Becky's Greatest Hits Vol. II

 There is a meme, and a general question in the air these days......what radicalized you? It has become a joke, but for some of us, it's a very real question and one we have actually spent time on.  I'll gladly share my list from as early back as I can remember.  I first want to say how much I appreciate that my parents, local Charlotte radio and my elementary school and junior high school librarians didn't censor me. It was reading James Baldwin, a gay man born in Harlem in the 1920's, before I was even 13.  Before I was even old enough to know what all of those qualities might mean.  It was not reading Richard Wright and Nikki Giovanni until I took an African American Lit class in my 30's with Dr. Alicia McCollough.  It was not until Barack was inaugurated.  It was not until Bernie stepped away from the podium for BLM speakers.  It was not until George Floyd.  It was not until Sonya Massey.   It was reading Slaughterhouse-Five at ...

I really dug his first book with James Patterson , and I like this one pretty good too.  The only problem with this one is that I'm listening to it as an audiobook, and I don't dig all the voices.  A real first-world problem, I know.  And it's always kind of interesting to see how Bill is kind of spelling out how he sees himself in the world, or rather, how he wants to be seen.   This book by Rax King, on the other hand, makes it quite a joy to listen to her lovely voice as she reads her own, sometimes boring sometimes scary, escapades as a teenager and young adult.  Her full chapter on Creed makes the entire book with the read. For television viewing, I did enjoy the History Channel series of Thomas Jefferson, but got a little bored by the FDR episodes.  And that shocked me as I love FDR!  Something about the presentation and the actor portraying him looking a little too much like Kevin Spacey methinks. And even though I didn't see ANY of his mov...