Author: Ernie McCray

I recently enjoyed the honor of a lifetime: addressing the University of Arizona’s Class of ’60 with my take on our times at our alma mater. My classmates and I showed up brimming with youth and Rhythm and Blues and Rock and Roll, more than ready to “Go! Go! Wildcats! Go!” and the school welcomed us with open arms.

In the background, besides the up tempo music, the likes of I Love Lucy had us laughing crazily and we relied on Ed Sullivan giving us a “Really good show” every Sunday but the world, at large, was in no way like a picnic on a carefree sunny day.

No discrimination is reasonable but there, to me, is nothing more screwed up than the discrimination inherent in our “Don’t ask, don’t tell” world.

Now, thanks to old Jim Crow back in the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s, I’ve faced more than my share of discrimination but I overcame all that, beginning in my childhood …

I can’t shake the sadness I feel for Tyler Clementi, the 18 year old Rutgers University student who recently took his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after a classmate broadcast his intimate encounter with another man online.

My goodness, how many more gay people must die due to society’s hateful attitudes towards them? Tyler wasn’t the only gay youth to end his life in September. There were about seven ….

Man, did I have a good time
in OB,
much like the time a whale
I saw in a watercolor
on a table
in the middle of the street
seemed to be having
to me –

I just received an email regarding an Ex-con play, an original musical drama, Off the Hook, featuring a 15 member cast of formerly incarcerated people, which will be performed this Saturday, September 18th, at 2:00 PM at Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center at 3925 Ohio Street.

At the hip school
they aren’t aware
and they don’t even care
about what their
test scores might be
because they’re much too busy
rolling up their sleeves
trying to keep up with the boys and girls
with their stash of electronic accessories,

PROLOGUE: What follows was written as an appeal to our softer, more reflective and discerning greater selves as we seek a better world.

One day,
throwing
a bunch of stuff away,

Ahhh, what a time we had, my childhood friend from Tucson and I. Jim Hopkin.

Our visit was like a fantasy, as there was a time in our lives when neither he or I could have imagined a scenario wherein someday I would cruise up to a sidewalk in a nice “chine,” as we used to say, in front of Southwest Airlines and he jumps in and I whisk him to a Comfort Inn and we end the day in one of the hippest Mexican Cafe’s in town – with nary a soul in any of these places wearing a “P.U.” frown.

Back then we knew no one who had flown any where – the concept of a “colored” person staying in a hotel had not yet been implanted in our young minds – and we couldn’t eat in a cafe unless the sign above it read Jack’s Barbeque or Duke’s Drive-In.

by Ernie McCray

It’s been a little over a year since my Nancy passed away yet moving on is still the order of the day for our children, Carlos, Tawny, Nyla and me.

The kind of grieving we’ve experienced, in our various stages of moving on, has revealed just how fragile we are and how dependent we are on each other, how glad we are to just have each other around.

And just when it seemed that the pain in our lives was toning down, one of the twins, Nyla, announced, since her boyfriend who had been unemployed for about a year found a job in Vegas, that she was packing up and leaving town. Oh, the feeling of loss raises its ugly head again. Not with fangs this time but it’s come with a bite.

For some time I’ve been wanting to say something about Betty Brown, an old friend who passed away a few weeks ago. It’s taken me a while because the pressing question for me has been how does one summarize such a noteworthy woman’s life accomplishments? Listing them would fill an extremely tall and wide notebook, not to mention exhaust the reader.

But I’ve decided to go with simplicity beginning with the reality that there are many advocates for children on the planet but not many of them, including myself, could keep up with Betty’s pace as a community activist without gasping for air.

As a child growing up in Tucson I would sometimes, on a comfortable April day, ride my beat up blue Schwinn out to the foothills – and just soak in the beauty of the Sonoran Desert’s flowers of spring as they danced in the warm breezes, showing off their brilliant yellow and purple and orange and red and blue petals that cling to their striking green stems like lovers on a honeymoon.

Such moments soothed my young soul, making all the world feel like a lilting melody sung in perfect harmony. And to stay with this idea of music as a metaphor for “good feelings,” the world’s music, at the time, did make everything seem “copacetic” as the devotees of jazz and swing used to say in their cool ness.

Getting in my car to drive to OB to protest The Black’s “Don’t Feed our Bums” mentality, my mind said to me: “Hey, nobody will as much as give us remnants of picketers from another day the time of day.”

But when I walked down Bacon and hit the corner where it intersects with Newport Avenue and saw all the people and picket signs …