- Love
2. Be Kind
3. Work Hard
4. Stay Humble
5. Smile Often
6. Keep Honest
7. Stay Loyal
8. Travel When Possible
9. Never Stop Learning
10. Be Thankful Always
Tag: blog
Dear Hip Hop…
Who Willie Lynched your mentality?
Who put you under a spell?
Why you let them teleport you back to slavery?
They could have at least made it look good
didn’t have to hang you on the block
in your own hood
from your own trees
could have bridged the gap
between the souls you “sold” for rap
could have at least duct taped pieces of the truth
so you didn’t look like the signs of the times
didn’t have to trade your crown
for nursery rhymes
spill your blood on the ground
like wasted time
look how intoxicated you are
don’t know the difference between what truth and being real is
Is we being real?
There’s a reason that last line ain’t grammatically correct
gotta spit truth a lot truthful than that
since when did speaking the Kings English
ever define being black?
since when did we become something called Black?
what is that?
if you gonna spit truth
you gotta come much harder than that
and much deeper than black
you see even your conscious rappers
ain’t wrapped tight enough
can’t baptize deception in muddy waters and call it clean
can’t metaphysical the spiritual
and call it revolutionizing the struggle
can’t call it consciousness if you still sleeping
but rebellion the only thing around here get played
and you the only people around here being played
why I still hear rappers remixing they own graves?
who put yall under a spell?
don’t know why prison statistics don’t start with the prisons
outside of jails
but then again
I guess we can’t all spit truth
the records will never sell
Self Published Books and Libraries: How to Get Your Book onto Library Shelves
Great Info on Self-Publishing and Libraries.
What Indie Authors Need to Know About the Library Market
By Jane Friedman via Publishers Weekly
It has become a cliché to talk about how e-book distribution has leveled the playing field for indie authors and made the publishing environment more democratic. But accessing the library market remains somewhat more difficult for single authors with just a few titles.
While indie authors can gain some access to libraries by making their books available through major library distributors, that doesn’t mean that those books will be purchased. In many ways, getting self-published titles into libraries hasn’t changed since the e-book revolution: authors still have to prove that they have quality products that fit the collection. And, unfortunately, authors still face the stigma of self-publishing: there’s a long history of patrons offering to donate handwritten poetry collections or memoirs to their libraries.
Though some libraries work with their communities to publish…
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Guest Post by @PSBartlett The Kind of Writer I Want to Be.
Excellent post. I really enjoyed reading this. My favorite line: “I don’t want to write about what everyone else is writing about. I don’t need to sit at the cool kids table to feel good about myself.”
Hello everyone,
Some of you may have heard that I have a book on schedule to be released around Christmas. It’s my debut novel, written with an author by the name of P.S. Bartlett. A book related to that novel is being released Oct. 5. It’s called Jaded Tides and it is book 2 in the pirate tales series and the third book leading up to her amazing Blue Diamond: The Razor’s Edge that I absolutely loved so much that Bartlett and I became friends and ended up writing a book together. Here today is a guest post by my partner in print. Over the next few days you will be seeing several posts about her here on Ronovan Writes. Now, onto our guest post today by Award Winning Author, P.S. Bartlett.
The Kind of Writer I Want To Be
I’ve believed since I dedicated myself to this journey two…
View original post 958 more words
Movie Night Friday – Hancock (Fallen Angels and Nephillim)
Welcome back to another segment of Movie Night Friday, where I present some of my favorite movies and why I love them, now coming to you every other week.
Today, I would like to discuss the movie Hancock. There are actually a number of Will Smith movies that have profound symbolism but I will start with this one.
Hancock is a movie about a Superhero named Hancock (Will Smith) who everyone hates because of his lack of self-control. Though he is helping the city of Los Angeles, he is also destroying it, leaving damage everywhere that he goes. Hancock’s problem is not how people feel about him, Hancock’s problem is that he doesn’t care, or at least he acts like it. After saving the life of a PR executive (Jason Bateman) and meeting the man’s beautiful wife (Charlize Theron), he realizes that he may have a sensitive side after all. It is then up to the executive to train him to embrace his sensibilities and use his Super Hero status in a way that is helpful, and not harmful, to mankind.
Now that we got that out the way, let’s look at some key points here because the movie is funny but it reveals so much more. I try not to get so caught up in watching movies and TV shows exclusively for its entertainment factor because there is so many lies told through television (tell a lie through a vision) but there is also a lot of truth in these movies as well, especially by way of comedy. You see we must stop letting people define the way that we think. Stop calling everything a conspiracy just because your pastor or your society says its not truth.
One of the obvious things is that Hancock is a Super Hero. In today’s society, we have come to accept them as normal human beings with supernatural abilities. In one scene, Charlize’s character states something interesting:
“Superheroes, Gods, Angels.. different cultures call us by different names.”
There’s some truth to this. The Superhero movies have a duality to them.
#1: Fallen Angels
The first side to them is that they are the story of The Gods or Fallen Angels.
- When movies have plots where the Superhero’s intermingle with humans and have children, known as Demi-Gods, it is a movie / TV show telling you the story of the Nephillim or Giants. Nephillim means from heaven to earth they came, to signify the Giants origins as they are the children of the Gods. While many deem the Nephillim to be Fallen Angels, this is not so. The Nephillim are not the Fallen Angels. The Nephillim are the offspring of the Fallen Angels by way of angelic and human relations. You saw this in Hancock being that Hancock is a God (or Fallen Angel).
One of the first scenes in the movie shows a young lady and her friends checking out Hancock as he is getting drunk at a bar. The woman follows him home and joins him in his trailer. The young lady is excited to lay with him because she knows that he is a Super Hero. This is not far-fetched. Women have been known to flock to the bed of the Gods. The bible tells us:
Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
Gen 6:2 That the sons of Yah saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of Yah came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
- The Sons of the Most High are the angels
- The Daughters of Men are the human women
- They Took Them Wives -The Gods or Fallen Angels married the Human women (Wedding ceremonies today are mimicked from the ceremonies of the Gods marriage to human women)
- Went in Unto Them – Had Sex with Them
- And Produced Children – Gave birth to Giants
Hancock takes place in the city of Los Angeles. (The Angels)
The Giants were a combination of flesh and spirit: Spirit from their fathers the Gods and flesh from the human women they took as Gods. There is evidence of Giants in the history of man.
“There were Giants in the earth in those days…”
“There were Giants in the earth in those days…”
“There were Giants in the earth in those days…”
“There were Giants in the earth in those days..and also after that.”
“There were Giants in the earth in those days..and also after that.”
Let’s move on.
This is only one aspect of the Superhero movies. The next side may be considered controversial but it is what it is.
#2: His-Story
Another aspect is that of the African American. A lot of these Super Hero movies are incorporating pieces of his story. They are embedding messages that indicate that we are a people of power. If you think this is a stretch, let’s just let the movies speak for themselves. Let us take a look at some things in Heroes Reborn that are worth noting. Heroes Reborn is an excellent TV show picking up from its 2006 original Heroes.
The show is about humans with powers and there are quite a few African American themes. The Evo’s as they are called (Evolved Humans) are being persecuted and have to flee for safety. They are hunted down by dogs and other forms of torture. The most striking resemblance to our history however is the Underground Railroad. Not only is this system being used as a place of escape and safety for the Evo’s, but they are fleeing North to Canada. And the woman who is shown being led to the Underground Railroad in the Season Premier just happens to be a black woman and her black son. If you are not familiar with how The Underground Railroad was used or that blacks fled slavery north to Canada, I highly recommend you Google it and catch up to 2015. Or is this just a coincidence?
In the first X-Man, the woman who turns blue is ashamed of her color and the way that she looks. The saying she adopts is “Mutant and Proud”. But I suppose I’m stretching again huh? And that just happens to be strikingly familiar to “I’m Black and I’m Proud”.
There aren’t many black faces, but many of these shows are the stories of black people. That’s just the truth.
Anywho, that’s it for this weeks segment of Movie Night Friday.
Hancock is a funny movie, an educational one too. Check it out.
Movie Trailer:
Unfamiliar Faces – Lost to History
Have you ever wondered about those people who were part of history but who you never hear about? Sometimes people get lost to history. For whatever reason, their stories don’t make it to mainstream news, most of the time until years or even centuries later. Below is a list of four random people who were involved in major historical events in some way but whom we never hear much about. I will list a few every Thursday time permitting.
#1
Irene Morgan – We have all heard of Rosa Parks, but there were at least three women who refused to give up their seats on the bus in the Jim Crow south over the course of history. Eleven years before Parks, Irene Morgan, later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, an African-American woman, was arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1944 for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate bus according to a state law on segregation. The Irene Morgan Decision inspired the men and women of CORE to create a nationwide protest movement called “The Journey of Reconciliation” when groups of civil rights activists rode buses and trains across states in the South in 1947, a sort of precursor to The Freedom Rides of 1961.
The Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, handed down a landmark decision on June 3, 1946, when they agreed that segregation violated the Constitution’s protection of interstate commerce. Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth served as a catalyst for further court rulings and the Civil Rights movement. Eight years later, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation violated Equal Rights Protection.
Irene Morgan died on August 10, 2007.
#2
Sarah Collins Rudolph – We’re all familiar with the story of the Four Little Girls who were killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama. However, there were five little girls who were injured, four died but one remained. Sarah Collins Rudolph is the fifth little girl who was injured in the 1963 bombing. Her story touches my heart because she was blinded and there is nothing like losing your eyes. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Sarah Collins Rudolph survived the blast, but her sister Addie Mae and three other girls were killed. Today, Sarah still struggles with the aftermath of the bombing.
Update (2017)
Speaking of Addie, another lost to history fact (something that is just becoming known but that didn’t make news upon discovery) is concerning Addie’s missing body. Thirty years after the bombing, her sisters visited the grave. Seeing the condition, the neglected state it was in, they decided to move the body to a better-maintained area. However, when they dug up the grave, they discovered the corpse was gone but not only was the corpse gone but so was the casket itself. Addie Mae’s body was missing. The last reported update came in May of this year (2017) when an underground radar company searched and found what appears to be a child’s casket. Read More Here
#3
Virgil Lamar Ware – Emmett Till wasn’t the only youngin who perished in that day. Virgil Lamar Ware is a name we don’t hear very often or probably never did. At 13, Virgil was riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle on September 15, 1963 when he was fatally shot by white teenagers. The white youths had come from a segregationist rally held in the aftermath of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Talk about six degrees of separation (Six degrees of separation is the theory that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.)
#4
Lamar Smith – We have all heard of Emmett Till who was murdered August 28 of 1955. What we don’t hear a lot about is the murder of Lamar Smith just two and a half weeks earlier of this same year. On August 13, 1955 in Brookhaven, Mississippi, a man named Lamar Smith was shot dead on the courthouse lawn by a white man in broad daylight while dozens of people watched. The killer was never indicted because no one would admit they saw a white man shoot a black man.
I’m In Love With a Bookworm: Logo Reveal
For those of you who know me you know that I’m big on celebrating the little things. I try to appreciate all achievements. That said I am so excited about my new Logo! The designer was very patient with me and responded quickly to all of my changes to produce something that was not overtly extravagant, but simple and professional at the same time. There are more modifications I would like to request but for now this is my first Official Company Logo. Everyone meet Mr. Bookworm, Mr. Bookworm meet everybody. All of my books will soon be modified to feature him, time permitting. He will also be featured on all of my products. And he thought I was just gonna let him sit around all day and read, you silly worm you.
He has already been added to the site, check him out!
The PBS Blog 