In My Write Mind

“… was tired of giving in.”

So said Rosa Parks in her autobiography, My Story, written in 1992, some 37 years after she refused to give up her seat after a long day’s work, after a long time of being treated like a second-class citizen in the South.

“I wasn’t physically tired,” she said. “No more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day.” But for Ms. Parks, it wasn’t just a working day that had her tired. It was a working life — one filled with segregation and inequality — that led her to keep her seat, thus standing up for what she believed to be right. She knew what she was doing.

She was just tired. (more…)

He was part of the crew from back in the day, the tallest member of the original group of five that used to own the basketball courts at Cambria Park in Queens. Standing at 6 foot 2, he had an awkward gait (due to his size 15 shoe) and a suspicious odor that engulfed his pre-teen frame.

He was tall, dark and somewhat handsome, with curly hair and a chestnut complexion … but no one could get past the complexing smell. He was at the top of his class, excelling at math and history … but the remembrance of that odor subtracted from his appeal.

Yes, Kenny was a character straight out of a Charles Schulz comic strip, the successor to the almighty PigPen, a close descendant of Motown’s Funk Brothers. When Lipps Inc. made their classic dance hit, “Funkytown”, word has it they did research on Kenny’s block.

He was the classic big fish in a small pond. A lanky, malodorous fish, to be true. (more…)