After accidentally deleting the update I’d posted, I again like to announce that I am happy to have a new version of my website now in the process of being more accessible. Please browse and I welcome ideas and suggestions.

There is a new update on this menu item which now includes a drop down titled Pandemic Diary

Where were you?

(I wrote this in the summer of 2020 in conjunction with Black Lives Matter. I post this to commemorate Black History Month.)

September brings the inevitable question: Where were you when the planes struck the Twin Towers?

Where were you when Jacob Blake was murdered? Where were you when George Floyd was killed? Where were you when Breonna Taylor was shot? Where were you when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated? Where were you when Tamir Rice was killed? Where were you when James Byrd was murdered? Where were you when Rayshard Brooks was killed? Where were you when Alberta Jones was killed? Where were you when Trayvon Martin was murdered? Where were you when James Craig Anderson was killed? Where were you when Lillie Belle Allen was murdered? Where were you when Ahmaud Arbery was killed? Where were you when Randolf Evans was killed? Where were you when Michael Donald was lynched? Where were you when Alton Sterling was killed? Where were you when Stephon Clark was shot? Where were you when Atatiana Jefferson was murdered? Where were you when Michael Brown was killed? Where were you when Eric Garner was choked to death? Where were you when Kenney Watkins was killed? Where were you when Michelle Shirley was killed? Where were you when Riah Milton was murdered? Where were you when Dominique “Rem’ mie” Fells was murdered? Where were you when Louis Allen was killed? Where were you when Henry Hezekiah Dee was killed? Where were you when James Earl Chaney was murdered?

Where were you when Terence Crutcher was shot? Where were you when Oscar Grant was killed? Where were you when Natasha McKenna was tasered to death? Where were you when Botham Green was killed? Where were you when Ezell Ford was killed? Where were you when Laquan McDonald was killed? Where were you when Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot? Where were you when Michelle Cusseaux was killed? Where were you when Kathryn Johnston was shot? Where were you when Redel Jones was killed? Where were you when David McAtee was killed? Where were you when Johnnie Mae Chappell was murdered? Where were you when Oneal Moore was killed? Where were you when Dreasjon “Sean” Reed was killed? Where were you when Wharlest Jackson was murdered? Where were you when Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn was shot? Where were you when Malcolm X was assassinated? Where were you when Charles Eddie Moore was killed? Where were you when Ben Chester White was murdered? Where were you when Na’ Kia Crawford was killed? Where were you when Massai Cole was killed? Where were you when Antwon Rose was shot? Where were you when other blacks have been murdered?
Where were you?

Unicorns-? Rainbows-0
Not long ago I walked out of a Target Store and as I stepped out from under the overhang I saw a vibrant rainbow arching over the expansive parking lot. Excitedly I looked around to exclaim at its beauty until I noticed that not one of the at least two dozen people in front of the store had seen it. Even though some shoppers were facing east towards this spectacular exhibit in the sky, every one of them was looking down at a cell phone-maybe at a video of a rainbow!
My first thought was to point the colorful hues out to them, but I got the sense that they wouldn’t care to be distracted from the important business of texting or playing games on their electronic devices. As I watched the people coming and going from the parking lot and the other stores next to Target, I was amazed that not even the kids walking with their parents paused to look up at the very predominant colors framing the parking lot.
I stopped on the way to my car to wonder in part at the unmistakable sight of the rainbow, but more to continue to watch and wonder how it was possible that not one other person noticed it. Finally as I put my bags in the car and got out my own cell phone to take a picture, a woman in a car near mine asked me if I saw the rainbow. I didn’t see who spoke but was so happy to have another person notice the rainbow that I could have hugged her just as an expression of a shared humanity in wondering.
Had a Unicorn with a horn appeared from pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no doubt no one would have notice that either, even if the Unicorn prodded unobserving people in the ass with its Unicorn horn. The response probably would have been to complain of being disturbed from the important task of “selfing” or texting LOL to a BFF. WTF Asshole, wake up and smell the Unicorn!
This got me thinking about an incident that occurred recently at the University of Florida when a male frat boy taunted a black female pedestrian with slurs of a racial and sexual nature. His behavior was inexcusable and that he felt entitled to treat this woman in this way is a sad statement of the entitled culture to which he appears to belong. What got me thinking, though, was my experience with the rainbow because, though unfortunately I’m not surprised at his ignorance and his appalling treatment of the woman, I was completely amazed by the fact that he noticed anything at all. Based on my observations of the people of the rainbow, I know that very few people will bother to lift their head enough to take their eyes off of whatever device has them in a trance. Surrounded as this boy most likely is by like-minded, or maybe more to the point, non-minded people, it is a wonder that he or any of his frat-boy brothers’ can function in society in which looking beyond a cell phone or thinking is possible. The rainbows and unicorns and women of color, or not of color that are part of a larger picture don’t have to exist in the small world picture created by technology. Just don’t “Friend” it or “Google” it and change the definition on Wikipedia. With every thought and idea compressed into a tiny screen the world of this boy and so many others will continue to shrink. Who knows, maybe this is the start of a new evolutionary process by which those of our species who are so absorbed in technological devices may themselves become as small and limited as the technology they need to survive. What will these cell-phone-size-brain people do when confronted with the inevitable “Fatal Error!”? Like lemmings they’ll probably follow one another into oblivion, but I’ll be oblivious because I’ll be looking at the rainbow and waiting for the Unicorn.
Corny? You bet. But paying attention has its rewards.