I Am Not Desperate to be Hooked Up to a Man (That's Trying to Whip My Ass Everyday!) *this ain't the color purple. that was fiction.*

I don't Know if I Get it or Maybe Too Blind to See it.

It may be both. I understand why I go to church: I want a deeper fellowship with God. Man is not enough for me. Mankind will let you down and is flawed and fallible. I choose God. It is not about a man but the Word of God! I want the lessons and the blessings God has in store for me. My first priority is my children. I have to watch out for their well being first. Remember the story of Job? The Devil made a bet with God. He said" "if you take all of Job's money, he will turn and curse You where You stand."
God said, "No he won't. Job is my faithful servant." Go read the Book of Job to get the rest of it, if you don't know how it all turned out.

I read some of the responses to the article and I found no wisdom in it. No God's Wisdom, anyway. One lady said married people in the church try to keep single people single by telling them how hard marriage is, to be mean and discourage them from marriage.

I will tell you this: Not everyone who is married, married well. I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about people who did not look before they leapt or had a hidden agenda for their marriage all along. Don't talk to these people about relationships because they obviously don't know anything. These people have business partnerships and arrangements. Listening to them will keep you confused. Instead, keep quiet and watch what they do and then ask yourself if that is what you want. A friend of mine told me that long ago and it is good advice. Watch what a person does, not what he or she says to you.

Understand that people who go to church are looking for many things and not all of it is above board but, they are working on themselves. If you happen to stumble into their path or a trap, understand what it is and ask God about it in sincerity. Seek His face! Seek God's Wisdom and you will find it. Will you accept what you find out about yourself? That is up to you. God operates under free will. He asked us to follow Him and His Word.
Our time on this earth should be turned toward serving God and His wants and needs. That is true happiness. He said it is better to marry than to burn (in desire.) In the Bible it says the woman who is married puts her husband and family first--same as the man. He puts his wife and family first, then serves God.
A woman in the Bible posed the question of, "how do I get my husband to go to church with me?" The response was for her to be obedient and through that demonstration, the husband would be so impressed with her he would be happy to join her in church.

How many of us are willing to be obedient?
Will we obey God?
Our husband or wife?
Will we bend our will?
Answer that question first.

Personally, I don't understand what the problem is. If you are single and employed, why aren't you happy? Do you have hobbies and interests? If you can, you should travel and meet people and get to know someone different from yourself. If you hate your job, find out what you are truly interested in and get a job doing that. Life isn't difficult when you are free.

If you are married, you should be having sex everyday. It will break through the stony places in your heart and you will fall back in love with your mate--if that is an issue. If you cannot have sex, do what you can do.
If your mate hates you, then you should seek God's wisdom in earnest or just do as you please as if God says nothing to you at all.

If you don't have any money, figure out your needs and wants and ask God about it. Ask Him to place a hedge of protection around you because you are weak and scared and need help.
All of these things are in the Bible. Did you know that where there are three or more gathered in prayer, God is there too? Pray in earnest, don't just say the words. Pray the Lord's Prayer if you don't know what to say.

I will say this: When you get down low enough and hurt enough, you will turn to God. I know this for a fact.
I think some of us don't want to take our medicine so that we may be restored to God. Sin separates us from Him. Pray for God to break through that sin and hardheartedness to restore you to Him and you will be happy.

Pride comes before a fall (from Grace.)
Women are single for reasons other than the church. We all know what we do. Many of these church women want a man of God, who seeks His Wisdom. They know that the man they choose will be the head of them. It's not difficult to follow a man who is truly a man of God because you both want the same thing. However, you have to understand the characteristics of a Godly man. Often, we get sidetracked from what we really want through trickery. Then again, sending the Persecutor to shout out your sins before God is the only way God can communicate with you to let you know you've gone astray. I know this for a fact. That is one of the Devil's jobs, to tell Him how bad and unworthy of His Grace and Love and Mercy you are because he isn't getting any of that. Sound like anyone you know? Yep.


Now let's take a look at that Ass Whipping thing. We know who you are and as long as we can avoid you, we will be happy. God give me the wisdom.

All he wants to do is keep you down and sad or angry or depressed. He wants you to feel bad all the time because you are never good enough for him and he is doing you a favor just by knowing you. You live under the threat of being single and alone without him. (go figure) If he has to choke you to get you to do what he says for you to do (even if it is at your detriment) then he will do it. Usually he just points out your many flaws. You have been hearing it so long that you tune it out but your heart hears it. That is why when a man who does not treat you bad comes along, you gravitate toward him. You don't know him from Adam but there is no pain involved so how bad could it be? Then you find out. I pray we win but sometimes that is not the case.

Some of us survive it and some don't. However, when you take a good internal look at yourself, you will figure out how to change that part of you that is so needy and prideful that you will take anything the wind blows your way and put him at the head of you and possibly your children, just to say you got a man or a husband or to save face. Then we have the gloaters. There is nothing nastier than a person who revels in another's emotional pain. You are simply the lowest human form of a demon. God have mercy on your soul.

No one is perfect. The one who was perfect, Christ, Our Saviour, was crucified. How much more should you get? So try not to hold a person's faults against them, like talking bad about the church and its people or about God or saying women are single because they spend all their time in church. It's not true and people lie to make themselves sound good on paper. Church in and of itself isn't enough of a draw to get anyone to do all of that. People go to church to seek God's wisdom and his Word. People who do other than that will fall away like the chaff from the wheat.

The Black Church Keeps Black Women Single and Lonely? - BV on Money

The Black Church Keeps Black Women Single and Lonely? - BV on Money

The Black Church: How the Black Church Keeps Women Single and Lonely

Apparently Deborah Cooper's essay attracted the attention of CNN producers and spawned a piece examining this issue. This woman is HOT! Read her post.

A Misguided Attempt to Empower: Deborrah Cooper’s Lonely Black Church Woman Blames Black Women for their Singleness

A Misguided Attempt to Empower: Deborrah Cooper’s Lonely Black Church Woman Blames Black Women for their Singleness

How to Listen and Conversate about Things that Matter

Meaningful conversations foster understanding.

Okay ya'll, kitchen tables, water coolers and church basements and over fence posts: These are places to have conversation and discuss relevant issues.
I wish this could occur without all the bs that comes before and during it. I would like to see these conversations occur. I understand the roadblocks but I don't understand how to overcome them. Sharing of ideas conversationally is an art. I share an idea, then you or visa versa. The best conversations occur with me, on social networking or on the phone with friends. I cannot get into a relevant conversation when I'm supposed to be doing something else like praying or working. I cannot maybe others can. Then again, I work from home.

I get all of this after watching the president address the National Urban League in honor of their100th Anniversary today. He talked about lots of things but mostly education.

We have to say: Black kids are worth it!

However, president Barack Obama's role in our affairs is limited. He can set rules, tone and laws and create consequences but he cannot puppeteer every single one of us and make us feel differently about black children. That is up to us to do.

We have to change our own minds and say 'we are worth it, our children are worth it–and–even if no one else thinks so, I'm going to love them no matter what and do my best by them every day.'

Maybe I am pushing it to say everyday but that is how I feel. On the days I cannot, then someone does it twice as much and visa versa. Let us take up for each other. Let us actually not provoke each other to anger and be slow to anger. Politics is a hard game and many of us don't have or want a role in it.
However, the call for conversations about our problems has been issued and we should heed the call.

On the other hand, one should take a look at and discriminate between social networking conversations.

Blah, Blah, Blah. Fight!

I'm sorry but if one were to look through the comments on popular Facebook sites, one would find one or two of 10 or so comments made sense. The rest were short sighted and or ignorant of the basic facts. Most just a regurgitation of fact with little to no insight.

One conversation did catch my attention today: A white woman got hired at Essence Magazine.

There are people and families walking around here on janky ground. There are people around here going through or preventing foreclosure. There are even people wondering why they are not married and have no children, or why the spouse did this or that or avoiding domestic violence (or maybe not). On the other end there are women with children and no father for them, through no fault of her own, struggling.

They are not in the least bit concerned about a white chick pulling down a job in the fashion business at Essence or elsewhere. That is not news. A few feathers may have been ruffled but it is not news and should not be. Call your trades with this story. When a black gets hired in a mostly white environment, not news any more. When a woman gets a job in a mostly male environment, not news. These people are ground breakers, yes but how interested in someone else's job am I expected to be? There were no civil rights laws broken, no one is hurt or dead. It's just one job and no telling how long she'll be there.

Learn!

I want to take part in a discussion on education, race relations, creating infrastructure and the importance of it and in general what other blacks are doing in the form of a feature story. Everyday stuff we do. I read the police blotter too but all black folks do that.

But I'm mostly concerned about education and the way black kids are viewed by blacks, whites and the people in the world around them.
I'm concerned about my son not having his spirit crushed in school by insensitive teachers with no coping skills. Teachers who are not required to learn about child psychology and do not understand the physiology of a child's brain. They don't read the trades, no sabbaticals, no rest for the weary in a high-stress, high-burnout career. If this rock has hit you then be convicted by it, if not, discuss it and examine it. Speak up for yourselves, stellar teachers who know how to educate a class of young minds. Tell the administration en masse about how things should work. The kids are looking and so are the kid's parents.

Children! Please keep your hands to yourself!

We are watching you as leaders and role models because most teachers are of high moral standards and good character. It has always been that way and it is demanded. They are a cornerstone in our communities. People expect a lot of a teacher in and out of the classroom. We just do because everyone has had a 12-18 years of teachers looking at them, talking to them admonishing them and teaching them. All of us have had this in America. We still hear the words of teachers in our mind both good and bad.

Uhhh, you're still on the clock.

So get rid of the dead weight in your ranks and increase your salaries, like other industries do. As long as your union is paying its union dues all will be well--right?
In the meanwhile, I will continue to teach my child to respect authority figures. I will make excuses for said figures when they drop the ball and stop being a role model but a human who has been pushed too far and who has been silent for too long. I will do that because I have to, until he can discern between right and wrong for himself. He is already a unique child in that he idolizes Bill Gates and anything with a computer chip. He does well in math, prefers that to reading--unless it is about a new game system or animals and such.

I will reign in his mind, steeped in imagery and imagination and show him about dedication and hard work and using that to achieve a goal. I will keep him from people who do not share my values and morals as much as possible, until he can RATIONALLY make those decisions for himself or I am no longer responsible for his choices.
But let's start having those relevant conversations when we can and connect on a deeper level. The president has asked us to do so.
And yes, I have these conversations with my children.

Turk Sites

Since writing about the Amazon Mechanical Turk app, I have found other turk sites:
http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/
(helps decipher bad human interface from good ones ones)

http://www.turkernation.com/

http://www.mturkforum.com/

http://twitter.com/biggesthits

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/help?helpPage=worker

http://hyperion.stern.nyu.edu/mturk/arrivals.php

http://hyperion.stern.nyu.edu/mturk/completed.php

http://hyperion.stern.nyu.edu/mturk/requesters.php

http://www.thesheepmarket.com/

http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/

http://www.lulu.com/content/447946/

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/turkit/

http://www.gwap.com/gwap/

Amazon Mechanical Turk

How to Maximize Your Working Time on Amazon Mechanical Turk | eHow.com
I'm posting this because I signed up for the Amazon Mechanical Turk and have made .21 cent so far. Really. I guess I'll make it to the $10 you need to earn in able to transfer it to your bank account. Some of the Human Intelligence Tasks won't pay. I got cheated four times in a row. One was to put an ad on Craigslist--never saw that money and the dashboard said that I abandoned it. All I could do was to contact the person who posted the job. I'll keep you informed of my efforts.
In the meanwhile, please enjoy the eHow article on the Amazon Mechanical Turk.
By the way the Turk comes from a mechanical doll from the 1800s dressed in traditional Turkish clothing, who challenged folks in chess as a parlor game. Go figure. I'm uncomfortable saying the name now that I know about its origins. I mean, should we be saying "Turk"? Arrrgggg.