May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and with everything that’s going on locally, nationally, and globally, everyone’s mental health is being challenged. Take care of yours by avoiding stress and relaxing with an enjoyable book, or better yet, a great magazine, like the South Side Drive. We will never bring you bad news that’s going to stress you out – that’s why we’re called the “Guide to the Good Life Chicago.” Although April was National Poetry Month, it was also the month of the centennial birthday of the late, great Mayor Harold Washington, and that celebration took precedence in last month’s issue.
We are very proud of that issue, and for those of you who haven’t read it, we urge you to pick up a copy of the April South Side Drive or check us out online. Since this is the year of Mayor Washington’s 100th birthday, we have been told that Chicago will be celebrating this great man all year long.
However, we cannot let National Poetry Month go uncelebrated, therefore, we’re dedicating a portion of this month’s issue to our own Chicago poets.
Since this is Mother’s Day month, we will get started quenching your passion for poetry with a beautiful tribute to mothers written by Orlando Ceaser. We’re also celebrating what appears to be the end of the Covid era, and we’re doing it with just one of the poems from the collection of pandemic-related poetry by a retired professor, author, and poet Wilma Turner. Fred Dunham is a poet, and we all know it, and we know you will enjoy his article in which he tells the story of how he acquired his “Poetic License.”

This Mother’s Day month could not go by without looking at the life of an outstanding mother who has lived an outstanding life. In this issue, we are profiling the mother of Chicago attorney Ernesto (Pompey) Borges – Mrs. Frances Borges Lindo, a former fashion model who continues to live a model and glamorous life.
The good life is made even better when it is successful, but success does not just happen, one has to work at it. You can work at it on your own, but as you are about to learn in the article on Strategizing Successes, you can experience better results when you engage a professional life coach. Patricia E. Perkins is not just an ordinary life coach, she is unique in her approach and highly successful in the outcomes she achieves. In this article, you’ll read about her work and how she helps organize and strategize what it takes to make it in corporate America and in life.
Photographer Daveed Holmes brings to life the experience of Black Spring Nights-a night of live entertainment in which the Black Promoters Collective seeks to bring us out of the dark days of winter and the rainy days of April, into the bright, moonlit nights of May. Daveed takes us there with exciting prose and fabulous visuals.
Join us for Friday Live at the Quarry, a supper club setting with the best weekly live music on the southside from 6 pm to 10 pm, as well as a new late-night set called Quarry-Oke from 10 pm to 1 am. Of course, you can pick up your South Side Drive Magazine at either set and at cultural events and Black southside businesses as we work to bridge and build our communities.