And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America--then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.

"You can believe me that if I had time right now, I would not be one bit ashamed to go back into any New York City public school and start where I left off at the ninth grade, and go on through a degree. Because I don't begin to be academically equipped for so many of the interests I have. For instance, I love languages. I wish I were an accomplished linguist. I don't know anything more frustrating than to be around people talking something you can't understand. Especially when they are people who look just like you. In Africa, I heard original mother tongues, such as Hausa, and Swahili, being spoken, and there I was standing like some little boy, waiting for someone to tell me what had been said; I never will forget how ignorant I felt.

Aside from the basic African dialects, I would try to learn Chinese, because it looks as if Chinese will be the most powerful political language of the future. And already I have begun studying Arabic, which I think is going to be the most powerful spiritual language of the future." (p. 387).

"I know that societies have often killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America--then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine." (p. 388).

50 years was such a short time ago. It's hard to believe that just 50, 60 years ago, race relations in America were so atrocious. I often wonder how Malcolm X or Martin Luther King would react to the fact that we have a black president, if they'd believe that it could happen so soon. Or how they'd react to the fact that black males are still the least likely to succeed in America. We've come so far but we still have a long ways to go...

If you want something, you had better make some noise.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

I missed blogging. I missed reading. This semester has taken me by surprise, and I've been a little overwhelmed, to say the least. Can't wait to catch up on my reading during winter break.

I first read this book in my "Writing About Black Culture" class first semester freshman year. It's become one of my favorites. I had to read sections of it again this month for my "Anthropology of American Life in Film and Literature" course.

"I learned early that crying out in protest could accomplish things. My older brothers and sister had started to school when, sometimes, they would come in and ask for a buttered biscuit or something and my mother, impatiently, would tell them no. But I would cry out and make a fuss until I got what I wanted. I remember well how my mother asked me why I couldn't be a nice boy like Wilfred; but I would think to myself that Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise." (p. 8)

"As the sleeping Muslims woke up, when dawn had broken, they almost instantly became aware of me, and we watched each other while they went about their business. I began to see what an important role the rug played in the overall cultural life of the Muslims. Each individual had a small prayer rug, and each man and wife, or large group, had a larger communal rug. These Muslims prayed on their rugs there in the compartment. Then they spread a tablecloth over the rug and ate, so the rug became a dining room. Removing the dishes and cloth, they sat on the rug--a living room. Then they curl up and sleep on the rug--a bedroom. In that compartment, before I was to leave it, it dawned on me for the first time why the fence had paid such a high price for Oriental rugs when I had been a burglar in Boston. It was because so much intricate care was taken to weave fine rugs in countries where rugs were so culturally versatile. Later, in Mecca, I would see yet another use of the rug. When any kind of dispute arose, someone who was respected highly and who was not involved would sit on a rug with the disputers around him, which made the rug a courtroom. In other instances it was a classroom." (p. 334)

The 20s are like the stem cell of human development.

What Is It About 20-Somethings? by Robin Marantz Henig

The New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2010

"The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life."

"The more profound question behind the scholarly intrigue is the one that really captivaes parents: whether the prolongation of this unsettled time of life is a good thing or a bad thing. With life spans stretching into the ninth decade, is it better for young people to experiment in their 20s before making choices they'll have to live with for more than half a century? Or is adulthood now so malleable, with marriage and employment options constantly being reassessed, that young people would be better of just getting started on something, or else they'll never catch up, consigned to remain always a few steps behind the early bloomers? Is emerging adulthood a rich and varied period of self-discovery, as Arnett says it is? Or is it just another term for self-indulgence?"

Rich and varied period of self-discovery.

"The 20s are like the stem cell of human development, the pluripotent moment when any of several outcomes is possible. Decisions and actions during this time have lasting ramifications. The 20s are when most people accumulate almost all of their formal education; when most people meet their future spouses and the friends they will keep; when most people start on the careers that they will stay with for many years. This is when adventures, experiments, travels, relationships are embarked on with an abandon that probably will not happen again."

So relevant and appropriate. Henig is uncertain, and his/her? readers are uncertain that the choices people my age are making these days are the right ones--that delaying being an "adult" might have consequences. I'm not. I am so excited to be 20 years old and am so excited for the decade ahead of me. I don't know what's going to happen but I do know that I don't want to follow the traditional cycle.

You could trace the whole thing back to Jesus Christ, the ultimate secret agent

What's with All the Secrets and Lies? by Stephen Marche
Esquire, September 2010

"I suppose, if you wanted, you could trace the whole thing back to Jesus Christ, the ultimate secret agent, a poor carpenter who moonlights as the Son of God." (p. 102)

"The emergence of these types of stories is rooted in a newfound sophistication of American identity. We crave a new acceptance of doubleness, a recognition that secret lives are in a sense necessary. Part of this is a function of technology--our recreation is filled with Facebook profiles and gaming avatars--and we've come to expect that every person has, at the very least, a work self, a home self, a street self, and a digital self. Part of it, though, is also the fallout of recent history. Our ongoing wars and the Great Recession were the results of massive frauds, and after WMDs and 'Mission Accomplished' and the subprime fiasco and the Deepwater Horizon, we no longer take anyone or anything at face value. This is good news: We're less trustful but that much wiser, and our new cynicism has shaped how we think of ourselves and others. For the past fifty years, all culture, from the highest to the lowest, has been consumed with the distinction between the authentic and the inauthentic. The distinction means less every moment. There's no point in trying to find yourself anymore; you'll only find somebody else. 'Who am I?' has already been replaced with 'Who are I?' Soon it will be 'Who cares?' and we can all just get down to the business of living." (p. 104)

There is an excitement that spreads through the orchestra, felt in the control booth

"When his voice is on, as it was tonight, Sinatra is in ecstasy, the room becomes electric, there is an excitement that spreads through the orchestra and is felt in the control booth where a dozen men, Sinatra's friends, wave at him from behind the glass. One of the men is the Dodgers' pitcher, Don Drysdale ('Hey, Big D,' Sinatra calls out, 'hey, baby!'); another is the professional golfer Bo Wininger; there are also numbers of pretty women standing in the booth behind the engineers, women who smile at Sinatra and softly move their bodies to the mellow mood of his music. After he is finished, the record is played back on tape, and Nancy Sinatra, who has just walked in, joins her father near the front of the orchestra to hear the playback. They listen silently, all eyes on them, the king, the princess; and when the music ends there is applause from the control booth, Nancy smiles, and her father snaps his fingers and says, kicking a foot, 'Ooba-deeba-boobe-do!"

He also wore a remarkably convincing black hairpiece.

"In an age when the very young seem to be taking over, protesting and picketing and demanding change, Frank Sinatra survives as a national phenomenon, one of the few prewar products to withstand the test of time."

"The two blondes, who seemed to be in their middle thirties, were preened and polished, their matured bodies softly molded within tight dark suits. They sat, legs crossed, perched on the high bar stools. They listened to the music. Then one of them pulled out a Kent and Sinatra quickly placed his gold lighter under it and she held his hand, looked at his fingers: they were nubby and raw, and the pinkies protruded, being so stiff from arthritis that he could barely bend them. He was, as usual, immaculately dressed. He wore an oxford-grey suit with a vest, a suit conservatively cut on the outside but trimmed with flamboyant silk within; his shoes, British, seemed to be shined even on the bottom of the soles. He also wore, as everybody seemed to know, a remarkably convincing black hairpiece, one of sixty that he owns, most of them under the care of an inconspicuous little grey-haired lady who, holding his hair in a tiny satchel, follows him around whenever he performs. She earns $400 a week."

"They nodded, nobody mentioning the past hysteria in the Sinatra world when it seemed CBS was zeroing in on the man; they just nodded and two of them laughed Sinatra's apparently having gotten the word "bird" on the show--this being a favorite Sinatra word. He often inquires of his cronies, 'How's your bird?'; and when he nearly drowned in Hawaii, he later explained, 'Just got a little water on my bird'; and under a large photograph of him holding a whiskey bottle, a photo that hangs in the home of an actor friend named Dick Bakalyan, the inscription reads: 'Drink, Dickie! It's good for your bird.'"

"He also said that he'd been unable to get front-row seats for everybody, and so some of the men--including Leo Durocher, who had a date, and Joey Bishop, who was accompanied by his wife--would not be able to fit in Frank Sinatra's row but would have to take seats in the third row. When Entratter walked over to tell this to Joey Bishop, Bishop's face fell. He did not seem angry; he merely looked at Entratter with an empty silence, seeming somewhat stunned.

'Joey, I'm sorry,' Entratter said when the silence persisted, 'but we couldn't get more than six together in the front row.'

Bishop still said nothing. But when they all appeared at the fight, Joey Bishop was in the front row, his wife in the third."

"Nevertheless, despite a tired voice, some deep emotion seeped into his singing during this time."

"Frank Sinatra, holding a shot glass of bourbon in his left hand, walked through the crowd. He, unlike some of his friends, was perfectly pressed, his tuxedo tie precisely pointed, his shoes unsmudged. He never seems to lose his dignity, never lets his guard completely down no matter how much he has drunk, nor how long he has been up. He never sways when he walks, like Dean Martin, nor does he ever dance in the aisles or jump on tables, like Sammy Davis."

He seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese

Esquire, April 1966

"Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday."