DEATH OF BLACK MEDIA: Is Ebony Magazine Really Up For Sale?

Who Will Tell Our Stories, The Internet?

The outlook for the Holy grail of black-owned publishing companies, Johnson Publishing, is bleak. Actually, beyond bleak.

Non-stop speculation has had Ebony and Jet magazines on the ropes for some time. Then the Ebony Fashion Fair traveling fashion show -- a flamboyant staple of black women's fund raising efforts since 1958 -- was canceled for the first time in its history.

And now comes word that the company synonymous with Black America is putting its flagship title, Ebony, up for sale.

According to Newsweek, Johnson Publishing's chairman and CEO, Linda Johnson Rice, is seeking a buyer or investor in an effort aimed at securing the survival of the nation's oldest African-American magazine. It's unclear whether the company's other properties, including Jet, would be part of a possible sale.

We here at 3BAAS Media Group have been addressing this issue for some time and even held an Urban New Media Conference in June to discuss what actions should be taken.

According to those familiar with the developments, Chicago-based Rice, the daughter of Ebony's legendary founder, the late John H. Johnson, has approached, among others, Time Inc., Viacom, and private investors that include buyout firms. Time Inc., the world's largest periodical publisher, already owns Essence, a monthly lifestyle, beauty, and fashion magazine for African-American women.

Viacom, meanwhile, owns BET (Black Entertainment Television). Nothing has yet resulted from any of Johnson Publishing's overtures, however. And it's unclear whether negotiations are underway between the publishing company and any of the identified parties or other potential rescuers.

It's a challenging time for print media in general, so Johnson Publishing's plight is not that unusual. Add to that the question of whether the brand can stay relevant with younger blacks, and prospects look even worse.

The fact that black-owned Johnson Publishing faces this juncture during the year when a black man -- one whose social circle the CEO belongs to -- took the White House, is tragically ironic.

Still, no magazine holds the place in the collective heart of African Americans that Ebony has had since its inception in 1945. At the same time, the level of superiority and arrogance the company has shown can not be ignored. On several occasions we have heard people express frustration over how they tried to take the company in a direction that embraced New Media and kept readers fully engaged.

Even as recent as a few months ago at the 2nd Annual Blogging While Brown conference, several attendees where mumbling about Eric Easter, Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing. For many, Mr. Easter was coming across like he had all the answers as opposed to engaging those in the audience that have demonstrated an ability to create an online presence.

Currently, Johnson Publishing only has one photographer, Valarie Garrett, to cover the entire country for both Ebony and Jet. So even the images they once prided themselves on now coming from the record companies, studios, the celebrities themselves, or companies like Wire Image.

So the million dollar question is, "What we gon' do now???"

Source

To Hell With Boycotting Glen Beck, Show Black People The Money!

Apartheid Alive and Well on Madison Avenue

By Sanford Moore

During the time when America was segregated, the late, great Nat King Cole's groundbreaking television show was canceled because Madison Avenue and its clients would not sign on as sponsors. At the time he remarked, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark." Not only was his comment painfully correct, but also eerily prophetic, given that 50 years later Madison Avenue is still discriminating against black Americans.

The streets of Madison Avenue are like the segregated graveyards of the past, filled with generations of unrecognized black contributions, talent and ambitions.

The New York City Commission on Human Rights, in successive investigations dating from 1968 to 2005, has documented the consistent pattern of racial discrimination enforced by the major ad agencies and their corporate holding companies. They control a constellation of marketing, media buying, communications, lobbying and PR firms in which there is also a dearth of African-American executives.

Now, it's time to get agencies where it counts -- their wallets. Recently, I appealed to Bill Thompson, the New York City comptroller -- who manages pension funds, which collectively own some $100 million of agency holding companies' stock and some $6 billion of 46 of their clients' stock -- to pressure the agency CEOs to end the illegal and discriminatory practices of their affiliates.

Like the fight to free the blacks of South Africa, which was aided by the divestiture movement led by the institutional investor community, we must now employ the same tactic in freeing black Americans from the insidious grip of the Mad Men.

Workforce statistics and documented discrimination fail to put this flagrant and purposeful discrimination in its proper economic and societal context. In 1968, the year of the first New York City Commission on Human Rights investigation, the seminal book, The $30 Billion Negro, was published.

This revealed for the first time the extent and existence of the black consumer market. In 1979, when the commission's follow-up report declared that a condition of "de facto segregation" existed for blacks on Madison Avenue, a sequel to the book, The $70 Billion Negro, was published. So while the Mad Men and their corporate clients had no aversion to reaping black dollars, they were averse to hiring black employees and executives.

The black consumer market has since grown exponentially and is currently worth almost $1 trillion to Madison Avenue's corporate clients, according to Target Market News. Yet, Madison Avenue continues to denigrate the importance of African Americans and their consumer dollars. Madison Avenue agencies are still "afraid of the dark."

This prejudice, this remnant of Jim Crow, not only discriminates against black employees, executives and vendors, but also is propagated on the greater American society. It is manifest in the paucity of black leads on network TV, and in the disproportionately low use of black models in television commercials and magazine ads.

It is reflected in the rate and revenue disparity Madison Avenue forces on black radio stations as documented by the Federal Communications Commission. In fact, Madison Avenue has created and perpetuated a "separate and unequal" marketing paradigm. It is evident in its advertising, workforce, executive ranks and allocation of client ad dollars.

As reported by Nielsen, black-targeted media received some $2.3 billion in 2008. This figure represented 1 percent of measured ad spending. The figures for Q1 2009 reveal the same "niggardly" level of spending being allocated to black-targeted media.

Of the $1.3 billion spent by the federal government via Madison Avenue prime contractors in 2006-07, only $6.1 million found its way into black media vehicles, according to Nielsen.

When confronted with these figures, Madison Avenue agencies attempt to rationalize their policies with media gibberish about "impressions delivered" and meeting arbitrarily concocted media criteria.

What is being done is the same as when blacks were declared three-fifths of a person in the Constitution. Despite Jim Crow having been declared illegal more than 40 years ago, Madison Avenue continues to enforce a condition of marketing "peonage" on black Americans and the media that serve them.

Let us not forget that one of the differences between totalitarianism and democracy is the extent to which a free media system is supported by paid advertising. Also, let us consider the historical context since Cole uttered his scathing remark. Changes include the U.S. Voting Rights Act being passed, black rule in South Africa, black CEOs running U.S. corporations, black creative expression setting the tone of America's pop culture, and the U.S.'s first African-American president. Yet Madison Avenue refuses to lift the "cotton curtain" of discrimination.

We have had 40 years of pious pronouncements by the leaders of the industry, 40 years of investigations, reports and obfuscation, 40 years of denying the significance of the black consumer market. It is time to return the favor. It is time to make the CEOs of the holding companies pay a price with their own money, to affect their compensation packages and their company's stock price.

Thus my appeal to Thompson. As the youngsters say, it's all about the Benjamins.

Sanford Moore is an industry critic, former agency executive and current black talk radio co-host. He can be reached at thecutmancv@hotmail.com.

OMG!!! Actor LeVar Burton Has A Hissy Fit After Reading Rainbow Gets Canceled! (Spoof)

My Living Nightmare Of Encouraging Kids To Read Is Over

By LeVar Burton's Alter Ego

Thank god!

After 26 long years, I can finally rest easy. Twenty-six years I spent standing in front of a camera, gritting my teeth, and shilling the latest works of every hack children's book author imaginable.

For 26 years, I've told kids they could open a magical door to another world just by reading a book, when the only door it ever opened for me led to a soul-sucking career in the horrifying abyss of public television.

But now, at last, it is over. I don't have to lie anymore. I don't have to live that nightmare.

When the news came that Reading Rainbow would be canceled due to a lack of funding, I felt—well, to use a cliché like you'd find in one of the hundreds of books I pimped endlessly—like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

Every day I went to work hoping that maybe the studio had burned down, that maybe the program had been cut, that maybe PBS would finally stop squeezing the life from me drop by drop. Now that it's over, I feel the relief a bruised and broken soldier must feel when he is rescued after rotting away for decades in some dank, forgotten POW camp.

May that godforsaken show burn in hell.

At long last, I can pick up a book and read for pleasure! Haven't read one in ages. You know what I was reading during those 26 insufferable years? Scripts. Scripts for roles that went to actors who weren't stigmatized by their association with a TV show occupying the time slot right after Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

I happen to be an accomplished actor. I starred in Roots, which was the most-watched show in American television history. My stirring portrayal of Kunta Kinte got me an Emmy nomination. But you know what? At 25 years old, when the opportunity to earn a regular paycheck working on a children's show came along, it seemed like a pretty damn good idea.

I was dead, dead wrong.

Little did I know the next quarter century of my life would be an unrelenting blur of excruciating trips to some of the most boring places on earth. Apiaries, steam trains, old mills—every week they sent me to a fresh hellhole, and every week I had to interview the dullest people imaginable.

And those humiliating books. Maebelle's Suitcase and The Jolly Postman. These were not the classics. Anyone who could glue paper between two pieces of cardboard and hire a publicist could get a book on that show. And there I was, in sheer agony, trying to keep a smile on my face while talking up Germs Make Me Sick!

Before long, people began recognizing me on the street, and inevitably they'd come over and start singing this awful, cloying tune. When I finally asked somebody what the hell it was, I was sickened to learn that it was the show's theme. I'd never heard it. They didn't play it on the set, and Lord knows I never saw one episode of that garbage when it aired.

Hoping to escape Reading Rainbow's clutches, I started taking any role I could get. I'm proud of some of them: I played Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Martin Luther King in Ali. But you know what the most challenging role of my career was? Hosting Reading Rainbow and acting like I gave a shit about getting kids interested in books.

Fact is, I couldn't care less whether kids learn to read. There, I said it.

Look, Reading Rainbow was a television program. That should tell you something right there. What I should have done is hosted a show that taught children how to watch more television. I bet they would have come up with the funding to renew that show.

All I've done for 26 years is drive to work, clock in, read my lines, clock out, go home, and cry myself to sleep. Now I'm much older, a broken man, but I've reached the end of my terrifying journey.

And do you know what's at the end? Do you what's at the end of the "Reading Rainbow"?

A giant crock of shit, that's what.

Are Anti-Obama Protestors One Step Away From Calling The President A N-Word?

The Water Line Keeps Rising, And All We’re Doing Is Standing There

by Erin Aubry Kaplan

Worst thing first: the loosely confederated but commonly paranoid, almost proudly malevolent anti-America forces that pass for a conservative movement in this country is about two seconds away from calling our shining President Obama a nigger.

But that’s not the worst thing—actually, it may be best thing.

My husband is an American history teacher who’s been arguing for years that the racism that’s supposed to be such a thing of the national past has always stewed just below our surface, give or take an inch or two. The virulent resistance to Obama’s health-care reform efforts—and increasingly to Obama himself-- exposes this inconvenient truth more effectively than any argument that my husband or anybody else could make.

The big conservative march on Washington this past weekend paraded a grab-bag of grievances that all reduced down to one thing: Obama is an Other who doesn’t think like Us.

I wish this was so much political theater staged solely for the benefit of Fox News, et al, but I’m afraid it’s more than that. How else is it possible that the very centrist senator from Illinois, momentarily demonized as a liberal, was very quickly made into a socialist/fascist dictator with an oily smile and even oilier words who was trying to sneak Big Brother government past the loyal watchdogs of liberty and individual rights?

For many true and overwhelmingly white believers, Obama is Hitler meets the mythical black trickster Br’er Rabbit, a dread colored Communist who must be kept from power at all costs, because of course Negroes were most in need of social and economic redress, and must always be barred from the inner sanctums of capitalism.

Electing Obama was one thing, realizing we all must now follow the path he defines, whether we like it or agree with it or not, is entirely another.

The panic is setting in. Even the white folks who voted for him are rethinking their position, wondering seven months into this experiment if it was such a good idea.

It reminds me of a dynamic that black people know all too well—you get hired for a job in a burst of white generosity, but as soon as the going gets tough, you’re the first to be let go. Except that in the case of the President, he can’t be fired, at least not right away. So a certain segment of the population, including certain members of Congress, are trying to neutralize Obama with panic and character assassination.

I should have known this was coming, and I did. But I’m disheartened nonetheless.

I hardly agree with all that Obama’s doing, starting with ramping up the war in Afghanistan; I’m one of those disaffected progressives that he still calls friends. But to see him not even being treated like a president, when so much unearned respect was accorded George W. Bush for so long, is painful. It’s personal.

And it’s not just Republicans and conservatives colluding on the diss, it’s Obama’s fellow weak-kneed Democrats who either are blue dogs or who have no stomach for racial matters, and therefore say nothing; in not regularly calling out the bullshit of the opposition, they are standing with them.

Alas, President Obama looks as isolated right now as black people in high places have always been—isolation is the price of their success. The irony is that a president is elected to lead, not to be the prominent but innocuous face of affirmative action.

That’s the change Obama assumed came with the mandate of his election.

He was wrong.

ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and on the blog 3 Brothers and A Sister. Among her many projects, Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.

Do You Recall: A Poem in Honor of 9-11

By Richard Ivory

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense.
King Lear, 5. 3

Do you recall:

See the images of our people running

through dust clouds;

trying to escape falling steel;

the still images of screams of horror

tears of anguish!

The choked filled tears of mothers having to explain

the where- abouts of a deceased husband?

Have we forgotten the 92 brave men and women who died on Flight 11?

Have we forgotten our people on United Airlines Flight 175

which hit the South Tower ;

or American Airlines Flight 77

crashing into the Pentagon?

Have we forgotten

Brave Patriots

who prevented United Airlines Flight 93,

from crashing into the Capitol

yet instead perished

on the green fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania?

Have we forgotten America?

Did you see our people throw

themselves helplessly out of windows

to escape the scorching flames?

Do we not recall

the thousands upon thousands

who flooded the Brooklyn bridge

to escape this great terror?

And did we not recall

a Mayor who led fearlessly

as his city was awash in smoke

and in pain.

Let us never forget !

Death(s) 3,017 (including 24 presumed dead and 19 hijackers)
Injured 6,291+
Perpetrator(s): al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden

Source

Natalie Cole Comes Back Stronger, Better Than Ever!

This Is What Triumph Looks Like!

by Errol Briggs

Natalie gave more than what we could have ever imagined or prayed for last night at the beautiful Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Her comeback performance was out of this world. She commanded that stage like she had never been sick a day in her life.

When I tell you that I was "almost" in Heaven last night, then you can believe it.

On Wednesday September 10, 2009, the legendary singer and famous daughter of the incomparable Nat King Cole out performed Aretha, Patti, and Chaka. Natalie wore a deep purple gown for almost the entire show before changing into an equally beautiful turquoise mini gown. She brought out Kurt Carr and the Kurt Carr Singers, and she took us literally to church. She started to do the "Holy Dance" and shouted for about 5 minutes.

When you have been through what Natalie has been through, we know why Natalie danced and shouted all night. I think His name is JESUS. The man who saved her life; The man who gave her a new kidney; The man who delivered her from drug abuse; The man who is her all in all. Don't you know a little something about this man I am talking about?

I thank God for giving Natalie a new beginning, and I thank God for placing each one of you in my life. As Natalie said last night, "When you are going through something, you think you are the only one who is going through it. We all got problems in this world, so never give up and always know that if God did it for me, He will do it for you". Well spoken Natalie!

Errol Wayne is President of Errol Briggs & Associates. Check him out over on Facebook.

Museum Officials, Business Partners, Even Florida Governor Charlie Crist Is Pulling Out All The Stops For Black Art Exhibit

The Sunshine State has spared no effort to promote The Kinsey Collection, what many are claiming will be the most remarkable art and historic exhibit yet in tracing the African-American experience for Tallahassee residents. People are already feeling the impact.

Florida A&M University grads Bernard and Shirley Kinsey still consider Tallahassee a second home, and for six months "The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey" will have residence at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science. The exhibit officially opens to the public Friday and will remain here until March 21, 2010.

"I will tell you that we are projecting stronger admissions for the Brogan Museum than ever before," said Chucha Barber, the Brogan's CEO. "We have generated significant sponsorship for this exhibit, even more so than we had for the blockbuster Our Body — The Universe Within."

The list of corporate partners is a business Who's Who: Visit Florida, The Walt Disney Co., Target Stores, Progress Energy, State Farm, Edison Electric, the Anheuser Busch Foundation and AT&T, among others.

Local partner A.M.W.A.T. Moving & Storage volunteered to truck the exhibit here from Los Angeles and will take it to Washington, D.C., for its next venue, the Smithsonian Institution.

Barber said the biggest outreach is a cooperative effort with tourism marketer Visit Florida and American Express, which will promote the exhibit to more than 7.4 million people through the company's communications with its cardholders.

In Florida, the Governor's Office will join in marketing the exhibit with emphasis on February, Black History Month, she said.

Besides Los Angeles, the Kinsey Collection has been on display in Cincinnati, Chicago and in Bernard Kinsey's hometown of West Palm Beach, where it was housed at the Norton Museum of Art.

"We have had about 200,000 people see the collection, 12 to 15 million people have seen it on television, and about 2-plus million will see it at the Smithsonian," Bernard Kinsey said. "But what we're trying to do is a little different."

Continue

The Kevin Ross Show Takes On The "Evil" Barack Obama, The "Strange" Van Jones, The "Disturbed" Maia Campbell and The "Bizarre" Kinsey Collection

NOT!

Although now that we have your attention, make sure you tune in Wednesday 09-09-09 as Boss Ross talks all about the controversial issues everyone's buzzing over.

What's your reaction to the insanity surrounding Barack Obama? What's next for Van Jones? How is Maia Campbell doing after the video tape looking not quite herself went viral.

Plus, we'll take you inside The Kinsey Collection, debuting this week at the Mary Brogan Musuem in Tallahassee, Florida. That's 7:00pm PST tonight, only on Blogtalkradio.

Chris Brown Doesn't Heart Oprah, But It's Hollywood That Still Has Some 'Esplainin To Do

Young Black Actors Get A Few Crumbs At ABC, NBC

Chris Brown Upset with Winfrey Over Rihanna

Is Politics or Race Behind Obama's Education Speech?

Innocent Man Gets $1.8 Million After 23 Years in Jail
350,000 Hit by West Africa Flooding

Williams Sisters Reach 4th Round at US Open

Celebrated Kinsey Collection Makes A Black History Connection

Perry Bringing 'Colored Girls' to the Big Screen
Amnesty Urges Sudan to Withdraw Charges in 'Trouser Trial'
Toronto's 1st Africentric School Set to Open
Sheree Whitfield's Divorce Details Emerge
NC Man Sentenced for Threatening to Kill Obama
A Black Woman Poised for Presidential Candidate in Brazil

Costco Apologizes For Little Monkey Doll

Glenn Beck 1, Van Jones 0 as The Obama White House Strikes Out In The Game of Hardball Politics!

Black Environmental Czar Done After Beck Boycott, "A-hole" Uproar

Van Jones, a newly minted policy adviser who specialized in "green jobs", has called it quits after a crescendo of criticism over his previous affiliation with a September 11 conspiracy group. But was that the real reason the brotha was "swiftboated"? Well, calling Republicans "assholes" didn't help.

After weeks of being embroiled in what Jones himself termed a "vicious smear campaign," concerning past inflammatory statements, the San Francisco based author and lecturer relinquished the desirable DC gig just as President Obama fights to regain his campaign swagger on the contentious health care debate that has even Democrats failing to get in lock step.

Jones, appointed as special adviser at the White House Council on Environmental Quality in March of this year, apologized earlier after digital content of him "keeping it real" in describing Republicans went viral. Marry to a Caucasian woman, Jones has been very outspoken nevertheless on environmental race issues that many believe have caused urban areas with a large concentration of Blacks and Latinos to suffer at the hands of eco-friendly Whites.

Adding gasoline to the blazing controversy were subsequent revelations that Jones had the audacity to signed a petition suggesting that the U.S. government was involved in the 2001 attacks in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington.

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones said in his resignation letter. "I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future," he wrote.

But did this character assassination of Jones, 40, really have more to do with the pounding Fox cable talk show host Glenn Beck has been receiving from the Color of Change organization concerning statements that Obama was racist?

In all likelihood, yes, especially since Color of Change was co-founded by Jones and to date, they have successfully convinced 57 companies to not advertise on Beck's show. Not that the polarizing media figure's ratings have suffered because of the issue. In fact, their soaring!

And now that Beck has one scalp that he can put on his mantle, things are just starting to heat up.

Source

Gardena Councilmember Steve Bradford To Join The California State Assembly

The Distinguished Gentleman Heads To Sacramento

He made the announcement on his Facebook page just before midnight. With 100% of the precints reporting, Gardena city councilman Steve Bradford convincingly defeated five challengers in a Special Primary election to become Assemblymember-elect for the 51st Assembly District.

According to election results reported by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, Assemblymember-elect Bradford, the Democratic Party´s endorsed candidate, won the open special primary election in the 51st Assembly District with 52.9% of the vote.

His closest competitor was Democratic Party candidate Gloria Gray, who garnered 19.2% of the vote, and Republican Party candidate David Coffin with collected 17.1% of votes cast (with 100% of the district´s 158 precincts reporting).

"We engaged the voters with a clear agenda for change in the 51st Assembly District. The voters wanted a legislative representative who would focus on creating new jobs, provide residents with greater access to healthcare services at private and public hospitals, and work diligently to solve the state´s ongoing budget mess and cut the massive state deficits that inflict pain on local governments struggling to provide essential local services," said the Black pol who replaces Curren Price who now is the State Senator for the area.

Gardena Councilmember Steven Bradford is serving his fourth four-year term on Gardena´s City Council. He has been a four-time Mayor Pro Tem in more than 12-years on the city council. In March 1997, he became the first African-American to be elected to represent the people of Gardena on its city council.

Steve Bradford is the senior member on the Gardena City Council. He is widely regarded in Gardena municipal government for holding quarterly ´Up-Close´ meetings and ´Open Council´ office sessions to provide local residents and business people regularly scheduled opportunities to offer citizen´s input on Gardena city affairs.

Hot New Actor Jesse Williams Is Making People Go Terrence Howard Who?

Brooklyn native Jesse Williams is intentionally trying to seduce you with those piercing hazel green eyes. Is it working???

Hollywood's new "it" guy has quite a lot on his plate, causing the Black actors IMBD page to be up almost 20% in popularity. Two films, The Cabin in The Woods and Red Tails are currently in production, he's in Sarah Jessica Parker's The Washingtonienne, and Jesse is also making hearts flutter in Brooklyn's Finest (Yes he is!)


Keep your eyes on this one ladies. We likey!

STOP SAYING NBC STANDS FOR NOTHING BUT CAUCASIAN, STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

NBC's 2009 Fall TV Season Promo.

THOUGHTS???

For All You Sistahs Who Smoke, This One's For You Baby!

Did I Just Win $54,443?

by Isidra Person Lynn

I asked the young Asian USC student behind me in line how much a pack of cigarettes were these days. He had Newports, my former brand that I quit when the kids rolled in some 27 years ago.

He had been tapping the turquoise box,tugging at the cellophane. As I packed my groceries, he fished out his receipt and said "I'll tell you exactly: $5.99."

In horror, I shrieked "For one pack? They were $.36 a pack when I was your age in Virginia!" His eyes bugged. We made more small talk about cartons being like over $40 bucks. When he left , I was still packing my groceries in shock when the next customer, an older black woman, pushed her cart close and motioned for me to come near.

I could barely make out her words, but she said in the most gravilly voice lower than a whisper: "I wish I could have let him hear me talk". Her voice came from a hole in her neck she pointed to. You've seen the kind on that anti smoking commercial, right?

The woman went on to say she was 75. She was still robust, still beautiful. I said "Well, he may not think it pertains to him, you know how the young are." She managed to eek out "Well, he should. I have been like this since I was 40."

Wow. Now, what are the odds the very next person I would speak to would be her--a survivor of such a life-changing cancer??

Yes, I felt as if I had just won the lottery because if I had continued smoking for the last 27 years, I would have spent roughly $54,443 dollars and who knows how many doctors visits. I thought I would die with a cigarette in my hand, but as I take this deep breath in, it feels so good to exhale.

How did I do it? The month before New Years one year (No, I really don't remember which) I smoked on purpose like a chimney, so much so I was just tired of it--even sick of it. I told myself that on New Year's Eve I would cut up whatever cigarettes I had on hand, flush them down the commode and when the New Year came that would be it. And it was.