The late Ada Deer used to always ask me when we would get together for lunch at Quivey’s Grove, “Where do you get all of your ideas for your column and stories?’ And I would say, ‘From interacting with the people and the world around me.”

And that is so true. No person is an island and so we depend on other people to gain our intellectual and physical sustenance. I hate to think what I would be like if I didn’t have that interaction. That is why I rarely take credit for the things that I do because I know that the fingerprints of many other people are on the work as well.

I bring this up because I emailed my friend Kwame Salter last week to see how he was doing because I hadn’t heard from him in a while. He said that he was doing okay, just dealing with the ball of confusion that is the world today. And I responded back that the Temptations has summed it up well in their 1970s release “Ball of Confusion” that rattled off musically the many issues facing the world at that time including civil rights and the war in Vietnam, just to name a couple.

And so I must thank Kwame for the inspiration for this column. I owe you one Kwame. -- READ MORE