I usually don't meld my personal feelings and opinions in with my love for Poetry, Writing, and Art, but when I have had enough... I've had enough and my cats will no longer listen to me complain, choosing to nap through my rants, I write a blog announcing what I feel.

I read an article this morning about a sports pub that cancelled their subscription to NFL Package and will no longer be hosting NFL games on their many TV screens in their pub come football season.  I send them many thanks for taking this step and the courage it took to say goodbye to the financial income they will probably be losing.  Goody-Goody For The Stand They Took!

And, this is what I have to say!

Those players who use their status as a team player to forsake the country should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Why don’t they protest on their own dime, or should I say millions. They take one of America’s favorite sports and time to demonstrate against the country that gives them the right of freedom to play a fantastic sport, make millions of dollars, become a beloved player and they pay their country back by “taking a knee”. They are disgraceful, dishonorable, and unworthy to be an American.  It is not that I disagree with their intention, it is the way in which they have protested -- at the expense of their audience.  Holding the fans captive for their personal views.  There is a time and place for everything, but showing lack of respect for our Anthem, Flag, and Military that protect us 24/7, is crossing over the line.

If they want to protest, why don’t they use their own money and organize a protest, rent a football stadium and use their popularity and energy to bring people together and focus on the issues they feel are being mishandled or they disagree with; but not use the paying public time and money to pay for their own personal ambitions and protests.

They are lucky they live in America, and they should take their protests to the voting booths, not the stadiums or homes of the public who pay their salaries with their subscriptions and entrance fees.

I for one am through with athletics who enter the homes and public places to broadcast their opinion and consume the public with their personal views. They appear to be oversized children throwing a temper tantrum because they didn’t get their way. Go to your room and stay there until you can behave like an American who thank their country for the opportunities they have been given at the expense of the lives of our protectors, the brave soldiers of the United States of America. So go to your room and stay there until you can behave like an thankful American.
Amen!

​Lee Christine Brownlee

​Talent that tells a story with every stroke of his art is Ansel Pitcairn.  Ansel is an artist, not just in the word, but an artist from the heart.  The creativity he expresses in his art exudes emotion, feeling, and character.  The characters he creates are expressive of the moment, showing emotion words could not describe.
Ansel’s work was recently included in the exhibit of 300 artists depicting the African-American experience through a child’s lense. The visuals grab your emotions and widen your view of possibilities

I am so proud to say I know this brilliant copyright Calvin Alexander Ramsey, also a member of the National Writers Union - New York Chapter.  His talent has inspired so many writers, and his dedication to accuracy of the history behind the historical events he recreates is remarkable.  He instills in his followers the path to freedom included love and forgiveness along with courage and steadfast belief in freedom for everyone. 

Ramsey has his creative genius coming to life in New York's Manhattan theaters, the Carolina States, Pennsylvania, and the list continues.  If any Ramsey's plays come to your town, they are definitely worth an evening of real entertainment.  I might add that the theater tickets are very reasonably priced, even in New York.  The review below was written by the Chicago Jewish News after the journalist viewed the play and interviewed Calvin A. Ramsey.       --- Lee Christine Brownlee

Chicago Jewish News, Theater Feature
The Green Book at Chicago Dramatists Through April 1, 2018 on Thursdays - Sundays
By Hugh Iglarsh
Chicago Dramatists Theatre Building, 1105 W. Chicago Avenue www.pegasustheatrechicago.org
The original Green Book, the subject of Calvin Ramsey’s play now on stage (through April 1) at Chicago Dramatists, was a basic, cheaply bound guidebook for African American drivers in the middle years of the twentieth century, listing places where they could refuel, sleep and eat without undue risk to their safety or dignity. But the book was more than a black people’s Baedeker. It was community-driven, collective survival tool at a time when Jim Crow was the norm everywhere, not just the South. The network of listed families who agreed to open their doors to strangers was a lifeline for blacks during the Great Migration northward, and it was built on a solid foundation of generosity, historical awareness and social connection. 

​Much the same could be said of the playwright’s artistic process and purpose.  We spoke in a café in Evanston, near where the New York-based writer was staying as he oversaw the mounting of his newly revised work by Pegasus Theatre and ShPIeL, Chicago’s Jewish theater company. The play – which involves among other things the 1950s-era crosscountry journey of a Holocaust survivor to visit a dying black man who took some of the first photographs of the concentration camps – is a recollection of a time of black and Jewish unity on the issue of civil rights, as well as an attempt to reconnect and regroup in the face of today’s social and political challenges and struggles.

“Growing up in the 1950s, I didn’t know about the Green Book,” says Ramsey, who was born in Baltimore and raised partly on his grandfather’s farm in North Carolina. “The two places were only four hours apart, so we packed food and went in the woods. I thought everyone did that. But that’s how my parents tried to protect us.” 

He didn’t find out about the Green Book – named after Victor Green, the Harlem-based letter carrier who, with his wife Alma, published the book for three decades – until 2001, when an acquaintance told him about it in Atlanta, where he was then living. Ramsey was at that time on the Library Board at Emory University and had access to the school’s rare books collection, which included valuable editions of the Green Book. Holding a copy of the guidebook, Ramsey sensed the wealth of stories it contained. The moment rekindled his old ambition of being a writer – a dream deferred for 25 years, during which time he had supported his family by selling insurance, but never abandoned. 

A literary person himself, Ramsey focused on a man from an earlier generation who produced a humble book that would aid and influence many thousands of his fellow African-Americans. While Victor Hugo Green is not a character in the play, his and his wife’s presence animates it. Equipped only with an eighth-grade education, a good idea and an amazing web of contacts, Green created a publishing phenomenon and a public service, one that deserves to be remembered.
“With black letter carriers mainly delivering to black neighborhoods, because you couldn’t go to a white person’s front door, Victor’s fellow postal workers were in a position to screen people,” says Ramsey. “That’s how the guide grew after it started in 1936.”

Because there were few black-owned hotels or restaurants at the time, the guide listed mainly so-called “tourist homes,” the private residences of ordinary folks. They were the forerunners of today’s Airbnb, with one key difference: the owners would charge little or nothing for their hospitality. 

“It was something the black community needed,” notes Ramsey. “There weren’t even phone numbers – people would just show up.” (This travel experience is also portrayed in Ramsey’s children’s book Ruth and the Green Book, a spinoff of his playwriting effort, which made a splash when it came out in 2010). 

Green got the idea from a similar-but-different guidebook for Jews listing both kosher eateries and non-restricted hotels, a pressing concern in an era when many hostelries and other settings were closed to Jews.“Green’s dream was to one day stop publishing his book, because it was no longer needed,” says Ramsey. But it outlived Green, who died in 1960. It continued for a few years under Alma’s editorship, fading away only after passage of the federal antisegregation Civil Rights Act of 1964. For many of those years, according to Ramsey, the Green Book was produced by a Jewish printer named Gleaner, who took the job after other printers refused it. The guidebook was distributed through churches, Masonic lodges, unions and (surprisingly) Esso service stations – because, Ramsey speculates in one of many anecdotal grace notes sprinkled through our conversation – Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller’s wife Laura Spelman Rockefeller came from an abolitionist family.

As blacks and Jews converged in the making of the actual Green Book, so do they in the play. The character of Jacob Levinsky, the victim of Nazi ideology, sees the analogy between Old World fascism and New World racism, and so refuses to stay at any lodging place that practices discrimination. His sojourn with the Davis family in Missouri, whose home is listed in the Green Book, creates tension with a black Green Book salesman, who sees any mingling of the races – even on the part of liberal whites patronizing blackowned businesses – as the beginning of the end of his livelihood and world. Although the Green Book is gone, the spiky and complex issues and questions raised by its legacy are not. 
“People ask me why I have a Jewish character in a black play,” says Ramsey. “Growing up
partly in Baltimore, Jews were always part of my life. My job as a child – one of eight – was to go to the grocery store and pick up food for the family. There were four Jewish-owned shops near us, one on each corner. The merchants were always so nice to me, and I’ve never forgotten it. I wanted to honor them.”

Since it was conceived in 2001, the play has undergone readings and performances in places ranging from Valdez, Alaska to Atlanta to Yale University to Washington, D.C. (where Julian Bond read a part). But the Jacob character remained a problem, according to Ramsey: “I was stepping out of my comfort zone – not being Jewish myself, there are certain beats I don’t know.” It was his collaboration with David Chack, ShPIeL’s artistic director and the play’s co-producer, that helped Ramsey, in his words, bring feeling to the character.

“[Chack] has been remarkable,” Ramsey says, “not only in terms of his great knowledge of theater and history, but also in bringing the people together to make this special production happen.” Those people include director Ilesa Duncan (also the producing artistic director at Pegasus) and script dramaturg Joan Mazzonelli of ShPIel.

“I’m impressed with the cast, and I’m honored that Chicago Dramatists and Pegasus and Joan and the others took on my play,” says Ramsey. “After the rewrite, it feels brand new. The earlier readings and stagings were successful, but we’ve taken the play to a new level.”

With the production of The Green Book, Ramsey’s life has come full circle. As a young man, he moved to Los Angeles, joining the army of wannabe screenwriters. “Back then, I wasn’t writing from the heart,” he says ruefully. “I was trying to sell what was selling. But it’s not a good idea – you sell yourself short.”

It was right after 9/11, with its intimations of fate and mortality, that Ramsey decided to give writing another try. This time, his work – which include a range of plays and books on the twentieth-century black experience – come very much from the heart. 

“I wanted to show the history of the black and Jewish communities working together. If it weren’t for the Jewish community, the civil rights movement would not have had the success it did – but young people today know little of this history. I want to get them to see, hear and feel what it’s like for people to work together in all kinds of ways that aren’t necessarily well publicized.”

The Green Book was a pragmatic, low-key, seemingly unheroic response to a bad situation. But as Ramsey observes, it was also about “people having love for each other and taking care of their own. The Green Book is the story of a man with an eighth-grade education who reached out to people he’d never met to help them. There are more acts of kindness like this on a daily basis than killings. We need to shine more of a light on that.”  (Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Avenue, www.pegasustheatrechicago.org)  

You have had a little time to think about how you want to be viewed by the public, publishers, universities, businesses, suppliers, etc.

You have probably tossed about a couple of nom de plumes or company names you would like to be identified by.  Oh, there is nothing wrong with using your own name.  I for one, as a writer, wanted to separate my personal life from my writing so I chose a pen name. Many people prefer to use their given name as their identification. Whatever you decide to do, it is your business and yours only. 

Whoever thought DICK’S Sporting Goods would turnout to be the world’s largest sporting goods supplier ever. Or, take Boeing, United, Disney Land, and millions of other businesses that all started out small and grew more extensive than anyone could have dreamed.  The money that is spent in re-branding is much more than was spent on the original branding.              

Of course, you want to consider a logo, symbol, or other identification that will follow you and point out your identity.  So now you have the name, identifying lettering or symbol, and now you want to choose the font to be used to print your name.  This is often a difficult choice, feminine, masculine, textbook style, big and bold, decorative or curly.  Whatever your choice, take you time, get some feedback from friends of Facebook followers.  Test the final view of your identity branding and ensure you are happy, then establish release.  Go to press with your branding in business cards, website home page, blog page, and any place else you want your branding to appear. If you are a writer, print bookmarks, any handouts you plan on giving out as promotional items, etc.
​
If you are starting a business that requires stationery, envelopes, and other printed materials, follow-through with your branding and BRAND yourself for success.

I plan on writing several articles on Personal Branding.  Over the next couple of weeks, the articles will give you specific ideas on branding yourself, what you need to consider when designing the “new” you, and how to go about it in a professional manner.

Have you thought about your personal branding, your image, your persona, and the impression you leave with people you meet?  If you performed a survey on your Facebook followers and asked them what their image, persona, or impression of you was 6-months ago versus today, what would they say.

How do people remember you?  Do they remember you for your creativity, the “brand” you have established of yourself or your product?  Or do they remember you at all?

Creating a public image is the same as outlining your goals and creating a business image.

• You want to be recognized for your product.  You, your writing, your literature, books, topics of expertise, knowledge, and business smarts.
• Design your purpose.  What is the purpose of your branding? Will your purpose tell your audience/followers you are a good writer, interesting read, flexible, futuristic.
• Or will your purpose tell your followers you are a one-time hit with very little to share?
• You want people to recognize your ID, your persona, your branding and recall that you are someone they enjoyed and want to follow and continue to read the material you publish, whether it be books, blogs, articles or interesting facts about anything.

After you have identified your purpose, let your followers know your purpose and your image/identification.  Sell yourself by using your image on everything you do.  Your image should be on your emails, in a phrase identifying “YOU.”  Identified on your website, business cards, letterhead, postcards.  Followed through on your materials you sell, share for free, and promotional items. 

How do you think the Gerber Baby has made it to the ripe old age of 90!  Happy Birthday Gerber Baby!!!  Branding, that’s how.  When you hear the word Gerber you immediately think of baby food, good for the baby, a company that cares, and quality.

This is the intent when you brand yourself.  You do not have to be a product that sits on a shelf, but a product people can trust, recognize, and purchase materials and items you produce.  It is like Levi jeans, Campbell Soup, James Patterson the writer, Microsoft software products, etc.  Branding yourself is creating a household product from the image you project. In the late 80’s people were just beginning to hear the word Microsoft and were wowed over the first series of software that hit the market with the first personal computers. Look at this software company today, a mere 30+ years later.  The company expanded and grew in productive applications that are now owned and used in every household, office and school worldwide.

You want to carefully plan the image you want to project and do not waiver from your goal.  Living up to that image is not okay on a part-time basis but represents you 24/7.  This is why many people use a pen name, or nom de plume for a separate identity.  If you are a blogger, creating your image is choosing a likable blogging topic.  Politics is not one that is comfortable to hitch your wagon to in this time-period, unless you want confrontational responses to your writing. 

I am only saying that you need to outline your design for your image, list the qualifications you expecting to meet, stress how you plan to do this, and the expected outcome of any promotional launch of the “new you” being released.
​
Lee Christine Brownlee

Dr. Marion Sims, His Statue In New York City, and Dr. Marion Sims Medical Practice
​
If there were ever a statue erected that should be taken down in the City of New York, removed, and decerebrated, it would be Dr. Marion Sims’ statue.

Through the physician’s diary and notes, written in his handwriting, he kept meticulous records on the surgeries he performed on black women under the guise of medical procedures.  Gynecological Experimental Surgeries, and in particular, patients  Betsy, Anarcha, and Lucy. 

The following taken from Dr. Sims notebooks and history recaptured. “Today, we know three of the names of the female fistula patients from Sims’s owns records—Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey. The first one he operated on was 18-year-old Lucy, who had given birth a few months prior and hadn’t been able to control her bladder since. During the procedure, patients were completely naked and asked to perch on their knees and bend forward onto their elbows, so their heads rested on their hands. Lucy endured an hour-long surgery, screaming and crying out in pain, as nearly a dozen other doctors watched. As Sims later wrote, “Lucy’s agony was extreme.” She became extremely ill due to his controversial use of a sponge to drain the urine away from the bladder, which led her to contract blood poisoning. “I thought she was going to die…it took Lucy two or three months to recover entirely from the effects of the operation,” he wrote.

<a>http://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves</a>

Dr. Sims performed the surgeries on the black slave women without anesthesia, during surgery or medication for the pain after surgery.  This cruel, unethical, and murderous treatment of women has left a pain in my heart as I cannot remove the nightmarish screams I hear in my dreams as my mind replays each surgery over-and-over again with no relief from the pain. I reread the snippets hoping it will change the results of their surgeries, but the outcome remains the same.

Calvin Alexander Ramsey, a Playwright, and Author, known for many plays on stage today where Ramsey has brought back to life and script, history never before exposed to the stage that enlightens our sensitivities to unjust treatment passed over today of mishaps and unfair happenings of yesterday.

Damaged Virtues – The story of Betsey, Anarcha, and Lucy, three slave women under the knife of Dr. J. Marion Sims over and over again.  Dr. Marion Sims, better known as the “Father of Modern Gynecology.”  This new play, written by Calvin Ramsey, will be on stage in New York City, at the National Black Theatre on November 28, 2018.  The theatre is located at 2031 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10035.   This play is a must on your list of November Events.  DON’T MISS!
CALL FOR TICKETS:  212-722-3800
 
Other Calvin Alexander Ramsey Genius:

The ‘Green Book’ Legacy, a Beacon for Black Travelers.  (Black America’s Underground Guide to Escaping the Jim Crow South,) Book and Stage Play.
 
Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend (Book, beautifully illustrated.
 
Canada Lee, a play about an African-American actor who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, forming a friendship with a Jewish actor John Garfield.
 
Sister Soldier, Challenges, and hardships that faced African American people during World War II while in the Army.
 
Enlightenment, A correlation between Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Tupac Shakur.
 
Somewhere in My Lifetime, a beautiful, romantic musical stage play.
 
Bricktop,  This musical entails three friendships, Ada “Bricktop” Smith, Alberta Hunter, and Mabel Mercer.  The play covers Chicago, Paris, New York City, Mexico City and Rome.  Co-Author – Tom Jones
 
Many more delightful plays in his repertoire.


Please go to the website: 
 
<a>https://www.change.org/p/removal-of-the-dr-marion-sims-statue-in-new-york-ny?</a>

Sign the PETITION TO HAVE DR. MARION SIMS STATUE REMOVED FROM THE CITY OF NEW YORK!



See the play "Damaged Virtues" November 28, 2017, in New York at the Black Theatre, on 5th Avenue in Harlem.

PURPOSE:  Establish a group of writers who want to participate in improving their writing skills, advance their dreams, and work in a team to learn and expand the craft of writing and productivity.  Genre open, NO Skank or Crude literature, please.
MEETING OUTLINE:  Meet in a group, once per month, with no more than 20 people.  Bring a piece you have just finished or work in progress that you would like to receive feedback and critique from other group members.
The purpose is not to criticize, but to help each other improve in a professional manner.  Share information on useful reading material, software hints, publishing information, and additional helpful information.
MEMBERS: We are limiting the membership to 20 people so that everyone will have an opportunity to participate.  We will maintain a waiting list for those who would like to remain on a waitlist for an opening.  There will be a $5.00 per meeting cost for the facility, snacks, coffee, etc.
LOCATION:  Manhattan, New York (Address to be determined)
SCHEDULE:  Saturday, once per month, 11:00 am to 2:00 pm or 3:00 pm
The Meetup has been established under <a>https://www.meetup.com/Roman-Publications-Writers-Meetup/</a>
 

​As you are probably aware, aside from being a writer, author, etc., I am a poet.  I love poetry and the poetry that surrounds all our lives.  At least I did until yesterday when I read the “poem of the day” awarded by HelloPoetry.com.  I have published many of my poems on this website for a few years.  I enjoyed reading all the new poetry every day and admiring the talent from around the world that is expressed. 
 
There are more beauty and talent in the world than we can imagine.  I thought this up until yesterday when I read the “Daily Winner.” The poetry that is awarded the Daily Winner is reviewed by at least one person from the organization, and I would like to think a few people discuss the poems each day and have a literary background.  I have noticed the quality of poetry has recently declined and have questioned other poems that have won an award.
 
Yesterday’s poem was titled My Ugly Little Poem.  I could hear Frost turning over in his grave and possibly Emily Dickinson vomiting as she read the title.  I am not going to reprint the poem as I do not have permission, and I find it utterly disgusting even to read.  The gist of the poem was having to piss in the bathroom sink for some reason or another, and the next verse included “soap scum in the shower drain.”  Now that’s a lovely picture of beauty.
 
Is this poetry? To win a daily honor for that picture of disgust is beyond reproach.  Is this the continuing of the “Dumbing-Down” of America.  Now it is the “Dumbing-Down” of Poetry.  How sad to take away such beauty, such poetic bliss and then present the tragedy with an award.
 
You guessed it.  I wrote a brief note detailing my disgust and deleted my account from HelloPoetry.com.  I will not be a part of the “Dumbing-Down” of Poetry.  HelloPoetry should be ashamed of themselves for promoting literature so disgusting, mocking poetry and our great contributors to the literature we revere.
 
It appears someone either thought that was cute, or they are trying to turn literature into skank poetry.  There is a place for all kinds of literature, but the writers who contribute their beautiful writing to HelloPoetry.com have studied hard to perfect their writing skills, and respect our great literary predecessors do not write to be sidelined by skank poetry.  If you are unfamiliar with the term “skank” poetry, it is defined as crude, obnoxious, and unacceptable literature.
 
In my course, I teach writers on Branding; this HelloPoetry.com incident is precisely what I am referring to when I state “We must be cognizant of where our name appears, the surrounding atmosphere, and the level of quality in its surroundings.  If you are driving to appear in the arena of crude poetry, no problem, but don’t mingle with the great poets and try to “Dumb-Down” the beautiful history of literature.
 
HelloPoetry.com should have two websites.  One site for genuine poetic literature and the other site for Skank Poetry.  There is a place for everything, and everything in its place, as the old saying goes.
 
I would love to hear your response to this topic and look forward to your comments.  Thank you.

Thank goodness I clarified that title.
Poetry means so many things to so many different people, but one thing I am clear of is that today’s poetry sometimes appears more of a rampage, bitch-session, or a laundry list of complaints or things that make us unhappy in our lives.
 
In my mind, these rampages and laundry lists of complaints in no way paint a picture of poetry than if you took a paint brush and tried to paint the black-hole.
 
Emily Dickinson, the well-known American Poet, once said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”  Another well-known poet, A. E. Housman uttered his idea of poetry was when he was shaving in the morning, “. . . for if a line of poetry strayed into his memory, a shiver raced down his spine, and his skin would bristle so that his razor ceased to act.”
What definitions of poetry do I get when I read poetry, written in text messaging jibberish, or a poem that resembles my weekly grocery list?  Nausea!
I read a poem the other day that had just won a contest that paid $25,000, receiving the first place award.  I read that poem, read that poem again, then read it one more time, but never figured out what it was referencing.  No meter, no rhyme, no reference, no object to cling to, but it did have many big words in it that you never hear anywhere.  No emotion, no up feeling or down feeling, no beauty of mystery.  Lacked sinister thoughts, death and dying the beauty of a rose, or a sunset in the Caribbean.  It lacked POETRY!
 
There was no shiver down my spine, no explosion in my head, just the ramblings of a dull laundry list of things.
 
My idea of poetry is: