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Welcome, Eric L. Wattree!
Profile Information
- Current Hometown:
- Covina, California
- Connection to the Denver Urban Spectrum (may select more than one)
- New Reader, ConnectMe Member
- Sex:
- Male
- Relationship Status:
- Single
- Family:
- Wife: Valdie L. Wattree--Deceased
Daughter: Kaiumeka S. Jackson--Married, 3 kids.
Son: Eric L. Wattree,Jr.--Divorced, 2 Kids
Grandchildren:
Daughter's--Taylor (Girl), Byron, and Miles Coltrane Jackson.
Son's--Eric Wattree,III and Eli Wattree
- Career:
- Writer
- Hobbies/Interests:
- Playing Sax (Tenor, Alto, and Soprano), Listening to Jazz, reading. and writing.
Interests: Politics, Law, Philosophy, Psychology, Photography, Cosmology, Astronomy.
- E-mail address:
- wattree@verizon.net
- A Favorite Website:
- http://wattree.com
- Another Favorite Website:
- http://wattree.blogspot.com
- Another Favorite Website:
- http://yourblackworld.com
Bio
I'm a writer, poet, and musician (sax), born in Los Angeles (Watts), now located in Covina, Ca. I'm a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, The Black Star News, and a contributing writer for Dr. Boyce Watkins’ Your Black World, among several other publications. I’m also the author of A Message From the Hood:
I began writing when my late wife, and childhood sweetheart, Valdie Whitmore-Wattree, began writing me from college while I was in the Marine Corps. While trying to respond I was shock to find that I couldn’t fully express my feelings to her, so I embarked upon a crash course in English composition. Since the base library was all but never used, the Chaplin gave me the key, and thereafter I, literally, made the library my home on base.
After I was discharge I went on to West Los Angeles College and CSULA and majored in Psychology. But the foundation for what I consider my legitimate education was laid many years earlier on the streets of Los Angeles. There, some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lot of ghetto liquor stores.
These were the "Eulipians"—writers, poets, musicians, hustlers, and uncommon drunks—all, shade-tree philosophers who contemplated the fungus between the toes of society. Without apology, these visionaries danced with reckless abandon, unfettered by formal inhibition, through the presumptuous speculation of the ages. It was at their feet that I embraced the love of knowledge, and through their tutelage defined self-worth in my own terms.
While these obscure intellectuals stood well outside the mainstream of academy, I watched with astonished delight as they and their students sang, scat, and scribed the thrust of their philosophy into the mainstream of human knowledge. As one such student, I now fully embrace and promote their creed--that knowledge is free, thus, will transcend attempts to be contained through barriers of caste and privilege, leaving man's innate thirst for knowledge, free to someday overwhelm his lust for stupidity.
Everything that I now write, is in pursuit of that ideal.
Eric L. Wattree
I began writing when my late wife, and childhood sweetheart, Valdie Whitmore-Wattree, began writing me from college while I was in the Marine Corps. While trying to respond I was shock to find that I couldn’t fully express my feelings to her, so I embarked upon a crash course in English composition. Since the base library was all but never used, the Chaplin gave me the key, and thereafter I, literally, made the library my home on base.
After I was discharge I went on to West Los Angeles College and CSULA and majored in Psychology. But the foundation for what I consider my legitimate education was laid many years earlier on the streets of Los Angeles. There, some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lot of ghetto liquor stores.
These were the "Eulipians"—writers, poets, musicians, hustlers, and uncommon drunks—all, shade-tree philosophers who contemplated the fungus between the toes of society. Without apology, these visionaries danced with reckless abandon, unfettered by formal inhibition, through the presumptuous speculation of the ages. It was at their feet that I embraced the love of knowledge, and through their tutelage defined self-worth in my own terms.
While these obscure intellectuals stood well outside the mainstream of academy, I watched with astonished delight as they and their students sang, scat, and scribed the thrust of their philosophy into the mainstream of human knowledge. As one such student, I now fully embrace and promote their creed--that knowledge is free, thus, will transcend attempts to be contained through barriers of caste and privilege, leaving man's innate thirst for knowledge, free to someday overwhelm his lust for stupidity.
Everything that I now write, is in pursuit of that ideal.
Eric L. Wattree
Eric L. Wattree's Blog
Bush Cannot be Allowed to Get Away With What He's Done to America
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
I'm in total agreement with Obama's sentiment that it's time for America to heel itself and move forward, but I certainly hope he's not so fixated on that sentiment that he allows the Bush/Cheney gang to get away with the damage that they've done to America.
Of course, there are those who are going to insist that we have so many challenges before us that we can't be distracted by engaging in vengeance, but this is not a matter of vengeance, it's… Continue
I'm in total agreement with Obama's sentiment that it's time for America to heel itself and move forward, but I certainly hope he's not so fixated on that sentiment that he allows the Bush/Cheney gang to get away with the damage that they've done to America.
Of course, there are those who are going to insist that we have so many challenges before us that we can't be distracted by engaging in vengeance, but this is not a matter of vengeance, it's… Continue
Posted on January 19, 2009 at 11:51am —
BLACK AMERICA: OUR HISTORY LIES BEFORE US
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
I just read a snippet in Essence Magazine indicating that researchers have uncovered new information suggesting that Cleopatra may not have been Black. The article brought back to mind a piece I read by Earl Ofari Hutchinson's many years ago entitled, Whose Black History To Believe? In that very insightful article Mr. Hutchinson points out that black history tends to be given either short shrift by traditional historians, or is exaggerated beyond… Continue
I just read a snippet in Essence Magazine indicating that researchers have uncovered new information suggesting that Cleopatra may not have been Black. The article brought back to mind a piece I read by Earl Ofari Hutchinson's many years ago entitled, Whose Black History To Believe? In that very insightful article Mr. Hutchinson points out that black history tends to be given either short shrift by traditional historians, or is exaggerated beyond… Continue
Posted on December 27, 2008 at 7:14am —
Get on the Beam--Black Excellence And Maturity
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
Now that we have a Black president about to enter the White House, it's time for the Black community to do a serious assessment of where we go from here. How do we adapt to this new state of affairs? One of the reasons we're going to have a problem answering that question is that many of us don't really know who we are. We've been spending so much time fighting and protesting, that we haven't bothered to ask ourselves that very simple question in… Continue
Now that we have a Black president about to enter the White House, it's time for the Black community to do a serious assessment of where we go from here. How do we adapt to this new state of affairs? One of the reasons we're going to have a problem answering that question is that many of us don't really know who we are. We've been spending so much time fighting and protesting, that we haven't bothered to ask ourselves that very simple question in… Continue
Posted on December 26, 2008 at 6:09pm —
Jamie Foxx: How to Use Fame to Step on Your Brother
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
One of the readers of last week’s column, “Why are Black People Killing Themselves?”, wrote me a very heartfelt response suggesting that I was being a little hard on Black people. Michele (with one ‘L’, as she likes to remind everyone), a 36 year old Black single mom, a Staff Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, and founder/creator of poeticworks.com, wrote the following:
“We are a community of thriving thinkers We accept responsibility f… Continue
One of the readers of last week’s column, “Why are Black People Killing Themselves?”, wrote me a very heartfelt response suggesting that I was being a little hard on Black people. Michele (with one ‘L’, as she likes to remind everyone), a 36 year old Black single mom, a Staff Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, and founder/creator of poeticworks.com, wrote the following:
“We are a community of thriving thinkers We accept responsibility f… Continue
Posted on December 24, 2008 at 12:00pm —
Why Are Black People Killing Themselves?
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
For all who might have missed it, I'd like to call attention to Larry Aubry's excellent article, "Black on Black Violence: Part Pained Indifference," that appeared in the Dec. 4 edition of the Los Angeles Sentinel. In his insightful article Aubry discusses the Black community's tendency to simply stand by as a small segment of the community embarks upon a course of Black annihilation. He very correctly points out that "Black-on-Black violence is… Continue
For all who might have missed it, I'd like to call attention to Larry Aubry's excellent article, "Black on Black Violence: Part Pained Indifference," that appeared in the Dec. 4 edition of the Los Angeles Sentinel. In his insightful article Aubry discusses the Black community's tendency to simply stand by as a small segment of the community embarks upon a course of Black annihilation. He very correctly points out that "Black-on-Black violence is… Continue
Posted on December 24, 2008 at 11:30am —
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I received your blog post for SpectrumTalk and will go back to that and post it soon. Then, I went back to ConnectMe to check out your profile. I am pleased to meet you. I am impressed and inspired by your page here.
I see that you used to post blogs here on your page before we changed the formatting of the site this year. You can continue to post those blog entries from the Add a discussion under forums on the Main page or the Forums page. If you do that, I will be sure to double post those on our SpectrumTalk as well.
Best wishes, Tanya (ConnectMe Administrator)
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I'm new here, and put my Bio in the wrong location.
Eric
I began writing when my late wife, and childhood sweetheart, Valdie Whitmore-Wattree, began writing me from college when I was in the Marine Corps. While trying to respond I was shock to find that I couldn’t fully express my feelings to her, so I embarked upon a crash course in English composition. Since the base library was all but never used, the Chaplin gave me the key, and thereafter I, literally, made the library my home on base.
After I was discharge I went on to West Los Angeles College and CSULA and majored in Psychology. But the foundation for what I consider my legitimate education was laid many years earlier on the streets of Los Angeles. There, some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lot of ghetto liquor stores.
These were the "Eulipians"—writers, poets, musicians, hustlers, and uncommon drunks—all, shade-tree philosophers who contemplated the fungus between the toes of society. Without apology, these visionaries danced with reckless abandon, unfettered by formal inhibition, through the presumptuous speculation of the ages. It was at their feet that I embraced the love of knowledge, and through their tutelage defined self-worth in my own terms.
While these obscure intellectuals stood well outside the mainstream of academy, I watched with astonished delight as they and their students sang, scat, and scribed the thrust of their philosophy into the mainstream of human knowledge. As one such student, I now fully embrace and promote their creed--that knowledge is free, thus, will transcend attempts to be contained through barriers of caste and privilege, leaving man's innate thirst for knowledge, free to someday overwhelm his lust for stupidity.
Everything that I now write, is in pursuit of that ideal.
Eric L. Wattree