Jerry Ward's Blogspot

  Message from Dr. W. E. B. DuBois   This morning at breakfast, Dr. DuBois said, "Vice President Kamala Harris must read my novel Dark Princess.   She must ultimately own her triple-heritage."   I smiled politely.   Jerry W. Ward, Jr.             February 19, 2021  

  Our nation needs authentic singers, because they are griots of the infinite emotions and external forces that we deal with daily.   One of the most authentic was Esther Phillips, particularly when she sang " Disposable Society" (1974). Disposable society has thrown away the best in me They've thrown away sincerity, the keystone of integrity Disposable to throw away, buy something new another day There's nothing made that's made to stay Listen.   Phillips' voice had the authority,   sincerity and integrity to critique the future past of the USA. In her songs we discover the status quo of 2021.   Jerry W. Ward, Jr.             February 18, 2021  

 v   ASH WEDNESDAY BLOG/confession   Why do you torment me with necessity?   So much to say.   So much more to do before I rest on a cloud or a bed of fire.   Pandemic is relentless.   It is immune to moral inquiry and criticism. So much treachery to overcome.   I am weary, unspeakably weary, and the face of death is more and more beautiful.   Each letter my fingers type is alien to my autograph.   A blatant lie about how weary I am.   Weary ---a curse word for tomorrow's future.   Or the today that refuses to arrive.   And what is gained from cussing in the name of prayer?   Zero.   I would have my letters be lottery winners.   That is not destined to be. Shame. The filth of wealth runs away from me. Shame. Necessity, why do you torment me?   In cross-signed Catholicism , the face of Death is beautiful .   So too is living.   Open confession is good, so the world tells me, for a body's soul, but at this moment I am too weary to die in a confession.  

    TOUGALOO COLLEGE: when history met the future in 1997, two anthologies were published--     Miller, Nyari and Howard Rambsy II, eds.   Black Thoughts at the Fork of the Stream: An anthology of Tougaloo students' creative works .   Tougaloo, MS: Tougaloo College Journalism Department, 1997. Cover illustration "Black Thoughts at the Fork of the Stream" by Torkwase Dyson.   Includes work by Howard Rambsy II, Shelia Bonner, Kashelia B. Jackson, Michael McLendon, Chris Harmon, Kimm, Nyari Miller, Dameon D. Williams, Jeremy D-Wayne Chico Hodge, Malcolm Woodland, Lakeitha Bassett, Victoria Johnson, Samecia Mint   Rambsy , Howard, II, ed. Souls on Fyaah: A Collection of Thoughts on African American Males . Tougaloo, MS; Howard Rambsy II, 1997.   Cover illustrations by Trkwase Dyson.   Includes work by Joe Martin,Nyari Miller, WEBO (Denise L. Banks), Sharon Moncure, Patrucj Sutton, Jimmie Lee Morris, Jr., Shugana L. Campbell, Lamar Wade, Yvonne J. Brac

  Blog2.14.2021   The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6   Humble yourself and follow the lead of the child, but first teach the child to read.   Reading narratives to the child while it is still in the womb is a project for preparing children who will be born in the 21st century for what they are condemned to expect:   the heavy burdens of history as narrative prior to history's becoming equipment for daily life, instruments for probing inevitable uncertainties.   Always discuss with the child the centrality of narrative in the state of being human.   If this sounds to you like dream-work and   platitude your hearing is accurate. As what we once knew as American democracy slowly becomes a fascist desert, we must arm ourselves and our children to do battle with inconvenient truth.   Neither we nor the children can esc

  Blog2.13.2021   Each pandemic week imposes more reasons to worry, to grieve for the dead, to maintain social distance, to think of the bright moments and unfortunate experiences in my life before 2020.   Some days weariness shrouds me, and I ask "Why the hell am I condemned to remember segments of time?"   It is a relief when a small poem drops like gentle rain ----   Yes.   It is summer. Writers arriving and dead still burn so fiercely.   It is a relief to ask   Which is more important ----knowing how to use the   Human Genome Project to map "tiny changes in the viral genome as I spreads" or knowing how to use digital humanities technologies to analyze the literary properties of political trash talk in American government?   From the perspective of narrative medicine , the scientific and the humanistic ought to exist in harmony.   From the perspective of blood and flesh experiences, common sense tells us the scientific is more important; t

  BLOG2.11.2021   I TALK WITH DEATH EACH DAY. I SMILE AT IT; IT GRINS AT ME. WHEN WE PART COMPANY ALONG THE WAY, I AM STUNNED TO SEE WHAT I CAN SEE .     COVID -19 and the necessity of social distancing have intriguing side-effects.   You become more intimate with yourself. More reflective and more terrorized by the possibility that the world is not a stage but a cinema, film noir constantly dancing on the screen. Your terror becomes almost impossible to bear, because you realize you are a character in a movie the mass media is most reluctant to discuss.   If you do not belong to the Tribe of Trump, the pain is excruciating. COVID-19 incarcerates you in the   surreal.   You are haunted by an assertion James Baldwin made in The Devil Finds Work --- "The distance between oneself -- the audience -- and a screen performer is an absolute: a paradoxical absolute, masquerading as intimacy." The more you refuse to say the absolute has credibility, the more ab

    MUSINGS OF THE DAY   The mother- and father-ships of sanity have landed   Let our enemies of whatever color they be know this as we eradicate them with the tools of insanity.   Mr. Ramcat informed me this morning that I need to tie up loose ends and thank all the people who have made my life a rich and satisfying experience of 77+ years.   If you deserve my gratitude, you know who you are.   Four quotations to brighten the day------   "I don't regret my years as a prosecutor assigned to juvenile court.   In some ways, I think it is why I was put on this earth." ---Daphne R. Robinson   "While there are books and articles concentrating on young black men in the social sciences and education, thee has been comparatively little input from scholars in the arts and humanities/" Howard Rambsy II   "The hashtag 'black lives matter,' which now rings prophetically through various quarters of the United States of America and int

  Preface for a blog on COVID-19, 7 February 2021   Put "market nihilism" in your search engine.   Among the results you may find a sobering podcast "Hidden Forces," moderated by Demetri Kofinasm   an amoral   conversation between Ben Hunt and Grant Williams on "Market Nihilism: Price Discover in a World Where Nothing Matters."   The podcast is designed to convince you that narrative is the historical bane of human being in this world.   You know neither whether Hunt, Williams, and Kofinasm   are real people, nor would sonic analysis get you closer to truth. The sounds you hear could be produced by skilled actors. The situation forces you to be a contrarian without your volition.   "False truth" can be performed with convincing alacrity. That you breathe enriched pollutants   (designer misinformation) with each breath renders you virtually powerless. The majority of American citizens have no clue about how thoroughly they are managed by one

  THE EMPTY PARKING LOT   (for C. Liegh McInnis)     Yesterday ---it might have been already tomorrow-- pandemic authorizes no certainty--- we saw what you saw in   inept parking lots of indifference--- all those invisible spirit cameras witnessing the thunder of our peoples' tears, all their   piss stains of grief eternal.   Thank the universe for the blues.   And thank that universe for the eternal blackness of you telling our weary ears to listen to the sacred silence of the cameras in the empty parking lots, to hear the sole/soul   message of how we did, do, shall live.   I am the parking lot, empty and asking you what is the best deal to make with Death and God. But I know the answer --do I not--written in the stone of your gendered grammar?   Thank the universe for the blues.     Jerry W. Ward, Jr.     2/5/2021 11:04:44 PM

    Brief Review     Memoirs are in vogue.   Kiese Laymon's Heavy: An American Memoir (2018) has garnered critical praise for the bold weight of its masculinity. His book sparked   many unrecorded private conservations among those who know Laymon's mother in real time.   The private consumption of his memoir is saturated with uncertainty.   Likewise, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House (2019), the book chosen for   2021 citywide reading in New Orleans under the One Book, One New Orleans project, promotes more than a slight degree of indulgence.   It exposes the necessary quirks in the writing of memoir as an act of discovery.   Amelia Platts Boynton Robinson's Bridge Across Jordan   (1991) set a model for how an activist might write herself into histories of struggle. Robinson was strident in proclaiming she was a very special person. , Catherine Coleman Flowers' Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret   (2020), on the other hand,