By Norman Cain, May 7, 2020 — I had an expensive cellphone that my son-in-law bought me several months ago when I was in Orlando, Florida, but it broke down and I got an inexpensive cellphone and it’s working better than the expensive cellphone. There are some problems, but the good thing about it is the fact that I played around with it which I didn’t do with the old cellphone, the expensive one, and I was able to get online and I was able to get to my Facebook, which allowed me to be into Zoom right now with Best Day. Now I’m having problems getting into Zoom with my church, but I don’t have any problems getting into Zoom with my writing group at Drexel University which meets about three times a week but I’m able to do it once a week on Fridays. Hopefully, by this week or by the end of this month, I’ll have a computer. It should be coming in any day now and it’s going to be a donation, what I understand, from my writing group at Drexel. But if that doesn’t come through, I’m definitely going to get one at the beginning of next month.
Like previous presenters, I’m very thankful that during this dire time that we are getting text messages and phone calls, etcetera from people. Now, I’ve been getting calls and I’ve been calling people that I haven’t really talked to for three or four years. Especially with Facebook and whatnot, I’ve been reaching out to relatives across the country and also with the phone here, and it’s really coming in handy this technology, it can be bad and it can be good. Two folk Philadelphia icons in their mid-eighties, Bootsie Barnes who is a jazz saxophonist, very famous, he passed away. Just as soon as he passed away, they had all of … his sessions and whatnot [on videos]. And also, there’s a guy who’s about eighty-four who was a great social dancer who’s named Otis Givens, we could follow him ever since his teenage days and he died and they had so much on him.
Also, several times I’ve been in the presence of Trapeta Mayson who is the poet laureate of Philadelphia, so I got a chance to see her on television. And I cannot think because of the senior moments coming in, but there is a fella that was with, or he’s still with the MOVE organization, and he had just came out of prison, and he held on to his liberty for forty-five years I believe. And he gave the true story about the brutality and whatnot that they really had to endure — the true story. There was a first MOVE incident down in Powelton Village, the true story that they held up with this terrible system that we have in the United States, and that’s one of the things that’s disturbing me. We have all of this outpouring of love that’s going back and forth and I can feel it right now over the phone. All of this feeling of love and comforting words and then we have, I have to say it, our government really does not care. When you hear statements that some of us will have to die, you don’t have to say it that way but this is the way it is and this is what we have got to understand.
One of the things that I’ve been doing during this pandemic is that I’ve been researching Zora Neale Hurston. Several weeks ago I came back from Orlando, Florida and I stayed with my daughter and her family and I attended the thirty-fourth year anniversary of her festival in the town that she grew up—Eatonville, an all-Black town since about 1895 or earlier and it’s still incorporated. And the state of Florida wanted to put a highway through the town and they almost were successful in doing that but then the people rallied and said that the town was worth saving because of Zora Neale Hurston. So thirty-four years ago when they had the first festival I think 3,000 folks came. She is definitely a literary figure, a playwright, dance promoter, journalist, anthropologist, singer, dancer, and you can go on and on and on and on. So the last several weeks I’ve been researching, by the phone again, her work. I knew that she was prolific but I did not know the depth of her genius. So, basically that’s what I’ve been doing and I’m so happy that we have been able to come together at this point.
