1981

Attorney Jon Perezous is going to the Philippines. No, not to assuage a deep-seated interest in Imelda's shoe collection, but, rather, to join the U.S. embassy staff and provide a variety of services to U. S. citizens, from paperwork involved in marriages and adoptions to emergency situations such as imprisonment.

(That's what the press release says: "...emergency situations such as imprisonment." Five simple words tossed off oh so easily, words that conjure up the greatest fear that all who've traveled in a developing nation have. Imprisonment, your own personal Midnight Express. And to think that I could get tossed into jail in Manila and then, surreal world that it is, a Dartmouth classmate would poke his head through the bars, offer a few comments about Jim Wright and the frats, and then get to work releasing me.)

Online and need a book? Point your browser to Drum and Spear Books (), Gigi Roane's brainchild and the WWW's most popular bookseller for African Americans.

"While we specialize in books by and about African Americans," Gigi told me, "we can get any book a person might want."

Gigi and partner Willie Jennings started their "endeavor in November of 1996, first as an e-business. But since that time they've expanded and have done so with their interests in mind: cigar aficionado Willie has presented a series of Cigar Smokers Nights at the Drum and Spear, with good smokes, good books, good food, and good drink, while Gigi, a gourmet cook, caters book-club meetings and book signings. This past winter, when Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis were in town on their book tour, the Drum and Spear sold out an auditorium at Howard University for that talk and book signing.

"I also had a wonderful soiree for Lloyd Boston, the top designer for Tommy Hilfiger, and author of Men of Color," our classmate told me. "Johnnie Walker Black sponsored the event at our place with three bartenders. Scotch flowed that night, as did funds from my guests' credit cards." BET has featured the Drum and Spear seven times on a show called By the Book, and Black Enterprise Magazine has nominated Drum and Spear for its 1999 Black Enterprise Emerging Small Business Award.

Large online booksellers such as Amazon.com have approached Gigi and Willie to provide reciprocal links at their sites, links that would include a portion of any subsequent sales, but they have declined. "We have been negotiating our own partnership with an African American-owned distributor," finished Gigi, "and this will allow us to offer more of a discount to our book lovers."

Hallidie Grant Haid told me that AlanGreenstein and wife Laura Tranin have a new son, Lewis, to add to the one they already have, the hugely angry Nathan. ("Who is this person, please?" cried Nathan, looking into Lewis' crib. "Who, please? Who!?") Alan's an engineer with Heartstream, an HP subsidiary that's developed new portable "heart starters"— that was Hallidie's technical term, ER- watcher that she is—that are being put aboard commercial jets.

Looking for something to read this spring as you wait for the cherry blossoms to pop? Gigi made suggestions, books that are not well known and should be or are selling well at her place: Carroll Case's TheSlaughter: An American Atrocity, the story of the killing of 1,200 black soldiers on a Mississippi Army base during World War II by none other than the U.S. Army; InnerCity Blues: A Charlotte Justice Novel by Paula Woods, a great mystery series about a female officer of color within the LAPD; James C. Warren's The Tuskegee AirmenMutiny at Freeman Field; and Yesterday WillMake You Cry, the autobiography of Chester Himes, the author of the Harlem crime series that features the indefatigable team of Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones.

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