Category: From the Soul

Reflecting on my 80 years I find myself still dreaming of a better world. Not some “Kumbaya” singing fantasy world, but one where people, at the very least, try to find ways to understand and appreciate each other. A loving world.

But that was not the dream of my generation. Getting our hands dirty in pursuit of a world where concepts like “peace and justice and equality” rang true, just wasn’t something we cared to do.

We were called the “Silent Generation”

By Ernie McCray

When I was a child there was a commercial about a dog named Nipper who was supposed to be listening to his “master’s voice” on a windup disc gramophone. I thought about him early one morning recently.

On this morning I woke up a little earlier than usual because my iPhone SE startled me awake, vibrating and buzzing like crazy, kind of like those European police sirens.

And, hey, I’ve got to say I didn’t know I had an app for such as all that. I shut that little device up by grabbing it like a cowboy wrestling a steer he’d just roped only to find out that its histrionics was regarding an article about a book Arizona Senator John McCain had written. I was forced to question the very notion that I was in possession of anything approaching a smartphone.

By Ernie McCray

I recently wrote a rhyme about all the love I’ve enjoyed for 80 years, and now I’d like to share how I’ve put that love in play.

Regarding that, I have to say that loving has been easy for me because my life’s work has been dedicated to schools which are perfect places for spreading love.

And my intent, all along, has simply been to make my world more just for all human beings – beginning, in a moment in time, when I was in grade school myself.

Still Loving After All These 80 Years
(The Formative Years: More to Come)

If I’m breathing April 18th, 2018,
I will be 80 years old.
And to brag a little bit,
I lived those years
with a lot of love in my soul
and that’s quite an ac-com-plish-ment
for someone with
COLORED written on his birth cer-ti-ficate
if the truth be told,
considering I first said “Hello”
to the world
in Tucson, Arizona,

By Ernie McCray

Overcoming Gloom In a Grand Canyon State of Mind

The other day

I sat in my living room

caught up in thoughts of my daughter,

feeling a kind of gloom

that seemed to loom

over me

like a petrifyingly dark full moon

in a horror movie

Laura Ingraham’s put down of LeBron James on your network was so out of line and unnecessary and ridiculously insulting and dismissive. What does his grammar have to do with anything or his perceived “lack of education”? Why should he, in a country where he has the right to express himself, “Shut up and dribble”?

As a 79-year-old black man, it’s refreshing for me to see young black people like this great athlete speak out on what’s happening in the world — in this case, expressing his views on our president — who really “doesn’t give a fuck about the people” as he pointed out.

The “people” being those who don’t support his hateful, racist, mysogynist, sexist, xenophobic, abusive, disgraceful, dictator-loving, ill-informed, unintelligent, illogical, jingoistic, bewildering, divisive, predatory, blow-harded, clownish, non-Christian,

I am so glad to say “Good riddance” to 2017 because it was a bit unearthly to me.

I mean, on top of being barraged by all the abject buffoonery in D.C. that was unleashed by that fool who occupies the presidency, I had to go around most of the year looking like a palm tree bent over by the wind.

All due to some life-threatening vicious form of bacteria that found its way into my body and started whacking away like a field hand taking a machete to the stems of sugarcane, devastating my belly and tightening and weakening my muscles, making an absolute wreck of my lifelong bad back. It made standing and walking upright kind of an aerobic exercise that took all my might.

And let me tell you, trying to struggle to get your health back in a world that’s out of whack isn’t easy by any means.

by Ernie McCray

I dream a New Years Wish for my fellow black brothers and sisters, one steeped in my yearning for a country that truly is committed to the mythical land of “liberty and justice for all” we Americans pledge loudly and proudly in classrooms and public gatherings.

I just wish we actively pursued such ideals.

Now, I realize that we, like all other “individual” citizens of the country, can rise and shine and fulfill the loftiest of hopes and dreams.

We can find ample proof of that in our history as we’ve accomplished a little of everything. We’ve won Nobel Peace Prizes and journeyed beyond earth’s skies into outer space.

As I go along day to day, trying to move beyond the dark clouds that hover over me, I find myself indulging in reviving a few precious memories.

I see me in chorus in junior high school. Mr. Sidney Dawson is coaxing us to “sing it like you mean it” with a soulful expression on his face as he holds his hands over his heart.

I’ll always remember the day when we showed up at the Pioneer Hotel to perform, and the bellman said, “I can’t let you colored people come through the front door.”

By Ernie McCray

Debbie, my first born,
is gone, and now
is but a sweet memory for me
as I mourn.
With tears in my eyes
I reflect on our journey in life together
since she arrived,
seemingly out of the rich blue
of the Tucson skies
on January 4th, 1957,

In the next few months we will have a new San Diego Chief of Police and I hope that whoever gets the job can do something, for me, no one has been able to do: create an environment wherein I don’t find myself squirming a bit every time a police officer rolls up behind me or next to me. I just can’t help it, though, with my life’s experiences.

Now, hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve known some good police officers — parents at my schools, guys I grew up with, dudes I’ve toked and toasted with, played ball with — it’s just that the bad seeds among them can be downright scary at times.

by Ernie McCray

I just left Vegas a few days ago, with very fresh memories of how loud and all aglow it was, which makes it particulary difficult for me, in these moments, to fathom a man mowing down people who are having a good time as though they were foes on a battlefield.

Such a tragedy tears at your heart and it came at a time when we Americans are already suffering as we seem to be spinning aimlessly away from embracing each other as fellow citizens.