Big Sole Blog (BSB)

I don't know what overtook me today, but for the first time in maybe 30 years, I heard Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses," which I've posted above, and started crying. My first thought is that I needed to cry because I've been holding so much in over the last year (family deaths, health concerns, a variety of fears). Once in my life I was known for crying often--sobbing because

This month the Barman's Fund of New Orleans will give a boost to the city's only street paper, the New Orleans Street Exchange. According to the newspaper's newsletter, "the Barman’s Fund is a motley assortment of bartenders who pledge all earnings from one shift a month for charitable organizations." The N.O. Street Exchange is a street newspaper benefiting the city's homeless community and

I remember seeing on Facebook the picture of the NYPD police officer who gave the homeless man a pair of boots. The story moved me, and I learned more watching this video at CNN with story. Officer Lawrence DePrimo, who's received lots of attention for helping the man, said it was very cold; he saw Jeffrey Hillman's blistered feet and wanted to help him. He asked about buying him socks, and

Pima Community College released the following video of Jared Lee Loughner rambling and ranting around its campus, and media enterprises are calling in more experts to decipher meaning behind his jumbled words and bizarre behavior. The school suspended Loughner last year after he showed myriad signs of being mentally disturbed and possibly a danger to himself, college staff and students. Multiple

Oprah Winfrey tells Piers Morgan in an interview for his new CNN show that her greatest failure was the movie Beloved based on Toni Morrison's novel that won the Nobel Prize in literature. She said that after the movie bombed at the box office, she went into a depression for the first and only time of her life, feeling that she existed under a veil and asking her chef to prepare macaroni and

Did you recognize the image Clay Duke painted on the wall from the movie V for Vendetta?When I saw this story about the Florida school board shooting yesterday, I got a chill, not just because the video was scary either. I used to cover school board meetings in other parts of the country and sometimes the people coming in to protest budget cuts or ask for school board backing on some project did

A friend sent this to me, the "Fuck It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way." I wish I could adopt it because I honestly believe that sometimes no matter what you do, you can't change the outcome of a bad thing. The old way to say this would be "Let go and let God."

BlogHer.com, a women's blogging website, with help from OperationBeautiful.com, is running a series about owning your own beauty that features stories and pictures from ordinary women. That's a praise-worthy project. If I were younger, I'd ask to participate because I, like many other women, struggle with self and body image baggage, but who wants to hear about an older woman's emotional

I came across an old song today that reminded me of colorism issues in the black community, and again I remind my fellow African-Americans that other people of color have similar dysfunctions. Ask someone observant from India about it, for instance, and they'll tell you that some of their people favor lighter skin.Curtis Mayfield (June 3, 1942 – December 26, 1999), opens the set in the embedded

I don't hide that I have some anger issues, which means I really have to put the brakes on sometimes when I read comments from people supporting Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. It's usually not that they like these people that aggravates me, but that they try to declare the two men don't make racist statements or spread misinformation. I think you can like idiots all you want, just don't pretend