Coney Island is Trill!

I went to Coney Island on Monday July 3rd . It was deep. I never saw so many, Eastern Europeans, Brazilian soccer dudes, Puerto Rican homies and Deep Brooklyn Jewish cats in the same place at the same time in my life.

Coney Island is a Grand experiment in Democracy. Real Talk.

On the way to the train, I was rocking my Stop Shooting T-shirt (gett'em at Oh Word.com) I got the most interesting looks from po-po, left leaning white liberals, gully brooklyn thugs and old grandmommas. Some people, smirked, others smiled. It was really interesting to observe how people react to the message on my shirt.

In terms of the train ride. First. I got on the B. Then I got on the D. Blog family, the D is express in Manhattan, but local in BK. The train stopped on every stop. I finally gets there and it was cool. Laid out the blanket and what not. Reading my scandless summer sizzler by Donna Hill. Oh, there were mad mexicanos selling them, coronas, umbrellas and budweisers and mangoes on a stick with cayanne pepper. Them sh*ts look gully. I couldn't believe that the police let them rock like that. But I guess they were down by the water, and po po can't be every where at the same time. I swear, blog family, there were three couples, that were puerto rican, and they set up a DOMINO TABLE AT THE BEACH. THAT was so hood. I Loved it!

So I am there backing for a couple of hours, and this little rug rat came over with his parent. This dude, threw sand on me. I kid you not. Now yall know I got anger issues. I DO NOT NEED some bad @ss 2 year old throwing sand on me. His momma let me do it. His dad apologized. So now I got my eye on his lil' a$. These dude turned around and did it agin. Thats it. Sand in the hair, can of whup @$ gets opened!


I told the momma, "You better get your son!" For real! Soon after they took him down the beach to terrorize someone else. After I left the beach, I wound up in Prospect Heights at my girl T's house. We sat in frente de her building, drinking some beverages y mas watermelon right on St. John's off Washington. Somebody opened their car door and started playing Biggie Hella loud, and I thought to myself, this is So Brooklyn. Wow. That was a lot of typing for one sitting. Its july, and I intend on enjoying every weekend of it.
___________________
___________________

Can it be a stayed away too long.....?

Dear blog readers. I am here. I am working on posts and life is Crazy like a July summer should be.
Here are some tidbits I have come across and the last few.
Let me know what 'chall thaink?


________________
________________


N*gga trippin off Jay Z Cristal comments. Well a writer from the Washington Post tells Jay to take it easy. GTFOHWBS.

Luxury brands -- and mid-priced ones, as well -- have had a variety of responses to hip-hop's embrace. Timberland was famously not thrilled with the popularity of its boots among rappers and their fans. Other brands, such as Prada, have simply kept silent about their prominence in rap songs. Other companies have been proactive in choosing the performers with whom they'll form close relationships. In 1996, Louis Vuitton featured Grandmaster Flash in one of its advertisements. Just recently, Pharrell Williams collaborated on a line of Louis Vuitton sunglasses and created the soundtrack for one of its runway shows. Giorgio Armani hosted 50 Cent at a recent ready-to-wear show. Dolce & Gabbana outfitted Mary J. Blige for a concert tour. And brands from Gucci to Chanel have been inspired by hip-hop performers.

Whats wrong? Black man cain't use his voice to speak out on what he believes right. Prolly thinks Jay should shut up and sell raps.

________________
________________


Hold Up. So this dude is in Thailand, selling boot leg Deisel jeans to pay for Sex. Talk about a new jack hustle.

Aaron's is the basic business model for all e-bootleggers. Each week, he visits the Mah Boon Krong mall, known as MBK -- one of Bangkok's most popular shopping centers, complete with multiplex and bowling alley. In his favorite store on the sixth floor, the jeans, shirts and accessories are stacked 8 feet high. Styles are current, stitches are tight and the counterfeit labels will pass casual inspection.

After some tough negotiating, one pair of "Diesels" costs 550 baht, or about $14.30; it will sell for between $45 and $100, plus shipping. Without breaking a sweat, Aaron can run 20 auctions per week and clear upward of $1,000. In 2005, one of his more ambitious friends pulled in an estimated $100,000 -- tax-free, risk-free.

________________
________________


Ex-Bush Aide Fatally Shoots Son, Himself
Gunfire at McLean Home Followed Fight With Wife
Dude is Black. Deep right?!?!?!

A former Bush administration official, after arguing violently with his wife Thursday night, shot and killed his 12-year-old son inside their McLean home, then turned a shotgun on himself and committed suicide, Fairfax County police said.

William H. Lash III, 45, was an assistant secretary of commerce from 2001 until last year, then returned to teach at George Mason University Law School in Arlington, where he had begun as a professor in 1994. His wife, Sharon K. Zackula, fled the house before the shootings, and police said yesterday they were not sure what ignited the murder-suicide in a first-floor bedroom.

__________________
__________________

They trynna take away our you tube happiness yall.

Spine mag .com swipey.

______________
______________

M.C. Hammer's catalog got sold for 2.7 Million.

I put my soul on 2 inch reels that I don't even own.- Pharcyde

We anticipate that many songs in the MC Hammer catalog will emerge as a perfect fit for licensing in movies, television shows, and corporate advertising," Schulhof added.

MC Hammer filed for bankruptcy protection in 1996, with debts in excess of $14 million, despite raking in over $33 million in 1991.

Some of the rapper's assets included a luxurious mansion valued between $12 and $20 million dollars, 17 race cars, a Boeing 727, a Kentucky Derby race horse and a monthly payroll of over $500,000.

Evergreen also acquired producer/publisher Jerry Crutchfield's Crutchfield/Glitterfish catalog, which includes hits from Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, George Straight and others.

I wonder what Hammer would be doing today if he did not go bankrupt?
I wonder who could have prevented him from going bankrupt.
I wonder what he regrets.
________________
___________


This article is like a two pac song. Beautiful and Heartbreaking and angry all at the same time.
The Power to break up a family should be used judiciously. Excerpt below is from an article on social workers and how they weigh the decision of removing children from their home and placing them in foster care.

The staff is made up of investigators and treatment workers, with investigators handling the initial unannounced knock on the door after a report of abuse or neglect comes into the state’s hot line. Investigators have up to 45 days to decide whether to take a kid into D.C.F. custody, or to leave him at home but compel the family to accept the department’s long-term help, or to deem a report unsubstantiated and let the case go. During this time they can enter the house again and again and interview school nurses and neighbors, anyone who might know how well or terribly a child is being cared for. To take control of a child for longer than four days, the department needs a judge’s approval, but if a social worker senses that a child is at immediate risk, a supervisor’s signature on a form known as a “96-hour hold” will let her walk away with that boy, that girl or all the children in the house.

_______________
_______________


So I am on my blog greasy. Putting finishing touches on my, "Why women love bad boys" post, "The Coney Island, Stop Shooting" post, (Hi Rafi) and my .2 cents on the "Phonte/Noz/Bol/Gotty" bloggy fun. Oh, Davey D got a post up on the role of the White fan in Hip Hop.
All I know is that it is hot, and M.dot, is happy she don't stay in Queens. How you gon' live inna tri-state and not have electricity for 6+ days. We ain't at camp!


______________________
______________________

Dr. Jelani Cobb calls Ludacris, 50 and Ice Cube SNITCHES.

I am on my blog gully today blog fam.

Rafi, I gotchu on the Stop Shooting post. I had to get these out the way. Babygirl been backed up. I promised Gotty this one first. You up next fam:)

Dr. Cobb aint really call 'em snitches. I just wanted to get yall attention:0

But what he did do was point out how they can go after Oprah, but not after Bill O'Reilly (at least with the same vigor) or after Jerry Heller, who gaffled Cube for HELLA paper in the 80's.

This post started out from a forward from Gotty. I been sittin on the train marinating on how I was gonna go at it. Please enjoy.
*****My response's to Dr. Cob's essay are in blue.

________________________
________________________

We Still Wear The Mask

By Dr. William Jelani Cobb

Part I. 50 Cent and the Mask
We could have known that it would come to this way back in 1896. That was the year that Paul Lawrence Dunbar dropped a jewel for the ages, telling the world that "we wear the mask that grins and lies."

The poet's point was that beneath the camouflage of subservient smiles, black folks of the Jim Crow era were hiding a powder keg of other emotions, waiting patiently for the chance to detonate. The thing is, Dunbar never got the chance to spit bars with 50 Cent or throw in a guest collabo on a Mobb Deep album. If he had, then he would've known that grins and lies were only half the story.

These days, camouflage is the new black. Glance at hip hop for less than a second and it becomes clear that the music operates on a

single hope: that if the world mistakes kindness for weakness it can also be led to confuse meanness with strength. That principle explains why there is a permanent reverence for the thug within the music; it is why there is a murderer's grit and a jailhouse tat peering back at you from the cover of damn near any CD you picked up in the last five years. But what hip hop can't tell you, the secret that it would just as soon take to its deathbed is that it this urban bravado

is a guise, a mask, a head-fake to shake the reality of fear and powerlessness in America. Hip hop will never admit that our assorted thugs and gangstas are not the unbowed symbol of resistance to marginalization, but the most complacent and passive products of it.

[ The Thug Mentality cannot be discussed with out mentioning American Pop culture and its reverence for the bad guys. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Scarface. The list goes on and on. My intent isn't to let any of these cats off the hook. My intent is to ensure that it is being properly contexualized. I would make the same argument about Lil' Kim and sexual lyrics.]

We wear the mask that scowls and lies.

Part II. Dr. Dre Fist and Dee Barnes Face
You could see which way the wind was blowing way in the early 90s when Dr. Dre was being ripped off by white Ruthless Records CEO

Jerry Heller, and nonetheless got his street cred up by punching and kicking Dee Barnes, a black woman journalist, down a flight of stairs. In this light, hip hop's obsessive misogyny makes a whole lot more sense. It is literally the logic of domestic violence. A man is abused by a larger society, but there are consequences to striking back at the source of his problems. So he transfers his anger to an acceptable outlet – the women and children in his own household, and by extension, all the black people who constitute his own

community.

Nothing better illustrates that point than the recent Oprah Debacle. Prior to last month, if you'd heard that a group of rappers had teamed up to attack a billionaire media mogul you would think that hip hop had finally produced a moment of collective pride on par with the black power fists of the 1968 Olympics. But nay, just more blackface.

[ Well Duh. Then the question becomes, if being a thug is not anti

society , then what exactly does being Thug Mean? How can you be an unbowed symbol of resistance when your only language is violence, would be my follow up question. Ask Eskay. He will tell you that I am a firm believer in violence. In a way, waking up every day and trying to be contrsuctive in the face of unsurmountable odds will make you wanna be violent ock. Sometimes VIOLENCE is necessary to get the attention of your adversary. Why you think we at war? However, it can be only ONE of the tools in your tool box.

Not the only one.]

Part III. Oprah and Hip Hop

In the past two months, artists as diverse as Ludacris, 50 Cent and Ice Cube have attacked Oprah Winfrey for her alleged disdain for hiphop. It's is a sad but entirely predictable irony that the one instance in which hip hop's reigning alpha males summon the testicular fortitude to challenge someone more powerful and wealthy than they are, they choose to go after a black woman.

[ Female Model Minorities are easy targets ock. And you know the media loved that sh*t too. Ohhh, two black stars talkin' sh*t about each other, breaking news].

The whole set up was an echo of some bad history. Two centuries ago, professional boxing got its start in America with white slaveholders who pitted their largest slaves against those from competing plantations. Tom Molineaux. First black heavyweight

champion came up through the ranks breaking the bones of other slaves and making white men rich. After he'd broken enough of them, he was given his freedom. The underlying ethic was clear: an attack on the system that has made a slave of you will cost you your life, but an attack on another black person might just be the road to emancipation.
The basis for this latest bout of black-on-black pugilism was Oprah's purported stiff-arming of Ludacris during an appearance on

her show with the cast of the film Crash.

Ludacris later complained that the host had made an issue of lyrics she saw as misogynistic. Cube jumped into the act whining that Oprah has had all manner of racist flotsam on her show but has never invited him to appear – proof, in his mind, that she has an irrational contempt for hip hop. Then 50 threw in his two cen

ts with a claim that Oprah's criticism of hip hop was an attempt to win points with her largely white, middle class audience. All told, she was charged her with that most heinous of hip hop's felonies: hateration.

Part IV. 50's Love and respect for the President
But before we press charges, isn't 50 the same character who openly expressed his love for GW Bush as a fellow "gangsta"

and demanded that the black community stop criticizing how he handled Hurricane Katrina?

Compare that to multiple millions that Oprah has disseminated to our communities (including building homes for the Katrina families, financing HIV prevention in South Africa and that $5 million she dropped on Morehouse College alone) and the idea of an ex-crack

dealer challenging her commitment to black folk becomes even more surreal.

In spite of – or, actually, as a result of -- his impeccable gangsta credentials, 50 basically curtsied before a President who stayed on vacation for three days while black bodies floated down the New Orleans streets. No wonder it took a middle-class preppie with an African name and no criminal record to man-up and te

ll the whole world that "George Bush don't care about black folks." No wonder David Banner – a rapper who is just a few credits short of a Master's Degree in social work -- spearheaded hip hop's Katrina relief concerts, not any of his thug counterparts who are eternally shouting out the hoods they allegedly love.

[50 love the Hood though. Right ock.]

The 50 Cent, whose music is a panoramic vision on black-on-black homicide, and who went after crosstown rival Ja Rule with the vengeance of a dictator killing off a hated ethnic minority did

everything but tap dance when Reebok told him to dismantle his porn production company or lose his lucrative sneaker endorsement deal.

[ Say word. I wasn't even knowing about the back yard boogie

negotiations].

But why single out 50? Hip hop at-large was conspicuously silent when Bush press secretary Tony Snow (a rapper's alias if ever there was one) assaulted hip hop in terms way more inflammatory than Oprah's mild request: "Take a look at the idiotic culture of hip-hop and whaddya have? You have people glorifying failure. You have a bunch of gold-toothed hotdogs become millionaires by

running around and telling everybody else that they oughtta be

miserable failures and if they're really lucky maybe they can get gunned down in a diner sometime, like Eminem's old running mate."

[The buck stops here. This is inaccurate, untrue and a mistatement. There are as many flavors in Hip Hop as there a varieties of people

in this country. Some glorify failure. Others glorify they hood, they trees, they cars, they mommas, they baby momma's, they drive by's

, the list goes on and on. While the point is understood, when talking about art it is very important to resist being didactic otherwise you come across as not respecting the form.]

(We're still awaiting an outraged response from the thug community for that one.) Rush Limbaugh has blamed hip hop for everything short ofthe Avian flu but I can't recall a single hip hop artist who has

gone after him lyrically, publicly or physically. Are we seeing
a theme yet?

Part V. Ludacris, Bill O'Reilly and Oprah
It's worth noting that Ludacris did not devote as much energy to Bill O'Reilly --who attacked his music on his show regularly and causedhim to lose a multi-million dollar Pepsi endorsement – as he

did to criticizing Oprah who simply stated that she was tired of hip hop's misogyny.

Luda was content to diss O'Reilly on his next record and go about his business. Anyone who heard the interview that Oprah gave on Power 105.1 in New York knew she was speaking for a whole generation of hip hop heads when she said that she loved the music, but she wanted the artists to exercise some responsibility.

But this response is not really about Oprah, or ultimately about hip hop, either. It is about black men once again choosing a black woman as the safest target for their aggression and even one with a billion dollars is still fair game.

Of all their claims, the charge that Oprah sold out to win points with her white audience is the most tragically laughable. The truth is that her audience's white middle-class kids exert waaay more influence over 50 and Cube than their parents do over Oprah. I long ago tired of Cube, a thirty-something successful director, entrepreneur and married father of three children making records about his aged recollections of a thug's life. The gangsta theme went cliché eons

ago, but Cube, 50 and a whole array of their musical peers lack either the freedom or the vision to talk about any broader element of our lives. The reality is that the major labels and their majority white fan base will not accept anything else from them.

[I made this same connection when we discussing this over at Nah Right.]

And there we have it again: more masks, more lies.

Part VI. Hip Hop and N*ggas
It is not coincidental that hip hop has made Ni@$a the most common noun in popular music but you have almost never heard any certified thug utter the word cracker, ofay, honky, peckerwood, wop, dago, guinea, kike or any other white-oriented epithet. The reason for thatis simple: Massa ain't havin' it. The word fag, once a commonplace derisive in the music has all but disappeared from

hip hop's vocabulary. (Yes, these thugs fear the backlash from white gays too.) And bitch is still allowed with the common understanding that the term is referring to black women. The point is this: debasement of black communities is entirely acceptable – required even – by hip hop's predominantly white consumer base.

We have lived enough history to know better by now – to know that

gangsta is Sonny Liston, the thug icon of his era, threatening to kill Cassius Clay but completely impotent when it came to demanding that his white handlers stop stealing his money. Gangsta is the black men at the Parchman Farm prison in Mississippi who beat the civil rights workers Fannie Lou Hamer and Annell Ponder into bloody unconsciousness because their white wardens told them to. Gangsta is Michael Ervin, NFL bad boy remaining conspicuously mute on Monday Night Football while Limbaugh dissed Donovan McNabb as an Affirmative Action athlete. Gangsta is Bigger Thomas

with dilated pupils and every other sweaty-palmed black boy who saw method acting and an attitude as his ticket out of the ghetto.

Surely our ancestors' struggles were about more than creating millionaires who could care less about us and then tolerating their violent disrespect out of a hunger for black success stories. Surely we are not so desperate for heroes that we uphold cardboard icons because they throw good glare. There's more required than that. The weight of history demands more than simply this. Surely we understand that these men are acting out an age-old script. Taking the Tom Molineaux route. Spitting in the wind and breaking black bones. Hoping to become free.

Or, at least a well-paid slave.

__________________________
J, TPW, Gotty, Vik, where yall at? Watch'all think? That post was a few days in the making.
Now imma take me a nap or get me some more Zen Tea so I can write this stipulation letter for my boss. And where inna h*ll did the sun go. The Sky is gray again. I tell you, July weather got more personalities than a gemini (hi gotty:).
~m dot.
__________________________

You Need More People!!!!!!

This shirt from Lemaur and Dauley is that trill sh*t. While J Does not like these Hipster T's I think they are downright fresh. In fact the t-shirt represents the essence of me. BL allways has to tell me to take of my running shoes and put on my boxing gloves.

But 'chall, I don't be wanting to fight sometimes. But 'ol boy be like, if you want your dreams, you better get them boxing gloves and work on your fundamentals baby:)

____________________
____________________
6 Asian cats beat the snot out of a latino dude in Frisco aka the Sucka Free. Mac Jay, why yo people acting up?

Prosecutors are gunning for the hate crime.

Why can't modelminorities just get along?

Why do we keep hearing about these cases?

Is it that the prosecutors are pursuing these cases more vigorously, or they just getting more media coverage.

This is the second time today that I heard of a gang beating someone and it being treated as a hate crime which is a federal felony.

________________
________________

Vibe has been sold. And Danyel is back at the helm.
Where Oakland @ Nuccas!?!?!!?!?!

And where is her blog? Its been hijacked by a japanese cat.

_______________
_______________


So we learned last week that Gil Scott has The Virus and left rehab last week. Is it legal for a newspaper to print someones HIV status? That's my question. I am under the impression that ones status is HUGELY confidential and to mention it is a breach which will have yo @ss up in court with the quickness.

He gon' mess around and die in jail if he keep on acting up.

_______________
_______________

I like reading the wedding sections of The Times. I like to see, who married "UP" or "down". I envision what the babies are gonna look like. Im a nerd. I know.

I like to look at the descriptions of the families and I wonder how the "receptionist mother" feels about her daughter who just graduated from Harvard Med School and had just married a man who has graduated from Harvard Med School.

I look for brown people. It do Be some model minorities in the wedding pages from time to time.

Elizabeth Dee and Doug Wada were married on Thursday at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Rev. Thomas W. Ahern, a Roman Catholic priest, officiated at the ceremony.

The bride, 33, is keeping her name. She owns Elizabeth Dee Gallery, an art gallery in Manhattan. She graduated from Mount Holyoke. She is a daughter of Bonnie Grayson Dee and Arthur Hollis Dee of Frederick, Md.

The bridegroom, 42, is a painter whose work is on display at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts. He is the son of Alice Wada and Robert Wada of Claremont, Calif.

I pay attention to whether the people are smiling in their shots.

I love when I see someone who just got and mba/jd/md from Columbia, Yale, Harvard and I see that their parents are good old working class folks (ie receptionist, mechanics, bus drivers. I am curious when the parents and or their employment IS NOT mentioned. I wonder how they handle thanksgivings. Do they invite their Ivy league friends home. Do the front about what their parents do. Do their sibilings resent their mba's/jd's/md's.

Awww. The good ald fashion questions of class mobility.


_______________
_______________

Scarface in Bk. Moes. Sunday night.
The writing in the movie was priceless. I knew that it was about gangsta's and what not.
But I did not know that it was a immigrant tale also.

How can you understand Hip Hop with out analysing Scarface. In fact that would be a dope documentary. Fools talking about how the film influenced their rhymes and their style.
I stay seeing dudes, with scarface, hats, t-shirts, hoodies, leather jackets. Infact, for the past few weeks I have been playing around with the idea of a series of street portriats with dudes explaining where their from and why the rock the 'face.
_________________
_________________


N*ggas love eating chicken.

_________________
_________________

I like that " you need more people slang". I think that it is quite fitting at this point in my life where I am learning that I am only as strong as my network and my consistency. Es Verdad? What have you learned about yourself recently, blog fam. Where yall at. The boards been 'lil quiet since the n*gga post.

_________________
_________________

You Can't Blame the Youth

Cant blame the youth. Hot jawn right!?!?!

It is a parents responsibility to ensure that their children learn how to read.
It is a societies responsibility to step and and assist parents, when the parents are unable.

We either pay to educated 'em now, or pay to inprison 'em later. Our choice.

When the kids grow up to be grimey hoods with few legal "marketable" skills sets, you can't blame the youth. FA 'SHOW.

_______________

Cat on on 125th was selling a book called the "Destruction of the Nigger Mentality". Full disclosure. I HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK. Based on reviewing the table of contents it, humorous, serious, relevent, with a big gulping dosage of a pre mecca Malcom. ______________

White Boy creates a Hip Hopera that he desribes as a ghetto comedy and a social drama. Er. Ok. I would like to see it for myself. Tix are $8.

_____________

He was one of these seen the world men. These done things they afraid to tell their momma men.

- Yolanda Joe, "Video Cowboys"

________________
Today was one of the first rain free Saturday's in a hot minute. I spent the entire day in Harlem. Showing apartments, running around like I had no business. BL and I be straight symbiotic. We will see someone w/ the crazy outfit on, and look to get the other persons attention. The problem with that is when one of said indiviuals with a crazy outfit is a grizlle uptown chick, with a wifey on, some uptowns, metal chain for the keys. The whole nine. Did I mention that she outweiged me by a good 40 pounds. Now yall know that the 'town is gully, but laughing in the face of uptown grizzley females is the equiv of plain asking for an @ss whuppin. I can't help it. I get the giggles. It was cool, in the end. It was just hard to keep it in given some of the combinations I saw. What I DID see that was fly was the SOURCE of all them PUNKY brewster style colorful uptowns. I hit the mother load. They actually had uptowns with RAINBOWS on them blog fam! WHHHUUUUT? _______________
I recently came across a quote that said that perceived,
Sports as societys proving ground for moral and ethical issues. - NY Times Quote, May 2006

This statement resonated with me because of how closley the "moral value" or " moral impact" athletes actions OFF THE COURT afffect how they are perceived as atheltes and in general as human beings. Kobe anyone? Marian Jones. Barry Bonds.
_______________

According to the New York Bar association 10451 is the POOREST ZIP CODE in the country. It is located in the bronx. Deep Right. They sitting up her talking about Hurrican Katrina ("HK"), and we have some HYPER vulnerable folks with in 10 miles of Wall Street. Say Word!

________________

Yall remember Gloria Naylor. She wrote "Women of Brewster Place". I just finished her new book, "1996" and it is BUGGED(literally and metaphorically, more about that below). In the book, Gloria is the main protagonist, (its a fictionalized memoir). She is living in a recently purchased home in the Sea Islands. She messed around, after only being there for a few months ,and killed the neighbors cat. Then all h*ll breaks loose. The neighbor's brother WORKS FOR THE "N" "S" "A". Spoliers below.

Gloria goes on to be tapped, followed, chased, have her mind read using advanced electronic miliatary mind reading equipment. Blog fam. Could I make this up? Peep this excerpt of a review,

The fictionalized memoir purports to detail what became of
Naylor's life after she moved to a secluded stretch of St. HelenaIsland. Her intention was to spend a year writing in the serene island setting, plant a garden and spend time enjoying the lifestyle she had worked hard to obtain.
But shortly after moving into her home, Naylor has a run-in with an eccentric Jewish neighbor who "had at least a dozen cats." When "Eunice" refuses to keep the cats out of Naylor's garden, and Naylor ends up taking matters into her own hands, the dispute turns ugly.
Eunice's brother also happened to be the head of the National Security Agency. The bad blood between the women led to Naylor's being investigated as a drug-dealer and labeled as a dangerous anti-Semite. It wasn't long before Naylor discovered that she was being followed everywhere she went. When the harassment became unbearable, Naylor fled her Southern refuge and returned to New York, where the scrutiny escalated into mind-control.

____________________
So much bloggy goodness coming up fam. How was your Warm July Weekend? I danced in Fort Green Park so hard yesterday, my feet needed three showers! ____________________