Entry 3:

Hey Erroll,

You know, when they asked me for a bio to run with "The Breakfast Table," I crammed every accomplishment I could into it. I think I even mentioned that third-grade penmanship award I broke prissy little Nellie Morgan's fingers to win ("one line," my heinie). Yet, you simply identify yourself as "an editor at Pantheon." Too embarrassed to own up to being my editor at Pantheon? Or Toni Morrison's? Or  Henry Louis Gates? Miles Davis? Oprah? The list of luminaries is endless--why not drop a few names, tell a few tales? Regale those of us who toil in obscurity with the doings of the great ones. Tell the world that great Salman Rushdie prank you pulled with the ayatollah costume. (This is fun. Told you I'd get you back for making me rewrite my ending.)

New York what? Trump who? This is D.C., honey, we talk members of Congress here and argue about welfare policy over non-alcoholic drinks while breastfeeding our 5-year-olds.  Except, the Trump thing, I suppose, might be in the "Business" section, that pile of pages next to the "Sports" stuff. If it ain't "Style" or "National/Local" news, I ain't with it, so I'll have to take your word on that casino business. I'd have to beg to differ with you though on exactly whom it is that The Donald and The Indians are fleecing. It's not just white fools that they're parting from their money. I have some priest friends from my old neighborhood in St. Louis. Once stable and working class, now it's a wasteland. When riverboat gambling came in a few years ago, they said they could see the difference within the first month. Poor black folks by the hundreds spending their pittance gambling. They said domestic violence, child neglect, and abandonment, evictions--the whole pathological shmear went through the roof overnight. Remember black Sherrice Iverson, murdered in that casino by a white psychopath whose friend stood by and let it happen? That little 8-year-old was with her father (grandfather?). It was 4 a.m. Security had had to bring her back home on numerous occasions while he lost himself gambling. Why was a little girl in a casino at all, let alone in the wee hours? Gambling does not differentiate among fools by color.

My own mother drives four hours to cross a state line so she can buy lottery tickets. She's played for years and never wins. (Of course she doesn't! I keep telling her the odds, but she just says, "somebody's going to win." She makes me mail her Virginia lotto tickets. When I read her the winning numbers over the phone once, she broke my heart by whispering forlornly, "I've played numbers just like them." I keep telling her I'm her lottery ticket, but she somehow remains unconvinced. So y'all buy my book so I can stop my mama from gambling!)  In Houston, poor black folks ride buses for six hours after work to gamble in casinos, play all night, sleep on the bus ride back, then go straight to work. They take 'ho baths in the bathrooms at their factories and restaurants.  Slate's David Plotz has written prolifically on this subject.  

I'll get to Dubya in a minute (what a scaredy-cat!). Didja see the follow-up on the old guy who fell through the rotted floor of his privy in rural Ivanhoe, Va?  On Aug. 12, 75-year-old Coolidge Winesett fell through his privy floor five feet and spent three days amid snakes and other critters before his mail man got worried. It turns out his 90-year-old house was so dilapidated, a state agency had been for years trying to get him to let it build him a new house with modern plumbing. Now, the Post reports, "he's agreed he needs more modern facilities." Sometimes, it's fun to be a writer. Imagine the giggling in the newsroom over that line. 

I've got The Final Call, Code, and Ebony all lined up in front of me. What are you reading, oh swami editor of mine?

Editorially yours,
Deb