I first met James Earl Jones backstage at the Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway (we were both there because we had been asked to speak at Gore Vidal’s memorial some 12 years ago). I was over the moon that within minutes I was going to get to meet him. I walked up and introduced myself. 

We had a nice talk, remembering our funny and poignant moments with Gore Vidal. Jones, who was born in Mississippi, grew up south of Traverse City, Michigan in Manistee County. Moving to northern Michigan, he said, was a culture shock, and the trauma he experienced from the treatment he received as one of the few Black kids in the area, and the ridicule he endured for having a serious stutter, caused him to go silent at the age of 5, to become “mute,” and he did not use his voice until he was in high school. 

I told him that I now live in Traverse City — “near where you grew up!”

He paused and looked intently at me. 

“Traverse City is racist,” he said to me, quietly. He then told me what happened to him there. I’ll let him explain it in his own words in these paragraphs from his autobiography:

We're working on four peaceful ways to peace and need your help on all four of them. None of them are easy, as they go straight through the U.S. Senate, the corporate media, the United Nations, and college campuses. Join in!

1. Tell the Senate to immediately vote and vote Yes on Senator Sanders' resolution to stop the weapons to Israel.

Ohio is among the top 10 states where gerrymandering runs rampant. Now, a chorus of Black Faith leaders are uniting and urging Ohioans to vote yes on Issue 1, which will end gerrymandering by empowering citizens, instead of politicians, to draw fair legislative maps in an open and transparent process.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. All things fall apart. The center cannot hold.”  --  W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

As of May 2024, the United States has committed over $175 (borrowed) billion to escalating the proxy war against Russia, and, as in the case of the Iraq and Afghan wars, with little regard for accountability pertaining to tracking military hardware,  equipment, funding, or  fraud prevention.

One of the most grotesque moments in this bloody global Punch and Judy show preliminary to nuclear war, was the recent arrival of Vladimir Zelenskyy, former president of Ukraine, making a campaign stop at an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where some of the three million 155mm artillery shells the US has given Ukraine are produced.