Shakara!

heads up, before i continue with the menu, i will be back on the air Wednesday morning from 9am to 11am EST (east coast !!) on libradio.com . so check me out. My man the COnscious Rasta will be interviewing me. THAT IS THIS WEDNESDAY (sept 3rd) ... support black owned radio. REALLY BLACK OWNED radio.

this weekend was sort of blah. I totally forgot it was labor day weekend. Crazy huh? well i stopped messing with the Gregorian calendar like that. we really don't celebrate holidays (save mad loot ya'll). i did have to work . I had an ill gig on Saturday. It was for a very Christian couple. It feels funny Djing at a reception where the people don't plan on dancing. I did have the crowd laughing though.

Sunday, i totally forgot i had to work. it was bugged. But i got there about an hour late. i wish i could have seen the boys before i bounced.
oh i wanted to show you all these on Tom Feelings (read a few days back...)

Famed artist Tom Feelings passes
by HERB BOYD
Special to the AmNews
Originally posted 8/28/2003

His artistic lines were as sharp and precise as his politics, and for Tom Feelings there was no separation between his art and the struggle for the liberation of his people. Feelings, 70, made his transition Monday afternoon (August 25) in La Mesa, Mexico, where he had gone a week ago for treatment of cancer.

Many of Feelings’ friends and admirers learned of his illness some months ago when they were alerted that funds were being sought to facilitate travel to
Germany for treatment of an unusually aggressive form of colon cancer. ''That trip was not possible for several reasons,'' said his son Kamili in an interview with the Amsterdam News on Tuesday. ''The option was to send him to Mexico for alternative treatment, but it was too late.''

Feelings was born and raised in Brooklyn. He attended the School of Visual Arts but it was from his global travels that he began to develop both his artistic and political perspective. After the academic training and his immersion in the Civil Rights Movement, he felt a need to bring more balance to his work.
''So in 1964 I moved to West Africa … the original home of my people,'' he wrote in “The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo” (Dial Books, 1995). ''The
country I chose to go to was Ghana. Ghana under President Kwame Nkrumah was in the forefront of the fight for African independence and a unified Africa.''

For two years, Feelings lived and work in Ghana as an illustrator for the Government Publishing House. The experience was an enlightening one, he recalled,
delivering the joy and the identity he so fervently sought. ''For the first time in my life I was in the majority,'' he wrote. ''I gained strength in my
convictions, going out into the community of Accra, drawing all those places and faces my heart and eyes yearned to see and feel.''

Africa enveloped him and renewed his sense of color and imagination, and the gifted painter and illustrator absorbed the environment and wore it as a
second skin. ''My black-and-white paintings became brighter,'' he explained. “Even my colors became more vivid and alive, as though they possessed a light radiating from within.''

Some of these vivid impressions abound in the 20 or more books Feelings illustrated, including ''Jambo Means Hello: A Swahili Alphabet Book,'' which he
completed with his first wife, Muriel; ''To Be a Slave,'' with text by Julius Lester; ''Soul Looks Back in Wonder'' and ''Now Sheba Sings the Song,'' with
text by Maya Angelou; ''Daydreamers,'' with Eloise Greenfield; and ''Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America.''

But the culmination of his artistic journey emerged with ''The Middle Passage,'' with an introduction by Dr. John Henrik Clarke. For almost 20 years, ever
since he was once asked in Ghana what happened to the Africans who crossed the Atlantic during the slave trade, Feelings had worked on this magnum opus. ''My struggle to tell this African story, to create this artwork as well as live creatively under any conditions and survive, as my ancestors did, embodies
my particular heritage in this world,'' he wrote. ''As the blues, jazz and the spirituals teach, one must embrace all of life – both its pain and joy –
creatively.''

This Feelings did with gusto, relishing each precious moment as he worked to capture the majesty of his people and their contributions to world culture.
''He chose to put his art at the service of the people, and he did this with great humility and dignity, and for these reasons he will be deeply
missed,'' said attorney Robert Van Lierop.

His travels took him to Guyana and finally to Charleston, South Carolina, where he was ever in search of new ways to depict African realities as well
as to teach as he did as a professor of art at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. To list his awards would exhaust the space here, but we should
note the prestigious Caldecott Medal, which he cherished.

In his acknowledgments at the close of ''The Middle Passage'' he observed: ''Finally, to all those wonderful ordinary, extraordinary people who touched
my life, from America to Africa, from Ghana to Guyana. Especially those of you who saw these images in progress and sometimes with your eyes, sometimes with your words, helped me to give this story back, in this form. I hope you all understand that your spirit lives within this book in the most positive way, even if your name is not listed here.''

In our book of life, as we continue to pursue all that is beautiful and fulfilling, many of us will pause to thank Tom Feelings for putting us in touch with some
of those joyful moments that leapt from his canvases and illustrations and sprung from his generous soul. ''We are planning a memorial service at a later day,'' Kamili said. He said he would also be in touch with friends and associates about funeral services and a message to all those who contributed money toward his father’s well-being.

Feelings is survived by his mother, Anna Morris; three sons, Kevin, Zamani and Kamili; and daughter, Niani.

Big up....

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I have to say this
"Does anyone know when the watershow starts? "

Today my daughter and i watched SD GUNDAM, or Captain gundam. it was pretty cute. not as violent as the original show, but nonetheless, its dope.

yup me love me cartoon....