Dec 26

FAREWELL, PRESIDENT OBAMA

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
The picture you see is Senator Obama in Wisconsin at a presidential rally in 2008. He’s holding an original copy of my first edition of Mr. Jefferson’s Piano and Other Central Harlem Stories. My publisher at the time was so excited to meet him. She decided to show him my book. Rumor has it that he loved to read, but I don’t know if the Senator kept the copy or even read it if he did. My publishers wanted to advertise the picture on their site and claim he loved the book. I disagreed. I said I thought it crossed the boundary into false advertising. I worried about being sued and so I checked their site every day for the next two weeks. My publishers tried every which way but loose to convince me. They finally gave up on the idea of posting the picture.   Looking at the picture from eight years earlier, I think how much President Obama has changed. He looks so much younger in the picture. He has less gray hair and very little worry wrinkles across his forehead. Looking at him now, I guess eight years of being the father, the big daddy of our […]
Dec 19

Why I wrote FETCH

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I wrote FETCH, not too long after 9-11. On that day, I’d arrived at work around 8 in the morning. Performing my job as a senior property manager, I was reassigned to the main office at 100 Gold Street which was and still is six to seven blocks from Ground Zero. I remember thinking how beautiful the day was with its sunny, bright blue skies filled with fluffy, cotton white clouds. I worried about getting home before the crowds to vote in the Democratic runoff mayoral election for either former Public Advocate Mark Greene or Bronx Borough President Fernando (Freddie) Ferrer. Little did I know what tragedy was about to befall the adopted city I loved so much and I would be an eyewitness as well.   All of the scenes I wrote about from walking through the thick blizzard of heavy ash dust; the jammed hospital across the street from my office; the hordes of frightened people scurrying across the Brooklyn Bridge and to the extraordinary silence of the streets filled with bewildered, shell-shocked New Yorkers who are normally loud boisterous; I actually experienced on that horrid but fascinating day.   Most of the news stories I watched during […]
Dec 12

WE ALL BE DIFFERENT NOW!

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
We all be different now that Trump is to be our 45th President of these United States of America. I feel like I did when 9-11 happened. I was working four blocks away from ground zero. I watched as it happened. I felt so horrified, helpless, and unable to do anything to stop those planes from crashing into the towers, but I wanted to stop it. I wanted it to be a movie or a made-for-television movie that I could turn off at will. But it wasn’t a movie; it was real. Over three thousand souls died that day in New York City. The next day, 9-12, I felt sad, hopeless, and depressed as I tried to call friends and relatives to see if they were okay while they did the same to me. I wondered what would happen next to our country. What would happen next to the City?   Years ago, my car was broken into for the first time. I was in shock. At first, I couldn’t believe I had anything in my car that somebody could want badly enough to break out a window. Immediately, I felt shock, then I was stunned, and finally, I was […]
Nov 21

GIVING THANKS 2016

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I’m writing this post without knowing who are our next sitting president will be. It’s too late to encourage people to vote as the election has already happened. What I hope is that our country will maintain the same freedoms we have always had or hope to have and that our Constitution with its amendments and our Bill of Rights guarantee. This year is especially important for us appreciate that the United States of America is still the most democratic country in the world. As one of its citizen, I still have the right to debate that fact, write about that fact and publish that fact and scream that fact from the rooftops of the big cities of the north; to the prairies of the west; the farmlands of the south and the coal mines of the east. I say thanks America for being the country you are. I realize sometime you can be loud, not always fair, opinionated and wrong, but in the end, you allow us citizens to be. Happy Thanksgiving America and may you have many more. Thanks for reading this. BL Wilson
Nov 14

Why I wrote the novel, IF ONLY

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
When I wrote If Only, I could love again I had just broken up with my girlfriend of eight years. Actually, my girlfriend had broken up with me. She left me for some big, manly-looking female nearly thirty years younger than me. All the while she was backing away from me, my-ex kept claiming nothing was going on between her and the big witch. I knew better, I just couldn’t do anything. I suggested couples counseling or one-on-one counseling, and spending special time with each other. I even suggested giving up my writing but my ex-girlfriend had fallen in love with somebody else and there was nothing I could do about it. So anyway another weekend was coming up. I was feeling lonely, depressed and generally sorry for myself. Thank God for my friend Sheila and her two friends who invited me to hang out with them in the Village. We stopped by the LGBT Center and two women’s bars, Henrietta Hudson and Crazy Nanny’s (which has since closed). Somewhere between the three places, I spotted this tall, bald, well-built brown-skinned woman about the color of a ripe pecan. She wore fitted blue jeans stretched over nice tight a basketball […]
Nov 07

ELECTION DAY: November 8, 2016

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I started watching Donald Trump again last summer. I say “again” because I’m a New Yorker. I remembered him from the 1980’s when he redid the Wollman Ice Rink. The city was supposed to rebuild the rink in 1980 but six years and million dollars later, it still wasn’t complete. Trump offered to renovate the rink in 4 months for free. After he completed the rink under-budget and on time, he asked the city to allow him to recoup his expenses by keeping the revenue the rink made until he’d been reimbursed for all of his expenses. He operated the rink and a nearby restaurant from 1986 until 1991. He also operated rink again in 2001 as a joint venture. One of his companies is currently operating the rink. Trump popped up again in 1989, taking out a full-page ad in the Times to bring back the death penalty for the Central Park Jogger’s “supposed assailants” before they were even tried or found guilty. Years later, the Central Park Five’s (as the so-called assailants were now known), convictions were vacated and they all were released from prison when another man admitted to the crime and his DNA matched what found […]
Oct 31

HALLOWEEN & MY ANNIVERSARY

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
In October of 2014, I did something I’d been dreaming about for years. Here’s a little background about me first. When I returned to school in 1997 to earn my BA at the College of New Rochelle, I learned to use a computer for the first time to write my assignments, reports and papers. By 2001, I had graduated from Baruch College with a Master’s degree. I was an expert at using my laptop to do research then write about what I learned. During the same timeframe I was writing my papers for college, I was also playing around with writing romantic and erotic short stories. While most of my short stories never became novels, several did. One of them “Sweet Sarah’s Bluez” became an unpublished novel after I saw the movie “The Education of Rita.” The movie was a British hairdresser who wanted a higher education because she saw it as a pathway to leave behind a broken marriage and a low-wage job and attain success. I caught the writing bug but I needed to find my voice. I needed to write better since I kept getting pesky rejection letters from publishers I admired. I had shoe boxes filled […]
Oct 24

My Aunty & The Big C

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
Whenever I changed doctors and had to fill out new medical forms, I was always proud of my family’s health history. You know the forms I mean. The ones that have you check off any surgery you’ve ever had and when you had it. I don’t know about you but as I’ve grown older, I can’t remember all my surgeries a total of five or six when I had them. I’m much better at answering questions about all the diseases I’ve ever had and whether or not my parents and siblings had or have them too. On the health history part of the forms, I was proud to say that I didn’t have diabetes, or heart problems or high blood pressure but I did have arthritis and I was missing a gall bladder. My parents had their gall bladders along with high blood pressure and heart problem but they didn’t have diabetes. My father had prostate cancer by the time he died at 85. I wasn’t worried because I’d read somewhere that a high number of men had some evidence of prostate cancer after 75 or 80-years old. Neither of my sisters or I showed any evidence of breast cancer. […]
Oct 17

Trying not to think about cancer

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
I was re-reading through my notes about a workplace memoir that I’d written and published through a small independent publisher in 2008. I’d been collecting materials to write a book about where I worked and the heart-felt journey I’d made while working there. While reading my notes, I found something that captured my interest. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to add the information to the second edition of my workplace memoir, Mr. Jefferson’s Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories, or simply write another short story to post on my blog. When I opted to write a short story, suddenly, I traveled back in time. According to my workplace diary, Monday, October 13, was Columbus Day and a civil service holiday. Today was Tuesday, October 14, 1997. I read the diary note I’d written to my partner. I am so sorry. I know I promised I’d go to the PTA meeting but I can’t. As I read that note, I remembered thinking how I couldn’t say what I felt. Instead, for the past five weeks, I pretended I wasn’t worried about a damned thing. At forty-nine, I’d gotten my routine mammogram five weeks ago. I always hated the way that […]
Oct 10

COLUMBUS DAY 2016

by B.L. in Other 0 comments
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 have to listen to the lies or worse yet have to teach the lies to their descendants. Imagine […]
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