Sorry for the paucity of content guys. I spent all morning working on that Ivy League post. And I've spent most of the week turning it over in my head. This is how the sausage gets made.
This thread is yours.
Oh one more thing. I'm so proud that my baby got in Columbia. She is tired of me saying this. I will not stop. She can not make me stop. I will never stop.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Wow, do I get the first post? Cool. TNC, what will she be studying at Columbia?
I actually can't say. She swore me to secrecy.
Congratulations to her anyway!
What is she going to Columbia for? To finish a bachelors? Get a masters? In what subject?
I would love to tell you. But as a condition of me saying this on the blog, I swore to her I wouldn't say. It's not even that controversial. But she's, understandbly, skittish about the whole thing. I'm sure, once she settled in, I'll be able to say more.
Gotchya. Maybe if she does well after the first semester, she'll feel confident enough to let you spill the beans. In any case, best of luck to you both.
Maybe she`s afraid of commenters on her dude's blog finding out her classes and such, seems like a pretty legit concern, you just dont know these days.
Every time they show footage of Obama walking around, especially on White House grounds, I mumble under my breath "Well I'll be John Brown - the daggone prez-o-dent of these United States of America is cool bopping towards the podium. Ain't. This. A blimp.
My husband gets medical services at the VA hospital here in Tucson. I go with him sometimes. As you walk through the main entrance and turn to the left, there is a picture of the president right in front of you. Last week I went to the VA hospital for the first time since Obama was elected and there it was, the picture of President Obama.
I had to stand there for awhile and wait for what I call the moment of reconciliation, when what you are seeing reconciles itself with what you saw a long, long time ago.
These are good moments.
I felt this same way flying back into the country to LAX, get off the plane, make your way around the jetway down to customs and BLAM! The man himself, if anything can brighten up my mood after a 14 hour flight, this would be it.
Well in any regard, let her know that I (but I am sure we all are) am pulling for her. Knock it out the box...
Proud of her too, Coates. And, you keep on supporting her. Tell her another congrats from another of your blograts.
Ditto, very proud of Kenyatta, keeping it Harlem!!
Congrats to Kenyatta.
Anybody see this this morning? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/us/08roommate.html?hpw
In my freshman dorm at Stanford, I think that every or almost every roommate pair was interracial... Stanford's almost exactly 50% white, 50% people of color, so it was a pretty easy thing to achieve. I think it worked out really well, and a lot of people chose to room with their freshman year roommates in at least one of the following years (including me).
I barely talked to my white roommate freshman year. I existed within a mini-black world at a small, white, New England college. He was basically liberal anyway, but even if he hadn't been, I was in my "only black friends" period of life then, and wouldn't have cared anyway.
My school did random roommate assignments and I ended up with a tall, punk rock loving blonde Polish-American tomboy girl from rust belt Pennsylvania that loved science and math. I was an equally tall, gangly black girl, from South Carolina that was into Literature and Politics and read way too much for my own good. I wasn't sure how we'd get along, not even necessarily because she was white but because we seemed at the surface just polar opposites. However, it was roommate love at first sight and we were best friends in college and still great friends today. We roomed together every year after that and had singles across the hall from each other our senior year. We were so close that our names soon became interchangeable for each other among our friends. I never thought of it as a huge move for striking down racial prejudice, but I know we learned a whole lot about each other cultures and families by being that close.
Being away from home in at college can be a culture shock for some people and I think random roommate pairings can ease that shock for sure. If you stay in your own bubble you miss out on a LOT. I'm glad neither one of us did.
Contrast this with Michelle Obama's frosh roomie whose mom had her transferred.
Whoops, tough dice, mom! How were you to she'd end up the First Lady?
BTW, speaking of Ivy League stuff, I said this yesterday about the new Michael Lewis article in Vanity Fair:
*Yes, I know that MIT is not part of the Ivy League.
What does it mean to "leave weights on the Smith machine"?
In a gym, good etiquette is to take the weights off of the barbell after you're done exercising. That way, the next guy doesn't have the hassle of taking off your plates and then putting on his plates. A Smith machine is a kind of weight rack with safety features to allow someone to work out with heavy weights without a spotter. In my post, I included this footnote on the word "Smith Machine":
That footnote included a link to a Wikipedia article on Smith machines, but I took it out because the link got this comment held for approval the first time I tried to post it.
And btw, Ta-Nehisi, a paucity of posts isn't the same thing as a paucity of content. You put a lot of content into that one post.
Word.
When does Pat Buchanan's talking-head contract with MSNBC expire, please?
Congrats to your other half. Hope everything goes well.
Since we were talking about significant childhood shows & movies, "Transformers" being the focus, how does everybody feel about a new "Ghostbusters" movie? I grew up on the 2 films and even the cartoon series "The Real Ghostbusters" which I just found out featured the voices of Arsenio Hall and Dave Coulier. "Ghostbusters", "The Wiz", and "Adventures in Babysitting" all made cities seem both really exciting and dangerous at the same time, but on a level I could understand as a kid. I feel like a new "Ghostbusters" wont have any sense of that at all.
Hopefully the new Ghostbusters movie will lead to Hi-C re-issuing Ecto-Cooler. I need that in my life again.
I know! There are just not enough Tangerine juice box flavors anymore.
You just blew my mind. I LOVED Ecto-Cooler as a kid. Haven't thought about it in 10 years, at least.
Ditto. Definitely have not thought about that at all for maybe 15 years.
No joke, I actually tried to see if I could obtain some Ecto-Cooler on Ebay recently. Also: BONKERS candy!!!!!
That stuff was tasty!
I am somewhat skeptical about the movie, though. :D
I think the new Ghostbusters game is as close to another sequel as you'll get. Giving who's involved with it, though, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure it's better than the 2nd movie was.
Scratch that, just read about the Ramis-Stiller plans.
Columbia? What, pray tell, was wrong with UF? GO GATORS.
;)
I have three questions:
1) Regarding your Civil War studies, have you considered visiting historic battlefields, and which ones would be of most interest to visit?
2) What FPS games do you think could convert into a fun MMO? Personally, I'd love to see a Battlezone MMO...
3) What is your personal philosophy on schadenfreude?
"Columbia? What, pray tell, was wrong with UF? GO GATORS."
They live in New York, for starters, which makes Columbia a lot more convenient than the University of Florida.
After I had been in the Army about a year (the Army in the mid-80s was a real culture shock for a middle class white boy from the burbs, btw) I went to the Gettysburg Battlefield. Looking at the Union positions I was thinking that you couldn't find a better place for a battalion to stand off a division.
"Columbia? What, pray tell, was wrong with UF? GO GATORS."
You sir, are no iconoclast!
well-said
Oh yeah, I meant to comment on that - congratulations to Kenyatta! :)
Hearty congratulations to Kenyatta! I remember when I got admitted to Columbia for grad school I practically stopped strangers in the street to show them my acceptance letter. It's a great feeling, and your pride in her is lovely.
Am I the only one who still wants to talk about Michael? Cause I really want to talk about yesterday's service.
I'm getting really annoyed at other blogs and television commentators who are criticizing the Jacksons for allowing Paris to speak at the service yesterday. She is probably well aware of what people say about her father (did anyone else notice how she was one of the first people to give Rev. Al a standing ovation when he said "there was nothing strange about your daddy") and probably wanted to defend him.
It was clear to me that she really wanted to say something to the crowd and I am glad for her sake that she had the opportunity to do so. And an 11-year-old isn't too young to make a decision like that.
Rant over. Carry on, everyone.
they just didn't like what she said.
she defended her DADDY.
Yeah I peeped how Janet started to take the mic when she first almost fell to pieces, but she gripped her hand firmly around her aunt's, pushed a lock of hair back to steel herself and finished her ode to MJ before falling apart in tears.
I wasnt much for the spectacle of the whole thing but the genuine moments were really nice. Contrast that to what BET did... *sigh*
Don't even get me started on BET.
Gotta love 'Post-Racial' America....
Pool Boots Kids Who Might "Change the Complexion"
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Pool-Boots-Kids-Who-Might-Change-the-Complexion.html
More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason.
Kids at Creative Steps Day Camp were thrilled to go swimming once a week at the Valley Swim Club. But after only one trip to the private club, they were...
"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor
Really not surprising for Philly. Anyone who thinks that hardcore, segregationist attitudes only exist in the rural South should walk around the non-Center City white neighborhoods in Philly sometime. It's an eye-opening experience to say the least.
How does everyone post comments during the daytime? Are you all writers like TNC? Or you have other employment that allows you free time to comment? Are you allowed to post at your job (or secretly do anyway)?
I simply ask because I feel like the dude who arrives at the party after most of the kids have gone home. Maybe there's a few stragglers here or there, perhaps there's a couple still involved in a vigorous discussion. For the most part, however, the party's died down and won't reconvene until the next day.
No, Sir. I got a J.O.B. and it's hard and focused and commenting during the work day is just impossible. I'm on the West Coast, so I find comment joy in the morning or after work at night when most of the (East Coast) kids really have gone home. Frankly, it's just as well since most of the time TNC and the commenters here make me feel like a neanderthal contemplating infinity. My comments invariably seem downright silly - usually right after I've hit "submit."
Also, I don't think it fair to comment and not engage, so I keep my quips short in the morning so no one really steps to. (I don't like to think no one WANTS to step to.) Commenting at night is freeing though, because you're not trying to pipe up in an ongoing conversation in which someone invariably says what you want to say better.
Upshot: Enjoy what you can.
If you look at the timestamps most people are commenting during their lunch hour.
Most of my comments are during the day when I am still on the clock. No, I am not allowed to post, but I do it anyway, while looking over my shoulder to make sure that my boss doesn't catch me in the act. No matter the risk I often can't resist joining in on the hot debates in here.
However here lately, I have been participating less, while still reading daily, but spending more time thinking and shifting and sorting through the on-going conversations and pov.s. It is an excellent way for me to sharpen my critical thinking skills -- and be exposed to how other's think.