Brown Betties Gazette

Editor’s Edict:

It’s already mid-month of this brand new year and surprisingly, I think I’m pretty settled into it. Are you? Somehow I feel like this year will be like an amazing jacket you bought three years ago, put it in your closet with the tags still on and you are just now finding it…something old, yet new.

Whatever your situation may be, let’s take off the old jacket we’ve been wearing; it has done its job, it has run its course; it’s time to change!

Maybe you’re discovering old talents you’ve let lie dormant and are realizing once you blow the dust off ‘em, these talents can make you “change” (literally and figuratively – think $$)! Maybe you’re changing your outlook on life or the way you do things which will help you make a significant shift in your current position since changing a stagnant position can bring on growth.

The Gazette is due for a positioning change. Since I was a teenager reading “Seventeen” magazine and realized I wasn’t represented on those glossy pages, I’ve wanted to have my own magazine -- hence, the birth of The Brown Betties Gazette. This year we’ll be working to turn BBG into an actual online, flippin’ mag (see here). We will be accepting advertisements and donations to make this happen (click on the Paypal logo!). If you are interested in advertising with BBG, email us at brownbettiesgazette@yahoo.com!

Somehow, I think my mom and grandma win this month with how they have had to change…uhh, read her article, “Momma Said” and you’ll see what I mean. We have some wonderful poetry from Cecilie Davis Carter for “In My Solitude” and Tanya Alexander-Henderson asks you to defy what you hear with her piece in “The New Haiku”. Sidney Gaskins offers you a 2009 Challenge in “Love. Hate. Want. Need.” I’m a “Mocha Mogul” (so is Sidney), and came across a blog written by Nicole, also a Mocha Mogul, that was perfect for “Unzipped”. I hope you’ll enjoy it as well as the eighth fiction installment of "Harlem's Awakening"...the back story to Harlem & Joe of “Harlem’s Night Cabaret” as performed by the Brown Betties.

Our featured January Brown Bettie is my dearest friend, Miata Fuller…she is the perfect woman to jump off 2009 simply because she is who she is!

Thank you for reading; please forward to a friend; and don’t forget to visit www.brownbetties.com! If you have any comments, feel free to hit me up at brownbettiesgazette@yahoo.com

xo
The Hot One

ps. The biggest change of all: GO OBAMA! I still cry when I think of it.

Here are pics of me and some friends on that wonderful night he was elected. Photos by friend, Adrian Pitts.