Real Talk

Nothing left but photographs

Hard to move on when you regret one.

Trying to do the right thang, for you,

But

What
Happens when you're exhausted, cut off
From the the sun that reifies and the
Voice that edifies?

Now perhaps long gone, left to face it.
Face you.

And you can't replace it. Can you.
Can you?

Distractions they are, vicatin loves,
Then you awake, and deep down,
All you want, desire, is what you
Chose to lose.

Nothing left but photographs.

JuJuan Buford

The problem with the body and politic of this nation is one of mindset. For all the talk of U.S. exceptionalism, this country is behaving like anything else but exceptional. It's as if this nation's best years are behind it, and now folks are tearing each other to pieces over the last crumbs of splendor.

The greed. The selfishness. The acidity. The game is over. At least that is what it feels like for the supermajority of U.S. citizens.

JuJuan Buford

Every time I watch Chris Rock's "Good Hair" I can't help but to break out laughing hysterically.... and then cringe at the same time.

I mean folks will spend about, let's say, about six, eight, ten, twelve! thousand dollars for a weave. Hey, and that's cool. Salon owners, stylists, artists,... deserve to get paid what the market will pay.

However, I wonder whether these same folks contribute six to twelve thousand dollars per year to their children's 529 plans.

JuJuan Buford

 

Too often those who seek positions of leadership do so for the perceived perks and byproducts – status, celebrity, wealth, authority – without understanding the true measure of leadership itself. Leadership does not just simply make a difference or register in the fine print of media publications or television ads. Leadership is the difference in people’s lives.

JuJuan Buford

The Thorny Path to a National Black Museum - NYTimes.com

The Thorny Path to a National Black Museum

By KATE TAYLOR

Published: January 22, 2011

In the late 1970s, when Lonnie G. Bunch III had his first job at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, veterans of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black squadron, accused the museum of playing down their contributions during World War II. In response, the museum asked some of the African-Americans on staff to allow their faces to be used on mannequins, increasing the “black presence” in its exhibits.

“I didn’t do it,” Mr. Bunch said recently, who was among those asked. “That’s not the way I wanted to be part of a museum.”

Thirty years later Mr. Bunch, and African-American history itself, are part of a Smithsonian museum, but in a very different way. As the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Mr. Bunch, 58, is charged with creating an institution that embodies the story of black life in America.

The pressure couldn’t be greater. To open in 2015, in a $500 million building designed to evoke the art of an ancient West African kingdom, the museum will stand at the geographic center of American civic identity, on the National Mall.

via www.nytimes.com

Do proceed to the nytimes link above for the full article. It's interesting, exciting, and a little disconcerting at the same time. My personal opinion is that the purpose of history is not to be reconciliatory, but informative. Too often African Americans have to speak to our experience with bowed heads in reconciliatory tones to appease others. If our history and contributions to this nation are to be told, let them be addressed in courageous and unabashed fashion.

The only way people of African American descent will ever achieve justice in this nation, is when the abridged historical narrative (to fit the tastes of those who have plundered and benefited from the plundering) of this nation's development and societal progress is edited in truth.

JuJuan Buford

 

 

 

The fountain lady is absolutely hilarious. Hilarious! You have to love this country. If you ever needed a reason to act like you're living in the 21rst century and acquire a Pre-Paid Legal Services membership. Remember fountain lady. Ha!

JuJuan Buford

Let's face it. There is no middle class anymore. You are either wealthy, a member of the working poor, or you are non working and poor.

Seriously. Wealthy people don't trade their time for dollars because they have something called leverage working for them.

The working poor... well they're sharecroppers. Some are better paid sharecroppers. But sharecroppers nevertheless. I know this is bruising some egos, but you have to be honest. Due to inflation and the increasing gulf between the wealthy and everyone else, we already know that most people who occupy this space will be dead or dead broke by their early to late 70s.

Seriously, how is the 40/40/40 plan working out for most people? Ever heard of doing the same thing over and over again and than expecting a different result being insane, eh?

Then there is everyone else. Hell, at least there is some relief for those who are the non working poor (not necessarily because they don't want to work). At least you can buy some cheap whiskey on Sunday mornings in Michigan now.

JuJuan Buford

So the United States & France are ok with 'Baby Doc' Duvalier (one of the most brutal and deadly human beings in modern day history to subdue a nation) returning back to Haiti.

However former President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (a President that was actually democratically elected), desires to return home and....yes, the United States and France are hell bent on preventing his return.

Interesting, eh.

JuJuan Buford

Amazing. Democrats finally get a little backbone and decide to kick the Republican Party's teeth in. Ooops. I apologize that's suggestive language.

So the Democrats finally decide to finally posit perspectives that expose the intellectually obtuse and morally bankrupt arguments being proliferated by Republicans regarding access to healthcare. .

Damn... why can't Democrats exhibit this type of temerity all the time.

JuJuan Buford

Arizona rejected King holiday, now produces would-be assassin

Arizona rejected King holiday, now produces would-be assassin

 

Written by Bankole Thompson

Wednesday, 12 January 2011 16:17

 

The tragedy that occurred in Arizona last weekend is utter insanity. But I don’t believe the 22-year-old gunman is as insane as some of us are being made to believe. I am not buying that kind of excuse.

The reality is that Jared Lee Loughner is the product of a political philosophy that espouses violence as a means to an end. He is the definition of a movement that preaches hate, racial intolerance and violence as the answer to addressing one’s own insecurities about current political issues.

What happened in Tucson was nothing short of an attempted political assassination on the life of a moderate voice, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was targeted by the Tea Party for defeat in the November election.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which documents hate crimes and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, explained on MSNBC how the ideas of Loughner are drawn from past right wing extremist ideologues.

I was glued to the TV all day Saturday afternoon in San Francisco last week after hearing the news of Giffords attempted assassination, the killing of a respected federal judge John Roll, who was pro immigration in some of his decisions, and five other people, including 9-year old Christina Taylor Green who according to her father was enthralled by the Obama candidacy in 2008.

Young Christina, inspired by the Obama campaign, was beginning to take an early role in politics. An impressionable young girl, she, like everyone who was at the scene last week, did not deserve to die.
I watched Christina’s parents struggle to explain on CNN Tuesday night how they bade farewell to their gifted daughter lying dead at the hospital, and it struck me as the father of a young son, the unimaginable horror of losing a child in such a callous act.

via www.michronicleonline.com

Amen Mr. Bankole Thompson. Amen. Do yourself a favor and read this article.

Haiti: Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier Returns from Exile - TIME

Who Let 'Baby Doc' Duvalier Back into Haiti?

By Tim Padgett Monday, Jan. 17, 2011

Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former Haitian leader known as 'Baby Doc', makes his way through the Karibe Hotel in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16, 2011

Allison Shelley / Getty Images

 

This is a real atrocity. It's blatant. It seems Europe (& the United States, for those of us who know a little history) will never cease the venal punishing of the island. Check out the article by clicking the link below.

via www.time.com

Seriously. If you want evidence of just how bias and obtuse the U.S. media is, look at how much press the Pats and Jets are receiving. Are you kidding me. The Jets are new arrivals, who haven't even proved themselves yet. Isshtt...they just became competitive this year. The Pats are the Pats. I hate them the way Shanon Sharpe hates them. So what?

Now that Ravens Steelers game. That's a rivalry. That's something worth writing about. Something worth pontificating about. Not for the intellectual stimiluation, but for the simply carnal exercise of counting the number of bodies that will require surgery thereafter.

And by the way. The Ravens Steelers game is the AFC Championship game.

JuJuan Buford

Is your Dream bigger than your Excuses?

by JuJuan Buford

Is your dream bigger than your excuses?

 It’s a real simple question really.

Can I be real?

How many times have you denied yourself? How many poor (passing over opportunities repeatedly) decisions have you made, because of temporal circumstances? How many times have you been distracted by what’s standing before your nose, the chatter of those who don’t have your solutions, or the fear (mythical excuses manifest in your mind), reacting repeatedly with the same responses expecting a different result (insanity), as opposed to responding?

And what does responding look like? The description is coming soon. This blog is already about to be too long.

See you have to embrace becoming, before you become. You have to be, before you become. A two-dollar mindset will be departed from a million dollar windfall.

This one is going to hurt. Remember that one? That one that really, really loved you; understood you, accepted you; no, no mater what? I'm just saying...what the fu#! were you thinking?

How many layoffs? How many periods of insecurity? Feelings of feeling trapped? See you can’t steal second base with one foot on first. Michael Jordan failed his way to the top. Cut from his high school basketball team. The Detroit Pistons (Deeeeeetroit!). Then there was the long hours in the gym, and than the decision.

Decide. Homicide. Suicide. Pesticide. You following? Something has to die. When you decide, something has to die.

See, the excuses have to die. The negative voices have to die. The deprecating self-talk has to die. Critics must die. The opinions of family who are more critical than supportive must die. The influence of friends who rather whisper on the side, as opposed to advocate or possibly even join (who owns gas stations in Detroit?) must die.

Those who critique and even diminish your personal development, because your finances haven’t caught up with your growth yet….because they fail to realize that the extent to which you become valuable to yourself, followed by those around you ultimately determines whether one achieves financial dependence as opposed to perpetual servitude. Or to keep it simple…sharecropping.

And yeah, you can borrow this. I did.

Smell the roses. Smell the roses. Let them Ridicule and Oppose. And smile when your success becomes Self-Evident. Ask anyone who has ever achieved. They knew well before the material became apparent.

But the excuses must die. Must f-ing die.

So what you’re tired. So what folks are criticizing and looking down upon you. So what, it’s difficult. So what, someone rejected you. So what, it’s snowing. So what, you have to do without that big screen television, that $1,000 hairdo, a couple nights at the bar, endure snickers, do without that one who supposedly loved you, but left you hangin…. (yeah, ima go there)… What makes any of this any different from any other day? Would you rather pay now or pay later?

You have all your life to fail. But in life… if you get it right once… it’s done. Just continue to get better. And it’s done! Imagine working because you want to. Imagine pursuing your passion without concern for how you’re going to pay the rent. Imagine your children receiving more yeses than nos. Imagine waking up one morning, dialing up your cadre or crew, and being like…let’s take a jet to St. Kitts. And they respond like, okay, but I gotta brush my teeth first. Whoa!

But in order to know the aforementioned… you have to decide. Make up your mind. Is your dream or your excuse bigger?

To live, doesn’t mean you are alive. Which is bigger?

What inspired this outburst? Nicki Minaj's "Moment 4 Life". Yes, Nicki Minaj. It's another entrepreneurs' anthem. Igore the ignance, and take in the spirit.

  

 

Winning is the only option. The only. Option. I've decided, so all other alternatives must die.

JuJuan Buford

World of Mouth

 

Aint being cocky, we just vindicated
Best believe that when we done this moment will be syndicated
I don't know, this night just remind me of
Everything they deprived me of
P-p-p-p-put your drinks up
It's a celebration every time we link up
We done did everything they could think of
Gr-Greatness is what we on the brink of

Nicki Minaj - Moment 4 Life

Oh dag! What's going on in the black hair industry is straight up economic retardation. It's mind boggling! It's just absurd. Madam CJ Walker is turning in her grave for more reasons than one. Talk about irony.

JuJuan Buford

Interesting isn't it? When you lived a little, you come to appreciate those special moments, gifts, the really good people around you. Unfortunately, many of us have to lose, before we appreciate what's sitting right before us.

Then all of a sudden, poof. It's gone, and all you're left with is thoughts of what if. All of sudden the foolish inclinations, emotional insecurities, absurd expectations, and the ridiculous chatter are exposed for what they are... And another dream is deferred left to fester and spoil like a raisin in the sun.

Leaving some to experience serial suadades. While others blossom in the knowing.

JuJuan Buford

World of Mouth

We march all around til' the sun goes down night children
Broken dreams, no sunshine, endless crimes, we long for freedom (for freedom)
You're free but in your mind, your freedom's in a bind

Janelle Monae - Many Moons

The sky is the limit. Just keep on commiting to becoming.

J.S. Buford