June 26, 2020
Changing Of The Guard: 8:05 PM - 9:03 PM
8:05 PM - Waxing crescent moon...
8:10 PM My perch in the front row...
8:12 PM no movement, no sound... porch sitting... a centering meditative experience, undisturbed, deeply satisfying, a sound/no sound environment, trees breathe, leaves flutter with the sibilant rush of a lover's silk robe slipping willfully from shoulders, draping in slow motion to the floor.
8:25 PM except from Fred Robin, frequent visitor and earthworm miner who visits every day...cocks his head in a silent salute as I quietly greet him then goes about his foraging. Fred the kingdoms spokesman for the evening, a foraging robin becomes a winged zen master showing me the way of the universe.
8:54 PM Arturo Ui stationed behind me never misses activity outside his door....
9:02 PM absorbing the enveloping evening in a silence beyond all comprehension. Jupiter, mute and massive, shuffles into its slippers, surveys us from a safe distance.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Don Lemon: Anchor, Bridge
June 22, 2020
Don Lemon: CNN Anchor, Bridge
Don Lemon is paving the way every night to expand the conversation about racism in America. He is thoughtful, presents his authentic self every night, and differentiates his opinions from the news clearly.
He’s deceptively good at tackling the heretofore third-rail subject of racism, touchy to explore even with a CNN audience. Low key before the George Floyd murder, he registers the event with sense of the now, recognizing that this is the time to open up the talk and that he is going to use his platform to do it.
I can think of no other highly visible black man in the media constellation who has the credibility, sensibility, and a smoldering repugnance at a nearly profane sense of systemic racial injustice regarding black men in particular.
George Floyd's murder in plain daylight, captured on video, lit a fuse in the national psyche. Lemon lets it burn. But in a way that he intends, figuratively speaking, to cause as much imploding as exploding. When white folks begin to notice then come to grips with entitlement and privilege that comes with their skin color and begin to notice it without feeling called out that’s quite a feat.
Lemon is doing that. When he launched a podcast titled "Silence Is Not An Option," he put his words into action.
Excerpt from "Silence Is Not An Option"
I know that this issue, like this country, isn't just black and white — we're all impacted by this, and we all have work to do. Listening to this podcast won't wash away your sins, and you won't get a certificate at the end. You may still say the wrong thing — hell, I am sure at some point I'm gonna say the wrong thing — but silence is not an option. We've got to talk about this and find some concrete steps forward, together.
The stone he’s cast into the pool of race consciousness is making a ripple on shores heretofore unlapped . A news anchor, yes. And a bridge to a national consciousness about race.
June 25, 2020 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (22)