Big Sole Blog (BSB)

If you grew up on Motown music and love it, then like me you should mark your calendar for The Motown Sound in Performance at the White House. It airs on PBS March 1, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. central time and 8:00 p.m. eastern. According to The Root, this tribute is part of the White House's celebration of Black History Month and the show was recorded Thursday night. Watch the full episode. See more

I love Joni Mitchell so much that I even based an entire post once on her music at BlogHer.com, but my love for the singer did not stop me from laughing at Tina Fey's spoof of Mitchell's musical stylings on 30 Rock (via jukebox), per Huffington Post and Jezebel. Fey sings rather well her "Paints and Brushes" Mitchellesque tune. One of the lines in the Fey's hilarious spoof is that she will not

This video, "Free But Still Struggling," published by the Houston Chronicle about men wrongfully convicted in Texas is very compelling. But the story of one man in the video, Anthony Graves, that Yahoo posted is beyond outrageous:Anthony Graves would have received $1.4 million in compensation if only the words "actual innocence" had been included in the judge's order that secured Graves's release

More on Rankine and Hoagland at WritingJunkie.netI've been trying to get a steady beat, nothing overly elaborate nor sedate, on the poetry controversy involving race at this year's AWP, the 2011 conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Writers met in D.C., February 2-5.The controversy came to my attention when I received a message from poet Jericho Brown on Facebook that

I am happy for the people of Egypt, and as someone trained in communications with experience in social activism who has been online since the mid 90s and uses Facebook and Twitter, I understand how social media can be used as a powerful tool to build a movement. So, on some level I like the play of media soundbites such as "Facebook freed Egypt." I like the warm and fuzzy feel of them, but I know

What I miss about driving less is getting lost in a radio show, specifically narratives on NPR via WWNO here in New Orleans. I can't seem to listen to talk or narratives on radio sitting still in my bedroom or living room because my mind starts to travel to all the things I need to do in my house, and if I try to do chores and listen, I don't enjoy the story the way I can in the car.This Saturday

When I read at the Huffington Post on Monday that CNN's Anderson Cooper did not know how to leave Egypt if he wanted to, I almost wrote a post because I like Cooper, but when I checked CNN's website that day and saw nothing about what he told HuffPo, I decided to wait. Today, however, I had to write something because I heard on Twitter that Cooper and his crew was attacked, that he was hit in the