A few links:

• Problogger has the most comments I’ve ever seen for one post. Awesome on all ends.
• Electronic Village presents a video on Barack, Curtis, and the perception of manhood in the Black community.
• Cute babies at Boing Boing plead their innocence. They swear they’re not terrorists. You be the judge.
• The families of Brandon McClellan (Black man who was dragged to death) and Jennifer Hudson (mother and brother killed, nephew missing), I send my deepest condolences.
• Yeah, I know you don’t like getting stats about the drop-out rate in this country, but it’s not going away (Thanks, LeaderTalk).

A point to make:

Early on in my career (yes, it’s a career now), we were told that there’ll be tough moments that’ll test our mettle, but we should always appreciate the small moments and inflate them as much as possible. That moment for this blog came at this comment:

Anonymous { 08.09.08 at 11:15 pm } I agree with everything above; I am a gay high school student, in the bible belt, and have not yet come out to even friends and family. I am not so much afraid that they will abandon me, but I am afraid that they will never be able to think of me in the same way. I really appreciate you doing this for these teens.

Before that comment, there were only 8 comments on that post, 2 of them from me. And there were good points made, but I just kept writing, not thinking much about what I wrote. I posted this in January, and that’s where most of the comments ended. Seven months later, a young men somewhere out there puts that thought out there. I was so awed, I couldn’t even reply. I just kinda nodded in silence as I read it over again.

When I read comments like that, it’s not so much about how many comments I get, but about what they say.

I’ll get into that tomorrow. For now, comment as you please. I’ll be reading and nodding along.

jose, who is always halfway between the moon and New York City …