Miscellany

Have you heard that new song by Jill Scott? I can't think of the name of it, 'Hate on Me' or something about haters. The beat is funky. Did you hear that her Lyzel are divorcing? I'm sure she's going to talk about the demise of her marriage, it would be hard for a poet to avoid that topic. I wish her the best, He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat) is still one of my favorite songs.

This weekend I caught a rerun of the Rap Sessions at U of Chicago back in April. http://www.rapsessions.org/ is a travelling panel of urban and hip hop intellengencia that discusses issues affecting us and our community. This was my first time watching the discussion, I found myself talking back to the tv, applauding and jotting down things I want to follow up on. At the very least, it was quite interesting. The only unfortunate thing is that very often, I felt like the panelists were preaching to the choir. Most of the people that need to hear positive messages about and from the hip hop community were not in that U of Chicago auditorium and were probably unaware that the rebroadcast was on C-Span. (I stumbled upon the discussion by accident while channel surfing.) At any rate, check out the website. Most of the panelists have written books, you might want to check them out too.

Lastly, me and my bff walked/ran in a 5K race yesterday. Most of the other 5K's I've done were for fun only. They didn't keep track of our race times. This was a real race. I felt like I was back in high school when I was at that starting line. Then, when I started running, I remembered that high school was a very long time ago. Now, I'm motivated to increase my speed and endurance. I NEED to come in under a 9 minute mile. Yesterday I came in at 13:31. That average included my walking, so, I need to be able to not only run the whole 3.1 miles, but, shave 4:31 minutes off of my time. I'll check back in over the next few months to let you know my progress. The winner of yesterday's race averaged under 6 minutes. I'm not even going to kill myself to make that pace. I have limits ya know!

Holla