My mind goes back to the early 1970s, to Watervliet’s old Junior High School, otherwise known as the Zoo. My mom went to high school there and kissed her first boy friend– in the gym–all glitzed up for prom night. Then my Uncle Norman got hung out of a window by his classmates as a prank, […]
The only thing harder than being a 7th grader is teaching them.
Hoodie, , streetwise meets book-smart in a multi-purpose resource
You’d be surprised how much trouble a kid can get into for throwing a milk carton. That’s what happens in TastyFaith’s newest resource, HOODIE. Hoodie is ongoing novel about two friends–one streetwise, the other booksmart–and the escalating trouble they get into in their Detroit neighborhood. Can a friendship between a streetwise and booksmart friend survive the pressures of the street? […]
Hoodie
Imagine an ongoing adventure about two boys growing up in Detroit neighborhood so tough, viagra that even the rats need guns. It’s Hoodie, a coming of age adventure that combines the reality of living in the city with values and humor. It begins when ten year old Haman Brookes finds a wallet left in the pocket of a hoodie that contains money, […]
Jesus Jail
So I’ve been incarcerated for almost a year now. Not at Cook County, but Jesus Jail. But you might know it as Jesus People or JPUSA, an intentional faith based living community. Folk from all walks of life live here: artists, musicians, junkies, punkies, the tatooed, tattered and torn, all taking time out from whatever broke them to recover. And people come […]
Creating a Craving for Literacy
Harriet the Spy. Curious George. Homer Price with his donut machine Three of my favorite childhood friends. I would travel around the world and back with them, my ticket to these places being a local library card. Now, kids aren’t even getting off the tarmac of their imagination, as some won’t read anything longer than a tweet. In Asia, there […]
Mosquito Theology
I call him skeeter. That’s what Frank* reminds me of. Actually, with his tweed cap and trimmed beard, Frank reminds me of someone who should be smoking a pipe at an English pub instead of making cornbread at a Jesus Hippie Community. Anyway, he started telling me his story while cracking thirty six eggs. “I was a drug evangelist. I liked them so much, I’d […]
A New Door
Today, I entered a new door. I moved into Jesus People USA, aka Hippies for Jesus. It’s community style living where the residents serve the poor and homeless in Uptown, Chicago, of which I am one of them. It’s where I’ll be staying until whatever door opens next. Julie Andrews, the housing director, let me into my new home. Make […]
Unsafe at Home
Imagine you sent your only child eight thousand miles away to go to school in Chicago. Not a suburb, but Chicago, the murder capital of America with shootings heard around the world. You trust your child at a faith based school, spending as much as $40,000 a year to live and study there. And this is the only thing […]