Let 2017 be your year of overcoming the obstacles. In our world today there seems to be a lot of obstacles: racism, poverty, joblessness. But I have come to learn in my own life and through writing my father’s biography, that obstacles don’t signify stopping points. Unless you live in Chester’s Mill “Under the Dome.” (A fictional TV program that I loved-the town people couldn’t go under the Dome or around it or through it.) In real life obstacles can be overcome.

If you have followed my blog for awhile you know that I have published a book about my father, Eddie Green. My intent was for this blog and the book to be inspirational. To maybe help motivate someone to follow their dreams no matter how difficult it may seem. My family laughs at the title of my blog Pin In The Tush. But I told them it is supposed to bring to mind what happens when someone is stuck in the tush (or butt, if you prefer) with a pin, they usually jump-they are motivated! Anyhow, the book talks about the fact that my father was a Black man born in 1891 in the most poverty-stricken, segregated part of Baltimore, Md. Jobs were few and far between. I think his mother took in washing and I have almost no knowledge of his father, except that maybe he worked the docks when he could. There was no sewage system then and the houses were falling apart alley houses.

Despite the racism, the lack of jobs, and the poverty, or maybe because of it, Eddie left home at nine years of age, taught himself how to read, through books learned the art of magic and performed magic acts in churches and halls in and around Baltimore. He found work as a handy man where he could and wound up working at a theater where they also let him perform. He wrote a song (a bestseller), and sold it for next to nothing. (It became a bestseller after he sold it.) He took himself and a group of ladies out on the road in the South with his song. He got more work in the Theater, wrote more songs and just climbed from there to become extremely successful in the world of entertainment. Racism did not stop him. He was one of the most sought after comedians on White radio programs. He played Eddie, the waiter on the Duffy’s Tavern radio program through the last ten years of his life. Poverty motivated him. The necessity of having money gave him the impetus to teach himself a skill.

Anyone can enjoy a good life despite the seeming let-downs or road-blocks. This year have faith in yourself, treat yourself well, put in the work, learn something new, love your neighbors and see how you can be an inspiration to someone else.

Hey, thanks for stopping by and please, share this with a friend.

And read: Eddie Green The Rise of an Early 1900s Black American Entertainment Pioneer. Publisher: BearManorMedia.com