.” “What kind of accident? How serious was it? Are you hurt?” I pause breathing heavily, waiting anxiously for an answer. I’m hoping my son can’t be hurt too badly if he can still talk to me. I hear him sigh, take a deep breath, and then he tells me. “I think I broke my ankle. I fell asleep driving across the 59th Street Bridge.” I hear the piercing wail of sirens in the background as my son talks to me. An unfamiliar voice interrupts my son and says, “The ambulance is here to take your son to the hospital.” “Could you please find out what hospital?” “Where are they taking him?” the stranger asks. The ambulance driver says, “St. Clare Hospital on 54th Street and 10th Avenue. The stranger introduces himself. He tells me that he happened on my son’s accident and helped break the windshield to pull him […]
Sep 25

WHY I WROTE: CeeCee, Finding the perfect house for the perfect woman

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
How do you handle an annoying client? You own a small business. You get some of your clients through online ads you post, while other clients come to you through referrals from your satisfied clients. You really can’t afford to lose the annoying client. She’s wealthy. She has great contacts in the art world that you’d like access to. You think she can provide that access if she only stops acting so crazy. What do you do? When I worked for the city of New York, I encountered my share of annoying clients. I never quite figured out how to handle them as well as I’d like. I thought writing a story about what I should have, could have, or would have done might ease my mind and make an interesting storyline too. My romantic novel is CEECEE, finding the perfect house for the perfect woman. Thanks for reading! BL Wilson Here are the links for: CeeCee, Finding the perfect house for the perfect woman: Amazon Kindle USA: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074YKGJCF Amazon Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B074YKGJCF Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/7462060 Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/743712 Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/UJwqkSkrbpg Ask David: http://askdavid.com/reviews/book/lesbian-romance/15257 Connect with BL Wilson at these links: Blog: http://wilsonbluez.com Facebook Business Page: https://www.facebook.com/patchworkbluezpress Goodreads: http://bit.ly/1BDmrjJ Linked-in: http://linkd.in/1ui0iRu […]
Sep 18

SO THIS IS REDEPLOYMENT: Tuesday, May 19, 2009

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Much has happened since my last post, so it’s difficult to know where to begin. but I’ll certainly try. Laura, a sweet woman, a dear friend, and coworker, got caught up in the city’s layoff cycle. If Mayor Mike (Bloomberg) has his way, she’ll be gone, just another terminated provisional (a worker who isn’t civil service) victim biting the city’s budgetary dust and soon to be standing in the unemployment line. Her story is like so many provisionals working in city government. Laura relied on a mentor to get her a job with the city. Through various connections and or political patronage, she got a city job. She moved up the career ladder, never giving a second thought to taking civil service exams that might keep her job in a financial crisis. “Why take a test?” she’d say to anyone who would listen. “Civil Service tests are expensive,” she’d add. After all, she’d only be working the job for a short period until she found something better. Two or three months on the job turned into a year and then a year became two years. Two years became four and she was promoted several times and given two or three […]
Sep 11

REDEPLOYMENT: Thursday, April 30, 2009

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Well, it finally happened. What I’d been wishing for but dreading too happened yesterday. I guess you could say the suits got the ball rolling over me the day before (Wednesday, April 29, 2009) or at least that was when they officially sent me THE EMAIL. The message on THE EMAIL was short and bittersweet. The subject matter at the top read Updated: Personnel, whatever the hell that meant. The location was room 6C4—next-door to my old stomping ground when I first started working for my new Queen Bee. The original meeting date was scheduled for noon the next day (Thursday, April 30, 2009). The required attendees were me, Queen Bee, her minion Deputy Director (DD) and the New Kid-on-the-block who worked for Queen Bee’s boss, known as Big Boss. Rounding the panel of inquisitors, also known as suits, was a quasi-personnel representative. I considered her half-assed because she never worked a day in our Human Resources Division. She wasn’t familiar with employment rules and regulations. She also reported to Big Boss, but her assignment now was to take meeting notes. Later, the meeting was changed to 3:30 pm because the incompetent suits had scheduled two separate “personnel updates” for […]
Sep 04

DISPOSABLE EMPLOYEES: Wednesday, April 29, 2009

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I was listening to an old song by Don Henley as I drove along the FDR heading home from work. The main song chorus goes something like this: Kick ‘em when they’re up. Kick ‘em when they’re down. Kick ‘em all around. And I thought, Hey, Don, you took the words right out of my mouth. That’s exactly how I feel every time I go to work now. When did I become a disposable employee? When did I become somebody you could blow your nose on and then cast away like a used tissue? A worker that you could squeeze and squeeze like that last drop in a packet of ketchup until there was no energy or spirit left—just an empty shell to dump in a corner trash can until it retired. When I first started working for Queen Bee, the work was a challenge. I love being challenged and so I loved coming to work. Why was it challenging? I was a writer who wasn’t confident in her skill set yet. Oh, I knew that I could write. My master’s degree from Baruch College declared that much as did the framed certificates hanging on my office wall. But the […]
Aug 24

Why I wrote: ARE YOU THE ONE LOVE FOR ME?

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I wanted to write about a super confident personality. I met a few folks like this in various jobs over the years but I’d never taken the time to examine how to deal with them. They could be so annoying, time-consuming and energy draining so I usually went the other way to avoid dealing with them. Now, I was curious. I asked myself the following questions. How do you handle an overconfident, arrogant person who won’t leave you alone? You turn this way and there she is. You turn that way and she’s still there. You try insulting her but mean words just seem to roll off her back like she’s coated in Teflon. You try ignoring her but she just gets in your face even more. You want to resort to violence but your job as an educator won’t allow that. You wouldn’t feel comfort doing something physical because you aren’t a violent person. What do you do? You could call the police but that could be embarrassing to you and your career. You could escort her out but you suspect that she’ll just wait for you outside in the school’s parking lot or on the street like a […]
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