I always want to read something about our people's enslavement near the 4th. To keep it light, I also read Rolanda Watts' "Destiny Lingers" She is a sisterfriend and I ran into her at Essence. Then, I finished Paul Taylor's "The Next America." Taylor is the Executive VP at the Pew Research Center, and he uses their excellent data base to talk about the coming "generational showdown" which we are experiencing, at some level, in Black America.

I am addicted to the printed word, and my idea of a good time is a good book.

Sometimes, I repeat myself, and that was a second elimination [of Barack Obama]. I worked with a team, including a great editor who, as the project came together, suggested other additions and eliminations. It was a process.

[My childhood was ] spiritual than religious.

This was in 2004, and it told me that President [Barack] Obama intended to be very careful and noncontroversial in addressing race matters. I

I hope his wife feeds him [Clarence Thomas, Justice, U.S. Supreme Court] lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. . . . He is an absolutely reprehensible person.

The Task Force didn't produce any earth-shattering findings but it suggests that this matter is on the president's radar screen.