A TEACHING PRIEST
Friday, December 10, 2010
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Updated: Saturday, July 21, 2012

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Greetings! I, Larry Delano Coleman, am a “teaching priest” with an “open vision.” As such, I am laved in love with “Truth” and with “God,” however “nomenclated,” however manifested in matter, motion, space, and man.
“For a long time Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest and without law.”
2 Chronicles 15:3
Definitions
“Teaching” is almost a pejorative epithet, a bad word, these days. “Learning,” teaching’s objective correlate, is hardly better. Some claim America has been “dumbed down” deliberately. http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/author.htm
Although hundreds of billions of dollars are expended for education, annually, our students continually underperform on standardized tests relative to students in other industrialized nations. Educators, politicians, psychologists, sociologists search vainly for solutions, they claim. “Woe is me,” is the mea culpa, the universal lament.
Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, good judgment and wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental goals the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization).
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Education
Banal television programming, with and without “laugh tracks,” and “reality” shows preoccupy the bulk of Americans’ waking hours, along with video games which simulate mayhem, murder and virtual life. Bookstores die and newspapers wither on the vine.
While the current, apparent disinterest in “learning” and “teaching” is regrettable, it is hardly unexpected. In previous decades, deliberate lies, willful brainwashing and purposeful mis-education were the forebears of the current desuetude, and it may have caused it, directly or indirectly. We derive these conclusions from Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/liesmyteachertoldme.php ; The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Charlotte Iserbyt, http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/book.htm ; and The Mis-Education of the Negro by Dr. Carter G. Woodson http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/misedne.html .
Although the resources for, and modes of access to, information are greater than ever, the sheer weltering rate of such availability, itself, appears to have devalued the virtue of acquisition, itself. It’s akin to the tragic irony of starvation in a land of plenty.
Education as “political”
Education has always been political. It is the sacred fire. Persons demanding access to its inner sanctums were required to satisfy conditions. See, e.g.Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain (Bloom et al., 1956)
The “dumbing down” of America is not new, it would appear. The provision of knowledge, rightly, is designed to assure the continued empowerment of its purveyors. That is both fair and logical, and consonant with historical witness. No nation knowingly “educates,” nourishes, nor promotes future disputants to its power. So it was in the days of King Herod, Matthew 2, and Herod the tetrarch, Matthew 14, as the biblical accounts of baby Jesus, and John the Baptist, readily attest. Indeed, so is it today, as the seminal work by Michelle Alexander amply attests respecting the mass incarceration of blacks, under the guise of a “war on drugs.” http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/the-mass-incarceration-of-black-men/
The key to it all is the efficacy of context. Whether theological, ideological, historical or political, “context” affords a framework of analysis and reference which facilitates one’s processing and storage of information, and which, in turn, leads to its profitable utilization in accordance with that one’s best interests.
A fish out of water, whether salt or fresh, is out of context. A polar bear outside the Arctic Circle is out of context, so also is a rabbit outside of its briar patch outside of context.
Otherwise stated, unless you know who you, what you are, and where you are, you have got a serious contextual problem. Nature normally supplies context, automatically. So, in the ordinary course, we don’t have to deal with “knowing” or “belonging.” Somehow, one tends to be born where one belongs. This geophysical fact generally applies to plant life as well as to animal life, and to minerals, exceptions to the contrary, notwithstanding.
Longitude and latitude relate to more than geophysical space, however. They also apply in historical, political, theological and ideological space, as well. Knowing “who, what, and where” you are, at any given time, affords true knowledge of context, and that “who, what, where” regime includes much more than a name, nationality, and street address. Moreover, because everything living is always in motion, whether that motion is perceptible or not, one must continually assess and reassess one’s approximate context, in order to determine if one is rightfully “where” one “belongs” at any given time. This assessment is done by studying nature and books.
Nature is man’s primal teacher, and the source of all of man’s original understanding. Its lessons are literally inexhaustible. Books contain man’s coded observations of and interactions with nature, observational, experimental and accidental. These books record, cull, and collate the collective corpus of man’s cumulative knowledge, i.e., interactions and observations, over time. Teachers teach from derivatives of these books and from nature.
Pupils are taught “context” by teachers, both secular and non-secular. Secular teachers, “priests” belong to a given sect, and are paid to promulgate that sect’s cosmogony, e.g. world view and values, i.e., religion, in whole or in part. They teach you who you are, what you are, and to where you are in a given place and time. Non-secular teachers do the same thing, as secular teachers, relative to their governmental employer’s interests.
Value of “teaching priests”
“Teaching priests” dispense such vital knowledge as mathematics, science, reading, writing, history, literature. This knowledge is more ancient than any given sect’s creed, and is infinitely more valuable than the sect, itself. That is, its value transcends any given sect’s, and may be utilized in another sect’s labor, or in no sect at all.
Non-secular teachers, non-priests, may also belong to a “sect,” but they are paid to advance a government’s cosmogony, , e.g. world view and values, in whole or in part, even as they dispense more vital knowledge as mathematics, science, reading, writing, history, literature. This knowledge is more ancient than the government, and is infinitely more valuable than the government, itself.
“Education” is as old as man; their origins are coextensive. Man has always taught, and learned, and communicated. Wherever, whenever, and however man began, education necessarily began.
“Education” as we know it contemplates the transmission of information or knowledge from one to another. It also contemplates self-learning, whereby persons have taught themselves reading, writing, arithmetic, astronomy, navigation, plumbing, music, art, carpentry; any subset of a whole panoply of skills and disciplines.
Formal “education,” as distinguished from informal “education,” originated with the “teaching priests” who were part of the religious apparatus of the state, and, who indistinguishable from the state, so intrinsically interwoven were they. “Education” originated in Africa, i.e., Ethiopia, as did the rest of humanity and civilization, itself. From inner Africa, it flowed up the Nile River into Egypt, and across the Red Sea into, Mesopotamia and Asia, then finally Europe. This process of acculturation and dissemination took thousands upon thousands of years.
The Bible and Historiography
The Bible gives an historical account of the dispersion of mankind, “after the flood” utilizing the sons of Noah: Japheth, Ham, and Shem, as progenitors. “Ham,” the prototypical black man, and his progeny, and their lands, are set forth in verses, Genesis 10:6-20:
6 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. 7 The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabteca. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. 8 Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. [1] 9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and 12 Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. 13 Egypt fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, Casluhim (from whom [2] the Philistines came), and Caphtorim.
15 Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth, 16 and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, 17 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 18 the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. Afterward the clans of the Canaanites dispersed. 19 And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha. 20 These are the sons of Ham, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations.
Ham’s descendants—those comprising Ethiopian, Egyptians, Canaanites (including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians and Syro-Phoenicians), Mesopotamians (including the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians)and Put or Punt (North Africans, lands west of Egypt)--are set out specially, because for centuries both secular and non-secular teachers, priests, and preachers have ignorantly, and/or, willfully, lied about Ham’s descendants’ contributions (or lack thereof) to world history and civilization. Now, that lie has exploded in the face of its celebrants, without mercy. The Bible exposes the lie readily even to the most casual reader. http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/nation02.htm
The Egyptians were black. This short sentence sears the consciences of centuries of lying Islamic, western European and American scholars and theologians who are alleged to have done everything from deface the noses of thousands of Egyptian artifacts to disguise their Negroid features, to defacing the nose of the Sphinx, akin to the Taliban of Afghanistan dynamiting the thousand year old Buddhas which were carved into mountainsides in the early 2000’s.
In the late 1798 the nose of the Sphinx, was allegedly cannonaded by Napoleon. Purportedly, this was done in order to falsely portray the black purveyors of civilization as scions of “The Great White Race.” This canard now appears dubious, given that Napoleon carried “savants” with him, during his expedition into Egypt to measure, draw, preserve its treasures. A French soldier happened upon the Rosetta Stone, which was then being used as building material. Eventually this priceless treasure, now in the British Museum, came into the possession of the French scholar Jean-Francoise Champollion, who deciphered the Rosetta stone, in 1822, cracking the hieroglyphic code, by comparing and contrasting it with ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian demotic script. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone ; http://sacredsites.com/africa/egypt/sphinx.html
A Muslim writer claims the Sphinx’s nose was actually removed by a Muslim ruler in the 1300s to preclude the natives’ worship, adoration and invocation of its powers http://www.catchpenny.org/nose.html . http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101012190558AA1Sj5s https://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology.moderated/browse_thread/thread/7581158ce00127da/9280239ae477ba8f%239280239ae477ba8f?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=0&num=3&hl=fi
Many, but not all, Muslims and western Europeans taught the so-called “curse of Ham,” even as many brainwashed and lazy black teachers and preachers, glibly repeated this lie, never having bothered to investigate its premises’ truthfulness, to their shame.
Enter the Greeks
The Iliad, and the Odyssey, were the first books attributed to a European, the ancient Greek author, Homer. At the earliest, these books were written a mere 800 years before the birth of Christ. That places them almost 2500 years after the Great Pyramid at Giza was built, and more than 3500 years after the world’s first calendar was invented. The Greeks’ gods came from the Ethiopians, along with much of their knowledge, they admit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia http://getbeles.com/blog/?p=3 http://www.whenweruled.com/articles.php?lng=en&pg=2
Yet, today’s governmental, educational and religious establishment, despite knowing better, continues to impute education and knowledge to the Greeks, and three men in particular, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, all of whom lived and died a mere 400 years within the birth of Christ. These misrepresentations were acculturated in order to sustain the lie and myth of so-called “white,” western European supremacy, and to justify the enslavement and centuries’ old expropriation of Africans to the Americas by western European “Christian” nations.
One authority states directly there are no original Greek manuscripts in mathematics:
“In actual fact, our direct knowledge of Greek mathematics is less reliable than that of the older Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics, because none of the original manuscripts are extant.” http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/history/greekorg/greekorg.html
Another scholar , Dr. Kwame Namtambu, writes:
“Furthermore, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) himself, writing in Metaphysics, not only refutes Dr. Lefkowitz's ahistorical and false assertions but also confesses in Greek Hellenic language that: "Thus the mathematical sciences first (proton) originated in Egypt." Egypt is "the cradle of mathematics-that is, the country of origin for Greek mathematics". So, according to Aristotle, "the mathematical arts had never before been formed, constituted or elaborated anywhere else originating in Egypt only" (Obenga, p. 47-48). Aristotle acknowledges the originality of the ancient Egyptians in his own words.

In addition, in Prologue to Prodlus's Commentaries on Euclid's Elements, a disciple of Aristotle named Eudemus, who lived in the forth century B.C., confirms: "we shall say, following the general tradition, that the Egyptians were the first to have invented Geometry, (that) Thales, the first Greek to have been in Egypt, brought this theory thereof to Greece" (Obenga, p. 48).

The fact of the matter is that the famous, well known Greeks (Europeans) whom we study and revere in school curricula today all studied at the feet of the ancient Egyptians–Afrikans in the Nile Valley, Kemet. For example, Plato studied at the Temple of Waset for 11 years; Aristotle was there for 11-13 years; Socrates 15 years Euclid stayed for 10-11 years; Pythagoras for 22 yeasrs; Hippocrates studies for 20 years; and the other Greeks who matriculated at Waset included Diodorus, Solon, Thales, Archimides, and Euripides. Indeed, the Greek, St. Clement of Alexandria, once said that if you were to write a book of 1,000 pages, you would not be able to put down the names of all the Greeks who went to Kemet to be educated and even those who did not surreptitiously claim they went because it was prestigious. " Herodotus said it, Plato confirmed it and Aristotle never denied it".
The fact of the matter is that it took 40 years to graduate/matriculate from Waset; this then means that none of the Greeks graduated”. http://www.trinicenter.com/kwame/20010615c.htm
Muslim Complicity
To be fair to western European Christians, the Muslims, as early as the 8th century, had preceded them in the destruction of African civilization, as well as in the enslavement and expropriation of Africans to North Africa, Arabia, and Persia, even as they had formulated, promulgated, and practiced their own Islamic mythos of black inferiority for centuries. So the Muslims, like the Christians also had their besotted teaching priests, called “Imams.” http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/conscious-edutainment-videos-movies-tv/37862-destruction-black-civilization-dr-chancellor-williams.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/they-all-look-like-all-them/29471-al-jahiz-776-869-superiority-blacks-whites.html
In Malachi 2:1-9, God rebukes all “teaching priests” who fail to preach “true instruction” to his people. A similar pox is now on the governmental, religious, entertainment, and educational houses of the United States, both secular and non-secular:
Rebukes the Priests
2:1 “And now, O priests, this command is for you. 2 If you will not listen, if you will not take it to heart to give honor to my name, says the LORD of hosts, then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you do not lay it to heart. 3 Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, [1] and spread dung on your faces, the dung of your offerings, and you shall be taken away with it. [2] 4 So shall you know that I have sent this command to you, that my covenant with Levi may stand, says the LORD of hosts. 5 My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him. It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me. He stood in awe of my name. 6 True instruction [3] was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity. 7 For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people [4] should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. 8 But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the LORD of hosts, 9 and so I make you despised and abased before all the people, inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality in your instruction.”
Partiality versus Impartiality
Why “show impartiality” in one’s instruction? Aside from the fact it’s God’s command, there are other good and cogent reasons to be ‘impartial’, for those who may need stronger medicine. Partiality is, per se, unscientific. Good science depends upon impartial observation, experimentation, recordation, and demonstration. Impartiality honors and blesses its purveyors forever; partiality dishonors and curses its purveyors forever. Impartiality is a boon to further discovery, and a stimulant to further inquiry. Partiality burdens further inquiry, and distorts or discourages further inquiry.
Why “show impartiality” in one’s instruction? That’s like asking “Why sell fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat?” That’s like asking, “Why respect another’s property, progeny, or person?” Obviously, the question, “why show impartiality,” is absurd . Equally absurd is educational partiality in instruction under the guise of being impartial in educational instruction.
But, as Machiavelli teaches, “a prince must appear to be pious, but must never be.” “http://www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_1/machiavelli.html
“Prince” means and applies to both secular and non-secular power, in the governmental, religious, entertainment and educational context.
So, “game on!” Or, more properly, the game resumes, wherein the partial pretend to be impartial, the knave pretends to be the righteous; and the ignorant pretend to be the knowledgeable. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” Wendell Phillips once said in 1852 before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society . He was an abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator. http://freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm Especially is this true in governmental, religious, entertainment and educational context, where “true instruction” can so easily become false instruction, whether by omission or commission, resulting in purposeful “mis-education.” Just like fresh milk, improperly preserved, can so easily spoil and curdle, imperiling the health of its consumer, so also does manipulated knowledge.
Who am I, to offer such stern historical asseverations, on “education,” someone may ask? I am a scribe, also known as a “teaching priest,” also known as a philosopher-king. To all who receive these greetings in the spirit of love, I present them in name of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ !
#30

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Book review

PUDD'NHEAD WILSON by Mark Twain (Literary Classics of the United States, NY: 1982)

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

08/12/12

In this delighful novel involving miscegenation, forensic science, murder, twins, and antebellum intrigue on the banks of the Mississippi River, in Missouri, Mark Twain has written a masterpiece.

In a scenario redolent of Twain's more widely celebrated tale, THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, a 1/32 Negro infant is switched with his white half-brother, by its slave mother and joint nursemaid, “Roxy,”to prevent its sale “down the river,” the dreaded bane of all slaves and their mothers. The white infant's mother was dead and its father was too busy to know the difference or to tell them apart.

The Negro infant grows up thinking he's white and assumes all the hereditaments and characteristics of a slave master. The white infant grows up thinking he's a colored slave and observes the diffidence, and obsequies, of a slave, even absorbing the accents and inflections, along with the cuffs, kicks, scorn.

Twain is at his storytelling best in this novel! He employs the complete catalogue of trope and figures of speech, to show that white “race superiority” is at best farcical, at worst a lie! He does this while perfectly mimicking the vernacular of that era which makes copious use of the epithet, “nigger.”

Roxy becomes Twain's “Lady MacBeth,” of Shakespeare fame. She manipulates and leverages her knowledge of who's who and what's what with artfulness, grace and craft to her advantage while keeping her irresolute, gambling, thieving and self-absorbed Negro son who thinks he's white in check!

In the end, through, it is the lawyer-without-a-client, Pudd'nhead Wilson, whose “compulsory leisure” involves such curious habits as fingerprinting and meticulously cataloguing into forensic collections. Such enable him to dramatically solve a baffling murder mystery of the town's leading citizen.

This murdered judge is the chivalric, Virginia-borne, testator, uncle, benefactor of —the presumptive Negro “master” who thought he was “white.” Pudd'nhead –a disdainful nickname bestowed upon him by Dawson Landing's provincially inane whites—solves the crime with his fingerprints, a new-fangled notion, the DNA of that era. He adduces the evidence in a remarkable court room scene which wins him praise of and accolades from the formerly vapid villagers, whom he educates and astounds!

Move over Atticus Finch of To Kill A Mockingbird! Pudd'nhead Wilson's got you beat!

I derived great enjoyment from this short, 141-page classic. So will you!

#30

AMERICAN INCOMMENSURABLES

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

I first consciously encountered the word “incommensurable” while reading Plato’s The Laws, a treatise on nation-building in his hypothetical, ancient Greek nation of “Magnesia.” 

My next encounter with it was in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, a mathematical, mechanical masterpiece founded upon esoteric Biblical wisdom. 

To be used by such icons of world intellectual tradition, automatically places this very rare, recondite word in the ionosphere of incomparable scholarship.

But, it was not until afterwards, as I was feeling its presence, and intuiting its unnamed application, in Frances E.W. Harper’s wonderfully redemptive, Civil War-era novel, Iola Leroy,Or, Shadows Uplifted,  that I was inspired to write about this profoundly provocative and mysterious word, “incommensurable.” Whether Ms. Harper belongs in such august company as Plato and Newton is for the reader of her novel to determine. Her poetry and her prose impress me!

Com·men·su·ra·ble (k-m n s r--b l, -sh r-) adj.  means:1. Measurable by a common standard. 2. Commensurate; proportionate. 3. Mathematics Exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times. Used of two quantities.

Based on this definition, simple fractions would be mathematically incommensurable, because the integers producing them are NOT “exactly divisible by the same unit an integral number of times.”

Whether or not something is measurable by a “common standard”—another definition-- is more problematic, because “common standard” is subjective. For example, what is the “common standard” of beauty or courage or freedom or justice or intelligence? These value-laden qualities or virtues are, per se, “incommensurable.” Yet, a “common standard” is imposed upon such words, concepts, and people, with procrustean efficiency, regardless of variations or consequences. Such societal, normative impositions are rarely challenged by those most adversely affected, by those most detrimentally afflicted, usually.

The word, “Incommensurable,” does much more than negate commensurable quantities.  Beyond negation, it also debases, deprecates, demeans, and dehumanizes. It denies substance to its objects. Its diminutions, in fact, plumb the depths of metaphysical abnegation, transforming matter into antimatter! Beyond zero, its objects represent negative forces which require quarantine.

This amorphous concept has suffused philosophy, mathematics, science, as well as African American literature millennia apart. Yet, in a matter of less than a month, we—me and “incommensurable”-- had met thrice, in widely divergent contexts: Plato, Newton, Harper. “How curious,” I mused, “this must mean something. Let’s write about this incommensurable ‘tri-incidence!’”

Yet, how can anything existing on earth be really and truly incommensurable with any other thing existing on earth? If it exists on earth, isn’t it necessarily commensurable with all else that exist on earth? Is not Earth-life, itself, the “common standard” of each thing’s existence? Space, time, motion, matter define the physics of life on earth, per Newton. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen define earth’s elemental chemistry. These are common to all things.

 Christianity agrees: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” Romans 8:28-30.

Yet, generations of American ‘Christians,’ curiously, have been among the most strident, incommensurable of creatures by so readily demonizing others!

The word “incommensurable” means “adj. a. Impossible to measure or compare. b. Lacking a common quality on which to make a comparison. 2. Mathematics a. Having no common measure or number of which all the given lengths or measures are integral multiples. b. Having an irrational ratio. n.   One that is incommensurable.”

There is a dimension of life, “The Soul,” per Plato, with priority and dominion over physics and chemistry! It is the domain of the spirit.  It is the unknown and unknowable source and end of life, from which everything has come and to which everything returns! Also, known as the Unmoved Mover and the Uncaused Cause, this Spirit has innumerable names. I simply say “God” or “Amen.” Plato wrote of “the Gods” repeatedly in The Laws. They define the parameters of morality. Newton’s esoteric Biblical references in the Scholia of his Principia are nuanced, oblique and intrinsically laced within his mathematical demonstrations. Prudence demanded such seclusion, given his contemporaneity with Galileo, and the mortal risks he faced in light of his own “apostasy.” 

The Holy Spirit is the centerpiece of Harper’s trope of the black slaves’ awakening, acceptance, and affirmation of their inherent worth as God’s creations, before, during, and after the Civil War. It addresses, centrally, the dilemma of “colored” children raised “white”, on a remote Red River, Louisiana plantation with black slaves. After their white father’s death, they brutally discover that they are themselves ‘colored.’ This ‘shadow’—their ‘Negro’ race-- deprives them of their patrimony under Louisiana law, as well as their status as ‘free.’ The novel explores their dislocations, dangers, flirtations, and restorative familial resolutions, within that transformative era freedom for the oppressed.

That above-referenced “unnamed application” of “incommensurable,” redolent of Plato and Newton,  read and felt by me-- an attorney, African Methodist Episcopal preacher, historian, poet, science student, and author-- is from Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted (Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, NY: 2010 ; an unabridged republication of the second edition published in 1893 by Garrigues Brothers, Philadelphia).  That potent and portentous excerpt is below in bold italics:

“I think,” said Dr. Latrobe, “that we are right in suppressing the negro’s vote. This is a white man’s government, and a white man’s country. We own nineteen-twentieths of the land, and have about the same ratio of intelligence. I am a white man, and, right or wrong, I go with my race… You speak as if we wronged the negro by enslaving him and being unwilling to share citizenship with him. I think that slavery has been of incalculable benefit to the negro. It has lifted him out of barbarism, and fetish worship, given him a language of civilization, and introduced him to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and  what he is in America!...”

“Don’t you think,” asked “Dr. Gresham, that we have been too hasty in our judgment of the Negro? He has come handicapped into life, and is now on trial before the world. But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man. I believe there are possibilities of growth in the race which we have never comprehended.” (emphasis added)

“The negro,” said Dr. Latrobe, “is perfectly comprehensible to me. The only way to get along with him is to let him know his place, and make him keep it.”

Dr. Latrobe is an unapologetic racist! Voter suppression is justifiable against ‘the negro,’ this being a “white man’s country and a white man’s government.” The white man owns 19/20’s of the property, and owns that same amount of intelligence, says he.  Enslaving the negro “was of incalculable benefit to the negro,” according to Dr. Latrobe. Not sharing citizenship with the negro is perfectly normal. He also claims that “whites”—“introduced him [the negro] to the world’s best religion. Think what he was in Africa and what he is in America!...”

 Latrobe’s racial banalities were quite commonly held in that era. Their residue lingers, flaring up especially during election cycles, contaminating each new generation.  But, Latrobe’s blatant racism has, thankfully, morphed into latent racism. It is fueled by the clash between such unresolved national subtexts as—on the one hand:  certain whites’ subconscious guilt, their dissembled deceit, and backdoor betrayals of “the Negro;” and-- on the other hand: unresolved black grievances, unfulfilled promises, and governmental refusal of compensation for the deprivation of “commensurable,” if not “equal,” legal, political, economic rights.  Our national “center of forces” to use Isaac Newton’s phrase is reposed in our founding documents, whose centripetal forces pull on this nation’s political/economic infrastructure, viscera and conscience, inexorably.

Dr. Latrobe was right about this nation being, historically, a “white man’s country.” Yet, it was the black man’s indispensable loyalty, labor, energy, and inventiveness, which are inseparable from, and incommensurable with, that fact.

Two political compromises in the 1770-1790’s established this as a “white man’s country.” The first compromise was in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, itself. Therein, any reference to ‘slavery’ was purposefully omitted. And wisely so! Slavery had been out-lawed in England in June 1772 in the case James Sommerset v. Charles Stewart, http://medicolegal.tripod.com/somersetvstewart.htm 4 years before the slaveholding colonies declared independence by and through a moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants. The second compromise was in the United States Constitution, itself, in Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3, where blacks were given only fractional political status, 3/5’s of a man, for purposes of enumerating, and, thus, determining  the extent of Southern congressional representation and of direct taxation:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

This fractional allocation was also effected by the same moneyed cabal of Southern slaveholders and Northern merchants, as had excluded mention of slavery from the Declaration of Independence. So, “the negro’s,” fractional constitutional status, made him an “incommensurable” denizen from the very ‘birth of this nation.’ White men were made whole persons, but not all others. Given such incommensurable status, Frederick Douglass’ biting inquiry in his 1854 speech, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July,” is understandable! http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162

President Abraham Lincoln is popularly perceived to be a ‘friend’ of the negro, known as “The Great Emancipator” in American history. Yet, this quote from Lincoln sounds very much like Frances Harper’s character, Dr. Latrobe:

"I will say, then, that I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race." -- Abraham Lincoln, "Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858, Charleston, Illinois," in "Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings" (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 636, and in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 5, page 371

These sentiments by Abraham Lincoln were expressed in 1858, over a year after Justice Roger Taney in 1857, had held similarly in the infamous Dred Scott v Sanford decision. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford  

Therein Dred and Harriet Scott, former Missouri slaves, who had also lived in “free states” and in territories not yet states, were turned back in their bid for freedom that other Missouri slaves had routinely obtained through “slave-litigation.” The profligate denial of the Scotts’ bid [“That the black man had no rights that the white man was bound to respect”] http://home.earthlink.net/~ynot/slacases.html somewhat hastened the eruption of Civil War.

Abolitionist patriots like John Brown eventually decided to pursue armed struggle, in order to extirpate the baleful blight of slavery from the country. First, Brown and his family moved from Ohio and fought in the Kanas-Missouri “Border Wars.” Then, later, he liberated a score of Missouri slaves and personally took them to Windsor, Canada and freedom from Missouri through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan on a 1200 mile trek via the “Underground Railroad. Finally, having resolved to die as a martyr for freedom, his now infamous, sacrificial raid upon the national armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, elevated him to  revolutionary sainthood, even though he failed to secure arms for a planned slave rebellion utilizing the Allegheny Mountains’ crevices.   

But, in spite of John Brown’s vain heroism, it was Abraham Lincoln’s mundane election in 1860 that was the final straw for the insatiable South. If, in 1861, the South seceded in the face of such truculence, exhibited by Roger Taney in 1857, and by Abraham Lincoln in 1858, what level of racial prejudice, of racist rabidity did it actually possess? To what could it be compared?

Lerone Bennett, Jr., the former Senior Editor of Ebony Magazine, and author of such books as Before the Mayflower, and Forced Into Glory, has written relentlessly about Lincoln’s racism. But, conceding Lincoln’s and Taney’s racism, the South was determined and delusional! “My way or the highway!” was its creed!  So, the “Freedom War,” as slaves termed it, came!

The slaves, themselves, by escaping to Union lines eviscerated Lincoln’s desultory peace overtures toward the South! The slaves were waging their own “Freedom War” under the cover of the broader Civil War conflict!  Initially, they ran away, or sailed away. For example, in May 1862, the slave, Robert Smalls, stole “The Planter” a Confederate steam-powered warship of which he was pilot, from its Charleston, South Carolina, harbor and utilized his intricate knowledge and skill to sail her past Confederate mines, and batteries at Ft. Sumter and Ft. Wagner, into to a shocked Union blockade beyond. He took along his family and his enslaved crewmen and their families, under a white flag, in predawn hours. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1862/june/robert-smalls-planter.htm  That amazing feat startled the nation, and delighted the Union! I t should have been an omen to the South.

Earlier, three male slaves had escaped from Confederate fortifications they were building by rowing themselves across the James River to Ft. Monroe, Virginia, in May1861, where Union Gen Benjamin Butler would term them “contraband of war,” in legal parlance. Butler, a lawyer, would refuse to return them to a Confederate officer, who sought them under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, due the state of rebellion then extant.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html?pagewanted=all

Later, the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, created by Kansas U.S. Senator, James Lane, fought and won the Battle of Island Mound, at Butler, Missouri, in October 1862, against Confederate bushwhackers, at least twice its size, in defiance of Lincoln’s policy forbidding black troops. http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=54126

So, in these and myriad other ways, the slaves’ self-help insurgency continually forced Lincoln’s political hand!  His Emancipation Proclamation, of January1, 1863, freed no one, but it was great symbolic drama, which was widely celebrated as the herald of a new day by escaping slaves and by abolitionists: those lecturing, legislating, and writing, and by those in uniform fighting!.

The Dred Scott decision has never been judicially overturned. Instead, it was nullified by an estimated1,000,000 combined casualties and fatalities in the Civil War , 1861-1865, proving that the black man was, indeed, entitled to much respect, whether “incommensurable” or not! That historically condign, judicial decision was functionally superseded by the 13^th Amendment which freed the slaves, the 14^th Amendment which gave them due process of law, equal protection of law and privileges and immunities, and the 15^th Amendment which gave them the right to vote.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

No amendment gave the freedmen land, supplies, tools, back wages, restitution, or grant money. Nor did any ensuing law or judicial decree make them commensurable to white people socially, politically, or economically.

This financial dearth, this property poverty, this want of means and measures left the freedmen in a state of economic dependence upon their former masters, upon vengeful, returning rebels, or upon swindlers and hucksters of all hues and varieties. The Bureau of Freedmen and Refugees headed by Union Gen. Oliver Otis Howard helped some freedmen temporarily to adjust to their new-found status, providing food, shelter, and schools, most prominently Howard University in Washington, D.C. But, politics shut down the Freedmen’s Bureau too soon, Congress having appropriated too little for these millions of landless and penniless people, without whom there would have been no Union!

Soon, white men reached political rapprochement to abandon the freedmen to the South’s laws, customs, remedies, in exchanged for federal power. So, once again that cabal of Southern landowners and Northern merchants combined to cripple the black man’s independence and vitality for the white nation’s benefit!

The phrase from Harper’s character, Dr. Gresham, “But it is not fair to subject him to the same tests that you would a white man” is the application of “incommensurable,” sensed, felt, and used herein.  Equals may be “fairly” subjected to the same tests. But that is not so for un-equals. And, it is even less so for incommensurables—those for whom common measurement is literally, historically, impossible!  In fact, due to the effects of black chattel slavery,  followed by unrestrained white terrorism by government officials and private citizens on the federal, state and local levels,  it was sagely predicted that blacks would become “extinct” by some so-called “experts!”  Wrong!

Blacks are not bison. They are descendants of this planet’s original man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans From these “Africans,” “Ethiopians,” and “Egyptians”, all other homo sapiens evolved, along with all other civilizations, wherever situated.  The proof of their mettle is evidenced by their tremendous capacity to suffer, to love, to endure, to create, to fight, and to procreate, notwithstanding centuries of horrendous oppression. Their faith in God was their not-so-secret weapon. As Howard Thurman writes in Jesus and the Disinherited, slaves saw through the “white man’s preachers” and would “steal away” into bush arbors, away from white folks’ prying eyes and ears, where they would praise and celebrate their God in their own way, through preached word, spiritual music, and personal testimony, focused on freedom! Worship was hopeful and cathartic, as Benjamin Mays writes in The Negro’s God, published in the 1930’s, based on songs, sermons, poems, prose, prayer.  Blacks’ innate divinity fueled the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. It was “led” by Dr. Benny Mays’ gifted theology student at Morehouse College, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Council. King used “the sword of the spirit” to trounce “Jim Crow,” and massive civil disobedience demolish segregation.

Even so, centuries of discrimination, poverty, imprisonment, lynching  forced mass black migration into Northern ghettos where chronic unemployment, and depersonalization had a deleterious impact upon these “Exoduster’s” from Southern peonage and oppression! Dr. King’s remedies availed not in these teeming northern ghettoes. Here, traditional Southern values that had defied slavery, and defeated Jim Crow evaporated into the illusion of liberty. So, not only did Dr. King’s strategies not work, but even less effective were more militant approaches pursued by the Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam and others. The notion of “incommensurability” had entered into the blacks’ spirits!

After assassinations, exile, and imprisonment  robbed the Movement of its best leaders in the 1960’s, those left  behind attempted to employ racial quotas to rectify undisguised systemic discrimination, or its more discreet twin, latent discrimination. But, Labor union funding and Jewish philanthropy—the primary sources of their organizational income-- balked at mathematical racial quotas as hurtful to their members’ interests.  So instead of hard quotas, “discretionary goals and timetables” –non-mandatory and advisory only—were used to impart belated quasi-proportionality to future:  jobs, private contracts, government grants or contracts. Mathematical quotas had been rejected or termed ‘reverse discrimination’ by cynical courts and critics, as well as faint-hearted “leaders”.

Thus, “incommensurabilty” continues between the wealth of the two groups and in certain other indices, including that of the spirit. Meanwhile, perversely, Blacks pushed ahead in the misery index, disproportionately, leading in incarceration, unemployment, homicide, poverty, and educational deficits. At the base of it all is the enforced “incommensurable” relation between blacks and whites in America. Simply put, in America, “whiteness” is property, as UCLA law professor, Cheryl Harris, brilliantly proves in her famous Harvard Law Review article. Conversely, “blackness” is property’s antithesis in America! http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=927850

Beyond cavil or quibble, the history of the “negro” and  of “whites” in the United States of America reflects a purposefully designed and implemented national construct produced by powerful moneyed interests to exploit “the negro’s” labor and produce for the sole benefit of privileged “white’s.” “Whites” are another designed class, part of that same national governing construct, comprised of traditional European combatants, who became “white” allies upon immigration to America, and powerfully privileged!  Ultimately, this arrangement worked well for the ruling cabal. It facilitated their rule over both groups, white and black. America from the middle 1660’s forward, whether as a British colony, or whether as an independent nation, since 1789, was designed by laws,  mercantile custom, force, violence and deceit to oppress “the negro” and to keep him down on the bottom regardless of any individual merit, as attested by Dr. Latrobe.

This master-slave relationship is and was, at bottom, economic and has remained so since 1789, when this country was founded, through 1865, when the Civil War terminated the formal master-servant relationship. From 1865 through 1876, there was a much-too-brief “Reconstruction”—“Restoration” is more apt term, since it restored the rebels’ full rights, lands, powers, privileges. Meanwhile the blacks were handed the allure of Republican politics as the pathway to freedom.  The ensuing “Jim Crow” era ended with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act,  and the Voting Rights Act.  The resulting Affirmative Action era continues with and through the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 through today! His epochal election notwithstanding, Blacks remain, arguably, incommensuables, economically and politically!

Given this “Incommensurable” situation, Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television has proposed to Congress the following:

1. Allow black businesses to be eligible for government set aside contracts if they own 10 percent of a business rather than the existing 51 percent rule due to the 10-to-1 wealth gap; and significantly increase the dollar volume of set aside contracts for Black businesses across all government agencies.
2. Encourage majority-owned businesses to invest in black-owned companies by deferring the taxes on the economic gain similar to the FCC "tax certificate program" which motivated major media companies to sell to minorities.
3. Allow African American families earning less than $250,000 annually to defer federal income taxes, without interest, provided tax deferrals are placed into a 401(k) type savings account which can only be drawn out at retirement or upon death at which time the government would be reimbursed for the deferred taxes. The gain on the 401(k) investment would be available to the families at retirement or passed on to future generations.
4. Create a Treasury-backed fund to securitize short-term borrowing or emergency loans made by minority banks or other lending institutions to Black families provided these loans are marketed and made in a regulated and transparent manner. The securitized loans would encourage banks and lenders to make short-term or emergency borrowing available at reasonable rates and end "payday" lending as we know it today.
5. Require large banks under the Community Reinvestment Act to fund a nationwide marketing campaign targeted to the Black community with a focus on financial literacy and savings.

To this outstanding list, I would add a one-time economic stimulant of $2500 per individual tax payer, regardless of race, which will boost the economy greatly through consumption, investments, and savings both short-term and long-term, while it helps to erase debt burdens and restores faith in government.

In this manner, black American “Incommensurables,” their bane of poverty and stigmatization—their “shadow”-- having been “lifted,” will  be such no more.

#30

BLAKE or THE HUTS OF AMERICA, a novel

(Beacon Press, Boston, under auspices of Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, introduction by Floyd J. Miller, Editor: 1970)

By Dr. Martin R. Delany

Book Review—

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

Saturday, July 28, 2012



This pre-Civil War novel by the free-born, iconic black physician, explorer, abolitionist, editor, Union Army Major, and expatriate, Martin R. Delany, describes the incognito, transcontinental intrigues and escapades of a peripatetic, fugitive slave, who is the sole organizer of a much-anticipated slave revolt in the American South and in Cuba, a much-coveted Spanish slaveholding island colony.

This was the first novel by a black person to be published in the history of the United States! That is a rare distinction by itself, apart from its literary merits, which are considerable!

Sweeping in scope, it takes place on land and on sea, in Africa, Canada, Cuba, and the U.S. Published originally in serial fashion in the weekly newspaper, The Anglo-African, in 1859, it is reputed to be the black man’s reply to Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose 1852 novel, is said to have contributed to the Civil War. Stowe’s book, which personified slavery in human terms to the “North” through its melodramatic, empathetic characters, one of whom, “Uncle Tom,” is yet ingrained—though incorrectly and derisively -- in the black, national subconscious as a demeaning sycophant. Her book was based upon the earlier autobiography of A.M.E. preacher, runaway ex-slave, and Canadian emigrant, Josiah Henson, whose The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), served as the template for Stowe’s bestselling novel, which even President Abraham Lincoln is claimed to have read and to have praised.

A detailed introduction by Floyd J. Miller, Editor, written in 1970, issues a clarion call for the missing, final, six chapters of Blake, yet to be found, perhaps irretrievably lost. “Henry Blake,” is the Anglicized surname of the Cuban-born protagonist, “Carolus Henrico Blacus,” the scion of a well-to-do black Cuban tobacco merchant, who was impressed into slavery, during his apprenticeship as a seaman. This footnoted novel provides a compelling background narrative of Delany’s own life in its fictionalized aspiration for Pan-African liberation, as it tracks his own travels, readings, and life experiences.

Editor Miller piquantly opines, “[A]lthough an author of some ability, Delany clearly subordinated his writing to his own ideological orientation, and consequently his only fictional effort marks the artistic epitome of a social and political position—that is, the creative offering of an activist rather than the political expressions of an artist... [I]t is this nationalist bent throughout his career which gave Delany a prominence among blacks exceeded by few Afro-Americans in his generation.” P.xiii

Delany’s “activism” also manifests itself in scholarship, as his book, The Principia of Ethnology was published in 1879. The brazen use of the word, “Principia,” alone, evokes Sir Isaac Newton’s 1687 physics and mathematical classic, Principia, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy: a very lofty comparative to deign to attain for any man at any time of any color. Clearly, Delany was no ordinary man!

Nor is his an ordinary book. Part 1 describes slave life in the United States and Canada, including a harrowing chase, re-capture and escape via the underground railroad, cross-country, into Canada. Part 2 deals with life at sea, in Cuba, and in Africa, including color distinctions and differences between Spanish and American enslavement. The hinge of the book is its compelling, detailed account of the process of enslavement from the African barracoons— coastal barracks/prisons—through the fetid, weeks-long trans-Atlantic voyage—the “Middle Passage.” It also portrays the ensuing sale in the Americas of the “fortunate” survivors, our ancestors, and their amazing adaptive and coping mechanism rooted in the religion and faith that produced us!

In that regard, Delany writes: “You must make your religion subserve your interests, as your oppressors do theirs!” advised Henry. “They use the scriptures to make you submit, by preaching to you the texts of ‘obedience to your masters’ and ‘standing still to see the salvation,’ and we must now begin to understand the Bible so as to make it of interest to us….Dat’s gospel talk,” sanctioned Andy. P.41 Throughout the work, spiritual allusions are ubiquitous, try as he might to distance himself from its overwhelming, centripetal force.

He also addresses the power and importance of having money, which is so essential to obtaining and securing one’s freedom. He describes blacks who betray blacks, and whites who aid blacks. African ship pilots, he points out, were the norm in African coastal waters and in slave ports like South Carolina. He recounts tales of Prophet Nat Turner’s “Dismal Swamp” devotees who cling to the hope of insurrection and freedom, and he makes reference to Dred Scott and James Somerset, conflicting Anglo-American judicial decisions which rejected black freedom in America in 1857and after it was initiated in Great Britain in 1772.

That conflict was surely the real cause of the so-called “American Revolution,” slavery of blacks, as the British Royal Navy enforced the judicial ban on the African slave trade on the open sea and off the West African coast, after 1808, which embargo, American slave privateers, including the one Henry Blake piloted, repeatedly sought to subvert. All these and many other fascinating things are described most interestingly in the book. Of especial moment are the “seclusions” those covert insurrection planning meetings all across the country conducted across the South and in Cuba.

Whatever Delany’s actual ending may have been to his novel, “the African Freedom War” came, in the guise and form of the American Civil War and continues to this day “to secure these rights” which originate in the Magna Carta.

The work is memorable, indeed, unforgettable, and is commended to all as a true classic, worthy of its name.

#30

AMAZING ALASKAN ADVENTURES

AMAZING ALASKAN ADVENTURES

08/07/12

By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.

We descended into the grim, low-hanging clouds of Juneau, Alaska, the state capital of our 49^th state, in July 1994, from Seattle, Washington, aboard Alaska Airlines. Happily, a water-lined, mountain-bound town appeared beneath the clouds, rustic in simplicity, yet shrouded in mystery.

We--my wife, Lyla, and our three sons: Andre, Imhotep, and Kemet-- had just attended the week-long National Bar Association Convention in Seattle.

Alaska was that year’s final destination of an annual family vacation that had began with an overland journey—via Interstate Highway 70—in our 1994 Dodge Ram van, from Kansas City, Missouri, through Colorado, where we spent the night; through Utah, so richly red, brown and rugged, and Las Vegas, Nevada, where we spent another night. The next day, we arrived in Santa Ana, California, our first “must-see” destination to visit a rare, ancient Nubian exhibition temporarily housed there in a museum.

From Santa Ana, we drove north to Los Angeles to visit relatives and friends and for rest and rejuvenation. The next day, we traveled up Interstate Highway 5 to San Francisco for dinner on the Fisherman’s Wharf. After dinner, we pushed north until we eventually found a motel in northern California, without “a hole in the wall”, local argot for something we’d rather not know!

Stopping to admire Redwoods National Forest’s multiple features, including driving through and under a giant redwood, on the road, we soon experienced the arboreal mystery of day-turn-to-night, amid the densely layered sequoias’ darkness. Returning to daylight, we meandered on up Pacific Highway 1, along the relentless Pacific Ocean past Oregon’s rocky ledges, and primeval plainness back to Highway 5, and on to Seattle.

After enjoying the beautiful City of Seattle, where we watched the premier of “Forest Gump,” enjoyed a novelty, Starbucks Coffee; and having fulfilled our convention duties, we flew into Juneau, totally clueless as to what lay ahead. Our plan was to rent a van in Juneau, then to drive to Fairbanks, then to Anchorage, thence back to Juneau on back to the lower 48 states.

Our first shock was to discover that no roads led out of Juneau! What? The inter-coastal highway that appeared on the map was just a watery fjord, not the concrete pavement we had assumed it to be. Whoa boy! What's next? We retraced our steps to the airport and purchased ferry boat tickets to Haines, on the mainland. Juneau sat on a narrow, rocky littoral.

Next shock: the ferry only made two runs a day; and, we’d already missed the first run. The next one would not leave until late night, putting us into Haines around 4:00 a.m. Whoa boy! Here we go again! So much for nature-watching from this red-eyed ferry. It also ferried cars, trucks, people, animals, in separate compartments, all for a small fee. So, until our ferry ran, we spent that day visiting a salmon rendering plant, viewing sites around town, boating out to a melting glacier, chunks of which plummeted into the fjord. We also had lunch and dinner of salmon at area restaurants. Salmon—king and sock-eye—are ubiquitous favorites in the northwestern United States, both in Washington and Alaska, we found. It's their chicken!

Eventually, we boarded the ferry, and accommodating ourselves to steerage with others, we made our way to Haines on time. A Haines resident whom we had only met over the phone, while at the airport in Juneau, had offered us the use of her home to rest in and to refresh in, after our journey, as no one was home. She even told us where she’d leave the door key! But, being ever prudent—and secretly entertaining images of chain-saw murderers from Hollywood movies—we decided to forego that act of incredible kindness that so amazingly characterizes all Alaskans, we encountered. Being suspicious lower-48ers, we kept driving, marveling that anyone would offer total strangers their home, sight unseen! “To the pure, all things are pure…” Titus 1:15.

Along the route to Fairbanks, we caught our first glimpse of majestic, snow-covered Mt. McKinley, the tallest mountain peak in North America, clearly visible from over 100 miles away in the sunrise. What a sight! I was surprised to learn that Fairbanks had an African Methodist Episcopal Church, which meant it also had black people! Ha! The mayor was black, we later learned. We rented a lovely, totally-furnished and completely-equipped, two-bedroom duplex; shopped at a grocery store; cooked a scrumptious breakfast; ate; cleaned up; and crashed into bed from exhaustion. Our whole family was pleasantly contented. It was in Fairbanks that we observed the mystical dance of the “Northern Lights” also known as the aurora borealis. The sun did not set until midnight Alaska-time. Clearly, we were in a very different world.

We were headed to Anchorage, by way of Wasilla, where we planned to stop and to visit a fellow National Bar Association (NBA) member, and fellow Howard Law School alumnus, Ashley Mahala Dickerson, Esq., one extraordinary lady. I had cross-referenced each membership directory: Howard's and the NBA’s before leaving Kansas City. That’s how I found her. I also had spoken to her over the phone, amazed that she had been in Alaska, since the 1940’s, practicing law, no less! I later discovered she and her three minor sons had “homesteaded” Alaska, before it became a state, and had lived in a trailer, in the early days, on her 160 acre allotment, in the wilderness! An Alabama native, her neighbor and playmate was none other than Rosa Parks—yes, that one—and Mahala was among the first blacks admitted to the Alabama, Indiana, and Alaska bars. Extraordinary!

To our surprise and delight, our “visit” with Attorney Dickerson resulted in an unsolicited invitation for our entire family to spend the night. Alaskan hospitality is amazing, we were beginning to see. Her home was rustic, palatial, entirely harmonious with its context. It had 4 or 5 bedrooms, as many bathrooms, and, most shockingly, an indoor Olympic-sized swimming pool in which our hostess swam while we watched, having respectfully declined her kind invitation to join her swim. The next morning, she cooked us a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, potatoes, toast, grits, coffee, orange juice, and moose sausage. Moose is a delicacy in Alaska, we also learned. After breakfast, she proudly led us on a guided tour of her wooded estate accompanied by her dog, a lovely malamute, that I mistook for a huskey. Our host, a Quaker—the only one I’d ever met of any race—took us to their “friends” meeting house, which is also on her estate, easily identifying hibiscus and other floral varieties in passing. What a wonderful person and what liberated spirit she was, this former Alaskan legislator!

Parenthetically, while traveling to Wasilla, from Fairbanks, we had passed the Great Alaska Pipeline at several points and had marveled at its eco-friendly beauty and technological efficiency, which resulted in every Alaskan citizen getting a thousand-plus dollar check for oil royalties every year. Would that we had such a government-owned pipeline in Missouri that awarded us a $1,000-plus annual royalty check each year!

Anchorage, itself, seemed somehow anticlimactic, after the wonders of Wasilla. We did, however, stop for lunch there. But, as it pretty much looked like any number of other of dozens of American cities we had seen, including our own—Kansas City--we found our way back onto an interstate intent upon heading for Haynes, the ferry, Juneau, and ultimately home.

“Intent” is one thing, but actuality is quite another in Alaska!

We hit a 800 pound moose at midnight on the highway enroute to Haynes! That jarring collision unexpectedly compelled our stay-over in Chistochina a couple days. Imagine that! Colliding with and killing a moose, at midnight, in the middle of Alaska! My wife had been driving, while I was sleeping in the front passenger seat, and our 3 sons were sleeping in the back of our Chevy Lumina van. Somehow, I dreamed that we were falling over a cliff down through pine trees, whose needles were brushing my face. In fact, the safety windshield’s glass had shattered sending shards everywhere, even into my jean pockets. Screeching brakes, a thud, and the moose’s rasping, dying breath just outside my window all came rushing to me at once, as I snapped awake. “What that hell?” I uttered excitedly, looking at my wife, incredulously. She was calm. “That moose wouldn't get out of the way,” I'd first thought that I'd heard her say. She was very cool. Too cool.

“That thing just jumped right out in front of me!” She protested. Fortunately, none of us were hurt. The vehicle, a rented Chevy Lumina minivan was smashed, “jacked,” as the kids say. But, it was drivable. I instructed my wife to back away from the moose, lest it attract a hungry bear, further compounding our problems. She pulled down to a dirt road 100 or so yards away, pulled in, turned on the flashers and waited for help.

Again that amazing Alaskan hospitality manifested itself. A serviceman driving to New Jersey stopped and lent aid. He produced some duct tape and flimsy plastic used to cover dry-cleaning and improvised a replacement windshield for ours, that had been caved in by the moose. While he was still there another vehicle bearing two ladies stopped. They told us we had passed a lodge about 25 miles back. They volunteered to lead us back to it so we could sleep and regroup. With that, our “angel”- serviceman took off and continued on his journey, laden with our heartfelt, thankful gratitude.

Following these two new, female angels, we retraced our route. Never exceeding 20 miles per hour, due to our precariously plastic, improvised windshield, we followed those local ladies through the cold night air. Sure enough, they led us to Chistochina Lodge, which looked dark and forbidden, as though it were closed. “Oh, there’s someone there, alright.” They said. “This is Alaska.”

She knocked on the door. Light, smoke and sound poured out as it opened. “These folks killed a moose, back up the road and need a place to stay,” an angel said. “Come on in!” replied the hostess. As we entered I noticed a wet bar through a doorway where several patrons were seated. Boy, could I ever use a beer, I thought to myself! While we were checking in, and thanking those kind ladies who had helped us, a couple guys from the bar ambled over. “Did we hear tell you guys had killed a moose back up the road?” one asked. “Sure did.” I replied. “Can we have him?” he asked. Have him? I must’ve looked, as perplexed by his question, as I felt, because he next said “Come on over to the bar, and let me buy you a beer.” Sold American! At the bar, I gave these gentlemen who were gratuitously furnishing the beer, the mileage road marker our fallen moose was near. My wife and kids, meanwhile, had checked in and were unloading the van. “Here's what you're gonna have to do, fella,” one of them said. “Call the highway patrol, tell'm what happened and where. Then, tell'm you're giving your moose to some local folks to clean up and to dispose of.” We walked over to the front desk phone. I related that information to the authorities. That done, having consumed a beer or two, I bid these newest set of Alaskan angels good night and went to bed upstairs in our room. At last!

Later that day, as I looked out the window into the quiet morning gloam, I noticed a smokehouse with hewn haunches of meat hanging from the rafters. It appeared to be freshly cut. I wondered if that was our moose. Turns out it was. They offered us some of it for breakfast. “This is Alaska!” I demurred in favor of bacon and sausage, my old familiar favorites!

The rental car company soon brought up a new minivan from 150 miles away, from Anchorage, our previous Lumina having been completely totaled! Thereafter we ferried back to Juneau, and flew back to Seattle; picked up our own 1994 Dodge Ram van and drove back to KC. Our amazing Alaskan adventures were complete. As breath-takingly beautiful as that state is, its people are even more beautiful, more wonderful, more loving! What a visit! What a vacation! What a state! Great life-long memories it has given us. God bless Alaska and its amazing people!

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