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Black Kos, Week In Review: "Beauty, Truth and Bibliomania" [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-12
Beauty, Truth and Bibliomania
by Black Kos Editor, Justice Putnam
I have been mining my trove of short stories that have sat in storage for quite some time, I know it’s not poetry and that has been my focus for these many years, but I do try to use music and rhythm in my prose, not quite like prosody, but close.
I was taught to read when I was three and have never had enough to read. Ever. I do not necessarily collect books, though I have a considerable library, it is not the books themselves sitting on the shelves that are important to me, but the content. I learned at a young age a person of letters should have a wide range of topics and disciplines under their belts. A diverse and comprehensive reading list is a must. When the humanities were still legal to be taught, I always thought the following would be a good list to follow.
Beauty, Truth and Bibliomania by Justice Putnam "Why do you have four books by Bukowski?" she seemed disturbed as she closed The Most Beautiful Woman In Town."
I'd have more of his opus," I answered, "I'm slowly re-building my library."
"But I don't understand, you like Bukowski?"
"Sure," I responded, a little tentative, not quite understanding her question, "I've always been attracted to his writing style. He is very spare."
"But Bukowski is a misogynist and you have four of his books!" she pointed at my bookcase.
South Of No North, Factotum and Women, plus the one she was returning to the shelf indeed totaled four.
I thought of all the other books I used to have, lost now from bad love affairs and bad finances. I used to have all of Will and Ariel Durant's tomes, even a rare, Mansions Of Philosophy. I had all of Jack London's books and stories. I had all of Cooper's Leather Stocking Tales. I had most of McMurtry's work from the sixties and seventies; All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers prominent among them. I had Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems and stories. I had H.G. Well's Outline Of History.
I had everything by Virginia Woolfe and Janet Flanner. I had obscure poems and letters by Gertrude Stein. I had most of Phillip K. Dick, Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. I had most of Clifford D. Simak. I had a first printing of The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre by B. Traven. I had everything by Hemingway. I had everything by Orwell; including Down And Out In Paris And London. I had all the works of De Sade and Thackeray. I had a dozen volumes of Eugene Field. I had Dickens and Marlowe. I had Melville, Chaucer, Defoe, Voltaire, Swift, Virgil, Plutarch and Donne.
I had all the English translations of Mishima. I had Kobe Abe's Woman Of The Dunes. I had volumes of Dryden, Pope, Shakespeare and Spencer. I had Balzac and Fante. I had Baudelaire and Fitzgerald. I had poems by St John Of The Cross and essays by Annie Dillard. I had all of Henry Miller. I had some of John Rechy.
I had volumes of Linda Paston and Marge Piercy. I had some of Sharon Olds and all of Jack Kerouac. I had all of Gary Snyder's work and volumes of Eric Hoffer. I had Kahil Gibran and Rilke. I had Ovid and Nietzsche. I had Berkeley, Hume, Kant and Ghandi. I had Autobiography Of A Yogi by Yogananda. I had the Kama Sutra and the Upanishads. I had The Analects and The Tibetan Book Of The Dead. I had Byron. I had Percy and Mary Shelley. I had Ten Days That Shook The World by Jack Reed and I had volumes of Emma Goldman. I had Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and volumes of Faulkner. I had God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley Jr. and I had The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey.
"I take Bukowski's work," I began, though I feared she was having none of it, "to be stories and characters that show us how not to be. He is taking a snapshot of life as it is, in all of its dirt and grime; in its violence, bigotry and selfishness. But I don't take his life of the gutter milieu to be a blueprint or affirmation of bad behavior."
"Oh," she said, pulling out a volume of the Alexandria Quartet, "you have Durrell. Now this is beautiful." © 2004 by Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches-Strophe Verlagswessen
(This piece has appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet)
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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‘Untrue attacks’: Kamala Harris gets candid about Biden staff not defending her in new memoir. The Atlantic: The Constant Battle
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The first stop on the day’s calendar had been planned months earlier. At a meeting in the Oval Office discussing her work uplifting Black executives and entrepreneurs, Dr. Stacie NC Grant had invited me to address the annual gathering—the Grand Boulé—of her sorority, Zeta Phi Beta.
Now I was in Indianapolis, looking out over a convention center packed with 6,000 powerful women in dark-blue dresses and white jackets.
I’m a member of a different sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Black women’s Greek-letter organization, founded at Howard University in 1908. But these women are my sisters, too. We’re all part of the Divine Nine, the Greek organizations founded when segregation was law in the South and standard practice in the North. W. E. B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall were early members of the first Black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, founded at Cornell University in 1906. The Divine Nine has been an engine of uplift for generations of Black college men and women, instilling a love and celebration of excellence, philanthropy, and service to all mankind. My Divine Nine family would show up for me throughout the campaign. That day I was so pleased to see the young president of Phi Beta Sigma, Chris V. Rey, and the esteemed president of Delta Sigma Theta, Elsie Cooke-Holmes.
Throughout my career I’ve maintained that people in positions of power must be required to ask of themselves: Who am I not hearing from? Then make it their business to seek those folks out. I came to the White House knowing that the people in that building needed to hear from a wider range of voices.
As vice president I’d been given several roles by Joe Biden. But one role I created for myself was building up the diverse coalition that our party encompassed. I made it my business to get out there and make sure that no community was overlooked, especially those that had been taken for granted in the past. Black women, the Democrats’ staunchest, most reliable voting bloc, was one such community. The boulé in Indianapolis was one of a dozen Divine Nine gatherings I’d addressed since taking office.
On this day there was a new energy in the room as I walked onto the stage. A Black woman was slated to be the Democratic nominee for president. It was us. And everyone there understood what it meant: that this would be a journey of both joy and pain. I was in a room full of people with whom, because of our shared experience, certain words did not need to be said. There is an emotion that comes from being in a place where people see you, support you, know you. The kindness and the love in that room penetrated the armor I usually wore, armor I’d need to put back on as soon as I left that room.
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Facing those seeking to oust him from office, Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver warned Missouri lawmakers on Thursday that a redistricting plan backed by President Donald Trump is reopening decades-old racial divisions in Kansas City.
Cleaver flew from the nation’s Capitol to Missouri’s statehouse in what he acknowledged was a likely quixotic attempt to stop a Republican plan that would dramatically reshape his Kansas City district to give the GOP a better shot at winning one more seat in next year’s election. Missouri’s Senate is expected to give final approval to the plan as soon as Friday.
The stakes are high, because Democrats need to gain just three seats to flip control of the U.S. House, and Trump is trying to stave off a historic trend in which the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections.
Cleaver, who has been in Congress for over 20 years after serving as Kansas City’s first Black mayor, denounced the redistricting plan for using Troost Avenue as a dividing line — a street that he said had long segregated Black and white residents. Instead of being contained fully in Cleaver’s district, some residents west of the street would be shifted into a district held by Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Alford.
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Ananda Lewis’ absence underscored a broader pattern of how Black women are often overlooked until someone else forces the acknowledgment. NewsOne: The Disrespect: MTV Faces Backlash For Disregarding Late VJ Amanda Lewis During VMAs
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When Busta Rhymes stepped onto the MTV Video Music Awards stage to accept the inaugural Rock the Bells Visionary Award, he carried more than just his own legacy with him. The hip-hop icon used his moment in the spotlight to honor Ananda Lewis, the beloved MTV VJ who passed away in June after a battle with breast cancer.
On Sunday night, as the Hip-Hop legend accepted his first MTV award in his 35-year career, Busta kept things short, heartfelt, and personal, utilizing the moment to not only jokingly call out the network for taking three decades before giving him an award but also honoring his family and fellow trailblazer, Ananda Lewis.
“Y’all know I usually do these long speeches, I’m not gonna do one today. But next time y’all take 35 years to give me one of these, y’all gonna let me talk as long as I want!” Busta said. “I want to thank — and I think we all need to acknowledge — the incredible woman that loved us very much when we came to MTV during the ’90s,” he said. “An incredible woman that loved me and she loved us. She loved the culture; she lifted us up. I love her very much. I miss her very much. The late, great, incredible royal empress Ananda Lewis. I want to big up her mother, her father, her sister Lakshmi. The blessings don’t stop, so we don’t stop, baby.”
The heartfelt tribute was met with resounding applause, but also highlighted what MTV did not do—formally recognize the passing of one of its most important VJs.
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Several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been forced to alter campus life this week after receiving potential threats. Alabama State University, Hampton University, Virginia State University, and Clark Atlanta University all enacted emergency safety measures on Thursday, canceling classes, locking down campuses, and urging students and staff to shelter in place.
“We have seen too much violence on our campuses, whether it was the brazen murder of Charlie Kirk yesterday or the threats against these HBCUs today. Colleges and Universities should be a place of free expression and debate in a way that’s respectful, engaging, and productive,” Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement shared with theGrio. “What we have seen the last two days is anything but that. HBCUs have seen their fair share of attacks in recent years, including the 2023 incident at Edward Waters University and the 2024 shooting at Tuskegee University.” Virginia State University (VSU) went on lockdown Thursday morning after receiving a threat. All classes have been canceled, and employees have been instructed to work remotely. Students were told to stay indoors and monitor VSU emails for updates. Those off-campus students were urged not to return until further notice.
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WELCOME TO THE FRIDAY PORCH
IF YOU ARE NEW TO THE BLACK KOS COMMUNITY, GRAB A SEAT, SOME CYBER EATS, RELAX, AND INTRODUCE YOURSELF.
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