Sunday, May 31, 2009

Fly Brother Departures - Summer/Fall 2009

All the pieces of the puzzle.

Behold the itinerary* for my upcoming round-the-world jaunt (click image to enlarge), touching six continents and ending this November in Brazil. In the coming weeks, I'll delve into the details of the planning, including ticket costs, accommodations, and activities. If you're in any of the scheduled destinations during the schedule dates, let a Fly Brother know:

*subject to change.

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Fly Favorites: May 2009

This month, I've run across several interesting Internet items that I thought I'd share with you, my dear readers, starting with:
Photo uploaded by CitySkip
  • A bittersweet homage to New York (Fuckin') City's bad ol' days of the 70s at Vanity Fair.
  • The world's crappiest flights, hotels, meals, and toilets razzed by noted travel personalities over at the Titanic Awards.
Photo by fadogirl
  • The English meanings of place names like Malibu, Chicago, and Lake Tahoe (plus fun-to-say places like Chattanooga, Okeechobee, Tuscaloosa, and Idaho-Udaho-which-one-is-a-state?) with National Geographic's interactive map, Native Names. Bet you can't find which names mean "person of dirty water," "let's have intercourse," or "falling hair."
  • Aerial views of the concrete swirls of Spaghetti Junctions, Mix Masters, Mixing Bowls, and Hillside Stranglers from around the world, featured at wejetset.
  • America's Next Top Model coverage of fashion in Brazil's biggest burg, favela-style, and the funky new English-language print and virtual travel guide to my favoritest city on Urf, Total São Paulo, which debuts with hot-spot reviews and a salacious call girl interview (kudos to TSP for 'going there' with what most people, myself included, love about Brazil...the sex!).
  • Bogotá's Sunday-morning ritual of bike-riding, roller-blading, and general promenading through high-altitude streets in Streetfilms' ten-minute short, Bogotá Ciclovia. This makes me miss living in the Colombian capital.
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Monday, May 25, 2009

Black Like Me

Warning: this post is long and political. But I majored in political science, and some folk might not like what I have to say. Tough.
Me, toasted to a rich chawclit brown and squeezed into a tiny t-shirt I bought in Salvador da Bahia. I did not want this picture taken.

Day before yesterday, I posted this as my status on Facebook:
Acabo de caminar del gimnasio. Hoy es un día brillante de sol tropical. Y bajo de ese sol iluminante, se me dió cuenta que yo era el único negro/moreno/mulato en la calle que no era obrero, vigilante, mulero, vendedor de cocadas o aguacate, o muchacho de servicio. ¿Qué vaina tan desesperante?

Translation:
I just walked home from the gym. Today is bright with tropical sun. And under that illuminating sun, I noticed that I was the only black/African-descended guy in the street who wasn't a construction worker, security guard, mule driver, coconut treat or avocado seller, or servant boy. How depressing!

An immediate response from a FB friend:
Interesante, pero qué negro? Vos no lo sos o no pareces.

Translation:
Interesting, but what do you mean black? You're not, or you don't look it.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been plagued by the eternal question, "What are you?" I won't lie and say that I've always had a solid racial identity, but for most of my 31 years, I've lived life as a black American male, albeit one of obvious mixed phenotype. Growing up in the American South, my identity was never questioned by whites, only by the other blacks I went to school with, often pointing to my curly 'fro and calling to me in faux-Spanish, "catada-potodo" and all that jazz. My mother, herself the recipient of much vitriol from her darker-skinned peers during her years in segregated schools and at an HBCU in the late 50s, told me how she had often been mistaken for white during the pale winter months of her youth. But despite her recent European ancestry and light-bright-damn-near complexion, she was born in 1938, under the equalizing rule of hypodescent in the United States, with the requisite single drop which once and forever placed her on the dark side of the color line. And it was under the same culture and climate of that rule that I was born in 1977, reddish-brown, darkening in summer, with features sitting halfway between two continents.

That did not mean, however, that I was raised culturally confused à la Diff'rent Strokes. I grew up in a black neighborhood, in a black Baptist church, in a black family with members "from coal to cream." My youth was always a little bit Cosby, a little bit Good Times, a dash of 227, and a whole lot of Amen. I was surrounded by institutions of black middle-class success, not quite Atlanta-level entrepreneurial luxury, but the fruits of striving, college-educated Southerners who marched in high-stepping bands and continued to serve the Greek letter organizations they joined back when it meant something; and always within a ten minute drive of the 'hood and the cheap Chinese take-outs and barbecue joints. I was a member of a black Boy Scout troupe and learned about W.E.B. Du Bois and Madam C.J. Walker and Charles Drew as a part of the McKnight Achievers Honor Society. Curly hair notwithstanding (receding, actually), I grew up black. And I know what it means to be followed around in stores, to attend a high school with 50s-era library books, and to be harassed by the police.

I've come to reconcile my phenotype the way I reconcile my interests, that to be black—physically, culturally, emotionally, spiritually, politically—is not to be monolithic. That we are, in every range, dimension, and manifestation imaginable. It took me going through stages of emotional maturity, attending a mostly-black high school (where I was hated for being a fat Oreo nerd) and an HBCU (where it was finally cool to be smart, diverse, and culturally inquisitive), and traveling through the realms of my brothers and sisters in the Diaspora, most notably Latin America (where I initially had the naive expectation that people who looked like me also thought like me).

"Why you wanna be a black nigger?"
I was asked that once by a Colombian woman who had lived for a while in the United States and couldn't get her translation right; Spanish subtitles for American movies and TV shows give "negro" for both black and nigger. Though I'm sure she was educated in the proper derogatory terminology during her time in New York. Anyway, her question was prompted by my response to her original query of whether or not I was Latino (that catch-all term which incorporates Spanish-speaking cultures from Mexico to Argentina and truly means absolutely nothing outside of an American cultural context, and even then...), something often asked of me. My answer is always either negro americano, afro-americano, or a mix of the two. More often than not, this answer is never accepted at face value, hence her perplexity at why I would choose to identify myself as something A) seemingly unpleasant, judging by her tone and facial expression, and B) apparently untrue.

See, in Latin America, the race issue is less, pardon the pun, black and white than it is in the US. The Spaniards and Portuguese, already a mixed lot, had much less reluctance than their British counterparts in planting their seeds in foreign soil, so to speak. In fact, an entire range of interesting names developed to accompany the corresponding array of skin tones, hair textures, and facial dimensions, the most prevalent being mestizo (white/indigenous), mulato (white/black), and zambo (black/indigenous). Along with this color gradation came social value, rated according to your position: African slaves, invariably, at the bottom. Underlying this system was the exact opposite idea of hypodescent—one drop of any other blood kept you from being black (though not necessarily enslaved), and some places even allowed enterprising mixed-bloods to purchase whiteness (don't worry, folks, I've included a bibliography below). Wrap all this in the typical European colonial social matrix that privileged whiteness above all else (repeated throughout the Americas, Africa, and Asia), and you can understand why no one in their right mind would actually choose to be black in Latin America if they didn't have to. Why would anyone want to identify with a group of people who, still in 2009, maintain the lowest position on the social ladder in the countries where they are greatest in number, and whose color is a euphemism for poor, dirty, and ugly? Where a Spanish word for cute (mono) is default for blond and where one "German" or "Spanish" grandfather is enough for people who look like Denzel or Oprah to claim, "I'm not black, I'm mulatto," as if that were a badge of honor (of course, there are no Colombian Oprahs or Denzels because maybe they don't want to be on TV or in movies here in Colombia, right?).

It's this same lack of identification that keeps the colonial structure in place, because there's not enough unity or anger to incite any type of focused paradigm shift reminiscent of the American Civil Rights Movement. The segregation here is most certainly economic, but that functions as a proxy for race when the majority of the lower-class, with no access to adequate education or jobs, is indigenous or of quite obvious African-descent, and the number in the upper classes is negligible (of course, everybody always seems to know the one exception that proves the rule). And people here tend to think that their mixed-raced societies indicate the lack of racism; I'ma tell you that fucking your dusky, voluptuous maid (or paying her to deflower your 15-year-old son) is not the same as legitimate socioeconomic mobility.

100% Negro
Here in Colombia, I've been called racist for even talking about race, and for pointing out inequalities that had theretofore gone unnoticed. I've been called divisive and off-putting for being proud of my own heritage by people who think nothing of invoking their Italian or German or Norwegian ancestry. I even had a fellow professor once ask, exasperatedly, if we had to talk about race on a Friday afternoon just after I discovered a student had included "nigger" in an academic paper! (Must be nice to have the luxury of scheduling life's inconveniences, you douche). Still, people can call me any number of things, but it doesn't reduce the ingrained responsibility I feel for educating and raising the consciousness of my own people as well as others.

When asked why I care so much, I answer that it is because of sheer luck and cosmic grace that my ancestors' slave ship docked in Charleston and not Cartagena, Santo Domingo, Kingston, or Salvador. Because the United States proves over and over, despite severe and deeply-ingrained problems, that it is, in my opinion, the only country in the hemisphere where people of African descent have a decent shot at unfettered success regardless of skin tone, last name, foreign parentage, or bank account balance (Canadians, correct me if I'm wrong). And like the Afro-Colombians, Dominicans, Jamaicans, and some 90 million Brazilians, to name a precious few, I am the descendant of Africans brought over to the Americas as property, speak a European language, and have been acculturated to European mores and values. The language may be different, but the history and heritage unite us. That is why I care about what becomes of a bright 12-year-old black kid who has to stop school to sell chewing gum on the side of the road in Barranquilla to help his mom pay rent. That is why I care about what becomes of the 20-somethings who should be studying law instead of selling their bodies to the highest bidder at the clubs in Rio. That is why I care about what becomes of the Caracas street pharmacist with the business acumen of a Fortune 500 executive. Because under a different set of circumstances, they all could have been me.

There are varying levels of black consciousness throughout Latin America, with Cuba leading the pack and Brazil, Panama, and Venezuela at least showing up to the conversation. But there is still a huge dearth in the number of socioeconomically successful Afro-Latinos/negros/morenos/mulatos/whateverthehellyouwannacallem to serve as examples for younger generations to aspire to, or for non-blacks to see as proof of a people's abilities. So I willingly accept it as my duty to be an example to my people in the Diaspora, regardless of language or nationality, that black does not have to mean poor and uneducated and ugly (or shoe-leather dark).

My aim is not to pit groups of people against each other; it is to instill sufficient pride in a marginalized and victimized group of people to have them demand better for themselves from themselves, their governments, and their communities. To insist on equal opportunities for quality education and employment, and to see their broad features, kinky-curly hair, and dark skin as signs of resilience and fortitude, not something deficient and needing to be "improved" with each successive generation. I'm young, gifted, and black. I'm black and beautiful. I'm black and full of flavor. I'm black and proud (and uppity to boot!). And I want them to know what it means to be black like me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Aside from the four years I've spent living in and traveling through Latin America, there are a few pivotal books that have deepened my understanding of the people and their societies:

Andrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000. Cary, NC: Oxford University Press USA, 2004.

Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Newest printing - Wilder Publications, 2008. (Originally published, 1903).

Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the Slaves (Casa-Grande e Senzala): a Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. New York: Random House, 2000. (Originally published, 1933).

Robinson, Eugene. Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race. New York: Free Press, 1999.

Whitten, Norman E. and Arlene Torres (Eds.). Blackness in Latin America & the Caribbean: Social Dynamics and Cultural Transformations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.


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Piece #3


Pieces #1 and #2.

Friday, May 22, 2009

From the AV Room: Titicaca!



LMAO!

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How to Reduce Four-Plus Years Into a Box, a Suitcase, and a Carry-On in 12 Easy Steps


You've got 26 days left in Colombia; here's what you do:
  1. Rip all bootleg, copied, burned, and otherwise unoriginal CDs to your computer. No need to carry home all that plastic (and the joy of this is rediscovering old tunes and artists who hadn't crooned from your speakers in a while...some good ol' Donny Hathaway, anyone?).

  2. Give towels and your $50 DVD player to the sweet old lady you live with. Or to the sweet old lady next door. Or to the sweet old lady who cleans the floors at your job. Either way, there's always a sweet old lady somewhere to give something to. She can get the tube socks, too ($10 a bag at the flea market).

  3. Donate Before the Mayflower (681 pages) and The Brazil Reader (544 pages) to some inquisitive English students; they'll be grateful for the cultural insight and you'll be grateful for the lightened luggage. If you really need those books again, that's what Amazon.com is for. Do NOT donate first editions or autographed copies of anything.

  4. Give plastic CD and DVD cases to the art teacher who can do something creative with the images; a collage, montage, melange, or some other artsy-fartsy but interesting crap. She can also get the old in-flight magazines and back issues of Men's Health and Ebony (the Obama issues should get packed in the box, along with the CD carrying case that holds the actual DVDs).

  5. Give I'm-too-sexy white crew-neck and V-neck t-shirts to friends at the gym, who are the only people your size in the country anyway; you can always get more at Target. They can have the tubs of Hydroxycut Hardcore, too, especially since the gubment said not to take it.

  6. On that note, if it ain't been worn more than twice in the last four years, there's somebody else who'll wear it tomorrow.

  7. Give old curriculum circulars and blank grade sheets to your students during final exams to make paper airplanes and turn the classroom into Hartsfield-Jackson.

  8. Sell the roller-blades. If you ain't learnt by nah...

  9. Re-write the scribblings on every other page of the six composition books you've had for years into one small notebook. Or better yet, throw them shits away. Along with all the peer-edited copies of your thesis fiction project that you've kept for the interminably-impending re-write.

  10. You might have to make a Sophie's choice about the porn collection.

  11. Get back to me on the shoebox full of ticket stubs, museum guides, mini-maps, boarding passes, and the Cuba Offers You government tourist guide. There has to be some kind of use for all this memorabilia. And you know the Prince poster gets rolled up and packed (stuff some dress socks in that mug to retain the shape, then break out the iron when you get home!).

  12. Place regrets, fears, doubts, and other assorted baggage out by the curb.
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Colombia Mía: Paisas

Four years ago, I first visited Colombia at the behest of the friend of a friend who worked as the academic director at a bi-cultural language center in Medellín, the country's second-largest city, best known for its controversial benefactor, Pablo Escobar. I fell in love with the place, partially because of the hours-long conversations I had with a couple of paisas from the City of Eternal Spring: a spunky college student from the neighborhood and the well-read security guard (with empty shotgun) at my friend's apartment building. Unfortunately, the job I was offered at the language center didn't pay very well and I ended up accepting a better-paying university position in Colombia's fourth-largest city, Barranquilla. C'est la vie.

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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Stupid Cheap Summer Airfares That You Would Be Stupid to Ignore

Photo by Gun Sydney

These are some of the deals I've found for round-trip international travel in June, July, and August (some even extend into the fall, when the weather's heating up Down Under). Dust off the passport (or apply for one) and get them bags packed:

Chicago to Dublin*, Ireland - $498 on Delta

Chicago to San Jose, Costa Rica - $277 on TACA

Los Angeles to Buenos Aires, Argentina - $598 on United

Los Angeles to Frankfurt*, Germany - $517 on Delta

Los Angeles to Manila, Philippines - $588 on Delta

Los Angeles to Panama City, Panama - $297 on American

New York-JFK to Santo Domingo, Dominican Rep. - $341 on JetBlue

New York-LaGuardia to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - $513 on United ($541 on Delta)

Newark to Berlin*, Germany - $519 on Continental/KLM

Newark to Cartagena, Colombia - $393 on Continental/Copa

Newark to Sydney, Australia - $712 on United ($573 from LA!!!!!!)

San Francisco to Tokyo, Japan - $454 on Air Canada (early-mid June only)

Washington to Frankfurt*, Germany - $526 on Lufthansa

*Once in Germany or Ireland, you can hop over to almost any other major European city for as little as $40 each way.

And right now, round trips from the East Coast out West and vice-versa are also stupid cheap, often $200 or less, so not living in San Fran or LA is no excuse; DC people, hit that Chinatown Bus to The City. I found these fares by first checking the forums on frequent traveler website FlyerTalk, then verifying on the individual airline sites, or on Farecast, Orbitz, Expedia, Farecompare, or Airfare Watchdog (which is especially handy by alerting you of fare sales from any airport you desire). If you can, play around with the dates or destinations; I'm sure you'll find something worth salivating over.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Ghetto Fabuloso -or- Where I've Been: Caracas

They say Caracas es Caracas, lo resto es montes y culebras—Caracas is Caracas, the rest is just shrubs and snakes. With serpentine highways jack-knifing, double-backing, and clinging to mountainsides before plunging through tunnels that connect the country with the Valley of Caracas, that statement is beautifully obvious. The capital of Venezuela, at once cosmopolitan and ghetto, sits at the northern edge of South America, separated from the Caribbean Sea by the looming green wall of Avila Mountain and ringed by red-bricked, ever-expanding shanties that drape the hillsides.

As the principal city of the largest oil-exporting country outside the Middle East, Caracas combined the flavor and openness of the tropics with the verve and sophistication of a cosmopolis; in the 70s, Air France even ran the Concorde regularly between Caracas and Paris. Its glory days clearly over, I was last in Caracas in 2005, when Hugo Chavez still seemed harmless and funny, with his "Bush, joo are a donkay," and the comfortable controlled chaos typical of large Latin American cities still seemed intact.



Within the conglomeration of 4.5 million people, freeways course through the valley bordered by countless billboards and high-rises sprout indiscriminately like a real-live version of Sim City. Boisterous, loud, dirty, crowded, and hot, Caracas ain't pretty. But it's sexy. And what struck me most about the place was the swift friendliness (and attractiveness...hotties everywhere) of the people; how you can go up to random folks on the street doing random things, and they take you into their world for a few hours, showing you their hobbies and houses, introducing you to their friends and trying to get you drunk, their diverse interests and tastes spanning place and time. One of my friends does flatland x-treme biking while listening to Lou Rawls on MP3!

Politically speaking, I haven't seen any of the so-called reforms Chavez has put into action to nationalize major corporations and entire industries, fight labor groups (who should be his natural allies), and essentially destroy the middle class, but from what I hear from my friends in the country, things are not going well. I had intended to return over Spring Break to compare the changes I saw, but logistics made that impossible. As much as I love Cuba, I do not believe changing Venezuela into the 2.0 Beta version is the right way to achieve social equality.

Caracas is straight hood, and besides Rio de Janeiro, it's the only city where I actually felt nervous about my safety; stray bullets are common and crime has exploded. The city, it pains me to say, is on the type of downward slant that takes a place decades to rectify. But on the flip side, you got tan chulos in wifebeaters rolling through the city blasting the latest reggaeton or hip-hop in heavy '83 Chevy Malibus with their brick-house chicas smacking gum in the passenger seat. The nightspots go crazy with house or salsa til sun-up. There's ice skating on top of Avila Mountain (outdoor ice skating in the Caribbean!) and baseball outshines soccer as the nation's pastime. Afro-Latino syncretic religion is strong, as is the obvious African cultural element to the city, from the swagger and slang of Venezuelan Spanish to the proliferation of brown faces on the streets. It's like Harlem in the early 80s or DC in the 90s, not just ghetto, but also fabulous. There's something appealing about having your name engraved on your belt buckle when everyone else has, too.

I think the cosmos saved me from a great life disappointment by not allowing me to find a suitable job in the city when I was searching back in 2004. I do love Caracas and would have hated to be forced out of the country when Chavez siezes all foreign-held bank accounts.

To catch some of the true rawness of CCS, look at the first few scenes from the crime drama, Secuestro Express; very much in the vein of New Jack City and City of God. Any time I see images of the city, I remember the rush of being on the edge of anarchy. And I like it, at least in short doses.



And here's an excellent, admittedly anti-Chavez blog about the goings-on in Caracas.

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Piece #2

Here's Piece #1.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mothers Day Shouts, Anniversary Greetings, and a Schedule Update

1. Happy Mothers' Day to all the women out there who have cared for someone other than themselves. It's called mothering and without that saving grace, humans would have extinguished themselves through general stupidity and excess testosterone millennia ago.

2. Happy (Late) Anniversary to my parents E&P, who, on April 30th, celebrated 39 years of marriage. I couldn't exactly call it bliss, but they still together.


On honeymoon in Nassau, Bahamas - May 1970

3. In keeping with my commitment to myself as a writer and you as my audience, I'm officially establishing a posting schedule that you can scratch yo back by. Starting today, fresh posts will appear on Fly Brother every third day. This week, look for new material on Wednesday and Saturday, followed by next Tuesday, Friday, Monday of the next week, etc. Dig?

Why not post on two fixed days, such as Monday and Thursday, you ask? Because I like variety and seeing different days in the postmark header. Nothing more.

In addition, I'll be responding to comments, should there be any, within 24 hours of receiving them, instead of each time I upload a new post. So comment, dammit, and then I can respond to the comments in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, I've seen some visual drafts of the blog redesign and I like, I like! Be ready, folk!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Motivated.

Often, just when we are in greatest need of motivation or inspiration, it comes suddenly and without warning. For me, these last few weeks have been marked with anxiety about my future, annoyance with my present, and a general ping-ponging between frustration and fatigue, feeling over-burdened and over-committed.

Enter Chris Guillebeau's 279 Days to Overnight Success, a succinct, engaging guide to establishing yourself as a full-time artist and/or social media guru, offered free-of-charge on his amazing site, The Art of Non-conformity. Having been profiled in The New York Times, on MSNBC, and here on Fly Brother, Guillebeau outlines his quest to hit every country on Earth by the age of 35 and to make the world a better place in the process. In his encouraging manifesto, which I read in a little under two hours, he discusses his successes and failures as a full-time writer, the expectations to succeed but not to receive much front-end financial gain, self-discipline and prioritization, the extreme importance of maintaining an accessible connection with your readers, and, above all, remaining true to your own voice to attract the right audience for you.

Amidst the chaos of increasing work and life pressures, reading this guide today was a needed splash of cold water, underscoring the intermittent messages I've been receiving from the varied reaches of the cosmos in one orienting, 79-page stroke. In forty-two days, I'll be done with high school teaching and Colombia, at least for a while. Between now and then, there's nothing to do but buckle down, prioritize, and get the documenting, grading, blogging, reading, writing, working-out, planning, and packing done. Over the next few weeks, I'll be making the necessary changes that reflect my commitment to my readers and my writing, giving voice to an under-heard perspective of international travel at Fly Brother and other venues, and I'll be utilizing many of the techniques outlined by Guillebeau and other young, successful, full-time writers who are doing exactly what I want to be doingmaking a living while doing exactly what they want to be doing. And I urge anyone who's interested in that lifestyle choice to read 279 Days to Overnight Success.

Today, children, I leave you with three quotes that came to mind as I wrote this post:

From the aforementioned manifesto -
"[Y]ou have to find a way to keep making art during the not-so-fun times."

A very shaky paraphrase of a sermon I heard a few years ago by Rebm, Jr. at Bethel Baptist Institutional in Jacksonville, Florida - "Sometimes, you cain't be waitin' on nobody else. You gotta hold your own hand up."

And something deceptively simple, profound, and oft-said to me, most recently by São Paulo trailblazer Kevin of Club Whirled -
"You can do anything you want."

Stay tuned.



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Sunday, May 3, 2009

Help a Fly Brother Out

Hello to all you grown-and-sexy people out there,

I'll be redesigning Fly Brother over the next month, and as a part of that upgrade, I'm asking you, my lovely readership, for your opinions and feedback.

I'd like to know what you like about the blog, what you don't like, and what you'd like to see more and/or less of. More music or video? More favorites lists or how-tos? More city snippets or personal narrative? More essays on race or history? What would you like to see that I haven't come up with yet? How can I make the blog better?

Let me hear it, folk; lay it on me. I appreciate and thank you for your comments and patronage.

Paz e bem,
Fly Brother