If you read my stuff, you will quickly notice my lifelong affinity for Divas of Color. Etta James. Bessie Smith. Tina Turner. Aretha, of course. When I started telling my stories six months ago, those were the ones that jumped out first. No mystery. They just seem like the right voices to personify my inner life…

My best girl friend, Sandi (I call her SML because that is her initials), is word-challenged. She’s plenty smart, but sometimes has difficulty expressing herself. She uses words in strange combinations that don’t really make sense, but after years of exposure I am able to silently translate them in my head. So, I know what [...]

1986 Up in my bedroom sitting on the floor playing an audiocassette I got for $2 called “Gospel” by Aretha Franklin. Very lo-fi recording of her when she was a teenager (like me!) singing at church, New Bethel Baptist in Detroit, and accompanying herself on piano. I am horrified by what I think I hear [...]

I still have a Yahoo! email address, okay? It’s not as bad as still having AOL or Hotmail. Plus, I have a Gmail one too. So shut up. Anyway, so that I can check my email quickly first thing in the morning, Yahoo! is my homepage. They have very carnivalesque top-news stories, lots of self-help [...]