The path through life is often a bumpy one.  There are few of us who have made it without a lot of mistakes and bad decision making.  And while, its optimal to keep yourself out of trouble—its honorable to face your bad decision making, mitigate your damages and turn it around.  Too often we see bad circumstances or bad decision-making as a death sentence that crushes our goals and motivation.  We use our misfortune as an excuse and a life-time reason to gripe about what we don’t have and what we cant get.  But not Rob Tillman.

Almost one year to the day after graduating 5th in his high school class and receiving a full academic scholarship to a major university, Rob sat in a county jail cell.

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NEWSFLASH:  You can have a bunch of fancy schmancy degrees and still give back.  Jim Smith shows you how.

Jim Smith is one of my heroes.  So often, we buy into the dichotomy that you have to either make a lot of money and forget the people or love the people and be broke.  However, Jim Smith, with a mind trained in physics, technology and business has devoted his life and significant brain power to crafting more effective and efficient ways to mentor and teach life development skills to at-risk youth.    He looks back on his days in subsidized housing and knows that it was education and a strong family that helped him avoid becoming a statistic, and he is determined to create opportunities that will do the same for others.

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Aaron McGruder
Cartoonist

Born: 29 May 1974
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois

Just a few years ago, when he was still a young college student, Aaron McGruder decided to create a comic strip that reflected both his love of hip-hop culture and the true racial diversity and complexity of the world in which he lived.

The result was The Boondocks, the story of a group of African-American city kids adjusting to life in white suburbia. Combining childhood antics with contemporary political and social satire, the strip explores the terrain where dashikis and Brand Nubian CDs meet The Gap and Hanson.

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I love these guys!  Thank you for reminding us that there is more to black music  than clubs and ballin and booty shaking and that there are some of us that actually still know how to play an instrument.

You’ve heard the expression, “don’t judge a book by its cover”; teenage brothers Damien and Tourie Escobar are a perfect example. When you first spy the New York duo’s streetwise style, you may expect them to start rapping, but then you hear their violins, and an entirely profound and altogether surprising sound awakens from their souls. Dubbed N.B.S or Nuttin But Stringz, the talented young musicians play an intense blending of classical music, jazz, r&b, and yes, hip hop.

Tourie and Damien, studied at the Juliard School of Music and Bloomingdale School of Music and have taken their mastered skill to startling heights to include the world famous APOLLO THEATER, JAY LENO SHOW and ELLEN SHOW just to name a few.

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