Been Away for Awhile

Hello people, sorry I have been gone for awhile. To all my phone bloggers I apologize but that phone number no longer works. I plan on listening a new phone line for those of you that enjoy blogging to my phone account. As for me, well, I'm currently back in college completing my Masters in Business with an emphasis on Information Technology. I'm excited and loving my classes. I'm currently on summer break from my job and thought that this summer I may make a little extra change teaching at the local community college or maybe even doing some consulting work. I have to give shouts out to my oldest daughter Christian Page. She graduated from MLK high school in Atlanta last month and has a full scholarship to college in Tennessee. I'm so proud of her and look forward to her success. She's going to do great.
Anyway, I will be blogging again soon, but feel free to hit me up. Thanks.

-Vee

SHOUT OUTS TO MY PHONE BLOGGERS..

Betty,

Thank you for phoning in. I appreciate you stopping in and reading my blog site. I want to thank you for leaving a phone message and reading my "Rebirth" poem. That poem was written about 3 years ago and it just came to me one day. I began to write and before I knew it I had this writing that many people I know who had read it found it to be somewhat insparational. I have performed that poem at some local poetry readings and recieved a great amount of applause for it. Although I do not condone the use of the word as much anymore I do understand that it is a part of our community on so many levels. Many people may find it offensive and I do not denounce their opinion in the least bit. I hope that your thesis comes out well and I wish you all the luck in the world in your academic endeavors. Keep on pushing for your goal, you will be there before you know it. Please feel free to call in at anytime on my post's. Thanks again.

-Vee

Ms Sunshine,
Thanx for calling in. I'm glad you enjoyed the poem "Ms. Butterfly". I hope that it was the motivation you needed to understand that you are more than just flesh and blood, you have a soul and a beautiful side of you that you want to find and will find. Do not allow for people to demean you because of what you expressed. It's a great thing to keep your personality shining. Be what you name says "Ms Sunshine" and keep on moving. Soon you will find that those that have said mean things about you are just like sand paper, they rough and gritty, but the more they rub you the worst they become and the more polished you start to be. Keep on with what your doing, you will prosper and your life will get better. Thanks for the call.

-Vee

Beautiful Indulgence,
Thank you for your call. It is sad what happened in the Dunbar Projects. I hope that justice is served and that attention to this atrocity is brought to light. I am glad that I had the opportunity to pass this on to someone that didnt know about it. Thank you for stopping by and please keep coming through my blog spot. I appreciate all that come and by all means, pass my sight on to others. Thanks again.

-Vee

Diva27,

Hey you. I appreciate your phone message. I am glad that you enjoyed the poem "Ms. Butterfly". I hope that it allowed for you to understand the beauty that dwells within you. The fact that so many people look at the aesthetics of people as a determination of who they truly are and not see the soul of an individual which really dictates the beauty of a person is sad. I thank you for stopping through, and feel free to leave as many responses as you feel you want to. Keep on doing what you doing, everything successful that you seek is on it's way. Just be patient and it will happen. I look forward to seeing you again on the blogs. Thanks again.

-Vee

Dog In The Dog House

I was completely appauled at the racist remarks made by Dog the bounty hunter. Is it not funny how people like this tend to try and justify their remarks by stating that it was "Anger" or "I was just not thinking at the time." How is it that you can use such racist remarks and feel that you are not racist? Sorry that your son wanted to date a woman of color, yet the fact that you stated that you use the word around your house so regularly that it would mess up your career by bringing in a black girl to your family is racist in itself. If you are not sure of what happened, then click here to read about it.

Although a Bounty Hunter is not a police officer, they are in law enforcement. As a peace officer you are held to a certain amount of professionalism. Does this particular type of behavior really portray the "good ol boy" network that is so evident within organizations of this type?

I mean really, this is something that is handed down throughout generations and this mentality will be passed on to each child until someone breaks the lineage of ignorance. It is amazing how appologetic they become when they are caught, however, if this was never taped would his mentality have changed? I doubt it. I am completely in awe at this revelation and it truly makes me wonder how many others feel the same way as Dog when it comes to people of color.

I read that Dog stated through tears "I am now going to be placed in the same category as Imus". YA THINK??? Damn right you are going to be placed there. Theres no sympathy for that. It just burns my ass to no avail when the justification factors start to be express. If you a Senator tapping your foot in a bathroom stall and get caught by an undercover cop for trying to solicit "Man Love" then you are a homosexual. Point blank. Nothing against Homosexuals, just admit what you are. I have more respect for a person that does that. If you are an ex KKK member running for congress, stop trying to "double speak" your way into politics. Your a racist and will always be one point blank. So if you use derogatory comments towards a group of people then you geniunely have a resentment towards that group, wether you want to admit it or not. Don't cry now, you stirred up that hornets nest now you about to be stung. You can go ahead with your tail tucked between your legs and realize that this is the end of your fame. Maybe you can go on and find something new to do. Maybe you can start a blog or something.

I just hope that people don't buy the rhetoric that is about to come down the pipe. The tears, appologies, and total disgrace of his actions will plaster the news and be the subject of a few CNN and other media shows on television. The appolegetic interviews and statements will fly from the Dog house like free'd slaves. I want those that read this to understand that I am not being biased towards this situation, hell I feel that OJ did it, I think I Love NewYork and Flava of Love is disgraceful, I believe that Clarence Thomas should not be sitting on the Supreme Court Justice after his criminal behavior. I just feel that ignorance should not be fed and that if you do the crime then you must pay for your injustice to those you hurt. I would love to hear what you think about this situation. Thank you.

-Vee

What if Barack & Michelle Obama were ghetto?

What if we find out that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama were ghetto? I was watching Candidate Obama on MTV and I actually saw his “inner nigga” come out. I mean I could have swore I saw him cuss a little bit. The question was “Would you consider being Vice President to Hillery if you do not win the nomination or vice versa”. That’s when I saw him cool as hell say “I’m running for President”, then the moderator tried to break it down as if he was talking to an uneducated person and asked the same question just in different terms. I could have sworn I saw him cuss a little bit and I swore it look like he said under his breath “muthafuca didn’t I just say I’M RUN-NING FOR PRESIDENT not Vice President….PRESIDENT!!” I was waiting for him to stand in the middle of the stage and say “KING KONG AINT GOT SH!T ON ME!!” but unfortunately it never happened and so I lost my interest. However, a lesson learned was this, under pressure, a black man’s blackness will come out. That blackness like that one friend of yours that complains about everything he/she orders at a restaurant after they just gave 32 separate directions on how to prepare their friggin plate, you know damn well 16 year old Megan can’t remember the best technique to pee , let alone remember that you need your patty slightly dark on one side and a little brown on the other with no pink in the middle. That blackness when they passing out paychecks and you hear that one person in the very last cubicle yell out “OH HELLLL NAWWWL!!”..you know that cat’s check shawt!! Right when Obama answered that question I realized that damn….Tupac was right…everybody in L.A. (or in this case “ that’s a blackperson running for president”) has a little thug in them. So it made me wonder…. What if Barrack & Michelle were ghetto, what would go down? Here’s my list in no particular order:

Michelle Obama all up on myspace with pictures of her and her “girls” all up in top secret areas of the Whitehouse. Sitting on top secret aircraft like they on a motorcycle at the black motorcycle club annual run.
We find out that Barack’s lips are black from smoking blunts. The public finds out through a Paparazzi catching a picture of Barack getting the newspaper at Camp David in boxers, a wife beater, tube socks,corduroy house shoes and a blue presidential rag tied around his head like Tupac smoking a blunt.
Michelle online with the user name mimi_da_firstlady_fasho@penselvaniaave.whitehouse.gov
Barack & Michelle will be the first presidential couple that attends the Hip Hop Honors awards because they were honoring LL Cool J and “I need love” was their wedding song.
Barack’s secret service wearing presidential “Blingage” around their necks like WuTang Klan.
The Inauguration will be the first to have Hennessey, Beyonce’, and a D.J.
Barack will be the first president to show up at a press conference in an Adida’s sweat suit with the Presidential seal on the left breast pocket.
The White House will have those fans you find in church, you know the ones that have that white Jesus kneeling in the red robe with blond permed hair looking upward with the light from heaven shining on his face. Or, the ones with Martin Luther King on the front in the black and red robe sitting in the pew in the pastors chair. Either one, if you flip them over the advertisement for the local funeral home is on the back in black and white.
After press conferences, Obama’s cousin (Not Cheney..lol) Elroy selling rib plates and chicken dinners out back.
If Obama get caught up like Bill Clinton, it’s not going to be no little white intern..hell naww…it’s going to be Karen Steffans (Super Head).

I’m sure this list could go on…let me hear what else would happen if we found out the Obama’s are ghetto and they got elected.

-Vee

Dunbar Projects....Why did it happen?

Have you heard of the incident in West Palm Beach Florida at the Dunbar projects there? If not click here first to read it then read this blog, it will make a lot more sense.

To me, this was one of the most heinous and terrible crimes ever committed upon a woman and her child. Why is it that our youth have grown so out of control that total disregard to humanity is just a way of life for them? I will tell you why, because parents arent parenting and teachers arent teaching yet each one is blaming the other. It's like some terrible misconception that each one play's a role and that that role only lasts for the period they are within sight. Out of sight of out of mind is what it seems like is going on here. Many parents today are so wrapped up in their personal agendas and their own selfish motivations that they forget the need to develop a child into a good productive law abiding citizen. Yet some parents will cuss a teacher out for taking away their childs cell phone in class or reprimanding a student because he/she has on something that is completely inappropriate to wear at school. This behavior alone displays the need to create confrontation as a means of "getting your way". Ignorance teaches ignorance.

Whatever happened to the respect of each other and people in general? Those that believe in their God probably questions the theory that we are already living in hell and that heaven can only be on some remote island near Hawaii. These young men were deviants, completely misinformed about respect and the desire to succeed. I understand that living in a project can be a social shock and may create a feeling of dispair. A feeling that anything you do will never amount to anything except your friends and local family that consists of crackheads, pimps, prostitutes and drug addicts. You may say "not all are like that" and I will agree with you. However, I grew up around the projects. I knew pimps and hookers, I have seen drug addicts shooting up in the allies and crime running rampant as police turned a blind eye to the situations going on. Yet our youth are so ignorant at times that it's as if they are trying to go to prison just to build their street credibility. The local gangsters and pimps are their role models, and as long as they are there they will follow them. Theres a major loss to our youth here, a loss that we need to address and become proactive in deterring. Everyday I talk with a youth about specific goals and reaching them, I try to be the role model that they aspire to be like or better. Leadership by example has always been the best way to lead and to teach.

Although I may be a tad bit biased on this issue, mostly because I am a teacher, I am also a parent that has a major concern about teachers teaching. First of all , there takes a certain type of person to teach inner city youth. I know we have all seen the Akihla and the Bee type movies where a teacher walks in and creates such a stir that they actually help the child or children to become something great in life. Those are great movies and very good true stories. Yet my only problem with that is;Why is there only one teacher trying to do it? I'll tell you why, there are so many teachers that are there specifically for a check and thats about it. If the student learns or not then thats the student and his parents problem. Then there are those that want to make a difference and they are laughed at and their "outside of the box thinking" is shot down by those that just want to make it to retirement. We need to provide our teachers with better pay, more materials and stronger accountability practices. I know all about the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) act, yet we are still leaving children behind. We are sweeping the low performers under the rugs and keeping the ones that are doing good in the traditional schools. Adminstrators and Principals know that it is neccessary to remove those children that are below AYP (Annual Yearly Performance) and refer them to a Charter or Continuation school so they can deal with the low performance. Although the education factor is a blog all in itself, I had to mention it in order to get to the point of these hoodlums that committed this heinous act of pain and suffering towards this poor Haitian immigrant. If the projects are designed to help low income families, then why not help them?? Lets not just create a roach haven for drug dealers and poor souls to live, lets make projects have community centers that have classes on credit and investing. Lets provide for educational opportunities for residents of that project or better yet why not have a mentoring program that brings young men & women into it to provide motivational speaking to allow for them to take pride in themselves? We need volunteer mother's and father's to be there for those kids that just want an ear to listen to. Although many of these ideas may be just a dream, they still have merit. This is the opportunity to elighten and save the lives of people that may have fallen victim to an ignorant youth. Now please don't get me wrong, what I am expressing here is "pre-intervention" what we can do to prevent something of this magnitude to transpire. The Dunbar hoodrats (as I call them), these terrible menace's to society need to be punished to the full extent of the law and should serve the remainder of their lives thinking about this travesty upon humanity that they have created. However, they will be released in due time and slapped on the wrist.

I am just appauled at the fact that no news coverage or 20/20 special has been done to bring focus to this. Why hasn't Farakahn, Sharpton, or Jackson made any marches or had any dialogue with the nation on this issue? Our "so called" leaders were there for the Jena 6 case because it fueled racial tension yet because this was a "black on black" crime, the need to expose it isn't really a big deal. This is not the 50's and 60's anymore, yes racial ignorance still exists, but we have a bigger problem here...inner city ignorance!! Living the stereotype that the world has placed on us. The gruesome details of what they made that woman do to her own son and the torcher they gave to both of them by pouring amonia in the eye's and the overall rape in front of that young boy is going to do nothing but make that child a tormented soul. They not only hurt them physically they hurt them emotionally for life and nothing in this world could ever give them back the life they once had.

I think we need to take back what we gave to this world and thats our children. We need to work really hard to start teaching respect and love and to stop with us always being the victim of "The Man" story. Lets teach our kids to their ass out of jail and pick up a book which could lead to learning which could lead to a degree one day. The projects should be a temporary fix to a shorterm problem, not a longterm fix to a lifelong problem. No one should be in the projects until they are old enough to retire. No one. There are waaaay too many opportunities out here, you just have to be prepared to work for it and strive to be a part of the successful ones that everyone else in the projects talk about. It's to late for these Dunbar kids, but it's right on time for all the others that want to make a better life and live it. Thanks for stopping through.

-Vee

Note: Working with innercity youth and also growing up in the same neighborhoods as many of them I tend to see and have saw things that many of us take for granted. The Invisible is a poem that relates to many people that cross our paths daily. I wrote this poem after talking to a student one day about his behavior in class and realizing that all he was asking for is a chance to be heard. Lets not take the "invisible" for granted. -Vee

The Invisible

I am the boy that no one listens to
The one who wears boots instead of shoes
I am the one who wants a friend
But the only ones that listen are counselors (because they have to) and the wind

I am the boy that needs attention so I shave my head
I am the boy whose anger grows like a fire and is becoming fascinated with the dead
I am the boy that all the others chase, so I run
I am the boy that will bring my own peace, so I return with a gun

I am the girl that is happy and thin
I am the girl that eats, just to throw up…over…and over …again
I am the girl that loves to share with each other
I am the one who barely speaks to my mother
I am the one that wants the boys to sit next to me
I am the one popping this pill of ecstasy

I am the man that works all day with nothing to show
The same man that sends my money for my son…while she spends it on blow
The man that only hears from my child when something is needed
The same man that mama runs to when HER man has hit her, and she’s being mistreated

I am the woman that is always happy and full of joy
The one that treats food like a toy
The one that feels that happiness is found in a cheesecake
The one that longs for love and prays for a mate
The one that smiles on the outside without fear
But allows no one to know that the inside is full of tears

All of these people are a part of someone’s life
All of these people are asking for help, but no one hears their cry
It is the inseparable feeling of rejection that dictates their existence
It is the destructive behavior that motivates their persistence
For everything they do makes them miserableAnd to the world and themselves…they are truly the invisible.

To Love A Warrior

Note: I wrote this poem after having a dream about coping with coming back from combat in the Gulf. If you are a U.S. Marine who ever served in combat, then you will definately relate to this. -Vee


To Love a Warrior

Someone once said that I am the master of my destiny
And if that is true….are you sure you want to be with me??
I have had to live a life of unspeakable turmoil
A life that mixes like water and oil

I am not a soldier, I am a warrior
A man willing to eat his own guts and defend the world like a lawyer
A man that knows very few fears
And will kill as ordered and be back in time for the game and beer

Can I truly love when my government has ordered me to kill
Can I truly hold you knowing of all the blood I had to spill
Who made me judge and jury in a land of unspeakable crimes
Who allowed me to be the defender of our times

It’s amazing how people worship men of power
And it’s crazy how we continue to denounce those men in the midnight hour
The Government made me promise to defend the Constitution of the United States
Be a patriot of Life liberty and the American way
I have dived from the skies of foreign countries just to give my life
I have slit the throats of communist and gave their heads to their wife’s

I have drowned my pain in bottles of Jack
While nursing the wounds of oppression that scar my back
I have given what I felt was my all
Even under extreme violence and misery…I still stood tall

I have broken every sin that God has ever written
And it seems to me that I have even made a few that he hasn’t even given

Part II

C-130 Rolling down the strip
Marine Corps Daddy bout to take a little trip
Stand up buckle up and shuffle to the door
I jump right out and shout MARINE CORPS

Yeah….Jump right out a perfectly good ass plane
Where my fellow patriots only know me by my rank and last name

Rat-a-tat-tat …that’s the sound that echoes in my head
AK-47 was the sound….and a 12 year old boy lays there dead

Kill or be killed was the motto that I held true
But did that little boy know what I was about to do??

What makes me different than a Crip or Blood in the streets of my home
What makes me different from destroying a life and leaving a mother alone
To make sense of my killings is far beyond my scope of understanding
But legally in another land, it’s all a part of “Social Handling”

Does the Government even know who I am?
Or am I just another number walking in the land of the damned?
Washington knew they could count on me to do what I was trained
But can I count on them to help me when I no longer have a rank in Front of my name?

Will I be remembered if in combat I fall?
Or will I just be another name on some black granite wall?

It’s a lot to hold on to when you have placed your chest in front of the lives of others
Especially when the enemy will never be allowed to go home to their mothers

My regret for the things I have done does not exist
If I could I would …. Like an open hand to a closed fist

My dreams are in color and vivid and constantly on rewind
Waking up with the vision of a boy’s fear of me in my mind
That will never stop, nor will my pain
And to love me would all be in vain

Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful) is the Motto of all Marines
But we tend to be more faithful to everything else besides what matters, that’s what it seems

A missionary of death is what we are programmed to be
Destroyer of all that threatens the livelihood of the U.S. from Sea to Shining Sea

Therefore, Am I truly the master of my destiny?
And if that is true….are you sure you want to be with me??