hello welcome to a very very special segment of truth today with gloria thomas i am your host some gloria and i want to first thank you for inviting me into your home and i want to thank you for tuning in and college me and telling me how much you liked the show shout out to adam and san francisco who called me and said he really enjoyed the show let's see do appreciate you calling or emailing or reaching out and i do appreciate that you take the time to allow me to spin about a half hour in your home and i want to say a special hello to my mother a mama she's going to be ninety in a couple months oh no she's going to be ninety next month in august the nineteenth on the nineteenth so happy birthday mom mom going to be celebrating till october which you and i just thank god that  sold much love and so much grace and so much goodness is wrapped up in your life you have i tell people all the time my mother has enough love and her baby finger to heal the whole planet and i felt that way as a kid in a little girl and i still feel that way now at sixty my mother has anough love and her baby finger to spirit the kind of love and joy around this whole world and it has the capability of healing so i want to spin this time tonight talking about my favorite singer my most favorite singer in the whole wide world this i miss him being here i miss his presence on the planet i am very good friends with this wife hey willie how you doing should get a copy of this show should be able to see it but i speak with her probably almost daily i kid her when i first met her and i told her i said you're going to see me a lot because i'm the biggest bobby blue bland fan in the whole wide world and she just laughed at she thought that was so cute  said then one day she believed to be because i feel like bobby was a gift that my father gave me my father was a huge bobby fan and i grew up on bobby's music and learned a lot about my ideals around about of from listening to his music and and then when i got old enough to go to his shows and just see how he could just poor love to his audience in a way that jess made everybody so happy i used to see people just be so happy to hear him sing that they would just be brought to tears because his voice was just such a such a beautiful experience he was he was blues but he was smooth and he was soulful and he was loving and every body everywhere that i know and i knew i had at least five favorite bobby blue bland songs he's one of the most recorded artist of all times he has he was touring the world up until his last days he had been to scandinavia he'd done blues cruises canada and he traveled the world singing and blues people for a long time thought he lived in houston so you know houston texas loved him as their own he did a album at one point in the seventy's titled the california album so a lot of people thought he lived in california but he just belong to our community at large i mean and he never never never left what we know as the chitlin circuit  so what that means is he would play to a small crowd and what we call a juke joint in cheeks tex's and tex's in you don't know where that is but look at up and little places like lufkin you know little places in georgia alabama mississippi he never left his fans wondering when he would come to town because he traveled so much that everybody at least once or twice a year if you were a true bobby blue bland fan you had a chance to see i know in those early days yes at least twice a year especially if you were in the bay area but sometimes even more because he did blues festival jazz festival rhythm and blues festival and he was just such a loving loving loving person he always had time for his fans i'm going to get a little sad because the last time i saw him he was a thunder valley and i had the chance to spend the weekend with him and his wife and i we went up to thunder valley on that saturday and i spent the day with her doing girl stuff you know shop it at the mall and just kind of hanging out in the net saturday even we went to dinner with thunder valley and it was so special like i got a chance to fix his plate and his wife was teasing me she was like please go and enjoy it but there's a beautiful buffet up there and the food is is really really good it's delicious but when it is fixed is playing you know put the things on there they told me he like to eden you know brought us play to you know just sat there with her we laughed and we talked and there were minded him of all the shows i had gone to see him perform and and he remembered all of them like you know some of the shows i was like yeah but i can't remember what year that was but it was when you were at queen a town hall or the fillmore auditorium and every show that i talk about i would talk long enough he remembered all the shows he remembered you know people that he met through the years he every time i've ever gone to see him i never saw him turn anybody away who was just such a loving person that if you were true finn whenever you want to see his show win as he performed you did not just feel like you were experiencing a great bobby you actually felt like you were being and you felt like you could feel his love for you as a fan his love for his audience and his commitment to  even i just feel like i took every opportunity i had whenever i had the chance to talk to him and meet with him i i took the chance to tell him just how great of a singer i thought he was and just how much i loved how he cares for his space and so i take the chance to take the opportunity to tell his wife that because i want to see i'm so many times eventually i met her and we became friends and we talked just about every night now when we have for quite a wound now and you know i moved to georgia for about a year in two thousand  and the whole time i was there you know she was one of the few people who i talked to on a regular basis when i moved there but you know she i saw how bobby could pour out so much love because of the love of that i watched her poor on to him and then him on to her as well she's a nurse by profession and you know how blessed  much of a blessing is that for your wife to be a nurse and she she just took care of him with just just and probably one of the most impressive ways i've ever seen a wife take first because you know they both cared for and loved and supported each other in a way that really does extend life you know the title of the show is turn on your love life because through bobby blue bland being a huge fan as a kid you know like i listen to motown too but i listen to bobby blue bland more than anything and you can tell i'm old because most people call him bobby bland and i heard somebody on facebook say he's anything but bland and that's true but he was such a dynamic singer and he was so gifted with his talent that people just fell in love with him i mean they didn't just enjoy him they did just like his music they fell in love with him so the title and become of  that he kept his love light turned on and he kept his audience with their love lights turned on because that was just that was just what he did that's what he came here to do he really did come  to love everybody he could as much as he could and so the title of the show is turn on your love life because really really really really what we need from each other today we've always needed it we've always needed it we've always needed it but i really do think we're we need it more because hate and anguish and turmoil and trauma is  mainstay it's like commonplace it's like eating your dinner because there's so much trauma and so much abuse and so much misuse from the highest of you know our nation's government to the most broken poorest human being on the planet there's just so much pain and anguish and heartbreak alive and well and you know like stevie wonder said hates going round break in many hearts many many many hearts are not functioning that they're full capacity because hate hate anguish  rage self center ness selfishness greed is really really really really break in the heart of mankind and you know i can only imagine what the spirit of god must feel like like i can only imagine to be guy like i can't even describe god right now god god is god so big in my life like god i be a food to try to describe god but the spirit in which i call god that power that presence that force that love that grace that mercy that even i can't describe i can only imagine that while human beings came here to love and care for each other and to prove that god is real through loving each other and caring for each other human beings have been wro raping maiming stealing from each other you know in some places from the time they like put their first ship on the water it's really really really sad that groups of people entire groups of people have been wiped out simply because love lights either couldn't shine we're not allowed to shine or purposely kept from shiny so you know love  is just such a powerful healing to such a powerful healing event and we need of we need so much love one of the reasons that i was such a b  all those songs that were about love were how i learned how to love like i learned those emotions that i later would call of those emotions trigger behaviors that that's how i distinguish love from other emotions because of the behaviors that i had attached to the word love and i learned those behaviors from bobby you know be an honest in a is his wife calls it best she says i was telling her one day i say you know one of the big one of my favorites that is one of the not as highly rated song as i think it should be the end  fallen star wishing that i could be wherever you are and really you know that's what love feels like if you're in a romantic if you're a romantic you feel like you could just love for mankind you know that love for are human beings that love that we all so desperately want need and try to give i think most people try to love you know there's a lot to hate in the world right now to the point our president has said please search your soul search your soul ask yourself who you are ask yourself what you're willing to do to make this world a better place ask yourself what belief systems did you get passed down to you that you know are terrible are foolish are self centered are selfish are mean  hateful or spiteful which belief systems are guiding your life right now that would allow you to make a judgment or take a position against another human being that would result in the kind of violence that we've seen everywhere just everywhere you know i think if we could play love songs like bobby blue bland songs and school children i think children are would learn about love about real love about love that wants each other to live and i love that doesn't promote deft and doesn't promote  greed and doesn't promote self centered innocent doesn't promote selfishness like can you imagine likes a lot of people call me idealistic whatever that might mean but i do believe  believe i believe that love has the power to heal every single broken element that i could possibly have any other woman could possibly have any man could have any little boy could have or any little girl could have i certainly know as a social worker that people face smitty many many hurtful things may be many troubling horrifying things and i know in my profession as a social worker  that people really really really want to do better people want to do better they want to feel better they want to improve you know nobody is born here as a little baby when they're trying to learn how to talk no no baby says please don't teach me all that i don't want to talk i want to be mean i want to be selfish i want to be self centered no child does that however based on what a child can experience a child's heart and a child's spirit can be broken to degree that they can become a human being that doesn't want anything to do with love or other people and worse human beings can turn into vile vicious elements that spend all their lives attack in one another or anybody they can like you know people can have thoughts like teachers should have g teacher with a go in a holster on your desk to be able to teach a child like where does that kind of insanity come from who would who would take a risk and letting the world know that they have that kind of tragic thinking like i just it's mind boggling and i'm not going to figure it out i'm not even going to try but what human being thinks that a teacher should carry a gun i mean haven't we buried enough people as a result of gun violence certainly we've buried anough people of color suddenly we've buried enough children you have twenty children babies dead out of school and that don't hit your heart in a way that makes you think we may have a problem with guns we may have a problem with ammunition we may have a problem with violence like i don't know i really don't get it i don't i would never know or understand a thinking process along those lines and that's why haven't i titled the show turn on your love light because loving guns i mean in a rocket science love and guns don't go together killing is not for the human species to just have a great time with you no bombs dropping on children men women boys and girls for years upon years upon years at a time like when do we stop when do we stop when do we live the commandment that says not kill when do we stop and when do we turn on our love light when do we turn on love so that we're not afraid of love we have a commitment to love when marriages don't have to be broken up because people either never learned how to love are willing to learn how to love our freight of learning how to love and yet even more afraid of making commitments like how well i'm not going to say how do we get here i've watched it i'm sixty i watched it i saw what happened i saw the massive distribution of drugs and guns in our neighborhoods i saw the massive distributions of guns and and people being used for target practice i saw i see how t v shows are written and sale that have big sponsorship based on how people are murdered like i've watched it you know i didn't grow up in a time where t v shows their whole focus was about how people get murdered and what people don't do about it how they don't talk about it and i i didn't see stories like you know those children in connecticut that could die and to us it just leaves the news or even just as big and equally as important as all the single gunshot  victims who have died all over this country certainly from before we were supposedly civilized but that's a whole nother show but today you know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of young boys and young girls gunned down by violence and nobody is trying to really do anything about me not say that because i'm doing something about it right now i'm telling the truth about it right now and i certainly love everywhere i go and i try to and i try not to gossip and i try not to lie and i don't talk about people behind their backs because those things are not loving and they don't let my love light shine so you know i i would i want to encourage all of us like we're where we really are on this one planet together and like dr king said we're either going to do something about the brokenness and the tragedy and the hatred that we have in our world and our society and our nomination as an american or we're going to perish like  like foods is like really what it appears we're possibly doing so please stop please stop don't please don't pick up a gun don't buy  ammunition don't make those gun manufactures more powerful than they already are you know we don't have nowhere to go there's not another planet to go to and if we destroy each other  know all those prices that were paid for us to get here and be where we are were paid in vain so i'm down to the last few minutes and i want to know that while my heart is heavy and my hear school i feel really really really blessed right now i feel really blessed that i'm a person a young woman who was able to be friended become a friend of bobby blue bland i'm really really grateful to be a friend of his wife hey willie and i'm really really grateful that you know in my lifetime that god would allow my past to cross there and that i got to grow up on bobby blue bland music and and i got to enjoy him as a singer and as an entertainer but even more as a human being as a very kind person so i have a great way and please let somebody know about the