I had to add this quick rec to the last.  Check out James McBride's web site, www.jamesmcbride.com/. It is just plain fun. It lists his books, reviews and engagements to some amusing illustrations and has really good good jazz playing in the background.  As the man is a composer and Jazz musician as well as a writer, I shouldn't have been surprised. 

The Essence article in the review section had some very interesting books by other black writers listed with his.  I'll be mineing these for my 50books_poc project.

I repeat his site was just plain fun.

I'm reading fifty books by people of color as part of the LJ community  50books_poc .  I've decided to post rec's on my own LJ of some of the more interesting books that I encounter. So today I recommend:

The Color of Water: A black man's tribute to his white mother.
James McBride.

James McBride's mother, a white Jewish girl who grew up in the Segregated South, went over to the black side, as she put it.  She had a romance with a young black man at a time and in a place where that could mean death and ultimately moved to Harlem, married a black man in 1942, embraced his faith, married another after the first died and raised twelve black children.  A strong personality who described herself as light skinned, she was a woman of faith and practicality and driving belief in education who raised her children to see themselves as black Christians in a largely hostile white world and pushed them to succeed in that world. 

McBride places his own memories of growing up next to his mother's monologue about her own life.  This is very effective.  Both stories are interesting and engaging and illuminate each other, encouraging thoughtful reflection on race, class, religion, identity, family and  the effects of abuse.  I loved the depiction of both McBride's father and stepfather.  The nuances in McBride's picture of his mother's family that he gained by his research was also quite interesting.  The book is full of powerful personalities that I wanted to know more about, especially his older brothers and sisters and their support for the civil rights movement:

( Cut for length )

There's a lot I could quote from the book, but I found one paragraph that shines a quick light on the way white and black relate in this country and on the life and personality of McBride's mother herself.  She had been hurt by the new minister of the church that she and her husband had founded forty years before.  He had "treated her like an outsider, a foreigner, a white person, greeting her after the service with the obsequious smile and false sincerity that blacks reserve for white folks when they don't know them well or don't trust them, or both.... Ma was so hurt she resolved never to go back there again, a promise she broke again and again, braving the two-hour subway and train commute from her home in Ewing,  New Jersey, to sit in church, the only white person in the room, a stranger in the very church that she started in her living room." 

 I thought this was a great read.

ETA: I found this quote on Wikipedia which amused me: "I thought it would be received well in the black community but it's sold much better in the white Jewish community," he said. "Most of my readers are middle-age, white, Jewish women...."

I read this appalling story I found in the Guardian about a young man in Britain who was denied access to the sixth form in school (High school) despite having more than enough qualifications simply because he has Asperger's syndrome.  He studied at home and has now been offered a place a Cambridge, but couldn't go to what amounts to his local High School. 

I don't see any difference than if he had  been a woman denied higher education because "she would just have a baby and waste it" or "we would have to spend money on putting in bathrooms to accommodate  her."  Arguments I heard made when I was a child.  Read the story  and tell me if you think this young man has been discriminated against.  The story would have sounded the same if he had been a black man in the fifties denied a chance to go to school.  This is discrimination pure and simple. 

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/04/autism-asperger-s-education-society


ETA:  I did not mean to imply that this problem is unique to Britain.  I think such issues exist all over.  In the US I've seen students with problems resented by parents and PTA members who see them as expensive and likely to lower test scores and thus likely to jeopardize the funding and reputation of the school.

Title: Four Secrets That Asteria Greengrass Kept And One She Didn’t
Author: vegablack62
Recipient: birdseyeview
Rating: PG

Word Count: 3700

Beta: oddnari
Character/Pairing: Asteria Greengrass, Horace Slughorn, Stephen Cornfoot, Tracey Davis, Millicent Bullstrode, others
Summary: During her fifth year at Hogwarts Asteria has to keep a lot of secrets.
Disclaimer: The characters, places and creatures mentioned belong to JKR. I am not profiting from this work.
Author Notes: I wrote this as a pinchhitter for the hp_fivethings exchange as a gift for Birdseyeview, who wrote two excellent stories for the community.  Check out both her Alice and Frank story Hold You For A Million Years, community.livejournal.com/hp_fivethings/2069.html#cutid1 and her Asteria and Draco story The Little Things community.livejournal.com/hp_fivethings/12626.html#cutid1.  They were excellent. I’ve never written Asteria or written as a pinch-hitter before.  Many thanks to my superb beta Oddnari, whose advice improved the fic.
 

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I took this from Bird'seyeview:  Name a fandom, and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to that fandom.

Because my only fandom is HP, I like Bird'seyeview will alter the question. 

 I will follow the  </a></b></a>buongiornodaisy method, and offer you the opportunity to choose any character from HP and I will be happy to tell you my unpopular opinions about them.

(I will talk about any character.  I think I have an unpopular opinion about all of them, but just to give a hint: my opinions of Seamus and Mconagall are particularly off kilter.)

For the first time I am pitch hitting.  I think its a good thing to do, but I don't like it.  I need more time to write well.  I just sent my fic to the beta last night, but I can't help feeling that it needed more time to cook.  It's good for me though because it forced me to write characters that I wouldn't ordinarily write.  

I volunteered to pick my gift prompt for ownfic fest late.  I checked out the taken prompts worried that there would be no gen left for me to choose. Poor naive fool that I am.  it was all there.  Lots of slash taken though.  LOL.

Ceirdwenfc has granted my wish for an Alice/Frank story during happy times.  The story is called First Kiss and was written for the Rarepairs community wish list.  You can find the list at this site here: community.livejournal.com/rarepair_shorts/ .  Responder can list rarepair stories they crave to read on thier wishlist and other can chose to write what is requested.   Anyone can grant wishes, so check them out.

Ceirdwenfc's story was marvelous, fun, and charming.  I love her Alice and Frank together.  Read something short, sweet and perfect at her jounal: ceirdwenfc.livejournal.com/331849.html . 

I've posted my prompts for the ownficfest , a fest where we post plot bunnies and stories that we would like to write but have let languish.  Other festers pick among them for the plot that they would like to receive as a gift and we write the chosen story for them. We write our own fics!

I've posted my three fic bunnies, and I  think they will be among the last chosen because  I suspect I am the only person interested in reading these story plots.  Oh well.

If you are interested in joining this fest you can sign up at community.livejournal.com/ownficfest/ but do it soon. There are only two days left for sign ups.

I'm a member of an lj community where we try to read fifty books in a year by persons of color. This is my third entry.
The Snow day by Kamako Sakai,
3/50  (Only the third of my fifty books.)

On a whim I picked up this child's picture book by the Japanese writer and artist Kamako Sakai and found a beautiful, gentle story that captures the experience of a certain kind of kindergarten age child.  If any one has been around a quiet watchful five year old they will recognize this child.  A heavy snow has fallen keeping the child from going to school and the child's father from flying home from a trip.  The delay of the father supplies a little tiny bit of plot and resolution when the snow stops enough for him to return.  Sakai captures the muffled quiet and isolation a heavy snow creates.  It looks like the child and the mother  are the only two people in the world. 

I loved that the child is portrayed as a bunny, a bunny how could  be either a girl or a boy and could be from any race or gender.  This could be any child.  I also appreciate that the family lives in an apartment building. So often normalcy has to be a single family suburban home.

The illustrations are lovely and the text matches.  

South Carolina Republican activist Rusty Depass made an extremely offensive racist joke at Michelle Obama's expense on facebook.  As the man was a member of the South Carolina election commission and determined the fairness of elections in a state that has a long history of denying black citizens the vote, I believe this remark is significant.  I'm posting the complete quote from the Huffington Post because I want to preserve the evidence of this joke until I see proof that this man actually thinks differently than his remarks imply.

( Rusty Depass shows what he really thinks )
I wonder if this man is too stupid to realize that a facebook comments page is hardly a private space to park racist remarks you don't want made public, or does he actually think the public would find this remark witty?

A GOP staffer in Tennesse received a racist e-mail about President Obama from another staffer, Sherri Goforth, executive secretary to State Senator Diane Black (Republican, Gallatin)  and posted it on a political web site, because it made her mad, and she wanted to see "Tennesse move past this crap."

I agree and I want to see the country move past it as well, which is why I am posting it. (You can find the racist picture here. www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/16/tennessee-gop-staffer-ema_n_216085.html It is so old fashioned I had to wonder if the woman who posted it was one hundred years old.  It calls Obama a "spook.")  Ms. Goforth was just sick about what she had done because she sent the picture to the wrong email list.  (I wish someone would ask her who the people were that she meant to send the picuture to.)  The Republican staffer who confronted her was disgusted that this was all she was sick about.

Republicans were as upset about this as I am and are the reason people know about this.  They believe as I do that the bright light of day is good for cleaning away this garbage.

This is a quick rec of an artist who has illustrated the Potter books in a way that I think is amazingly true to the spirit of the original books.  These are children's illustrations that are mature examples of art at the same time.  I love these pictures; they move and capture the action and souls of the characters beautifully.   I wish I had a copy of the book with these illustrations. Truly.

Check them out:  community.livejournal.com/hp_fringeart/1948116.html

Title: Going Forward
Author: Vegablack62
Challenge: Grammar love ficathon for nosmutforyou 
Prompt: Anadiplosis: a rhetorical device where a word or phrase at the end of a sentence or phrase is repeated at the beginning of the next sentence or phrase, e.g. Here, we don't accept failure. Failure is not an option. 
I threw in a little bit of Anaphora.
Rating: G
word count: 638
Characters: Neville, Ginny, Seamus, Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein
Summary: After a bad night for the DA, Ginny calls a meeting.
Author's Note: This may become part of a larger story.

( Read more... )

Is there anyone out there knowledgeable about British politics able to explain this vote for the BNP in this election to the European Parliament. (I only knew about the BNP before this because I wanted to give Neville a Bulldog Patronus, and was told by Sunzu a brit picker that the Bulldog was a symbol of the BNP, a white supremacist group.) 

How dangerous are they?  Are they white-supremacist, anti-immigrant or Fascist like they are being called?  Their support looks to me like it comes from the British equivalent to the Rust Belt, post-industrial communities with high unemployment and few prospects.  Is that right?

I heard that the anti-immigrant parties have done well  in other parts of Europe as well.  Is that true and are these forces dangerous?  Or is this all a flash in the pan?

Title: Bad Moon On The Rise
Author: Vegablack62
Pairing: Lavender/Neville
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Prompt: Rhetorical Question
Summary: Sometimes there's nothing that we can do.
Author's Note: Written for the Grammar Love Ficathon at nosmutforyou .  We were to write a fic based on a rhetorical device. I chose to use a rhetorical question.  The ficathon is on until June 10th and is open to all. Rules can be found at community.livejournal.com/nosmutforyou/15606.html

Title: Meeting by the Willow
Author: Vegablack62
Characters: Neville, Luna
Challenge prompt: written for the  Whomping Willow challenge at hp_misfitfics 
Rating: G
Word Count: 1050
Summary:  Luna runs into Neville at the Whomping Willow.

( Read more... )

I’ve been bemused by the number of  stories in fandom where the smell of manure acts as a short hand descriptor for anything associated with Herbology.  The walls of Sprout’s office are said to be permeated with the smell of manure, as are the greenhouses and the gardens.  I reached a real low when I read one story where Neville showed up for a date in robes that have manure on them.  Unsurprisingly the date went badly.  I left the story wondering if the author thought all gardeners walked around permanently anointed.   I have to wonder if these writers think that I, an obsessive gardener, have a living room that smells like manure, or clothes that reek of filth.  I hope not.

 

Why would Sprout have manure in her office?   Why would anyone who worked with the stuff not clean themselves with a cleaning charm followed by a shower and a change of clothes, before going on to do other things?  Manure carries germs not doing so would be akin to not washing your hands after using the toilet.

 

Most gardeners view scent as part of the pleasure of plants.  The smell of fresh mown grass, autumn leaves, crushed  herbs and of course, the scents of most flowers are loved.  I grow certain plants just so I can smell them, and I place some where I can brush against them to release their scent in the course of my work.  That is common practice among gardeners.  Of course we love strong and pungent plant odors as well.  (There are a few notoriously smelly plants grown often by men for fun in the garden, I’ve never seen one that wasn’t grown far from the house or in an isolated greenhouse.  A bubble charm would be perfect for this situation.)

 

Your nose should enjoy itself as much as your eye in a garden

I was tagged by miss_morland to do this meme:

Name five fics or art that you’ve written and tell us what first inspired it, whether it was a visual image, a song, a prompt or something else entirely. Unlike miss_morland, who tends to start with one sentence that embodies her character and situation, I don't have a consistent pattern of inspiration for my stories. I tend to have two or three sources of inspiration that I weave together into one story.

( Read more... )

ETA: I forgot that I'm supposed to tag two people. I would love to see anyone on my flist do this, but I tag Birdseyeview and Ceirdwenfc, obviously only if they want to be tagged.

It's that time of year.  The blue poppies are in bloom.  I have to post pictures from my garden. Yeah!  These just opened and so their heads are still tilted down.  The picture is acurate; they really are this intense a blue.  I think these should be the plant to represent Ravenclaw.  Neville grows a lot of these.  You can always tell my favorite plants because they show up in Neville's garden or greenhouse.





( If you want to see more  )

Dear fandom,

May we have a Neville story that does not contain the words, "killed the snake."  I'm finding it repetitive and annoying. 
Thank you,
Vegablack62

Apologies for spamming you with another rec for a Harry Potter Gen community, but nosmutforyou community.livejournal.com/nosmutforyou/ is simply a wonderful writing community which has sponsored some of the most creative writing challenges that I've written for.  In the last year we've been challenged to write stories based on randomly generated prompts,  to write a complete story in six, twelve or eighteen words, and  to show why our OTP was meant to be together in a story of less than two hundred words.  The last two challenges were more difficult than they at first appear.  A two hundred word story can show one moment in a couples relationship; finding the moment that shows who these people are is not easy.  That was great practice for a writer. 

The results of these challenges were fun and easy reads.  You can find the masterlists for these challenges at community.livejournal.com/nosmutforyou/tag/!masterlist

Currently the challenge for the community is to write a short fic using a rhetorical device such as dramatic irony, hyperbole, or alliteration.  This was intimidating to me at first, but once I got started I really enjoyed this challenge as a mental exercise.  I think this challenge has improved me as a writer, because it has forced me to use these devices consciously in a way that works for the story.  This Challenge will continue till June 10th.  I urge you to give it a try. It's a lot of fun.  I've written three by now and I'm trying on a fourth. The prompt list can be found at: community.livejournal.com/nosmutforyou/15606.html#cutid1

Community members post gen stories in addition to their  challenge fics of course and these are excellent.  I've enjoyed this community tremendously, but the woman who maintains it can no longer manage the commitment and would like to offer the community to others who would be willing to take it over.  If no one is found by June 12th the community will be closed to new stories.  This is an active community with members who post and comment.  I would be sorry to see that happen.  If Gen is something you enjoy and you can handle the commitment, consider taking over this very fun endeavor.