People – Through My Periscope

Welcome Home to Africa

I read in the news yesterday that Ludacris has just gotten Gabonese citizenship. It seems his wife is from Gabon, and so he got it through her. Irrespective of how he got it, though, it is symbolic of a wave of Africanism that has been cresting over the past few years. Specifically, the facet of […]

by Peter George Smith

Goodbye Artical Don

Facebook has its detractors. Some folk feel it is a privacy-invasion slippery slope. Facebook also has its supporters. Despite all the issues of privacy currently swirling around the platform, I am one of the latter. Not that I am not concerned about privacy. One of the things that pisses me off, for example, is Facebook’s […]

by Peter George Smith

On the Road to Africa

“Free seating, free seating! Sit anywhere you want!” He had to be talking to me, as it was I who had posed him the question about whether or not he was in the right seat. By the way he pitched his head though, and his voice too, he seemed to be addressing all of the […]

by Peter George Smith

Caribbean Christmas in Flight

The Air France flight just took off from Toussaint L’Ouverture in Port-au-Prince, headed for Miami, after a pit stop coming from Pointe-a-Pitre. On the way up from Guadeloupe there was an older man and a younger-looking woman seated beside me, just behind the exit row on the left hand side of the plane. Haiti was […]

by Peter George Smith

Upon the Departure of My Mother

I did not cry when my mother died. Not when I got the news. I was in the kitchen at home in Florida, tooling around the stove trying to fix a quick breakfast, when the red, car-shaped phone rang. I reached quickly into the corner of the counter where it was parked and grabbed it […]