From the Peanut gallery - 02/12/2005

They call me Lazarus.

Q: Where are you?

A:
At work. Where are you?

Q:
Are you ok?

A:
Yes.

Q:
Are you dead?

A:
No. Not to make light of your concern but, if I were dead email wouldn't be the best medium to contact me.

Pretty much that was the bulk of my 200+ messages over the past 10 days. I've been on business "travel" that will happen from time to time. Generally, when it does happen it's transparent to you all because I'm "there" and back before anyone notices.

I can't give out notices saying that I'll be gone for X amount of days or where I'm going. So there will be times when I just vanish. It's probably my fault for being so consistent. On top of that there come situations where all modes of communication are shut down for OPSEC (OPerational SECurity) and we are not allowed to communicate (well in most cases) that is called minimize. That doesn't necessarily mean something is bad that can mean they just want to control traffic so they can do maintence but, none the less. So there will be times where I will just vanish. I just hope that you all will be patient during those times. The good news is that I have a a lot of entries that I have finished. I have over 200 entries in my journal now. I'm trying to decide which ones to post, I've done a lot of self discovery in the past couple of days so I'm probably going to rant about my life in the next few posts. Basically I talked to my parents for the first time last night and you could tell that they just wanted to chat all night and they would have if I would have let them. The thing that was kinda funny (well not really) was that I got over 200 emails and none of them were from people that I would have expected them to be. It's funny how that works. It's wild that there was more concern from people that have never met me than it was from people that I have "known" for years. Weird. But, at anyrate I appreciate everyone's concern who did email me to ask of my whereabouts.

Q:
I see you say Black all the time. I thought the that your people pefered the term African American.

A:
Some, people do and some people don't. I happen to be one of those that don't. African American has 0 relevance to me. The term is illogical to me. I'm not African; I have no relationship to Africa. I was born in Florida. My ethnic background is American. The traditions that I revere and celebrate are American traditions not African. Besides it's only in America where you hear such silly terms, like African-American or Mexican-American or Japanese-American. You don’t hear terms like English-American, Korean-Mexican or Irish-Italian or Japanese-Peruvian.They sound silly off the rip but they should sound normal here? I’m proud to be Black, I’m proud to be American that’s the end of that. I don’t long to attach myself to the “old-land”. Blacks and Africans (Hatians, Dominicans, and Jamacians for that matter) have different culture systems they and they are different ethnicities as far as I’m concerned. I reserve the term African-American for people that are from the continent of Africa (and yes that includes Mrs. Kerry) and reside in America. Those who are from American and Black to me are Black.

Q:
It just seems like the resaon you don't like African American History Month is more about sour apples based on your experinces.

A:
No, I don't like African American History Month because it takes too long to say, let alone type. Now then if you are talking about Black History Month then I would say agree wholeheartedly that yes some of my disdane for it is based on my experinces when in school. But, more to the point I don't agree with the ham-fisted way it is approached. BHM only goes the most glaring parts of racism I mean who doesn't think that terrorising a individual by buring a cross in someone's yard or not letting someone entry because of their skin color is bad. Duh, everyone can see that. We need to think about the more subtle elements of racism. I don't know if America is ready to move in that direction but, I think it is going to have to with all the "new" cultures coming to the US it is going to be difficult to still be a melting pot. America is going to have to adapt and start becoming more inclusive as opposed to more exclusive. I think that all American history should be integrated into American history books to give a more well rounded view of how America got to be where it is and that is because of the inguenity of all it's people. I don't think that race is particularlly relevent when it comes to things like that.