St.Elsewhere Episode Three Down's Syndrome

I remember this episode! This was when I realized why I was such a fan! Yeah Yeah Denzel but the issues that were brought up in the scripts presented were all that too. So enjoy your Sunday edition of St. Elsewhere sit back and reminisce!

Back To School And The Ministerial Alliance

The school years is almost upon us and the Juneteenth Committee was called upon to help with the planning and marketing of this event. I was appointed to help the Ministerial Alliance with that part of it.
I think its going to be a good turn out as far as the kids coming out and getting the school supplies that they need for school. So that is a good thing.
Ms. LaJoy and I went to their once a month meeting this morning and told them that we will also be donating funds for the cause as well as another church that called First United Methodist which I think was wonderful for them to do.
Sad though as I was speaking with the group that handles outreach at this church she was telling me how they needed more support in the food that was donated as they were giving away far much more that they ever had. So their church will be donating money to help purchase school supplies and help out with that. Great wonderful.
One thing that I learned today was how to do only what you are asked and no more than that since people will let you take on all of it if you want.
More on the next years family reunion and the Freedmans' Bureau next week. I will also try to post some photos from the back to school rally as well.

till then

have a good week and stay tuned to tomorrow for the next episode that gave us Denzel St Elsewhere..

Scratching Backs

I know you all know the old saying. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours? Well this time I am having to make good on that and help out a loval group called the Minsiters Alliance. This group is made up of African American ministers in the Ouchita County.
Well they are going to be putting on a back to school youth rally and they would really like for the Juneteenth Committee to be the marketing team behind the success of it.
I certainly could say no to them but I am off again to help them pull this off in less than two weeks. But I just wanted to say that no doubt I will do this so that I am guaranteed that they will work with us again next year for Juneteenth 2009.
Let's see how this goes and if we can pull this off.

Chat later

St. Elsewhere Legionnaires Part 2

For all you Denzel Washington fans, make sure that you check out another great episode of St. Elsewhere!

Where History Lives

Did you know that Camden, Arkansas can boast as having one of the only remaining Freedmen's Bureaus in the United States? Oh yes we can boast about that.
The Historical Society in Camden that also handles the Chidester house and museum purchased the building and moved it to the new location off California street in Camden.
I was reading in the Camden News how they want to have this as a building that can hold African American art and other artifacts that pertain to black history in this area.
The Freedman's Bureau was where African Americans went to get established in the his area call Eco Fabre back in the day or the Ouachita. So I thought that was interesting.
They would like to work with the black community to get the building back to the period that it came from. I am excited about this and you know I am going to be giving the Historical Society a call this week!

Keep you posted

St. Elsewhere Episode Legionnaires Part 1

Every Sunday come hang out here with us and catch some old episodes of tv shows that brought us some of our best actors!
The best part of this is that there is no time you just come to our space on the web and watch the show. It will be ready for you!

Enjoy!

The N Words Sup Wit Dat?

I don't think that there is much that I can say here I just wanted to post this on my site so that we can have some dialogue going on about this N word thing.
I don't really think about it only because I can't believe the word still gets used yes even by my. By habit really because as I was growing up thats what I heard and still today I hear the word in my community and in my family.
Here is what is interesting though is that when you are a fly on the wall listening to the word you know the inflections of the voice to know the meaning of said N word if that makes sense.
Example:

1. Two brothas come up to one another and give each other dap and says, "What's up my N!" and they hug. - That is a term of endearment there
2. A group of young teens are walking through the mall all African American, two older black women shake their heads and say "Chile look at that group of N's right there, they need to calm down" - Hooligans, punks
3. Spike Lees School Daze scene at KFC Samuel Jackson says "Ya'll N's and you gone be N's just like us" - a term of self hatred passed down from generation to generation.
4. A young lady is on the phone with her best friend speaking of her boyfriend and how happy she is with him she says , "Girl I love my boo that's my N" - she loves her man

These are just examples of how our community uses this word. It is hard to explain but Jeraldo Rivera said something interesting today on Fox News this morning on this topic.
He being Latino told of how white ranchers in Texas used the derogatory term Chicano to describe their workers. It meant to the white ranchers they were low lifes. He said now you can hear Latinos calling themselves Chicano and claiming it as a sense of pride rather than what it was created to mean. They took the word and made it their own.
You know in the black community we do that same thing but because there is 400 hundreds years of slavery, abuse, degradation and genocide that is associated with that word it still to this holds a bitter taste in our mouths and goodnes don't let anyone else use it that is not African American.
I'm not excusing it, I'm explaing MY point and how I myself understand the word. So the next time you hear the word listen, really listen and then dicipher the true meaning.
Then make up your own mind on where that word should be in your own personal vocabulary.

Plans already for 2009

Car Show on Sunday June 22, 2008 in Camden, Arkansas in the video above.

Well we are already getting ready for 2009. The core group of us sat down and of course planned out the intimate details. Thats always fun because we have such a hard time with how we can make everyone in the city happy and still get our point acrss.

This year we decided on offering family packages so families can plan their reunion with us and choose which package best fits their budget. Once they do that they can make their payments throughout the years and be ready for Juneteenth 2009 without hurting the purse strings.

Sounds like a plan huh?

I will certainly have to keep you posted on how that goes for sure since that is going to certainly be more work administratively for me. But you know this is like a game for me. I want to know how far I can take it with this celebration. I want to know how we can educate the public about America's second independence day and still get businesses to see how they can particpate and benefit from this special day that many states are begining to recognize as a state holiday.


What I would like to say is this stay tuned for this years planning of Juneteenth 2009 Family Reunion. This is going to be very very interesting.



Next post ...meet the staff of the Juneteenth Foundation in Camden

Success!

Thank you's and Acknowledgements on this video!

Well everyone after my ranting on this blog I went back to the drawing board and to the other active Juneteenth Committee members and we devised a marketing plan for January 2008.

With the little money that we were given by the local advertising and promotion committee of our town and no cooperate sponsorhip, we were able to make our city officials stand up and take notice of us.

With all of our events we brought about 22 thousand people to this little town that is dying. ( i mean that literally most of the manufacturing jobs are moving out of the country or away from here). McDonald's ran out of hamburgers! Walmart ran out of money! (not a supercenter though). Allen's ran out of silverware for the opening ceremony banquet!

On Sunday the car show was a blast and the carnival and .....well all of the events were full to capacity literally.

Now all I can say is this. Local businesses who only see this as N*^&^a Day now have to look at us for what we did. We brought much needed revenue to this tiny town and they were glad for it.

I guess you could say we were the little engine that could and finally did.