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Silent Night

Today’s story illustrates how spirituality can be a powerful force, even in the midst of unbelievable violence and insanity. Photo: WWI soldiers in the trenches The World War I Christmas Truce of 1914 On Christmas Eve in 1914, two lines of homesick soldiers, one British, one German, were dug into the trenches on the Western Front in the middle of World War I. Now, you have to understand that…

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Sunday Sermon [The Global Trance]

Sunday Sermon [The Global Trance]

I wrote this six years ago…

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Redemption Song

Hola mi Gente,I usually post this around this time of year… because it never fails, someone will tell me that reading the following helped them, or they shared it with someone they thought it could help. So… here goes… My life is my message The cliché that life is stranger than fiction is true enough. And believe me: my life has been pretty much strange. Thanksgiving Day has its own personal…

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Sunday Sermon [The Inner Teacher]

Sunday Sermon [The Inner Teacher]

Hola everybody, I’ve been neglecting writing for quite some time… here is a snippet — an introduction of sorts to a series of stories based on a character I created, Don Pedro. The Inner Teacher I was showing a friend a series of stories I’m writing that have as a central character, a mentor I call Don Pedro. She was curious about the character’s origins. In truth the character is partly an…

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Misquoting the Dream

Hola mi Gente,The exploitation of King’s name — the distortion of his teachings by conservatives — is one of the more deplorable developments in contemporary life in the USA. I submit that whites should not be allowed to cite the “I have a Dream” speech for at least ten years. * * * A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special…

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A Nuyorican Christmas Story

A Nuyorican Christmas Story

Hola Everybody…This post is an annual tradition here at the [un]Common Sense blog… During the 60s & 70s a Puerto Rican identity movement1 encompassing music, literature, and the arts in general was born. Salsa wasn’t merely a musical genre, it was, in the words of Panamanian Salsa musician/ activist, Ruben Blades, an “urban folklore” that ignited throughout barrios all over the world (and in far…

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Asalto in the 'Hood

Asalto in the ‘Hood

Hola mi Gente,The following is loosely based on true events. I took some creative liberty. LOL Collard Greens and Pasteles Kids playing at Kosciusko Pool In terms of the revolution, I believe that the revolution will be a revolution of dispossessed people in this country: that’s the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican American, the American Indian, and black people.— H. Rap Brown My best…

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Redemption Song

Hola mi Gente, I usually post this around this time of year… because it never fails, someone will tell me that reading the following helped them, or they shared it with someone they thought it could help. So… here goes…

My life is my message

The cliché that life is stranger than fiction is true enough. And believe me: my life has been pretty much strange. Thanksgiving Day has its own…

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Thanksgiving With the Rosarios

Thanksgiving With the Rosarios

The following is something of an annual tradition here at the [un]Common Sense Blog.

Thanksgiving, for reasons I won’t get into now, is one of my favorite times of the year. Yeah, we should call it Thanks-taking for the crimes against our First Nation brothers and sisters. But Puerto Ricans are the ultimate fusionists and we make everything our own. Thanksgiving in our home was a celebration…

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Sunday Sermon [Prayer]

Hola Everybody, Happy Sunday. I haven’t posted this in a while. It was inspired by someone who said similar words to me in an elevator, of all places. I don’t pray, nor do I like to chant, but here goes…

My Prayer for You

If I actually prayed, my prayer for you would be that you have the opportunity to live a life in which you would be able to discover and engage that which you are most…

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Remaining Teachable [Blackbird]

Hola Everybody, What did I learn today?

This is what I learned today. With all the shit that’s going down, perhaps this will put a song in your heart…

Are you familiar with the song “Blackbird” by The Beatles? Most of us are. I had no idea the meaning behind it. Did you? I will never listen to it the same way again. “Paul McCartney was visiting America. It is said that he was sitting, resting,…

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Daily White Privilege Reminder [Possessive Investment in Whiteness]

Daily White Privilege Reminder [Possessive Investment in Whiteness]

Hola Everybody, Years ago, I happened upon George Lipsitz’s book, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness and it opened my eyes to the many insidious ways in which white was maintained at the expense of Black and Latinx people. There are many eye-opening facts in this work, not the least of my discovery that there were by-laws expressly forbidding Blacks from housing in suburbs.

In this unwavering…

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White Privilege [De facto Slavery]

White Privilege [De facto Slavery]

Hola Everybody, I have adapted the following from an anonymous post I found on the internet.

De Facto Slavery

In 1866, one year after the 13th Amendment was ratified (the amendment that ended slavery), Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor (peonage). This made the business of arresting Blacks very…

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Remaining Teachable [Beginnings]

  Hola Everybody, So, there are some things I maintain that help keep whatever sanity I can claim. One is a daily meditation practice (vipassana), often done when I first wake up.

Secondly, it’s to find and engage things I am passionate about and that give me some measure of joy (see my post earlier in the day). I have to be on a mission. So I try to connect with and immerse myself in things I am…

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Remaining Teachable [The First Recorded Opera]

Remaining Teachable [The First Recorded Opera]

Hola Everybody, When I was a young child, a teacher responded to my question by informing me that the reason she didn’t teach Puerto Rican history was because, “Your people don’t have a history.”

I was very upset.

So when I got home I asked my father why we didn’t have a history and my father looked up suddenly and said, “Who told you that?!”

I explained and he just nodded his head.

From that day…

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Remaining Teachable [Licking Your Elbow]

Remaining Teachable [Licking Your Elbow]

Hola Everybody, When my son was about 7-8 years old, we would play a game. Everyday we had to share with one another something new we learned that day. In the spirit of that game I offer these daily discoveries…

It is impossible to lick your elbow.*

*Note: 75% of all people who read this will try to lick their elbow

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White Privilege [Redlining]

Hola Everybody, It is informative that I can call you a “white cracker muthafucka” and you can respond by calling me a “dumb spic,” but those are examples of individual prejudice. We can go our separate ways after, but we go home to different realities. When we talk about systemic or institutional racism, the following is a prime example…

American Apartheid

In the 1930s, the federal government…

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