Do you count?

My neighborhood is such a quiet place that the radiance from the moon, reflecting off the carports in the dry Texas evenings might be the loudest stimuli around. Maybe the intermittent trains rustling down the tracks a mile away are a close second.

Minimal artificial lighting means that the stars and the moon illuminate he walkway to my mailbox as much as porch lights beside each apartment.

This is the path I take every evening when I return from work, checking a mailbox that is almost always empty. So imagine my surprise when I thick envelope from the U.S. Department of Commerce arrived addressed to me.

In bold, black, block letters I was told my response to the American Communities Survey was required by law. This 28-page booklet provides more timely data about communities, municipalities, cities and even rural America more frequently than the decennial census. Apparently, my address — not specifically me, as they reassured a handful of times — was simply because I represent a crosssection of my community.

I don’t know who rented my apartment before July, but I can only presume that the government was more interested in knowing about them then a Floridian becoming a reluctant Texan.

There I was spending a cool, Sunday evening telling the government about myself, my residence, my education, my career — and the period this year where I didn’t have a job. This information, sans my name supposedly, will be used by the public and private sector to make decisions about developing my community, and what facilities and necessities an isolated man in South Texas might need in the coming months and years.

The number of average Americans who log onto www.census.gov for information about the percentage of people in their community who speak German as a second language is minimal. Then again, how many people pull up the American Communities Survey on their smartphone to find out just how few minorities live in New Hampshire and Vermont while attending a family wedding on a scenic summer afternoon?

If nothing else, I now know why so many people quizzically stare at me as I amble through town in my fire-engine red “Floridamobile.” Less than eight percent of the population here is black, and just 17. 6 percent of the populace has a college degree. Throw in the fact that I am 26, and you have a perfect concoction for piquing curiosity in a small community.

Is it picking nits to call winners “World Champions”?

When something does not make sense to me, I usually make a funny face and ask a question: sometimes to the closest person near, or to no one in particular.

Otis Nixon ending the 1992 World Series with a bunt was one of those instances. Three weeks away from my eighth birthday, I asked my dad why he would bunt since the probability of him reaching base was very low.

The Braves were the closest thing to a major league baseball team in Southwest Florida at the time, so by almost obligation I rooted for them. (It didn’t hurt that the headmaster at my school — Edwin Gleason, a genial gentleman with an English accent — was an ardent Braves fan, who had a child-like smile on his face when molasses-slow Sid Bream beat Barry Bonds’ throw from left field earlier that month for the Braves to even make the Series.)

As Toronto danced in the infield of Fulton-County Stadium I sat there in my room as disgusted as a seven-year old who never played organized baseball could be.

Some time during one of my periods of stewing and snarling at no one in particular, my mother must have mentioned the fact that Toronto were not the “World Champions” as many broadcasters and newspapers reported.

With the Texas Rangers or the St. Louis Cardinals two wins away from baseball immortality, I cannot help but recall those consecutive Octobers where the team I wanted to win didn’t, and I sought for every excuse or plausible explanation for why it didn’t happen.

But back in 1992, I thought maybe there was some way Atlanta had won the series. Instead, her point was that it was impossible to designate the champion of a league featuring only American and Canadian teams “World Champions.” (Just the look on my headmaster’s face in the opening weeks of November was enough to convince me that the Braves indeed did lose for a second straight fall.)

Every morning the next year, I would borrow the Sports page of the Sarasota-Herald Tribune in the hope that someone had knocked Toronto out of first place. When Chicago faced Toronto in the ALCS that fall, I of course rooted for the White Sox, not solely because I despised Toronto, but in part because I went to a few White Sox spring training games earlier that year.

When Toronto won the World Series again, we were in Denver for a family trip. I missed Joe Carter’s Series-ending home run because after driving from Florida to Colorado with three smart-alecks my parents wanted to grab food at a decent restaurant.

Again the topic of World Champions came up.

On that cool Saturday night I was more annoyed that I missed such a dramatic baseball game, but as we walked down the street toward our hotel I again asked how the Blue Jays could be World Champions. For all we knew there might be a team somewhere else in the world better than them. At least that was my hope because I really, really didn’t like Toronto.

I was already aware that the 1904 “World’s Series” was called off because John McGraw thought his Giants were the best team in the world, so there was no point in playing the Boston Americans because it was a formality. But then, as is the case now, when something does not make sense I continue to ask questions until an answer satisfies my curiosity.

My dad said that was the way things have always been. He didn’t know why it was called the World Series. My mom said they should come up with another name. Neither answer was good enough, so I kept pressing for a sufficient answer.

The answer I sought never came, at least that October. Though the Braves eventually won the World Series two years later, so much had changed. My parents had more pressing concerns than the silly questions of a 10-year old with a smart mouth, I no longer attended the school where Mr. Gleason was the headmaster and most depressing of all, I was committed the perpetually hot-and-cold Florida Marlins.

The Braves mini-dynasty was proof that part of baseball’s mystery is not its timelessness, but the fact games always leaves us with unanswered questions.

Are you occupied?

A three-hour Friday night class for a minor in political science may be one of the least likely places to be introduced to a weighty topic such as assimilation. But that is the beauty of college, there are always learning opportunities if one is willing to explore them.

Our professor asked whether it was more desirable to subtly blend, or assimilate, into the American political culture like an A. Philip Randolph, or fight against it like Marcus Garvey did.

Six years after that “Blacks in the Political Process” course, I still lack a concrete answer for either position.

This was not one of those rhetorical questions that thrown out there to keep people from walking out of class to enjoy their weekend. We were expected to provide nuanced answers that added historical and current perspective with our position.

It’s been something I have masticated on for the past two months after reading up on Texas history.

Apparently it’s worth celebrating that a band of people who were invited to live on land, with minimal or no taxes, and thought they were morally superior to the state could revolt and start their own republic. Despite running up huge debts, they wanted to be bailed out — or annexed, if we are going to be historically accurate — by an emerging superpower, whose beliefs and morality were in closer proximity to theirs. (Keep in mind all that startling history occurred in just 25 years.)

Texas is not unique. American anthropologist W.W. Newcomb argued:

“The same sequence of events has occurred repeatedly in man’s history; in invader with superior cultural equipment supplants and replaces a technologically inferior group. If the inferior culture survives it frequently does so in marginal areas not coveted by the invader.”

The “superior cultural equipment” of this century is money, and more specifically access to it. Thousands of people protesting the actions and perceived greed of banks over the past month is proof that point.

There have always “haves” and “have-nots.” In the past it was easier to blame -isms and phobias for the segregation. Racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia still exist but the moneyed class is smart enough not to spew venom toward those groups publically, or in a forum that might become public.

For generations people have come to America seeking new opportunities because their easel was empty, so to speak, and they could color it anyway they chose.

But as we become a country that looks down on those with less money than us — and let’s be honest, as individuals, our words whisper compassion while our actions scream self-absorbed—we are segregating ourselves from those who simply want to take in the complexities of a culture, understand it and eventually succeed in it.

I made the connection between that conversation about Randolph and Garvey and today’s greed because both Randolph and Garvey had considered self-sustainment a foundation their political theory. That 2005 discussion also led me to ask: are people trying to emulate and assimilate into the corporate culture, or is there a genuine want to fight the greed that has been inherent for centuries?

It’s my belief that too many in the moneyed class want to curb access to education, so people cannot create successful businesses, no matter how small, to compete with them.

If we really want to occupy Wall Street and the corporate culture, we have to look at our consumption habits. Or as one Facebook friend put it: “If you really want to occupy Wall Street do your holiday shopping at a small independent merchant.”

Bank of America and Wells Fargo are likely apathetic to picketers. However, if those same protestors switched their banking to credit unions and smaller, more localized banks, the corporate offices in Charlotte and San Francisco might not be as dismissive.

The same rings true for retailers. Yes, it is likely more convenient to purchase a product online, or at a mega retailer. Yet, statistics have proven that when money is spent at local and independent retailers it circulates throughout the local economy, and stimulates local or regional growth, as opposed to New York stock prices.

Considering the banks and business lobbies pay billions to advocate in Congress and Legislatures across the country, it’s not a stretch to believe that if people spoke with their wallets instead of their mouths, things might be different.

Or as Mandela would say: “rhetoric is not important. Actions are.” The question now, is which actions will we take?

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

The college of love and charity

Growing up my parents shared a 1985 Volvo 740 GLE. No matter how much they bickered about other things, one thing was always constant during my childhood — the orange and green license plate on the back of that maroon Volvo.

That simple plate celebrating the centennial of Florida A&M University was my introduction to a school and a history that is as much a part of me as my parents.

Florida A&M is not the best school, or the most perfect school, but it is my school. To this day there is a misnomer that the school only accepts blacks. Of course the truth is that only one of Florida’s three public universities founded in the 19th century has never excluded anyone because of race or gender — Florida A&M.

My dad went to the school so long ago it some people called it FAMCEE, because it was Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College. It didn’t become a university until 1953, the year my dad graduated.

Eventually, I found my way to the school which was once a slave plantation. Florida’s first territorial governor Robert DuVal owned the property. Until the 1940s there was a massive oak tree adjacent to where the current library sits that bore the blood of beaten slaves.

Traditions at so many colleges are being whitewashed by those who choose to only remember the good ol’ days when the sky was apparently bluer.

It would ruin a good story to know that Paul William Bryant and Wayne Woodrow Hayes frequently visited Tallahassee, Florida to get insight from a coaching wizard— Alonzo Smith Gaither.

Even when they were nothing but Jazzbirds playing on a combination of grass and dust, Saturday’s in the fall were always about an experience for Famuans. The smell of all sorts of unhealthy concoctions waft in the air prior to kickoff, some unfortunate opponent is pummeled for 30 minutes and then the world’s best marching band takes center stage.

The experience is what fathers tell sons and why mothers want their daughters to return to Tallahassee. It’s what has become a part of the lore of a school that is largely ignored or forgotten — even by its local newspaper.

Time may have grayed and thinned my dad’s hair, but the bushy mustache he had as a sophomore in 1950 remains. Pictures hidden away in archives only tell so much.

Older generations serve as modern-day griots, the ones who remind future Famuans that Foote-Hilyer was once the only hospital for black people in Tallahassee or how every building on campus tells the story of a person who was critical to the school’s mission of educating African-Americans.

Without those stories, we would not know the student union building, which was once a hotel, was named after an interim president, in H. Manning Efferson, who rarely gets credit for being the bridge between one of the university’s more unpopular presidents (William H. Gray Jr.) to one who became president emeritus upon retirement in George W. Gore.

It was a warm February afternoon, one where the sun prevented icy thoughts of the night to enter the consciousness. After hours canvassing North Florida talking to football players, I idled at a Kentucky Friend Chicken to write about what I witnessed that day.

While waiting to see just how bastardized Harland Sanders’ Southern delicacy had become, a group of people were talking about one of the boys I recently interviewed.

They started talking about his future and how his choice of college would be the perfect fit for him because of its proximity to home, the family atmosphere within the football program and the hospitality of the campus crowd.

They were talking about Florida A&M.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Do you get by with a little help from your friends?

What would think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Angeline Taylor is a dear and true friend of mine, even though she knows I am not much of a singer.

It’s been this way since June 11, 2007 when both of us were forced to endure a monotonous orientation for our new jobs at the Tallahassee Democrat.

It all started because I started writing jokes on a sheet of paper to relieve the monotony and got a high from her laughter at my highbrow humor.

Sunday, Angie sent me an e-mail telling me a 20-year old woman allegedly killed her good friend, Shannon Washington, for no apparent reason. Considering both of us are proud Florida A&M graduates with ties to the Sarasota-Bradenton area we stewed at the prospect of a friend allegedly putting a knife through her friend’s neck.

Only later did I find out the deceased lived in same apartment complex I lived in during my last three years of school.

When sharing the story with other Rattlers, they collectively expressed similar bemusement. The sentiment was to state their intention to pray for Washington’s family then ask “who would do something like that?”

It is far too early to speculate on why Washington was killed. However, the incident should encourage us to think about who are our closest and truest friends. And only the person staring at you in the mirror can define friendship.

I have gone clubbing with friends. I have confided in friends. I have gone to church with friends. I have consoled friends. I have committed crimes with friends — if you consider underage drinking and changing the prices at a gas station lawbreaking. I have fornicated with a couple female friends. I have played sports with friends.

No true friend has every led me to get mad enough to wish them ill will, or think to execute the harm myself. As my girlfriend continues to remind me, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.

In our haste we elevate people to positions in our lives they do not deserve. Other times a person is in our life for a reason or a season. We have to figure out where everyone fits in our fragile emotional existence. Otherwise, some serpent of a person might come up and strike when you need them the most, or least expect it.

Periodically I come up with a purge list; a collection of people whose reason and/or season has passed and its time to detangle my relationship with them — even if it hurts. The first time Angie heard of this list she expressed a bit of amazement at someone in their early 20s eliminating people that by my own definition “don’t teach me anything.”

I learned a lot about people this summer when I didn’t have a job. Many people were incredibly supportive, yet there were some who ignored, or were too busy, to pay attention to calls and messages from 941-961-0044.

A college acquaintance recently stated on her Facebook page “I’ve learned in life that it is a small world…and that positive relationships, whether personal or professional, will take you far.” A sentiment that was rich because more than one person has told me how much this acquaintance uses people. (I didn’t find out the hard way, until after I could no longer write business features about her organization.)

Is this person an awful person for not being collegial after leaving Tallahassee? Not at all, but she is an illustration that not everyone is good for you — even if they are good people.

The book I believe in speaks of the true vine, one in which “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

Rotted relationships will shrivel and burn when the furnace of life fans flames of failure, bereavement, illness, joblessness and other fiery moments. Friends might not douse the flames, but the best ones bear the burns of someone who is willing to endure an inferno to rescue you.

I get by with a little help from my friends, Yes I get by with a little help from my friends, With a little help from my friends.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Does a "brand" burnish or burn?

Ten years ago I used to write poems and essays in a notebook aspiring to be popular.

Believe me, the content I produced at the time surely would not have motivated many clicks, or driven user generated content, or been linked to a sundry of web sites that were a half decade away from being created.

But, at the time, I wanted to be the person everyone at Rockledge High School knew and the man the good looking girls would want to sleep with. I wanted to be so well-known that freshmen aspired to be like me and recent graduates sought my time as validation they still mattered.

All of this came to mind when I stumbled across this column published in the Washington Post last month about branding. A humor columnist, who has a pair of Pulitzers, mocked the concept of people in journalism trying to make their name outside of their increasingly slipping work, stating “because we know that, in this frenetic fight for eyeballs at all costs, the attribute that is most rewarded is screeching ubiquity, not talent.”

That specifically brought back the summer before the Patriot Act, and my quest for adoration.

Admittedly, it was a highly egotistical pursuit. Perhaps it was an overreaction to being an overweight, backup placekicker with few friends. A person no one particularly missed once I slid out the door of my Sarasota high school, rarely to return.

Whatever it was, overhearing the tales of classmates copulating, or at least tell detailed stories of debauchery, led me to believe it was possible for me as well. In hindsight not becoming a Lothario was probably for the best.

A decade later everyone who would have been a candidate became a friend.

The girl who was kind enough to be my first date evolved into someone where we would hold long discussions on conservative politics. Another friend became a reminder that happiness and good things do happen to genuine people. And a third is an inspiration to follow my dreams—even if both our careers are not as successful as others would have imagined at this point in our lives.

As for the person who was to be my prom date? Well, in typical Will Brown fashion there was a miscommunication and it never came to fruition. But, the two of us do talk on occasion and high school is usually not one of our talking points.

Because I refused for any friendship, then or now, to be predicated on the “gauzy filler material, the pale fluff inside decorative throw pillows,” the popularity I always internally craved never came.

I never got the last laugh, or the trophy panties of my classmates. If the corresponding decade is any indicator of the future, there is a strong probability neither will happen.

But if it meant anything, the bespectacled, black placekicker who was admittedly socially awkward, but universally accepted as being smarter than the average Cheez Doodle, did receive the loudest cheer at graduation.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

“My fellow Americans”, how did you accrue your debt?

When the nickels, quarters and dimes were all counted, there was $5.50 to buy some ice cream. It was a simple pleasure, a gift from me to me after weeks of scrapping by and trying to live within my drastically reduced means.

Such was the dichotomy between me and the two politicians who hoarded the evening discussing America’s rising debt on national television, that I had to write about it.

Despite the protesting from the President that most Americans had not heard of the nation’s debt ceiling until recently, I recalled an informative story on National Public Radio about the history of America’s debt ceiling.

In the two months since listening to the story, my belief has coarsened to the posturing of both parties. As much as both want to claim innocence, not funding two wars of choice and ratifying, then signing two pieces of flawed budget-bursting legislation convicts both major parties to some degree.

Monday, President Obama and Rep. John Boehner (R- Ohio) laid out their thoughts on this so-called debt crisis.

I call this a so-called crisis because at the end of the day some agreement will be made for America to pay its substantial bills — even if it forces the President to think about more pressing things other than his upcoming 50th birthday.

During Boehner’s remarks he noted his House of Representatives recently passed a bill that might lead to passing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. My question is why such an amendment is necessary?

We the people are also to blame.

Collectively we are so materialistic that we want to be like our neighbors up the street.

Yet, most of our neighbors are too prideful to mention that their new house has mortgaged their future to the point that one missed paycheck or unforeseen circumstance will send them crashing toward life in Section 8 housing. Our friends do not mention that the new car their purchased has put such a wallop in their credit, or access to it, they cannot buy a new home for a decade.

Instead of electing representatives who are supposedly the best and stateliest among us, we send people to our capitols and Washington and the White House who have the most lumbar flexibility with their positions.

Two sentences after assailing the previous administration for wasting the surplus it was gifted in 2000 President Obama uttered “To make matters worse, the recession meant that there was less money coming in, and it required us to spend even more. …”

Read that again.

“To make matters worse, the recession meant that there was less money coming in, and it required us to spend even more. …”

Yes, this country needs teachers, police officers, firefighters and other essential municipal
employees. Yes, those who lost their job through no fault of their own need and deserve some compensation in the weeks it takes them to get on their feet.

However, when we do not check our elected figures for thinking it is acceptable to spend more than we make, we are allowing them to mortgage our future so they can continue to pay the bills of their lives of relative luxury.

(Obama, whose best-selling books made him a millionaire, will earn $400,000 this year. Boehner will earn $223,500 for his role as Speaker of the House. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid makes $193,000 annually, while the anonymous congressman earns just under $175,000.)

With those salaries, is it little coincidence that politicians discuss “the American people” and it leaves you wondering whether this person is talking about you, or just those that contributed to their campaign?

So while both sides quibble about a manufactured situation and attempt to be the most pious in their closing remarks, I just wonder whether the two Midwestern politicians who have requested for God’s blessing over America have truly remembered that no debt should remain outstanding, except the continued debt to love one another.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Where is home?

My brothers believe home is where you lay your head. But they are far more gregarious than I am. When they enter a room their peers instantly take note. Me, I am more inclined to slip in and observe my surroundings before being the fulcrum of attention.

This week a handful of people have asked where I’m from. The obvious answer is Florida. But, unless I am pressed I never provide a city. No one has yet to inquire further, but the idea of how to answer that question was one that led me to ask “where is home?”

Is it the ritzy city of money and retirees that hardly acknowledges it has a black population? Or is it the small town where nostalgia for it trumps all other memories? Perhaps the city that educated me and went from the bane of my existence to a begrudging enclave of peace.

My two outgoing brothers — one who is five years younger and the other who is 15 years older — would quip something about Victoria, Texas being my new home and I better get used to it. There would also be an unrepeatable joke from both that would make me laugh with politically incorrect delight.

As large as Texas is, it feels so quiet when I come home from work. Unlike Florida there is not a foundation of friends to lean upon in person here. I think it was mother who said it was a chance to reinvent myself as a journalist and become a better person since the only thing people out here knew about me is what I told them.

Outside of a summer in Shreveport and my two weeks in South Africa, I have lived in the most unique of the 50 states.

People have asked whether I am homesick or miss my Whitney. Honestly, I have not been away long enough to truly miss either. But I do know I will be reunited with both again.

#LifeinTexas, as I am fond of tweeting, is a learning experience. Not all of us are fortunate enough to have a chance to sink or swim, become a man or a mouse. It is a chance to figure out if I am going to be person or the pork.

I was a closeted emo kid for high school and early college, spending countless hours writing about feelings, emotions and other things interconnected with the eagerness and angst of leaving home. After A Decade Under the Influence of amateur then full-blown adulthood I realized Coming Home, wherever that may be, is not selling out.


Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Is Florida a fertile ground for folly and foolishness?

The day Charlie Crist announced he was running for the United States Senate he stopped by Mission San Luis in Tallahassee for an event promoting Florida’s natural tourism and the state’s multiple historical treasures that date back a few centuries.

Inside a remake of what would have been a 17th century church a throng of local, state and national journalists gathered just in case the sitting governor divulged any information about his political ambitions.

Few if any of the throng of information carnivores stopped to realize that part of the reason Crist added the speaking engagement to his schedule was to support Florida’s most recognizable industry at a place that was once a Spanish mission and the capital of Spanish Florida for more than 50 years in the late 17th century.

As I walked to my car I met a man from Pensacola who was part of the city’s 450th anniversary celebration in 2009 and coordinating Florida’s quincentennial in 2013. We joked about Florida history, and specifically how most people don’t recognize the richness of it.

Prior to World War II Florida was the South’s least populated state. Now, it’s so crowded with snowbirds, tourists and people who eventually wound up here—as well as a few colorful natives liberally sprinkled in this conservative state—that one friend joked “It’s the South’s cousin that went to college.” And yet with a population and GDP that is larger than The Netherlands, there are people who cry foul when some residents want to speak languages other than English. Apparently, they never took the time to remember Florida was named by a Spanish man who was so enamored with all the flowers he saw upon searching for his fountain of youth.

For many people Florida is the state that gave the world Disney World, hanging chads, Casey Anthony. Others believe it’s where the shuttle is launched, or one super sized retirement community. Then again, by 2030 there will be more people over 65 in Florida than any other state in the country and it will be the largest age demographic.

And then there are some who only shake their head at the peninsula because we have people like Douglas Arp, a Tampa man who was arrested this week for illegally selling Viagra at a liquor store.

But this is a state where someone named after Napoleon can have a county named after them. And a descendent of his can become the state’s Chief Financial Officer a century later.

Florida has a river of grass, which while decimated by Central Florida developers is still a sight to see. Or a forgotten coast where drivers can take a hairpin turn while overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, just miles from where the state’s original constitution was written in 1838.

An animal hospital in Tallahassee had a sign that asked by Noah allowed mosquitoes to join him on his ark, a sight that elicited a huge laugh from me because my hometown was once a part of Mosquito County, before being separated into Brevard, Indian River and St. Lucie counties.

These days people are wondering whether they can impeach a highly unpopular governor, one who proposed to cut 10 percent in education spending before the Legislature came to its senses for once and only sliced eight percent of the dollars per student. Of course they could propose the state’s constitution is amended and governor’s are once again limited to one term in office.

Despite being a place that is so popular with retirees there are cities named Winter Haven and Winter Park, there is an overarching sense that people do not realize just how rich the differences and oxymorons of a place that is the Sunshine State, but home to the Lightning Capital of the World.

Florida has always been a state of populist politicians, who ascend to power on the ignorance of its residents that are a combination of southern yokels, naturalized Yankees, beach bums, retirees and clandestine natives. Those who don’t understand that commit political suicide, or blow their brains out like John Milton, the state’s Civil War governor who just couldn’t stand the thought of sharing his lost paradise with Northerners.

But studying Florida governors is not something most people waste their time doing. Otherwise most of us would have a bigger affinity for a $20 bill, or wonder who were the men whose legacies will forever be attached Gilchrist, Hardee and Perry counties.

No one is going to lead a charge to name anything after Charlie Crist, but listening to a man who was such a representation of his constituents that he decided to sun tan too much that May afternoon made me remember my native state is know for more than fools and football players. Even if the colorful underbelly is constantly being relegated to books that no one bothers to read.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Is it July already?

Amid the champagne and other spirits that flow at the end of most December’s many people set resolutions for the upcoming year, as though they are starting anew.

More than 100 million people have fallen for this trap of believing January can be just the catalyst for a change in their life. Since more than 90 percent of us fail to meet all those goals we have set, there is no shame in admitting that 2011 is half over and most of our optimism has dissipated like those chocolates we either ate or bought for Valentine’s Day.

I did not set any resolutions for myself this year. But in the days before my birthday I attempted to set 26 goals for myself. The fact I couldn’t even find 26 things I wanted to accomplish, should have been an indicator just how hard it is to fulfill one’s To-Do list in a given year.

Of the 20 things that I scribbled down, some have been accomplished and that includes “regaining strength in my right hand” after breaking my writing hand the day after my birthday. There are others like “proposing to Whitney” that I’m still working on.

Perhaps our inability to finish what we start has infiltrated other areas of our culture and lives to the point that we find it odd when someone actually does lay out an ambitious plan and accomplish it. Or perhaps that is looking at something as wistful as a New Year’s resolution too seriously. Either way, the midway point of the year is an opportune time to bring up a larger point about setting goals for ourselves.

If I got a 40 on a test when I was in school my parents would probably have a conniption. But, if I said eight of my 20 goals have been completed through six months, the optimists that they are would say that I have six more months to finish my list.

Then again life could be worse as there are six more months in the year for us to resolve our unfinished resolutions—even if that extra cupcake is tastier than the thought of looking perfect at the beach.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

What do other people see when they initially look at you?

A few weeks ago I swallowed whatever pride I had left and walked into the local workforce development office in search of answers to obtaining unemployment compensation.

After a 20 minute wait to be seen, I noticed a five-foot tall cardboard cutout mentioned just how important a jobseeker’s first impression is to future employers.

Never one to care too much about having stubble on my face, or the freshest shoes, or clothing or accessories that immediately promoted a brand when I was working, and prior to that in school, I decided to ask some friends their original impression of me and how it changed or differed once they got to know me.

Realizing that most men my age wouldn’t ask —and definitely not share—such things with other guys, I kept my query to 15 women, and received nine responses. Their answers were as much of an eye-opener as my trip to Workforce Plus.

Words alone are incapable of describing me, or any person. However, the experiment was a healthy one for me because the constructive and loving observations were things I had either not previously noted or chose to dismiss.

If nothing else asking an honest assessment of your friends—not your family or significant other, but your friends—is a good way to see just how far you have come over the years. Try it, and if everyone is being candid, the responses should provide some self-realization.

No one wanted to go out on a limb and call me weird, but it was nearly universal that I was not the average guy. One friend said it best when she saw me in a science class in college and immediately thought “‘Lord, this boy needs help.’ He’s smart, doesn’t dress normal and country.”

Other words used were dork, nerd, goofy and usually those were followed looking uncomfortable in my own skin. Something else that was instantly recognizable was that I was always telling jokes, or was quite the smartdonkey, but had a decent heart once all the visual and evident demerits were removed.

Yes my concept of humor, in the eyes of my friends, was quite unique. However, as the years wore on most realized the highbrow humor with a tinge of snobbishness was as much a part of me as my glasses.

“You are an awesome person. I am thankful that I know you and have a friendship with you,” said one amiga who has known me since I was a hefty 16-year old in Rockledge, Florida.

Underneath it all was intensity for doing the right thing and not taking the path of least resistance. Though it was something I knew Whitney was aware of, I had no clue that others recognized that I do have a serious side to me.

“Now, I see that you are a little less immature and still goofy with a quirky sense of humor,” said one friend who noted I am still so young my breath smells like similac. “You have matured into a young man with determination and strong morals. I truly admire that.”

In truth, there is something I admire in each of the friends who received my initial question. As haughty as it sounds, if a man or woman was incapable of teaching me something, of contributing to the world around them or a warm person then I would not waste my time talking to them either personally or professionally.

Perhaps my belief in what constitutes a friend is as highfalutin as some of my jokes, but when I see one, it does not take long to recognize it.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

What were your youthful accomplishments?

When he died in a flurry of bullets 15 years ago, I did not know who Tupac Shakur was. I did not know his music, or why his death was just as seminal a moment to some as Kurt Cobain’s suicide two years earlier.

As unbelievable as Shakur’s death may have been to my classmates and millions of others, it may be equally unfathomable that he would have turned 40 today.

Though I knew neither man, nor his work during their lifetimes, I always wanted to accomplish something revolutionary in my lifetime. As I grew older, and became a fan of both, the thought further fermented in my mind.

Everyone wants to be rich and famous in their lifetime, but the thought of winning a Pulitzer Prize before my 30th birthday motivates me more than the money that I could clearly make from winning such an award.

Though neither artist lived to be 30, I always had a sense from watching documentaries on both and listening to their work that their art was more important than money. If Shakur and Cobain happened to make money and earn commercial success while sharing their talents we were richer for it.

In his 25 years Shakur did more than most of us will do in our lifetimes. How many other rappers would be such a cultural phenomenon more than a decade after their assassination to the point the President of the United States found a way to evoke is name during a black tie dinner this spring?

Shakur’s 40th birthday will not be the catalyst for me to go out and spend my remaining days in Tallahassee volunteering or trying to save the city. It’s better to be honest, than lie to simply flatter the memory of a dead man.

The biggest changes within any organization or society do not come from on high, but from the people. Even non-secular countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Syria are beginning to realize the exuberance of youth are more powerful than water when channeled properly.

(South Africa realized this with devastating consequences 35 years ago and takes pause each June 16 to celebrate the impact its youngest citizens have on society.)

So while we cannot live without water, it is also a very destructive force. The question, Tupac’s death has led me to ask myself and others is whether your actions, your art, your words are enrich or destroy lives?

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Was last night a failure or dream deferred?

The sun still rose this morning. The apocalypse is not among us simply because a team won a basketball game last night.

In the immediate moments after the conclusion of the NBA season, I was among the chorus of people who were happier the cocky bunch wearing the white jerseys lost as opposed to the maligned bunch in blue won.

As the night wore on, I realized holding up a bunch of young men for such praise or ridicule was silly. At the end of the day most athletes are simply men—and occasionally women—in their 20s who are playing the game they love and getting paid for it.

Athletes, politicians, actors and other so-called celebrities are, and always will be people. Because a person has more money or is recognized faster than most of us does not make them immune from hurting.

Then I heard the combination of anguish, frustration and surprise from a 26-year hold multimillionaire who had the gall to lose last night. It made me rethink a few things.

"At the end of the day, all the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. …” That is what LeBron James said about an hour after his dream of winning an NBA championship was suspended for yet another year.

It has baffled me why we as people love to bring public figures to such depths when they do not meet either their expectations or ours. Our collective envy seemingly prohibits us from having empathy at just the moment someone else needs it.

Social media has ruined the line between constructive criticism and vindictiveness. Combined with my generation being dubbed the most narcissistic in American history one can see how that is a Molotov cocktail when intertwined with the wrong person’s vocabulary.

The point is most of what we know about athletes is when they are at work. I am sure we all have a few colleagues who we think we know. However, if we saw them at a BDSM convention, or if they were a deacon in their church, or if we saw them at a gay bar we would be stunned.

Why should it be any different with athletes, who are like most of us—except their salaries are bigger and more people want to sleep with them? Winning an NBA championship does not instantly make a basketball player, or person, better or more complete. It just makes someone the best in their profession.

And if you can’t support someone’s aspirations to be the best in their chosen line of work, especially when it does not pertain to you, then perhaps James had a point.

“...I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So they can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal. But they got to get back to the real world at some point."

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Is it a slur or a bundle of sticks?

Twice this spring an NBA player has been caught calling someone a faggot on television.

Frustrated with a call on the court Kobe Bryant called a referee a bundle of sticks, the day after a Phoenix Suns executive told NBA commissioner David Stern he was a homosexual. Sunday night, Chicago Bulls forward Joakim Noah was caught by a TNT camera calling a fan the same.

While various websites are racking in the page views today exploiting Noah’s temporary loss of his cool, one can only wonder why all the commotion? Sports leagues and other entities are disciplining people for being caught using the coarse language, not for the act of using the language.

It would be a stretch to say every person has used the words faggot or fag to define something other than a bundle of sticks or a cigarette. So many people have that it’s not even considered that abnormal of a word to use to describe everything but its dictionary definition.

Words do hurt, all of us know this first-hand; however, our unseen actions should at least stand to rebuke or confirm the words that all of us slip up and use out of frustration.

If someone wants to call a homosexual a faggot, go ahead. Once that word is eliminated from public discourse others will surely take its place, which is why the emphasis should be on the act of discrimination or belittlement, not the word itself.

Where someone stands on the whole gay marriage issue is not the point. People should take umbrage at their fellow man being mistreated. Who people sleep with is their own business — as long as it’s not the woman I am dating.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Since it apparently cannot be defined, what is “loyalty”?

My friends have a lot of time on their hands at work so sometimes we all exchange e-mails about various sports subjects and topics. Usually, a few tangents are taken and this was the case when many of us spoke about baseball this week.

Eventually the focus turned to a column published by Yahoo Sports where the writer asked whether the New York Yankees were making the right decision to stick with their aging veterans. These are players and people who have played for the team for more than 15 years and reached the highest levels of the game on multiple occasions.

Instantly, after reading Les Carpenter’s column, I thought of loyalty and what it is in a sports and business sense. The search for an answer was an unfulfilling one, so I am asking my family and friends for their interpretation in the hope it will catch on.

We are so quick to vilify an athlete for spending their formative years in a city then bolting for more money in another city. It does not matter whether the person might be reunited with family and friends, or they may prefer their new city, or more money is offered fans feel wronged that their “hometown hero” left for supposedly greener pastures.

The same fans who spend their discretionary dollars going to games fail to realize that if another employer offered them a 30 percent increase with some additional perks they would nearly forget to submit a two-week notice to their former employer.

It is not a crime to switch jobs, or to do so with little to no notice to your employer. Yet it may not be the most loyal thing for someone to do that. The refrain is usually “I had to look out for myself and my family.”

In the same notion, employers have long shown a similar zest over the past four decades to terminate an employee or eliminate a position nearly regardless of that person’s performance, evaluations or other metrics. They say “it’s not personal, just business.”

Even the dictionary cannot define “loyal” or “loyalty” without mentioning the word loyal. This week I was telling my girlfriend that what one person may consider loyal could be the exact opposite to someone else.

So what is loyalty, especially in a business and sporting sense? In search of an answer I sought out a friend who like me is looking for work.

Someone who is not loyal has “been burned in the past and they see what other people have done to get ahead. Maybe in their head they think it’s wrong, but they think this is the way it is and they have become complacent with that. No one wants to stand up, because if you do you are the scapegoat and you are made an example of.”

Essentially, her sentiments were aligned with mine. However, the answer sat with me like an appetizer, it was great, but not completely fulfilling.

In all the business books I have read have covertly mentioned that someone must look out for themselves at all times, regardless of how it might impact the team. Hopefully Tavis Smiley’s “Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure”, which I recently purchased for obvious reasons, will break the uninspiring trend. One, which chances my luck in the business world, could certainly be better.

Laughs and liveliness
-Wb

Do you succumb to visceral pleasures?

The most popular are smoking, drinking and fornicating. Other people succumb to cursing, or anger and other intangible toxins. For me, my vice is driving intoxicatingly fast. Fast enough to feel my left hand jackknife in the wind as it’s extended from the door of my bright red car.

There is something about being behind the wheel of a machine that is totally within your control. One that can reach seemingly unreachable and unsafe heights of speed and a machine that can—for the most part—come to a stop when you demand.

All the mechanical aspects of cars are of no interest to me. However, there is a certain rush of blood that rises from my fingertips, up my forearms, through the biceps and then diffused to the rest of my body when taking a corner obscenely fast, or flirting with the speedometer in my car. As much as the Florida Highway Patrol has tried to reign in this habit, there is still something exhilarating about releasing so many emotions onto a pedal that is no more than 10 square inches.

In my younger years, I would have judged someone whose vices involved drugs and or sex. To this day, I still have a blue joke about women and cigarettes that I tell friends. But as the points on my driver’s license started to pile up my penchant for considering the speed limit a suggestion rather than a demand fit the definition of vice: an evil or wicked action, habit or characteristic.

We all have our vices, many of which we are not proud about—some of which we hardly admit to ourselves. It would be easy to traipse through life pretending they do not exist in our lives; however, when lies are the foundation of our existence, life is eventually going to descend into rubble.

Once we are buried beneath the veneer of perfection, our vices become all the more human. Of course, to err is human; to forgive is divine.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

Is Morning Joy and orchid or a state of being?

I used to believe in the absolute truth, a truth that will does not allow people with sullied intentions to sling mud on it. But this is 2011 and we are in the era where “my interests will always trump yours.”

The reason I have always looked up to Nelson Mandela is not because he was mistreated for more than three decades. It’s that once he was set free, he still spoke of the collective rather than the individual. It’s an attitude I have tried to emulate since returning from Mandela’s land.


The past two weeks have been the ultimate test of that ideology.


Every day I try to put my time at the Tallahassee Democrat behind me. In the past 10 days I have also realized I need to put some people behind me as well, because like the Democrat their priority is their interests — regardless of the collateral damage to others.

My joy is to truly realize who is for me and who is just telling me that because it’s convenient. My joy is to play soccer on occasion and provide that one-touch pass that completely surprises and splits the defense. My joy is knowing that in the darkness, dawn— whenever it may come— is on the horizon.



It took separation from a job I loved, and a conversation with Whit’s dad, to realize that I am Will Brown, not “Will Brown with the Tallahassee Democrat.” In the late nights chasing stories I lost track of who I am and focused more on what I am, as though it was validation for the type of man I had become.


That probably happens with most of us, we are too preoccupied with what others perceive us to be or what we are and not who we are. It takes a special, or mature, person to intimately recognize who we are at our essence.

My challenge to you is to figure that out if you have not already. Because newfound free time and the ability to play soccer more freely are tolerable in small doses, but the absolute truth is I would much prefer to be working.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb