By Bonnie James America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Basic Civitas Books, 2003, 129 pages Phillis Wheatley is perhaps the most fascinating and thought-provoking American you never heard of. She arrived in Boston on July 11, 1761, at about age 7, […]
Recent Posts
Save Lake Chad With Transaqua: Franklin Roosevelt and Kwame Nkrumah Would Concur
In 1943, after having flown over the Sahara Desert on his way to a Casablanca conference with Winston Churchill, President Franklin Roosevelt remarked to his son Elliott, that with the recreation of a lake in the depressed flats in North Africa, “The Sahara would bloom for hundreds of miles.” He […]
Remembering Ulysses S. Grant on His Birthday
Ulysses S. Grant, the outstanding hero of the U.S. Civil War, who brought peace to the nation with the surrender of the Confederate armies at Appomattox; two-term President of the United States; friend and ally of Abraham Lincoln; and protector and advocate for the emancipated African-American slaves, was born this […]
Lawrence Freeman on President Trump’s Fundamentally Flawed Africa Policy
Even before President Trump’s latest outrage against the nations of Africa (along with Haiti and El Salvador) referring to them vulgarly as [expletive deleted] countries, whose people should not be welcomed as immigrants, the failure of the administration’s policies toward Africa was addressed in this article by Africa expert Lawrence […]
Nomi Prins: The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Worse Than the Last One
In this new article, renowned economist and investigative journalist Nomi Prins warns of the coming financial blowout while all the financial gurus and spin-doctors are claiming we are in the longest recovery of the past half-century. “We’ve made it through 2017. The first-season installment of presidential Tweetville is ending where […]
Vermeer and His Contemporaries: The Golden Age of Dutch Painting
As the Dutch East India Company established its empire around the globe, painters of the Dutch Golden Age examined the interiors—intimate spaces in the home, and of the human heart and mind. Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. October 22, […]
Sudan: Sanctions Lifted, Now Development Is Imperative
By Lawrence Freeman October 24, 2017 On October 12, the U.S. announced the long overdue, official removal of some sanctions on Sudan. Now, new and exciting potentials lie ahead for the future of Sudan and its people. This is not the time to delay; the government of Sudan should seize […]
Reflections of the Classical and Renaissance Ideas – From Bosch’s Brabant to Fragonard’s Paris
By Bonnie James Fragonard: The Fantasy Figures October 8 – December 3, 2017 West Building, Main Floor Bosch to Bloemaert: Early Netherlandish Drawings from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam October 8, 2017 – January 7, 2018 West Building, East Outer Tier Two new exhibitions opened on Sunday, Oct. […]
Recreating the Republic: How Lincoln Organized the Union Victory
By H. Graham Lowry This article was put together and edited by Pam Lowry in 2003, following the death of her husband Graham Lowry, using an incomplete draft of an article, research notes, and the transcript of several classes Graham conducted on Lincoln during the year before his health failed […]
What if Donald J. Trump Read Shakespeare?
By Bonnie James As I was considering the latest announcement from the Trump Administration, this one pronounced by the toad-like personage of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, lately, the Attorney General of the United States, rescinding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), or Dreamers Act, thereby subjecting some 800,000 young people, […]