This just in!
Welcome to
Jubilee News
Beyond the 8th Edition
(8.1)
Between now and the next edition,
enjoy the adventures of Blossom in
"The Daddy Pages."
A 9th Edition
is coming!
Stay tuned.
Jubilee News!
You made us popular. Now, it's our turn
to make you proud.
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~Disclaimer~
The works, When Men
Speak, When Men Speak-The Radio Edition, & Jubilee News are the
intellectual property of its founder, creator, & Editor-In-Chief, James W.
Falcon. However, the submissions of all artists are expressly theirs. Jubilee
News wishes to thank each artist for lending this newsletter your gifts,
talents, and works. Jubilee News seeks only the best talent to convey the
sometimes complicated message of reconciliation between the sexes. Your
investment in the "relationship revolution" is greatly appreciated.
Reproduction of
material & information found in this newsletter is prohibited. All requests
to copy and or to reproduce material and information from this newsletter must
be submitted via electronic request to the Editor-In-Chief at wmsjubileenews@gmail.com. Your compliance is
appreciated and your professionalism, celebrated. Thank you.
Message from the Editor-In-Chief
Welcome
to Jubilee News-A WHEN MEN Publication! This is the relaunch of the
publication and it called the “8th Edition
and Beyond.” It is the continuation of a dream sparked back in
2012. And it is also the fulfilled of a dream in the relaunch!
Several attempts have been made to gather a team of columnists and poets to
re-engage our audience. But I have come to realize that those attempts
were indeed out of season. This is the proper season for the
relaunch! This is the proper season for the voice this newsletter was
intended to have to be lifted to signify women’s empowerment, strength, and
progress! Now is the time for the fires to be stoked. Now is the time to
bring about a relationship revolution!!! And this newsletter will do just
that.
A Team has been assembled and plans are underway to publish the 9th Edition very, very soon. There is
plenty of life left and plenty of issues to tackle in male-female relationships.
So…the journey continues with fresh, new talent of hungry columnists, vloggers,
and poets. In the meantime, please enjoy the adventures of a character I
created named Blossom until we release the next edition. By the way, our
mission remains the same: to provoke a relationship revolution! I
have no intent of stopping what we’ve started…AT ALL! So long as the
need for encouragement exists as it relates to man-woman relationships, Jubilee
News plans to continue publishing its online newsletter.
Not
only for ourselves, but for our children and for many generations to come.
I thank you soooo very much for your patience…in advance…in this rebuilding
process.
Appreciatively,
James W. Falcon,
Founder/Editor-In-Chief,
Jubilee
News-A WHEN MEN SPEAK Publication
PS:
Your
support of this newsletter is appreciated. Your input is craved! Drop me
a note at wmsjubileenews@gmail.com if you have any questions
or comments regarding the content of the newsletter and I will guarantee you a
timely response.
Also,
if you have any suggestions for topics we have not covered, we will be happy to
review those requests as well. Once again, thank you for your support and thank
you in advance for your emails.
Thank
you once again.
|---------STAFF--------|
Editor-In-Chief
James W. Falcon
Co-Host, WHEN MEN
SPEAK-The Radio Edition
Open
Copy/Online Editor
Open
Director of
Marketing
Open
Marketing Intern
Unique E. Falcon
Manager, Social
Media
Open
Columnists
Open
Open
Open
James W. Falcon
Jai-ree
Nekil (Emeritus)
Poets & Spoken
Word Artists
Open
Open
Open
James W. Falcon
---------------------------------------------------[]--------------------------------------------------
|----------POETS,
SPOKEN WORD ARTISTS, COLUMNISTS-----------|
~8th Edition and
beyond~
Open
Open
Open
Jai-ree
James W. Falcon
~Previous
Editions~
MJD
God’s Precious
Flower (GPF)
MJAY
Victoria Sharrock
Memoirs of a Lady
From the
Reservation
Meredith Duncan
Weber
Sonja Maxwell
LaVerna Saunders
Jai-ree
Michelle Pringle
Barbara K.
Nekil (Emeritus)
James W. Falcon
I am immensely
grateful for the contributions of all of the above mentioned contributors for
their voluntary support of Jubilee News. Thank you.
This Publication wishes to honor the memory and legacy of a special partner,
Nekil R. Colden.
Nekil, a former
Editor-In-Chief of another publication, joined the Jubilee News Team in 2013
and made sizable contributions with promises of more in the future. But
unfortunately, Nekil lost her battle with cancer and passed away unexpectedly.
We are grateful for Nekil's life and contributions to Jubilee News.
Our deepest sympathies go out to her Family & Friends in her lost.
This Publication will forever honor her work and will hold a place for
her here among the staff.
Rest
In Peace
Nekil
R. Colden
11/25/1975
- 1/29/2014
Respectfully
submitted,
-James W. Falcon
THE DADDY PAGES-Chapter 7
How important is it for a little girl to have her father in her life?
Is a father's presence that important? What are the benefits of having a solid
relationship with your Dad? Follow a fictional character named Blossom as she
grapples with these topics in her growth and development from childhood to
womanhood in each edition of Jubilee News. Jubilee News is proud to present the
work of Baltimore
It was sooooo
soothing. Jazz music that is. Blossom was listening to piece of
music from a cd that she often kept in her disc player. She enjoyed the
artist and his music and…especially selection number 9. It was a piece of music
that had a heck of a lot of swing to it. And it also had a brilliant
interplay of percussion, piano and jazz rifs, too. While Blossom enjoyed
the entire cd, she rarely ventured away from selection number 9. As a
matter of fact, she kept selection number 9 on repeat. For as long as she
was home, she listened to selection number 9 most of that time. She
turned the sound down so her neighbors wouldn’t think she was a nut for
listening to that same piece of music over and over and over again. Some
days cared and some day she just didn’t. She loved jazz music.
Although Blossom was an artist in her own right-a visual artist-she harbored a
jealousy toward musicians-to saxophone players in particular. To her, there was
no greater expression of art that the rifs of a saxophone. She had a love
hate relationship for the instrument itself. But a long-standing romance
for jazz. Listening jazz was her absolute favorite pastime. Jazz
encouraged her when she was down. It provided the perfect cover on those
days she needed to cry aloud. And it facilitated the best “thought time”
possible. Whenever she had a big assignment due at work, it was jazz that
steadied her mind and her hand enough to complete the project. To Blossom, jazz
was almost like her boyfriend. She could be found talking out loud
whenever a moving piece of jazz was playing almost as if she were having a
conversation with an actual human being. Blossom learned to express her
artistic creativity through visual art. But Blossom is always offered a tour to
the furthermost reaches of her inner soul every time she listens to jazz-a
offer that she never, ever refuses.
As Blossom laid across
her bed on this particular evening after work, jazz took her on yet another
journey. Blossom slowly drifted into an incredibly satisfying, fatigue
induced state of nostalgia. She was immediately transported back to being
a 10 year old, grade school student. Blossom was reflected on a very
bitter sweet time in her childhood. She re-engaged in the moment she and
dad were at the music store looking for a saxophone to play in her school’s
band. She relived the pain and the joy all over again as she had done
almost as frequently as she played selection number 9.
“Good evening,”
said the woman behind the counter to my dad and I.
And in his easy
going, but somewhat distracted voice my dad replied for the both of us and
said, “Good evening” in return.
“We are to get
a saxophone for my Princess,” he said sheepishly. My dad was a good man…a
very good man but he was always intimidated when it came to buying big ticket
items because he was, as he often described himself, a superhero on a budget.
He had big dreams with little means. My dad was a very giving,
kindhearted person. But he was often plagued by the impact of having a
bank account that was not as large as his capacity for giving. It’s not
that my dad and mom didn’t make enough money. It was because they has
incurred a number of medical expenses from a crisis that my dad suffered a few
years prior. Their earnings were solid and by all accounts we were what many
might consider to be a middle-class family. To compensate, my dad often
gave what he could to help others and sacrificed his needs. It was
something I hated watching. I could see the pain in his face and even in
his gestures and movements…even as young as 10 years old. I hated t
because my dad had chosen that approach and no one, nowhere on the planet could
talk him out of it-not even my mother. I always wished that one day I’d
grow up to make enough money to give dad all of the things he sacrificed for my
sake an for the sake of those he loved. He didn’t deserve to have to go
without so often. Or at least, I didn’t think so.
But there we
were. The big day had come. We were going to finally get the
instrument I had talked so much about. I picked out the one I
wanted. An application was filled out and a credit check was run.
Unfortunately, the matter was just out of my dad’s range financially.
Each option discussed seemed as if it was chopping away a little bit more of my
dad’s manhood. I remember him talking and looking down at me with the saddest
expression I’d ever seen him wear. He was heartbroken that things were
not turning out the way he had hoped…the way I had hoped. As much as I
wanted to be sympathetic to his cause, my 10 year old desires kicked in and I
burst into a tear-filled tirade. And it was bad. It was bad because
it was silent. A silent, pain-filled cry. Apparently, it was so
painful that it didn’t look like I was breathing because I remember my dad
frantically calling my name as if I had stopped breathing. He took 2
quick steps and there he was in front of me, knelt down on one knee. He put his
big arms around me, and held me tightly.
“Princess, I am
soooo sorry,” he said. “I thought this was going to work, but it
didn’t. And I don’t know what to do,” he muttered slowly and painfully.
“Awww” said the
lady behind the counter as she expressed her sorrow. My dad then lowly
stood to his feet, thanked the lady behind the counter, we left the store, and
headed for the parking lot. It was a painful ride home. One I will never
forget. While he was driving, my dad reached over and grabbed my hand to
comfort me as I cried. And then something amazing happened. My
dad-this giant of a man…this man that I had seen as rock solid, unshakable,
and unbending did something I would never guess. His bottomed lip began
to quiver. The corners of his mouth drooped. Despite his attempts
to hold his composure, he simply couldn’t. His shoulders shrugged and
tears ran down his shiny brown cheeks like an April shower. The scene was
so powerful that it got my attention to the degree that I stopped crying to
comfort him.
“It’s O.K.,” I
said to my dad. “I don’t really need that saxophone,” I lied.
“You may not
need it Princess, but you wanted it and that’s enough for me,” he said barked.
“I’m going to get you that saxophone somehow.”
Once we arrived
home, my dad and I explained the situation to my mother. And she looked
as if she was going to cry, too. I snuggled up next to her on the couch
as she whispered comforting things to me while she rocked me slowly in her
arms.
The living room-the place that had hosted many of joy filled family
gatherings over the years was a somber, joy robbed, cold, place. There
was a heavy sorrow there that day. And then…my mother pushed away from me
and declared, “Hey! I have an idea!” Her enthusiasm and her
movements were almost frightening but I was so curious that I fixed my eyes on
her as if my life depended on it. She had my full attention. My mother
grabbed her phone and started typing.
My father, also
startled, said, “What Mommy, what?”
My mother went
on to explain that maybe we could get the sax online some place. “I’m
thinking…like…Ebay or something,” she said with confidence.
And so mom
searched and searched until she found a saxophone with an open bid. She
sprung into action. She rattled off the details to dad and I as she
worked her magic and before you know it, that somber, sad gathering was ignited
with possibility. Maybe dad was right. Maybe I WOULD get my sax
today. Maybe mom WAS onto something. The one thing I knew was that
mom and dad was rarely wrong when it came to me. Individually they were
was incredible people. And together, they was amazing.
Multiple bids and
nearly 2 hours later…it happened! The bids closed. And we
won! My dad happily took out his credit card and rattled the numbers off
to my mom as she input them into her phone. The purchase was made.
The transaction was secured and shipping and handling was taken care of.
And that ended up being one of the happiest days of my childhood. I was
thrilled. My parents were ecstatic. It was the look on my dad’s
face that said it all. It was as if my happiness were a drug for him and
he got more and more intoxicated as the minutes passed. The happier I
got. The happier he got.
My dad said to me, “See
Princess! I told you I’d get you a saxophone” as if the whole thing were
all part of well thought out plan of some sort. And it was-just not
his. I hugged him just as tightly all the same.
Join Blossom in her
journey through womanhood as she reflects on the interactions she's had with
her dad and...for a new chapter of...The Daddy Pages. Thank you.
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