525,600 Minutes. . .

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."

Benjamin Franklin, 1746

The benchmarking of time is one of the most important elements of history. It helps us rationalize our lives where we stand, while also requiring our cognition of where we've been and where we are headed. Time allows us to collect the stories that lie within the interstices of our historical culture. It helps us place into perspective the songs belted out in church, on the radio, and on the streets. Time shapes the words authors, poets, playwrights, and historians painstakingly lay out on the world's pages. If attention to it is paid, time prohibits waste, organizes priorities, and encourages life's curious appreciations.

BlaqueAdemics, a non-profit organization encompassing two profit-free groups and a publishing house, understands the urgency of life, and therefore, addresses a singularly significant need having time constraints: knowledge acquisition. Certainly myriad varieties of education are available; but, what knowledge do we retain? What new knowledge do we take away from higher education, familial interaction, and everyday observation and experience that can change where we are and place us in a position to move toward where we are required to be? More importantly, are we even armed with the fundamental knowledge to pay attention to what's lacking and capitalize on that which is not? BlaqueAdemics endeavors to be a clearinghouse for two organizations that provide that necessitated knowledge. While the Blaque Awareness Network™ is a forum for multi-media communication, the goals for the Blaque Awareness Center™ are to offer an onsite location for students to receive support in their educational endeavors, which range from tutoring to understanding financial aid. Banned Books & Company's sole purpose is to publish work by otherwise non-published authors who explore, interrogate, and contribute to the American experience, particularly manuscripts that concern African American, Ethnic, and American literature, history, and culture. From textbooks, to fiction, drama and poetry, when launched, Banned Books & Co., will be on the road to providing publishing services to a wide array of authors and reading audiences.

BlaqueAdemics™--where knowledge is applied. . .

The Blaque Awareness Network (2009)

Our distance from each other, socially, economically, geographically, and certainly educationally, hinders the possibility that we will connect with each other, each other's needs, or each others resources. If Katrina taught America anything, it should be that when we leave each other behind we all loose something of value. Those who need uplift should receive it from those who have already received it--we must pay it forward. Nothing brings people together more closely or quickly than cultural awareness of both ourselves, and each other. It's not that racism in America wll not continue to exist. In some eras it will even grow. However, there are myriad ways to avoid our participation in such a social system. Knowledge is the key, as acknowledging and knowing our individual culture encourage our desire to that of others, and such knowledge supersedes race, class, and gender. For ethnic minorities, our connection to our history and the history of others around us usually yeilds some level of unity, as we often find that we are ancient siblings, survivors of the same socio-economic systems that plagued our past and often plague many of us today. Our most powerful weapons against oppression and self-doubt are found in us, our knowledge of us, and our appliation of such knowledge. The Blaque Awareness Network provides a forum where this knowledge can be gained, and of course, applied in useful ways to the betterment of ourselves as individuals, the social groups to which we belong, and our country as a whole.

Banned Books & Co. (2010)

The next time you visit your local commerical bookstore, take not of the offerings that meet you at the entrance. Most of the selections are forms of entertainment to make us forget where we are in the world. While some might say that entertainment is supposed to make us forget, there comes a point when we've forgotten far too much. The local Barnes and Nobel or Borders Books greets readers of black fiction with an array of fiction from the 'hood, an affront in and of itself to African American readers of merit. There is a certainly a lack of knowledge among mainstream booksellers of which Banned Books & Company possesses.

The sole purpose of this developing publishing house is to provide to our readers a body of valuable literary work, while providing workshops, panels, and events for experienced and budding authors who desire to contribute new knowledge to the reading community. Banned Books & Company's first offerings, due out in September 2010, includes a competitive African American literature textbook, an inclusive textbook of Ethnic American literature, two books of poetry, and one autobiography. Banned Books is not a 'vanity' publishing house, but rather one where progressive, thinking, knowing authors can be published in the center of, yet outside of the mainstream. Although this endeavor begins modestly, BB&C will ultimately produce a scholarly journal, community newspaper, collegiate volumes concerning cultural, historical, and literary scholarship, and volumes of a-typical fiction, poetry, prose, drama, and short stories.

The Blaque Awareness Center (2015)

The hope of BlaqueAdemics is that a need for commercial space will arrive out of its first two organizations. Once acquired, the Center will house all of BlaqueAdemics' activities with an objective to maintain the growing computer operations needs of of The Blaque Awareness Network. It will also be home to Banned Books & Co. offices. The Center will also serve as a community center for local high school and college students, as well as the general public, to study, conduct research, receive tutoring in writing, consult with qualified academic advisors, and of course, network with each other and the community. In this way, The Center will secure all the endeavors of BlaqueAdemics, and for years and decades to come, will be the place where new knowledge is sought, found, and applied.

Favorite Links

• Kutztown University
• Temple University
• Wayne State University
• The Free Library of Philadephia
• The African American Museum in Philadelphia
• The Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
• African American Studies at Temple University

BlaqueAdemics^TM
"where knowledge is applied. . .
P.O. Box 2172
Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania 19608
©1992-2011
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