Big Sole Blog (BSB)

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Miranda Lambert's emotional performance of "The House That Built Me" got to me, too. The country singer and wife of Blake Shelton, sang the song at Wednesday night's benefit on NBC, Healing in the Heartland, for victims of that massive tornado that slammed Moore, Oklahoma, earlier this month. Tornado destruction or not

Oriental Turtle Dove (Streptopelia orientalis) by NikhilSource "Dead Birds Sigh A Prayer"* by Nordette N. Adams I have been told, "Do not post poems on the Internet!" See, the serious poet embeds her words only at the base of ivory towers where an usher pushes a diamond-crusted elevator button, calling offerings to the spire of the poet gods. "A poem is a sacrifice," I have been

Through his Rebuild the Dream organization, environmental activist Van Jones seems to be playing the prophet Nathan to President Obama's David on matters of climate change. Jones says in the video above that if President Obama continues to support the Keystone XL Pipeline, then the president should rename it "The Obama Tar Sands Pipeline." Clearly Jones is disappointed in President Obama

In a recent interview with his close friend Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry compared Langston Hughes's negative criticism of Zora Neale Hurston's work to Spike Lee's negative criticism of Perry's work.  I think Perry could use a better example when it comes to contemporary black writers downing his movies, plays, and television shows. (The timing of Perry's interview with Oprah coincides with the

No Game of Thrones tonight, folks. This parody of the HBO series by Jimmy Fallon (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) nearly makes up for it with a great laugh. The comic production is called Game of Desks, and the show went all out to mimic the GoT, even the opening is very similar and so funny. Looks like they had a lot of fun making this. The verbal argument over the iron desk near the

Front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune, Mother's Day 2013, featuring mothers who've lost children to gun violence. On Mother's Day morning, I found the Sunday edition of the New Orleans Times Picayune on my lawn. The picture here shows that day's front page. The headline of the feature story on the left reads, "Mothers talk about losing a child to violence." For many readers this is

This post supplements a longer post at BlogHer.com. I received an email on Monday (May 13) from BlogHer's News and Politics Editor Grace Hwang Lynch looking for people willing to write about the Mother's Day shooting. When I saw it, I was annoyed. No. I was angry in a way I couldn't understand. I figured that people not from here thought the incident was another "mass shooting story" like