Its all in the date

I was just thinking this week that all the great milestones of science fiction and pop culture have passed us by. It started with the late George Orwell reversing the year in which he completed his dark apocalyptic masterpiece 1984 often written Nineteen Eighty-four. We got to 1984 and there was no great war with Oceania or rats in cages attached to Winston Smith’s face (though Big Brother and torture did seem surreally relevant in the sudden invasion of Iraq and the Gitmo/ Abu Graib tortures but that’s for another blog). From then the dates fell away like sheets stripped from a yellowing calendar. It was October 16, 1997 and the Jupiter 2 carrying Earth’s first family into space (along with its most flaming charlatan, his robot boyfriend and their adoptive and precocious ward—which gave us one of the most iconic television phrases ever “Danger Will Robinson!”) blasted off only to be Lost in Space. Obviously nobody asked Dr. Smith and he certainly would never tell.

Then there was the Grand Trilogy of early 80s sci-fi movies with twisty plots, hot ballsy women and straight up hardcore violence: Escape from New York (1981), Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984).

I still remember seeing the poster for Escape from New York when I went to see the movie at Hanes Mall Cinema IV—yes Junior a theater with 4 screens and not 50 was a big deal then. The poster showed the destroyed head of the Statue of Liberty with the caption reading: In 1997, when the US President crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in for a rescue. When this movie was released, New York City was sandwhiched between the catastrophic economic collapse of the Drop Dead 70s and the apocalyptic obliteration of the cracked-out New Jack City era. Even though it was only 16 years away, at the rate of decay it wasn't a far fetched concept that NYC would likely be a prison by the late 90s. Kurt Russell was at his badass zenith at that time. Shedding his Disney framework and going from Jungle Boy on Gilligan’s Island to the magnificent MoFoness of Snake Plissken right before our eyes. Remember the green and black wireframe CGI of New York City! We were all amazed. This was movie magic at its best.

Three years later a god came to earth swaddled in leather and attitude. The juggernaut known as Arnold Schwarzenegger bore down on the American psyche like no villain had done before. Norman Bates’ demure horror or the sheer scope of the psychopathic nuttiness of Travis Bickle had nothing on the T-1. It was a machine sent from the future to kill the mother of humankind’s savior. Imagine a Satan sending a demon to kill the Virgin Mary before she even met Joseph. Technology so unrelenting lethal that only the shark from Jaws could invoke a feeling so visceral. The Terminator unleashed a fury on the world that was unlike anything before. It was originally stated that on August 4, 1997 a computer defense system goes online. 25 days later on August 29, 1997 Skynet (the name still gives me Goosebumps) becomes self-aware and initiates a nuclear strike that all but obliterates the human race. There has yet to be a Skynet, but Google (which was started in 1996) has taken over the internet. Should we worry that Larry Page and Sergey Brin have created the construct that will bring about the death of man and not Miles Dyson?

Ape conquered man in 1991. The nineties must have been seen as a bleak distant future to visionary artists of the past. Roddy McDowall probably became the most famous talking animal supplanting Mr. Ed. In my favorite of the Apes Chronicle movies: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Caesar, an intelligent, talking chimpanzee—the offspring of Cornelius and Zira, the ape couple that befriended Charlton Heston in the original Planet of the Apes—grows tired of his people’s slavery (the story goes that in 1983 all cats and dogs died of a disease that left man companionless so we took apes as servants and pets). Caesar starts a non-violent movement of passive resistance that quickly escalates into full-out revolution. The original ending of the movie (before it was sanitized for happiness in which mercy was shown by the ape captors to their former human masters) had Caesar standing on a burning precipice overlooking a mob of orange-jumpsuited gorillas. They had Breck, the cruel white administrator and chief boogieman of Ape Management stretched out and shackled by the horde. MacDonald played by black actor Hari Rhodes begged Caesar for mercy. The film ended with man’s nearest genetic neighbor ripping Breck to shreds. Could you imagine the imagery of a black man and a primate lording over the death of a white former slave master? The bloody American future now theirs to rule. A very potent simulacrum of 1972 mores and to say the least you see why the original ending did not test well.



And speaking of monkeys; what does a black monolith and bone-wielding primates with a murderous streak stir up in your brain? Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick (author and film maker) created a movie borne from the crèche of cutting edge special effects. 2001: A Space Odyssey still widens my eyes and sparks my imagination. It was weird and overlong but the sequences for this movie still look good 42 years later. Skylab and the International Space Station not included, humans are nowhere near having a facility on the moon. Or living in some far-flung dimension where we're all warped into an old people living in what looks like a Central Park West classic six with a disco floor and wainscoting. You will notice that I am making little mention of 2010: The Year We Make Contact because it not only didn't have the gravitas or zeitgeist of its former, it was just plain boring. Jupiter turning into a sun. That's what the entire movie was about. Really?

I guess that leaves us with the only milestone left. 2019. The year Blade Runner takes place. Many esteem this to be the greatest sci-fi film ever produced and is considered Ridley Scott’s masterwork. It made the future sexy and violent all at the same time. This future wasn’t the grand pristine intellectually sanitized conquerors we meet in the 50s, who with bold courage brought humanity to the stars. Think Forbidden Planet (RIP Leslie Neilsen) Nor was it the wasteland of squanderers that let apes rule and pollution destroy us. Think Soylent Green is people!! What teenage boy doesn’t remember Joanna Cassidy and her snake, slutty and aggressive running away from Harrison Ford’s Decker in a clear plastic overcoat. At least strippers made it into the future. And with the way our economy is in free fall, the sex trade may be the profession with the highest growth potential. So if Blade Runner is the Holy Grail we only have 8 more years to achieve Philip K. Dick's avant garde vision of the future. Here's the recipe: we need to speed up wrecking our atmosphere so that Southern California is cold, wet and bleak, build some fire-belching factories in the San Fernando Valley and get on the ball with a race of androids that look oddly like Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer, that we call replicants. And there better be a Latino-Asian LAPD detective brushing up on his origami even as we speak!

What’s fate, got to do… go to do with it

What is fate? Is there such a thing? Do we follow chosen paths or do we create them? Was Barack Obama destined to president? Was I destined to be sitting here at midnight disenchanted writing this blog? Is it fate that my fantasy football team is once again at the bottom of the league the second season in a row, despite having a good roster of players? Hmmm. Karma, kismet; chance, luck, fate, destiny, doom.
Dictionary.com states:
–noun
1.- something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot: It is always his fate to be left behind.
2. -the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed; the decreed cause of events; time: Fate decreed that they would never meet again.

We always think of fate in mythological terms. We’ve all heard the anecdotes. For example, when I first moved to New York in the last century my roommate (a former college friend) used the money I had been giving him toward the rent to secretly buy himself a car. After a huge confrontation that ended in kicking and spitting, I moved out. Shortly thereafter the block gossip led me to understand that said car had been stolen and ended up a burned out shell on the side of the Garden State Parkway. What went around came around. Now that was some cosmic retribution because I didn’t deserve to be robbed.

But that’s not what I’m speaking of. I mean real life predestination Presbyterian Style. A life path chosen before you were born. A walkway paved in such a way that no matter where you walk you will follow this Yellow Brick Road of Fate inexorably to Moirai, the Greek goddesses of Fate. It was written that even mighty Zeus, greatest of all Greek gods, was subject to their whim. And that’s exactly my question when seeking understanding of my purpose. Unlike the pristine Greek statues of perfect form, James Goetz’s 1946 line drawing of the Moirai is more to what I think fate must be— dark, chaotic, wanton, mysterious and a little bit sinister. I mean, you have no choice in the matter if it's your destiny, right? As I wrote in Solstice at the end of the climatic battle between Solstice and Queen Vivica there was destiny afoot.

"Vivica did not want to die, but she had no choice. Her death was foretold on that hot summer day twenty years prior when a porcelain-skinned baby dropped onto the red dirt of South Carolina screaming and raging for attention."

When I was in the fifth grade I had a dream. I was walking down the street between my mother’s house my cousin’s who lived next door, I came upon a man whose face I don’t remember. however, it shined as bright as the sun and he made me feel safe. He was God. He looked down on me and said “Daryl, I have a mission for you.” Then, suddenly, a huge red and pus-covered arm reached out from under a hedge and grabbed me by my Spiderman belt buckle and started dragging down into the grown. Of course, I woke up screaming. It gets better. When I was in college my best friend was into esoteric mysticism and new age spiritualism. I got my astrological chart read and I found out I have a kite. Unless you’re more than a Spencer Gifts astrologist (I’m telling my age) then you, like me, wouldn’t know what that means. A kite is a “fairly rare” configuration and signifies that I have a greater purpose or mission in life. Madonna and Oprah both have kites. Oprah has a network and Madonna has “conquer[ed] the world” just like she set out to do. And here I sit at midnight disenchanted writing this blog?

Don't worry, I’m about to wrap this up. What if WE DO HAVE a path in life laid out for us by the Moirai like a cosmic GPS. But what if that path is just shadows? Or merely moving images in the dark? Or pin pricks of light on the wall? Dots on a page? Braille to the sighted. What if we don’t read the road markers correctly? What then? Will some otherworldly spirit show up and make sure we are on the divine and narrow? These are all very interested questions. But then I think there also very good answers. The choice isn’t made for us. There may be some etching in the dirt or some movement and commotion, but we don’t have to follow them. For better or worse we make up our own destinies. Of course, there are building blocks in place that make Oprah, President Obama and Madonna who they are. Such factors as education, ambition, people who believed in them, as well as faith in themselves are all such important ingredients. If we can find meaning out of the meaningless then I would say there are no coincidences. We as humans can read something special into almost anything. Omens and signs guide us. Like believing in miracles. Simply because you believe, then miracles do manifest. I believe that sometimes random acts happen without that magic elixir of caprice or premeditation. Evil is always afoot. Crap just happens sometimes. If we view these markers telling us to till the soil of our lives in a different way and it profits us, wonderful. If not, oh well. Life is long and hopefully we will learn to not regret the idea that we did not read the markers they way they were presented. I will leave you with a poem that every seventh grader knew when I was in school. It still resonates today when I contemplate my fate. Maybe it was fated that this poem has stayed with me.

Invictus
By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Its like déjà vu all over again

Recently a friend of mine posted this on facebook: “Hard work pays off. From time to time, you have won by sheer luck. But most of the time, you get the reward because you did the work. Good Morning.” This got me thinking.

How does hard work pay off? And if the formula is that easy why don’t more people follow it? I think to begin we have to define what the reward is? For most of us in this celebriality driven consumerist frenzied society, reward is greatly defined by what rappers rhyme about in their lyrics or what every housewife on the Real Housewives of Banality has or wants to purchase, from new lips to the that oh so perfect lapdog. They crave money, cheddar, moulah. Power and fame (infamy). Now we’ve always had a personality driven society. We are human after all. In ancient Roman people bought sweat from the gladiators thinking it would make them beautiful.

Rags to riches. You may not know Horatio Alger, Jr., but if you’re an American your very day-to-day existence is affected by this man’s work. He wrote many young adult books on how down-and-out boys might be able to achieve the American Dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others. We all (especially in the creative, entrepreneurial sector) have entire mythologies about people who started out with nothing and who made themselves into huge blasting successes. JK Rowling went from welfare to billionairess. Tyler Perry went from homelessness to running his own multimedia-multimillion dollar empire. I even have such stories in my own family. I can’t count the number of times at family gatherings that I heard the story of my grandfather Dr. Island Lemuel Johns. A grandson of slaves born in 1892 who walked 16 miles from his hometown of Auburn, NC to Raleigh to earn a medical degree from Shaw University. All the while working odd jobs to make money. He died when I was 6 but I still remember being driven by the now parking lot on Patterson Ave and Fourth Street where his office was located, being told of his accomplishments. How can I live up to that feat?

So what does all this mean? That if I’m not the first black man on Mars that I’m a failure? A flop? A nobody? I think the problem is that we should measure reward incrementally and individually. I have a good friend whose philosophy is get it as quickly and as easily as possible. Of course I eschew his ideas. But we are economically equal. Materialistically he actually has more. So must I conclude that hard work is debunked by crafty laziness?

So in the end which side is right? Nobody. As always when it rains it rains on everybody. Some people work hard to get little, others work little to get a lot. That has no bearing on the course of action you must take. At the end of the day I may not have sold a million books (yet let’s not forget that) but I have worked hard on my craft. I have learned in great and small increments how to be a better writer, businessman, and person. It’s the struggle that makes you smarter and better. The difference I have noticed between myself and my get it quick friend is that he has not learned anything. He continually makes the same mistakes over and over. Like the bible says in Mark 8:36: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? My friend may have riches but as quickly as the came they can (and have in the past) left just as quickly. For me the wealth of emotions, ideas, people that I have encountered working hard for my dream will enrich my life forever. My epitaph may never read "...he came from nothing to conquer the world" but I bet if I keep working hard I’ll (or at least that hard work) will be remembered long after Bravo and its legions of personalities have faded into dust.

The Witch is Back and She Means Business

The witch is back and she means business. Solstice Macaffey, the world’s most powerful and glamorous witch, usurped the throne of the New York Coven in 1928. Now she’s set her sights on ruling the entire world. The Goddess of Light picks up where the astounding debut novel Solstice ends. Six months after killing the reigning queen of witches, Solstice finds herself embroiled in ever more scandal and intrigue. Using her favorite tools of conquest: violence, deceit and bravado, she brings her own personal brand of infamy to Jazz Age Europe. She makes new lovers, creates new enemies, sparks new friendships and is entangled with one very crafty angel. But when Solstice’s dark past roars into her life seventy years later—in present day Harlem, Newel, the young man she's sworn to protect, now thirteen may pay the ultimate sacrifice for her lifelong flirtation with evil; his eternal soul hangs in the balance.

Excerpt form The Goddess of Light

Chapter 1.
The Goddess of Light Ascending

ONE
**Harlem, 1929**

It was easier than she thought. Murder. Simple really. Effortless. Like the man she had just killed. She didn’t know him nor did she care to. He begged for mercy before he died. And, of course, she was merciful. Magnanimous. Benevolent. Magnificent. A few words spoken softly, almost like the song of a nightingale that brought great sweeping destruction in its melody. Harmonics that offered pain and death instead of dulcet invitations to comfort or sleep. The evil fell freely from her lips and would later be rumored as to be her favorite method of death. By this point, she had created variations of the original. Some would cause the victim to fall apart, literally, with limbs cascading to the floor. Others would include twisting and mangling, rending and crushing. Brutal and gleeful. They became known as the Solstice Variants of the Nkrumah-Shanmugasunduram Effect. But the original was the one she preferred. Easy, quick, bloodless. Well, not that bloodless.

As she rounded the corner and came upon the man she did not know, he cowered feebly in her presence. Obviously, he knew he was about to die. When she uttered the words “Karmino Sin Testa!” that separated his head from his body, the low moan that left his lips drifted on the air filling the small space with a cruel and piteous song. His mouth formed a perfect “o” and his eyes fluttered as if in dismay at his own lifeless body. The head cracked on the carpet with a sickening bounce and rolled into a corner under an ornate Beaux Art console. It came to rest, thankfully, with the fluttering eyes facing away from his headless body now disgorging streamers of blood across the room. Solstice stepped back from her malice, mindful of her new shoes; two-toned T-Bars in white and cordovan. She had just picked them up at Saks Fifth Avenue last week and smirked at the thought of fashion having no place in battle, but a stylish warrior she would be.

She remembered as a little girl sitting at her mother’s side in between her sisters, Babycakes and Tula, in the small, hot wood frame church hearing the triumph and conquest of the Israelites booming from Reverend Truman’s pulpit. His voice filled the room with heat and bluster. She thought of herself as a great soldier, sword in hand ready to kill every Hittite she could find. She chuckled at the memory of her makeshift weapon; a tree branch stripped of leaves prancing through the woods behind her cabin looking for King Agag. The thin switch whistled as she swept it broadly from side to side, hacking at the poison ivy, decapitating her foes. Her favorite bible verse meandered through her head. It was First Samuel verse three:

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

“Spare them not,” she murmured eyeing the dead body coldly. The fingers of its outstretched right arm still twitching and tapping and strumming the carpet rhythmically as if counting the items on a yet undone list of things to do before death came knocking in expensive shoes.

“Whadya say ma’chere?”

She turned to see Brasileiro. Tall, but not as tall as Delpha and slightly infirmed. He walked with a limp. Pretty in the face with long eyelashes and wispy thin lips. Fair beyond belief, too white to be black. But at least both her parents were Negro. This bastard was some exotic mix of Cherokee, Creole and something else. “I bet he can see in the dark too,” Solstice thought to herself remembering hearing Mama and Aunt Dollie talking about an old aunt of theirs who was part Indian and could see the blackest man coming down the darkest road on a moonless night at fifty paces.


She hated it when he called her “ma’chere” but because it made Delpha somewhat jealous she tolerated it. Brasil, as he liked to be called, paraded around as if he was some suave Negro from Nor’leans. Truth be told, he was just another high-yella geechee running from the sticks of Virginia into the arms of magic in New York City. He grew up fatherless on rotting porches, tending chickens and eating polk salad plucked from the earth. But she didn’t hold his humble beginnings against him; hers too were dirt poor. She couldn’t even begrudge him for his pretense now. How could she? Not with her running around killing people in her flamboyantly hideous Elsa Schiaparelli lobster-printed dress. Salvador Dalí personally created the fabric for the designer and Solstice had accompanied it with agate gemstones about her wrist and throat. She didn’t like Brasil because he openly fawned over her and practically gushed compliments whenever she was around, tacking on ma’chere as if it were supposed to bring her to orgasm every time she heard it. He was just too damned available. Men should never be that easy.

Lingus approached with the head of what looked like a cross between an old woman and a cat and tossed it alongside the other head under the console. They had finished purging yet another safe house of Vivica’s loyalists. Normally, Solstice would have dispatched Brasil or Lingus for this task. Especially Lingus. He loved it so. He stood by shifting—almost bouncing—from one foot to another, dressed in an aubergine, the word he used to describe the awful purple color of his doubled breasted suit, looking greatly like a hungry animal ready to kill.

“Whadaya want me t’der wit ‘em?” he said motioning his chin with a feral chuckle at the bodiless heads. “The res'is upstairs. Back bedrum.” His eyes flicked upward. This group was exceedingly vocal and defiant of Solstice’s rule. In the near six months since she had killed Vivica and usurped her throne, she had been bringing to heel any and everyone that defied her.

“Burn this place down. Let’s go. I have a party to throw,” she said coldly. She turned to walk away and found her eyes resting on the crumpled heads by the baseboard. She squinted at the receding and mottled hairline of the man she had just killed. Instantly, fire engulfed the head quickly spreading to the cat-looking woman’s head beside it. The fire brooded there with such intensity that soon the man’s skull exploded. Solstice turned nonchalantly and walked straight towards the door whispering under her breath as Lingus brought down the rafters “Spare them not.”

The Journey Continues!

I’m so excited. I’ve just completed the book cover for The Goddess of Light. It’s so interesting wearing many hats when you take control of your own artistic life. I have been allowed to oversee the art direction of my own book so coming up with a design that is both marketable and true to the story has been difficult to say the least. Moving from idea to completion is just like writing the book itself. You conceptualize. You begin the preliminary work. You edit. You edit again. You edit even more. You edit to the point of regurgitation and when you finally say screw I’m done. Something wonderful happens. You let the work lead you and it takes you in a direction that you could have never imagined and then you bring forth something beautiful.

I believe artwork is an integral part of my books. I’ve had the immense pleasure of working with two great artists. Narcisa Jovic and Justin LaRocca Hansen, have both been singularly professional and gifted. And of course I can’t forget Pepper Kaminski my own personal art director who has “jazzed up” both my covers. The Goddess of Light is the exciting continuation of Solstice. It contains intrigue, infamy, violence, sex, drugs, magic and hot jazz. What more could you ask for from a novel about a Harlem witch that scandalizes pre-war Europe.

Look for it soon on sale everywhere in late August.

I am the sum of many parts

I just finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I was impressed by his work and research. At first I was a bit put off because I must admit that I too was a follower of that American Cult of Personality—and after speaking with many friends from many cultures realizing that the entire world had been duped— believing in the “Self-Made Man.” That unique individual who through no help from anyone else rose from the deeps of miserable poverty to achieve superstardom in whatever field he chose. Mr. Gladwell dispels this myth with extensive data collection and good old common sense. Mother Wit is the name my mother gave it.

If you’ve never heard of Horatio Alger I’m sure you've heard his
philosophy (many would now say myth) about how any any person working hard and long enough can attain great wealth in the United States. The modern Republican social platform is built around it. Mr. Alger was the writer who espoused the rags to riches story of America. He wrote over 100 books during the 19th century mostly aimed at boys and young men. “By leading exemplary lives, struggling valiantly against poverty and adversity,” Alger’s protagonists gain both wealth and honor, ultimately realizing the American Dream. Now I know for years I used to ram my head against that dream and wonder what’s wrong with me. If Oprah can start life impoverished in a one-room shack and rise to the pinnacle of running a billion dollar empire then why couldn’t I? As I read in Outliers the conventional wisdom of her fighting like a Roman gladiator to secure the legacy she now enjoys was not so much a singular event but a culmination of many milestones. Now to be honest Mr. Gladwell didn’t profile Oprah Winfrey in his book (he did profile the Beatles, Bill Gates, Joe Flom, Canadian Junior Hockey leagues, Korean Airlines, Southeast China and the peasants who work in rice paddies). I just took his formula and applied it to Oprah and indeed it worked.  Here is a quick bulleted list of the basic ingredients that goes into making a successful
person:

Opportunity
Birth
Practice/ Preparation
Intelligence
Ethnicity
Luck

Legacy
Culture
Family Support
Communications
Work Ethic
Education
Access

He says no man is built all alone; that you must practice and prepare (at least 10,000 hours to become an expert.) You’ve got to be smart. Your ethnicity can also be a powerful attribute and not just a hindrance in most cases. If your family is super upportive it will help you communicate better and therefore be more confident in going after what you want. You must have a tremendous work ethic and a good education. Now read Oprah’s biography using the above list as a filter and you will see that even she didn’t spring forth from the head of Zeus as the Oprah we’ve come to know and love.

Now after reading his book I would like to reexamine my own life and take time to reflect upon and thank all the people that helped me strive to be as successful as I am now. First I was born in a time when African-American children were being integrated into the greater society. Unlike my older cousins I grew up with diversity. My high school graduating class was the first to go through all 12 grades in an integrated school system in Winston-Salem, NC. I never felt whites were alien or foreign or less or better. They were just classmates, friends, normal people. That ease around people from all walks of life has helped me tremendously. I’ve prepared myself by writing and being creative since I was six years old making up my own stories with my G.I Joe and Planet of the Apes dolls. Being black in America has made me proud of the heritage my people have brought to the world and given me a vast stockpile of experiences to pull from.

Growing up in the South has enriched my life with the importance of honor and being a man of his word. The south was at one time racially intolerant but by confronting the evils of segregation America was made better and that helped me too. My mother put me in private art classes and took me cultural events growing up. Being a musician and an essayist herself she knew the importance of opening up the mind to divergent and sometime disparate ideas. When I was kid and asked her why there weren’t any black superheroes in my comic books she told me to create my own. I invented 77 characters: mutants, super-heroes, super-villains, aliens, demons you name it. I had many mentors all throughout school: Mr. Humphries that brought me science fiction books when I was in his 7th grade English class, Mr. Whooley and Mrs. Spaugh (two white teachers that had me switched to the more advanced literature classes after I had been put in remedial English twice by the school system even though my test scores showed a stronger aptitude), Mrs. Gerotha (G-dot G-dot) Gentry who inspired me to love everything from African folklore, Chinese proverbs to Dante’s Inferno, Dr. Peter Radcliffe whose guidance during my college years still resonates with me. My father passed his incredible willpower/ work ethic on to me. A man who was born in 1908 and had to leave school in the third grade to work on a farm but taught himself how to read and insisted on me being well educated. My mother still tells me of the days he would come home from work and implore her to help me with my homework because he could not. Recently when I saw the movie Precious the abuse and horror didn't make me cry, but when she made that first step in learning how to read I thought of my father and that made me emotional. He started working at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1942 as a part-time laborer, carrying huge bales of tobacco to the auction floor to be sold. He retired 28-years later as a machine inspection supervisor for an entire department. He is the reason I am passionate about literacy.

So upon the shoulders of these people am I hoisted. Lifted and moved. Thank you all for the incalculable help and support. For the first time I feel like a success. Not because I have a private jet or drive a Maybach or wear Gucci (ok Universe I'm not saying I would turn any of that down!) but because of all the enriching experiences and people I have interacted with in life. Good luck and God bless.