Mar 31, 2012
The video below is of the screening of Red Tails, the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, at the White House.
I think it is a huge shame that this movie did not do well critically, and has some cringe-able lines.
I am thrilled it was made, and I am beyond proud of the Tuskegee Airmen. They trained as pilots, navigators, engineers in 1941, in a segregated military, when the voices of evil were convincing US military that African Diaspora adults did not have the intellectual capacity to fly planes.
Don't get me wrong, not everyone has the intellectual capacity to fly planes, no matter who your great grandparents were. I would say few indeed of any of us are smart enough. But the Tuskegee Airmen were, and they are inspiring me every day as I work towards adapting the book of a Nigerian airman, Captain August Okpe.
But you don't have to wait for the movie to come out to find out his story! You can buy his book from me. Or you can buy a copy of the movie script. Or you can wait for the movie.
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Mar 30, 2012
Washington DC, Mar 30, 2012. Secretary Sebelius Statement on HPHC List and MRTP Guidance
Tobacco use continues to be the leading cause of preventable death
in our country and today’s action by the FDA is a significant step
toward providing Americans with the facts about the dangers of tobacco.
Tobacco
companies will be required to report the amount of harmful and
potentially harmful chemicals in tobacco products and their smoke. The
chemicals that will be reported cause or could cause serious health
problems including cancer, lung disease, and addiction. Today’s action
will ultimately provide important new information about the risks
associated with tobacco products.
In addition, the Family Smoking
Prevention and Tobacco Control Act requires that tobacco products
marketed to reduce risk are promoted truthfully and are backed by sound
science. After the 1964 Surgeon General’s report linked smoking to
cancer, industry changed the design of cigarettes and used the
adjectives such as ‘light,’ ‘mild,’ or ‘low,’ to imply that these brands
were less harmful. But experts found that they were no safer than
regular cigarettes. The law now prohibits the use of such descriptors
unless tobacco companies can prove their products are actually less
dangerous. These requirements prevent misleading advertising from an
industry that spends more than $10 billion a year – $1 million an hour –
to market their deadly products.
We are committed to protect
public health and to make tobacco related disease and death part of
America’s past and not its future. We will continue to do everything we
can to help smokers quit and prevent kids from starting this deadly
addiction.
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Mar 28, 2012
Finlandia by Sibelius. From what I read, written to evoke snow and deep lakes and ice and forests. Interesting that this should be adapted for the Biafran National Anthem. What was Chris thinking? Captain Okpe describes in The Last Flight staying with Chris while he smoked cigarette after cigarette and wrote the anthem for Biafra which had not yet seceded. So when Biafra seceded, the General not only had a name for the new country, but uniforms for teh armed forces AND an anthem! This story grips me tighter and tighter each day.
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I left the warm embraces of Nigeria one week ago, sob, and am hard at work making "The Last Flight" into a movie.
My research is taking me far and wide, and close to home. For 3 years I drove Patience to music lessons in Germantown, corner of Germantown And Price Avenues, in North Philadelphia. I certainly walked by the ACES museum several times. It has a huge hall upstairs that was used for dances for military.
I heard about the museum several times during the past year, but things sometimes float around my brain before sinking in. It is a museum honoring Black veterans. Simple as that. And I am working towards making a movie of the story of a Black veteran, a pilot. Simple as that.
Watch the video above and swing by the museum. Anyone from the museum, please give me up-to-date contact information which I will post here.
Below I have posted the trailer from the hugely expensive movie made by George Lucas on the Tuskegee pilots. We will not have the budget that George Lucas had, but Captain Okpe's story is every bit as compelling. And is the story of a pilot who kept on flying, kept on bombing, while his country was starved underneath him.
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Mar 14
Three magazine interviews today about Captain August Okpe's book. Hard work making a hero immortal. I was driven around Lagos to 3 celebrity magazines, and interviewed. Above is a photograph.
Interesting questions. When are are we making the movie? Where are we making the movie? Are we using Nigerian actors? How much will it cost. Hm. Then, what is your marital status? What do you think about the situation in Nigeria? Time out! Oy.
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Mar 11, 2012
Sunday afternoon in Lagos after a lazy lunch near a river. Curled on a sofa reading about the Nigerian Civil War.
Hard to imagine a more beautiful, peaceful time than now. All around me is construction; roads are being built, buildings are arising. A long bridge across the lagoon is being built from Lekki to Ikoyui, every day except Sunday it is getting longer and longer.
In January, on January 1st, I heard that the cost of fuel had more than doubled, and Nigeria was on strike. I see no signs of hardship around me, no signs of revolution. All I see is Nigerians at work, happily creating buildings from bamboo and concrete.
Privately, I hear whispers that the most affluent Nigerians wish that Occupy Nigeria had continued in New York, and grown strength.
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Two old warriors drinking tea, swapping stories and laughing about the
times they worked with international leaders to get weapons to blow each
other into oblivion. I saw that in Australia, I have now seen it in
Nigeria. Grace enacted. War is hell. Occupy peace.
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Mar 8, 2012International Womens Day. The day women celebrate being women and demand equal rights with men. Which means economic parity.
Click on the picture above. It will take you to an article published by MJoTA in 2009, describing my 2007 visit to Ekpoma, Edo State, Nigeria. The lady on the left in Professor Afe Ekundayo, who was my guest in New Jersey for 3 magical days in 2008. Professor Ekundayo is a full professor of microbiology, and was the Dean of Natural Sciences at Ambrose Alli University during my visit. She later became Deputy Vice Provost of Ambrose Alli University. Strong, brilliant, hard-working woman.
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This day last year was also Shrove Tuesday, and I participated in a dinner celebration recognizing the successes of women of New York City. Unfortunately the event, in the American Association of University Women New York City headquarters, was run by men and by women subservient to these men. And, although the women so honored were spectacular, the event failed because of bad organization and infighting and complete failure to understand why Eleanor Roosevelt had happily opened the headquarters in 1949, and why Marian Anderson so happily accepted such an award in 1958. The dinner celebration doomed the organization to a rapid demise, which happened on June 1, 2011, with the public disgrace of the 2 who drained the organization of $100,000: President of AAUW NYC Nkechi Madonna Agwu BS (Mathematics), MS (Mathematics), PhD (Mathematics Education) and her constant companion, serial thief and document forger Lookman Arounfale Bashiru Sulaimon MS (Journalism). For more, click here. Organizations including the American Association of University Women, now known as AAUW, can only survive with good leadership, obedience to the charter, fiscal responsibility and an understanding of who should be management and who should be members. The New York City branch died because none of this was in place. The grownups left the management in disgust around 1990 and left the building and this 125 year organization to the unqualified. It was only a matter of time before the shaky leadership was passed to a recent immigrant, with no understanding of American rules, regulations, and fiscal responsibility, who immediately forced out the literature and became the constant companion of the assistant treasurer, a frequently arrested scammer and gigolo who for some years has moved in high circles in New York City government, in the Caribbean community and in the United Nations African missions. So where are we on International Womens Day? Are we doomed to constant sabotage of women's groups by men? How do we judge? A good place for me to start in the United States is at the leading news website in the leading city: the New York Times. Today's obituaries number 45; of these 5 are women. I am back in Nigeria where well-educated women with their own money follow their own paths, while most women follow the paths of men in some capacity. In my 6 years of living and working in African communities, what has surprised me most are constant requests from African men for romantic entanglements, permanent and casual. This has come from governors, business leaders, pastors, United Nations officials, media colleagues, everyone, although the vast majority are Nigerian. This has led to conversations about faithfulness and fidelity and hearing the astonishing argument that sexual infidelity has nothing to do with being faithful or loyal. I hear that in Nigeria, few women divorce, and yet I have been told in New York City, the rate of divorce in Nigerian immigrants is well over 50%. What happens to Nigerian immigrants? Simply: the women train as nurses and become financially independent and completely reject the infidelity that was accepted in Nigeria as part of economic survival. The key to women reaching equity with men is economic empowerment. In 1881, a group of women university graduates met and came up with a structure of an organization that had at its base discipline, hard work, accountability, sound financial management. The New York City branch was chartered in 1885. In 2011, 2 Nigerians did not know they had boarded a drowning ship, and instead of withdrawing with dignity to build on their personal relationship, scrambled for all they could get and brought down a 125-year institution and lost the building that was a short walk from the United Nations,click here.Ladies, this International Womens Day, give a hug or send a greeting to your women friends, and promise me that you will never let a personal relationship with a man destroy your sisters' dreams or get in the way of your own economic freedom.
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Mar 7, 2012Patience. I am the daughter of Patience, the mother of Patience. I am bursting with pride at my daughter.
My
mother, Dr Patience, is dancing with the angels today. I never saw her
dance, or skip. But I saw her run, and outrun myself and my siblings,
who are all my brothers.
Overnight, when I was 10, my mother was
stricken by a terrible crippling disease, rheumatoid arthritis. She
never ran again. She was in its painful grip when she died 33 years
later, in her 80th year.
She could not run or
dance, but she could laugh, and laugh she did when my daughter was born.
Her laugh came with streams, torrents of blessings for Patience, and
how well these blessings have guided Patience. Patience is wonderful, as
was Dr Patience. How blessed am I to be a Patience sandwich.
pa·tience (p  sh ns)n.1. The capacity, quality, or fact of being patient. 2. Chiefly British The game solitaire. Synonyms: patience, long-suffering, resignation, forbearance
These nouns denote the capacity to endure hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience without complaint. Patience emphasizes calmness, self-control, and the willingness or ability to tolerate delay: Our patience will achieve more than our force (Edmund Burke).
Long-suffering is long and patient endurance, as of wrong or provocation: The general, a man not known for docility and long-suffering, flew into a rage.
Resignation implies acceptance of or submission to something trying, as out of despair or necessity: I undertook the job with an air of resignation.
Forbearance denotes restraint, as in retaliating, demanding what is due, or voicing disapproval: "It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other" (Patrick Henry). The
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published
by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Mar 6, 2012
Ghana. Today, 55 years ago, the first of the African British colonies declared its independence. Over the next 5 or 6 years, all the rest followed, which destroyed our wonderful Empire Day ceremonies on May 24, which was Queen Victoria's birthday. When Australia celebrated Empire Day, we were part of the British Empire, and our ceremonies included singing a song from each of our fellow colonies, and fireworks at night.
As the African, Caribbean and Asian countries headed for the door (and let us remember so did Cyprus), the songs became fewer and fewer and Empire Day was laid to rest.
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Mar 4, 2012Nigeria. Captain August Okpe and I flew from Lagos to Enogu on Thursday, the same path that Captain August Okpe, click here, followed when he flew from Biafra to bomb Lagos. Every chapter I read from The Last Flight, click here, I am convinced he will not live to tell the tale. Yet he flew the last hostile flight of the Biafran War, as the Chief Pilot of Biafra, and today, this very day, he is in Ikeja enjoying a grueling hour-long match of tennis with a friend.
Captain Okpe has lessons for us all: have a stable family life (his then young and now late wife even knocked out perfect identical twin girls during the days he was bombing for Biafra), keep moving and don't drink alcohol.
This all made his aim sure and his reactions swift. You know he had to be swift when he was flying helicopters, flying high altitude planes and low altitude, grazing waves and treetops to avoid radar detection. On Thursday, Mar 1, we flew to Enogu to pay final tribute to Captain Okpe's commander, and later, good personal friend. Captain okpe was the personal pilot of General Ojukwu, and was recognized as the best surviving pilot in the Biafran War. We did not see the ceremonies, except on television, but we spoke with those who were there, and we were in the heart of Igboland, where General Ojukwu will always be a mytical hero. Sleep well Ikemba. Your rest is deserved. And when all around us is dust, your intregrity and your leadership will be remembered. I am so privileged to be in the house and care of your Chief Pilot.
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MJoTAtalks, click here
-MJoTAtalks:
Art Bearing Witness with Omenihu Amachi, click here
-MJoTAtalks: Health with MJoTA publisher, click here
-MJoTAtalks: Fiction with MJoTA publisher, click here
-MJoTAtalks: Music & Youth with Irv & Carlos, click here
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Biafra audio. Listen to speeches by General Ojukwu and the Biafran national anthem. Click here.
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Haddonfield New Jersey mayor is Tish Colombi. Lovely picture of Tish in article on Olympic runner who grew up in Haddonfield, click here.
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