Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire, translated and edited by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith, with an introduction by Andre Breton, (Wesleyan U. Press, Middletown, CT: 2001)

a book review

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

11/28/12

“Negritude” immediately comes to mind, when I hear the name Aime Cesaire. He invented that “Africentric” literary perspective, among Francophone blacks, along with his fellow Parisian-educated, colonial cohorts: Leopold Senghor and Leon Damas—whom I was honored and thrilled to meet my freshman year at Howard University.

Having studied French for 5 years in junior high and high school, where we read, as class assignments, Moliere's Le Bourgeoise Gentilhommme, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and Guy de St. Exupery's Le Petite Prince, among others, I yet retained sufficient confidence, over 40 years later, to undertake Cesaire's widely acclaimed “piece de resistance,” Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natale, albeit in English!

While it did not disappoint, per se, I was less than enthralled with it awful honesty, its unabashed rawness, and the abject sense of futility about his Martinique island home.

Cesaire is a poet and a damn good one! His craft is commendable. But his images hurt. Perhaps, they hurt me, because my legacy is African-diasporic like his and millions more. A few images may suffice to illustrate my angst.

“At the end daybreak...a cursed venereal sun.” The poem opens. “...the hungry Antilles, the Antilles pitted with smallpox, the Antilles dynamited by alcohol, stranded in the mud of this bay, in the dust of this town sinisterly stranded.” It continues. “...an aged life mendaciously smiling, its lips opened by vacated agonies; an aged poverty rotting under the sun, silently; an aged silence bursting with tepid pustules, the awful futility of our raison d'etre.” One wonders why he would ever want to return to: “...this inert town, this desolate throng under the sun, not connected with anything that is expressed, asserted, released, in broad earth daylight, its own.” Fear is palpable in such an “inert town” that is “not connected with anything...its own.” Such are those “fears perched in trees...dug in the ground...adrift in the sky, of piled up fears and their fumaroles of anguish.”

I was reminded of novelist, Richard Wright's, American Hunger, a social anthology by his African American counterpart and contemporary, when Cesaire drools upon hunger's insidious effect: “And neither the teacher in his classroom, nor the priest at catechism will be able to get a word out of this sleepy little nigger, no matter how energetically they drum on his shorn skull, for starvation has quicksanded his voice into the swamp of hunger...”

He places Martinique in a neo-geographic, if not historic context, when he writes “And my non-fence island, its brave audacity standing at the stern of this polynesia, before it, Guadeloupe, split in two down its dorsal line and equal in poverty to us, Haiti where negritude rose for the first time and stated that it believed in its humanity and the funny little tail of Florida where the strangulation of a nigger is being completed, and Africa gigantically caterpillaring up to the Hispanic foot of Europe, its nakedness where death scythes widely.”

Apostate, sneering, hideous, complicitous, “rouge of dust mixed with rheum;” these biting words are bullets in his expiatory arsenal. Cesaire rages about his own “cowardice rediscovered!” Declaring “My heroism what a farce! This town fits me to a t. And my soul is lying down. Lying down like this town in its refuse and mud.”

Purging himself, finally, he sighs reverently “At the end of this daybreak of my virile prayer...the lover of this unique people... I accept, I accept it all...to you I surrender my conscience and its fleshy rhythm...my abrupt words...embrace, embrace us at dusk...”

Poignant, palpable, powerful. Only such an impassioned soul as that of Aime Cesaire, could have imprinted the soul of fellow Martiniquan and psychiatrist, the iconic Franz Fanon, his devotee and student, whose virile works—BLACK SKIN/WHITE MASK and THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH—so imprinted me and others like me!

#30

IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES

IN PRAISE OF AUNTS AND UNCLES
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Monday, January 31, 2011

All of us have them. Or, have had them at one time or another.

We might even be “them” right now, ourselves. But, what is their familial purpose? Aunts and uncles—our mothers’ and fathers’ siblings; or, our grandparents’ siblings? What is our familial purpose relative to our own nieces and nephews?

This question has intrigued me ever since I read the Old Testament book of ESTHER, and became acquainted with that book’s hero, Mordecai, Queen Esther’s uncle. Mordecai is the archetypical uncle. He is wise. He is loving. He is pragmatic. He is courageous, and decisive. His orientation is family-first! Due to all of these virtues, and others, he successfully maneuvered his niece, Esther, into becoming the new Queen of Persia, consort of King Ahasuerus, King of Persia and Media, (known to the Greeks as “Xerxes” or “Artaxerxes”), who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.

This King had replaced his former consort, Queen Vashti, for refusing to appear before him, as he had commanded, during a banquet at Susa with his court and military generals. http://nlt.scripturetext.com/esther/1.htm

After Esther becomes Queen, through Mordecai’s help, she, in turn, saves herself, her uncle, and their Jewish people from genocide by interceding with the King, risking her own life thereby. She famously said, ”I will go to the king even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” http://bible.cc/esther/4-16.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Esther

Broadly speaking of course, aunts and uncles are family. In that sense, they are somewhat akin to surrogate parents, endued with the authority to instruct, reprove or discipline, and are, conversely,  implicitly obligated to protect, provide and encourage their nieces and nephews
.
Love and laughter, hugs and kisses, tall tales and short quips are what I mostly associate with my aunts and uncles. Whenever we gather, there’s generally joy, food and festivities, whether planned or not. There are also boisterous recollections, generally of the type you can’t refute, because you were too young to remember; like, “Boy, when you were little, we had to switch them little legs all the time! You remember that?” Of course not! Your dumb silence would engenders more, tearful laughter.

Aunts and uncles are also good at supplying connective tissues in family history. One of my uncles told me where and how my parents first met, something I did not know and would have never asked. One of my aunts once told me that her father, my grandfather, was so revered for his piety and moral rectitude that his white, Mississippi, farming neighbors would have him to come by and pray for them during their illnesses, although he was black. This was something else I could not have known, but now fully appreciate.

Aunts and uncles are praiseworthy. Some have had to “take in” and raise nieces and nephews following those children’s parents’ simultaneous deaths, or other calamities, as Mordecai did with Esther. In other instances, “aunt” and “uncle” was an honorific given to deserving folks who were no actual kin, but who were part of one’s extended family.

Aunts and uncles may also provide occasional gifts and presents: Christmas, graduations, weddings, birthdays, etc. Mainly, though, aunts and uncles produce cousins. Cousins are our lifetime playmates, friends, fellow travelers, family. If aunts and uncles produced no more than this, their job will have been well done!

Whether as Mordecai in the Book of Esther or as “Aunty Emily” in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, or as “Uncle Tom” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, aunts and uncles have played, and continue to play vital and praiseworthy roles in popular culture, and in our daily lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Em http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/StoCabi.html
#30

Hot Air Balloon

Sunday, February 13, 2011
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
HOT AIR BALLOON

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a little boy who loved his Daddy very much. He thought his Daddy could do anything.

They lived near St. Louis, Missouri, where the St. Louis Cardinals play big league baseball.

One day, they went to a baseball game. There, Daddy bought his son a big red hot air balloon, which was tied to a long plastic string. The hot air in the balloon made the balloon float up in the sky. But, the long plastic string, when held tightly, kept the balloon from flying far away.

The little boy loved his big red balloon. He played with it throughout the game. When they ate popcorn or drank soda pop, Daddy would tie the balloon to his son’s chair to keep it safe.

After the game, Daddy reminded his son to hold onto tightly to the balloon’s string. Otherwise, he said, the hot air, in the balloon, would cause it to fly far away.
All the way, in their car, the little boy held on tightly to his balloon’s long pretty plastic string.

As soon as they got home, though, a bad thing happened. A big gust of wind blew the balloon out of the little boy’s hand while his father was picking him up from out of the car. Up, up, and away it went! Higher and higher the balloon floated! It was being carried farther and farther away by the wind!

“Daddy!” cried the little boy. “Catch my balloon!”

But, Daddy could only watch, sadly, as the balloon floated away. It finally came to rest in the top of a tall oak tree, in someone’s back yard, about block away.

“Sorry, son.” He said, “There are some things, even Daddy’s cannot do, like catch a hot air balloon!”

The little boy wept bitterly at his double loss. The first loss: being the loss of his big red balloon. And his second loss: the realization that his Daddy, whom he loved very much, could not, after all, do everything as he had formerly thought, like catch a hot air balloon.

Soon, the little boy’s loud, piteous cries brought his mother outside to comfort him and to dry his tears.

“Ssh. See,” she said as she smothered him with kisses. ”You can still see your balloon, so you still have your balloon. See there it is! Listen! SsShhh! We don’t have the sun, or the moon, or the stars, either. Do we? Do we?” she asked.

“But, we can see them all – the sun, moon, and stars--so they’re still ours. So, we still have them. So, stop crying like a baby! Where’s Momma’s big boy? You still have your balloon! It’s just safe, now, in that tree! Now, tell me, who won the ball game?”

The little boy, somewhat overwhelmed by his mother’s wit, stopped crying. Mother’s wit had stumped him, and diverted him. He did not know who had won the game. He had been too caught with the balloon to notice or to remember, if he had ever known.

All he could do now was to quietly watch his big red hot air balloon float playfully in the wind in the distant oak tree top by its long, pretty plastic string. It remained there for many days, steadily diminishing in size, till one day, it was gone.

“The Cardinals won” said Dad. “Kenny Boyer hit a home run.”

INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence is a gift from God given at birth, if not sooner. It is therefore independent of education. Yet, "education" is a strong means by which the intellect's discoveries and tools are disseminated to others and built upon. Intelligence expresses itself in myriad ways. So, while the two are separate, each is weakened by the other's absence. They go together harmoniously. Intelligent people seek education in areas of interest due to their appreciation of its value.

Since this was originally posted, a study debunking the validity of so-called IQ tests has been published, affirming all that was said above! Praise God for confirmation and affirmation!

Here's the link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY by Patricia Carter Sluby (Praeger Publishers, Westport CT: 2004)


A book review

11/25/12
...

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman


This engrossing book,THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY, is the definitive reference on black inventors in America.

Its author, Patricia Carter Sluby, is a Registered Patent Agent and a former U.S. Primary patent examiner, whose prior book on this subject is entitled Creativity and Inventions: The Genius of Afro-Americans and Women in the United States and Their Patents (1987). So, her current book arises out of a lifetime of labor in this arcane and vital field of endeavor. Her love for her work infuses each page.

With machine-like efficiency, the book commences with a quote from Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, “Congress shall have power...[t]o promote progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Her “Preface” commences with a 1925 quote from Maggie Lena Walker, the legendary Richmond, Virginia, banker and philanthropist of color, that “...in this twentieth century, the woman or man who has brains and uses them will succeed.” The book follows with “Acknowledgments,” “Introduction,” 7 substantive, profusely illustrated/photo-laden, chapters; a “Conclusion,” “Appendix I: Minorities in the Practice of Intellectual Property,” “Appendix II: Roster of African American Patentees: Utility grants from 1821;” notes, bibliography, and index—altogether some 313 pages.


Beginning with an 1833 quotation from Edward H. Everett's address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, Patricia Carter Sluby's “Preface” establishes right away that blackness is anciently synonymous with invention. An 1886 edition of the A.M.E. Church Review contains an article by Professor R. R. Wright, which cites Everett:

“Go back to an earlier period in the history of the black race. See what they were and what they did three thousand years ago, in the period of their glory, when they occupied the forefront in the march of civilization; when they occupied, in fact, the whole civilized world of their time...We received it from our European ancestors; they had it from the Greeks and Romans and Jews. But,” said he, “where did the Greeks and Romans and Jews get it? They derived it from Ethiopia and Egypt—in a word, from Africa.”

African slaves, being non-citizens—as all blacks were, prior to the U.S. Constitution being later amended-- could not hold patents, a form of intellectual property, until after the Civil War. Such inventions were registered in their masters' names, or in the names of other whites. Paradoxically, Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederacy, had earlier attempted to procure a patent for a propeller riverboat invented by Benjamin T. Montgomery, a slave of his brother, Joseph, in Mississippi. This device was used by the Confederate Navy in the Civil War. Montgomery, who had been encouraged to read and write by his benevolent master, died in 1878, being born in 1819 in Virginia.
Sluby's marvelous book is full of many such anecdotes and raconteurs, as that of Benny Montgomery —far too many to mention here! It shall suffice to say that this book lists and describes every invention by blacks in America, including some inventions which are traditionally attributed to whites, like the cotton gin. Short autobiographical sketches are also given of such prolific mavens as Garrett Morgan, Granville T. Woods, Lewis Latimer, Dr. Percy Julian; along side these are those, like Henrietta Bradbury, a Chicago housewife who developed and patented a torpedo firing mechanism in 1945!

It covers modern day inventors like Dannette Connor-Ward, who invented the herbicide “Round-Up” in her employ at Monsanto, Lonnie Johnson who invented the “Super-Soaker squirt gun” and others in such disparate fields as nuclear physics, ophthalmology, and sublimated civil rights veteran, Bob Moses' “Algebra Project” to bring math literacy to school age children.

Reward yourself! Buy and read this book!

#30

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We are gods

Suppose that we are the only humans in the universe, Reader. That would make us "gods," not humans @ Psalm 82:6...In fact, we must be "gods," assuming that we ARE at all! Right now! One light year--not to mention a billion such years-- is a long way for anyone, or for anything, to travel at light-speed, just to see us--whatever we are, if we ARE, bypassing all others along the way!

Bill Sharpe ft. Dave Koz-- "Get Your Groove On"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqIdkxyVTXg&feature=player_embedded#t=84s

Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb! Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb!

Non-stomp funk fulminates with a bumpty bump-bumpty bump!

As a driving, thriving bass summons old souls from the deep.

An impetuous drummer tippy-tips, tippy-tips, captive to his own percussions.

"Come and join us!" Calls the unctious interlocutor "Get your grove on!"

An intrepid sax probes private places, furtively. Darting daringly in and out.

The chorus and rhythmic background spawns comic background radiation.

While George Clinton's spirit irradiates in the aurora borealis with a bumpty bump-bumpty bump!

"Funk not only moves, it also removes!" Hey! Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb

Excerpt: from "As to the Leopard's Spots: An Open Letter to Thomad Dixon, Jr." by Kelly Miller

“There is no hard fast line dividing the two races on the scale of capacity. There is the widest possible variation within the limits of each. A philosopher and a fool may be not only members of the same race but of the same family. No scheme of classification is possible which will include all white men and shut out all Negroes. According to any test of excellence which you’re and Mr. Watson’s ingenuity can devise, some Negroes will be superior to some white men; no stretch or ingenuity or strain of conscience has yet devised a plan of franchise which includes all members of one race and excludes all those of the other.

 

“Learned opinion on the other side ought, at least, to weigh as much against your thesis as your own fulminations count in favor of it. You surely have high respect for the authority of Thomas Jefferson. In a letter to Benjamin Banneker, the Negro astronomer, the author of the great Declaration of Independence wrote: ‘Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit that Nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of other colors of men, and that the apparent want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America.’”

 

Kelly Miller, “As to the Leopard’s Spots: An Open Letter to Thomas Dixon, Jr.,”  in RACE ADJUSTMENT: ESSAYS ON THE NEGRO IN AMERICA, p.37-38 (1909)

"Radicals and Conservatives" by Kelly Miller, an excerpt

"The radical and conservative tendencies of the Negro cannot be better described than by comparing, or rather contrasting, the two superlative colored men in whom we find their highest embodiment -- Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, who were both picked out and exploited by white men as the mouthpiece and intermediaries of the black race. The two men are in part products of their times, but are also natural antipodes. Douglass lived in the day of moral giants; Washington lives in the era of merchant princes. The contemporaries of Douglass emphasized the rights of man; those of Washington his productive capacity. The age of Douglass acknowledged the sanction of the Golden Rule; that of Washington worships the Rule of Gold. The equality of man was constantly dinned into Douglass' ears; Washington hears nothing but the inferiority of the Negro and the dominance of the Saxon. Douglass could have hardly received a hearing today; Washington...

would have been hooted off the stage a generation ago. Thus all truly useful men must be, in a measure, time-servers; for unless they serve their time, they can scarcely serve at all. But great as was the diversity of formative influences that shaped these two great lives, there is no less opposability in their innate bias of character. Douglass was like a lion, bold and fearless; Washington is lamb-like, meek and submissive. Douglass escaped from personal bondage, which his soul abhorred; but for Lincoln's proclamation, Washington would probably have arisen to esteem and favor in the eyes of his master as a good and faithful servant. Douglass insisted upon his rights; Washington insists upon duty. Douglas held up to the public scorn the sins of the white man; Washington portrays the faults of his own race. Douglass spoke of what he thought the world should hear; Washington speaks only what he feels it is disposed to listen to. Douglass's conduct was actuated by principle; Washington's by prudence. Douglass had no limited, copyrighted programme for his race, but appealed to the Decalogue, the Golden Rule, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States; Washington, holding these great principles in the shadowy background, presents a practical expedient applicable to present needs. Douglass was a moralist, insisting upon righteousness to public affairs; Washington is a practical opportunist, accepting the best terms he think it possible to secure."

Kelly Miller, "Radicals and Conservatives," in Race Adjustment: essays on the Negro in America, pp. 19-20 (1909)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL

Nehemiah 8:10 ►

Then he said to them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy to our LORD: neither be you sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.

THANKSGIVING AND THE CIVIL WAR

The USA became a nation in 1787, with blacks incommensurably amerced as 3/5's of a man for purposes of Southern Congressional numeration. We freed ourselves from chattel slavery by force of our own "sable arms" in the Civil War with over 200,000 enlisted black troops and sailors in 1865, striking the decisive blow, in battle after battle, following January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation became effective. Along with those enlisted were untold thousands of "contrabands of war," i.e. runaway slaves. That same year, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was formally ratified. Thereby, what had already been effected militarily was confirmed and conformed constitutionally! 1865-1787=78 years, right? A mere blink of an eye, historically!

Let us all be thankful to Almighty God!

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm

"Thanksgiving" became a national holiday during the Civil War in 1863, the same year that the Emancipation Proclamation was effective, and by the same President, Abraham Lincoln. Rejoice!

 

Thanksgiving Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln

showcase.netins.net

This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America's national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.

FORCED INTO GLORY: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Yet, for all of Lincoln's negatives, many of which are chronicled by Lerone Bennett, Jr., in his searing book, FORCED INTO GLORY, the slaves, free blacks, and abolitionists rejoiced that despite his "white supremacist" bent, in the end, he did the right thing in issuing the EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, and in enlisting 200,000 black soldiers, whose strong "sable arm," dealt the death blow to slavery!

Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 10:00:05 -0800
Subject: Re: * In Spielberg's "Lincoln," Passive Black Characters
Worse yet he ignored the fact that Lincoln was a white supremacist! During his presidential debates with Douglas he made that clear. Her...

e's a direct quote:

"I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor have ever been in favor of make voters or jurors of Negroes...And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

So why did he wind up "emancipating" blacks? The answer is that he needed more soldiers for his northern army to win the civil war.

Peace, Carlos

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Dorinda Moreno wrote:

``````````````````````````````
* In Spielberg's "Lincoln," Passive Black Characters

If I remember correctly, Spielberg did something similar in
Saving Private Ryan: there were no Black soldiers in the
invasion of Europe. Do we need to confront Spielberg on his
(hopefully) unconscious racism?

Cooper Thompson

===

Spielberg has not learned anything about undoing racism
since "Amistad".

"Lincoln" is a film for Spielberg to work out his
relationship with his dad. He needs help to work out his
threadbare relationships with non-Caucasians.

Peter J. Nickitas
Minneapolis

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Jean Jacques Baptiste DuSable and his empty grave

I happened upon an archeological dig the African Scientific Research Institute was conducting in St. Charles, Missouri, in the mid-2000's. They were searching for the grave of Jean Baptiste DuSable, the Haitian founder of both Chicago, Illinois, and St. Charles, Missouri, the first state Capitol, founded in the late 18th century, based on the fur trade.

As television cameras whirred, the archeologists announced that DuSable's supposed grave was empty! All were astonished. The surmise is that the black explorer's grave is under a Catholic church's paved parking lot there is St. Charles.

"Othello" as allegorical insemination of Moorish civilization into the Italian Renaissance through learning and culture

William Shakespeare’s immortal play, “Othello,” is an allegorical representation of the Moorish insemination of the “Italian Renaissance” through learning and refined culture.  

Though depicted as a thwarted, tragic love story between heroic, noble Othello, and the lovely, adoring, Desdemona, Shakespeare really is tracing the eschatological transmission of knowledge such as mathematics, chemistry and astronomy from Muslim civilization to Europe, which was enmeshed in a centuries-long “Dark Ages.”

honored ancestors

HONORED ANCESTORS WHO SUFFERED AND DIED; YET SURVIVED, EVEN THRIVED, FOR ME AND FOR THEIR PROGENY, DURING AMERICA'S 78 YEARS OF CHATTEL SLAVERY.

GRATITUDE

Learn what you can while you can where you are.

Love what you can while you can where you are.

Do what you can while you can where you are.

And be glad!

BENJAMIN ELIJAH MAYS

Last week, my wife and I attended a very stimulating lecture by Randal Maurice Jelks, Ph.D, author of his brand-new, rare biography on the life of "Benjamin Elijah Mays: Schoolmaster of the Movement." Jelks is a professor at the University of Kansas. He spoke at The Black Archives of Mid-America here in K.C.

A REBIRTH FOR CHRISTIANITY: EXCERPT

“Among European Egyptologists, there is one whose research and discovery have contravened the Christian claims relative to the first-century origin of New Testament scriptures.  Gerald Massey, rated in British literature as a minor poet, is far more accomplished in the field of Egyptian studies. Nothing but a full reading of his six major works and lesser volumes would be adequate to the significance of his material, the sum of which is that not only the canonized scriptures of Christianity and Judaism, but much apocryphal and pseudo-epigraphic afloat in these early centuries, is demonstrably of Egyptian origin.

“The question of what may have been a still more remote source from which Egypt in turn drew this material is one that lies hidden in the darkness of antiquity. It is asserted, for example, that the Egyptians knew the interior of the atom. Their mechanical resources for the building of the pyramids are still a mystery. Their knowledge of the astronomical periodicities was amazingly accurate. Many hints are found in the literature of Greece that her wisdom derived from remote Egyptian sources. Plato recounts the legend of Atlantis told by an aged Egyptian priest to Solon.

“Fixed in the opinion that nothing could have been embalmed in literature save facts (although we realize today that even the most scrupulous accounts of events are always colored by the observer or narrator, even if only by the selection of what is reported), the scholarly mind has gone off on many a wild goose chase after the ghosts of history entified out of allegorical and dramatic-type figures. The ancients, to whom facts were far less powerful than they are today, did not write a mere chronology of events; they wrote tales depicting the meaning of all history. The venerable scriptures will never be read aright until the spiritual essence of the events; and not the events themselves, are understood to be the heart of the narrative.  The events that never occurred, and the actors and characters that never lived, still carry the significance that is always and finally the true event of life. To the ancients, it was the soul and not body that held the essential being of existence; the one uppermost objective in antiquity was to devise ways to represent the pilgrimage of the soul. And because the system of hieroglyphics was developed to conceal as well as to reveal, empirical study has been unable to sift the gold of meaning out of the gravel of mythical events.”

--A REBIRTH FOR CHRISTIANITY,  by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, pp. 66-68 (2005)

nature nourishes

nature nourishes the knowledgeable

Antidote for Depression

Antidote for Depression

 

Thursday, July 2, 2009

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

 

Colossians 3:23-24. "Whatever you do, do your work

heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men; knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve."

 

Master, I thank you for reviving me, for restoring me, and for showing me the right way.  It is so easy for one’s foot to slip from the true path.  It is so easy for one to become lost in the thickets and brambles of the material world; for the light of the spirit to be blotted out by the dark, overwhelming canopy of earthly desires and values.

 

When one is in such a condition, depression is the likely sequel, because earthly rewards can never supply satisfaction to the soul.  Only spiritual rewards can do that.  And spiritual rewards come only from God.  Unless one’s soul is satisfied, there can be no satisfaction on earth.  Only a sanctified soul is a satisfied soul.

 

Thus, our earthly labors, whatever form they assume, must be undertaken as though for God, and not for man, knowing that whatever we do for God will be rewarded by God.  God’s reward being the true and everlasting reward.

 

11Thine, O LORD is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all.

12Both riches and honour come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all.

13Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name.

14But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.

 

1 Chronicles 29.

 

Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.  ACTS 7:22.

Perception-conception/God-time

Those who first perceived "time" also first perceived God.

Those who first conceived "time" also first conceived God.

Perception and conception are kindred. So, too, is God and "time."

"In the beginning God created..." Gen.1:1

"In the beginning was the word and the word was God..." John 1:1

Heed your physical and spiritual senses

Your physical senses are there to inform you, to warn you, to delight you, to encourage you!

Your spiritual senses are no less so! Heed them as well and be blessed commensurately.

"WITNESS” TO OBAMA’S FIRST INAUGURATION

By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

 

 

My wife and I drove from Kansas City, Missouri, to Washington, D.C. to partake in the epochal inauguration of Illinois Senator, Barack Hussein Obama, as the first black President of the United States in January 2009.

 

We spent the first night in St. Louis with childhood friends.  Departing early the next morning, I glanced at, and was recognized by, my third grade “girl friend,” Gail, now, herself, a school teacher, in a QT convenience store/gas station coffee aisle. I had not seen her, easily, since the 1960s.  My joyous reunion with Gail and her adult daughter was compounded by my discovery that, they, too, were meeting family members to drive to D.C. for the historic inaugural.  We were both amazed and reassured by this double coincidence.

 

The drive was uneventful, even restful--as my wife, Lyla, did most of the driving--until nightfall found us on Highway 70 near its conjunction with Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, where it began to snow and sleet and rain, so heavily, the lane dividers disappeared and visibility, too.  We had a choice to make: take the Pennsylvania Turnpike with its narrow lanes and steep ascents and descents through the Allegheny Mountains; or drop down into West Virginia and take our chances with that flatter, southern route through the same mountains. We took the southern route, and spent the night in southern Pennsylvania, 20 miles from West Virginia in a warm motel.

 

The next morning we arrived in the District of Columbia, via Silver Spring, Maryland, on Sunday, January 19.  Driving down “sweet” Georgia Avenue, toward northwest Washington, nostalgia overwhelmed me; I was being mysteriously summoned to “The Yard,” my alma mater, Howard University, “The Capstone of Negro Education.”  Relenting to the spirit, I rolled onto main campus, past the security guard station, which kindly waved me in, after looking at the mud on my car, my Missouri tags, and that “don’t you know me” look in my confident eyes.  Cars, as usual, were parked everywhere.  But as fate, and the good Lord, would have it, we found the perfect spot.  We then headed for Cramton Auditorium to see what was up.

 

Unbeknown to us, the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and confidante of Barack Obama, was just about to preach, when we entered the overflowing vestibule.  This was too wonderful to imagine.  Others, we later learned, had been redirected to three different overflow facilities, so massive were the earlier crowds.  But, our timing was exquisite.  We walked right in.  We were blessed as Rev. Wright, also a Howard alumnus, preached “till my dungeon shook, and my chains fell off”.

 

Leaving Howard, we retrieved “Silver” Inauguration tickets, and logistical information, from the Capitol Hill office of our Congressman, the Honorable Emmanuel Cleaver II, Democrat from Kansas City, Missouri, who had kindly befriended us.  Thereafter, we drove to 13<sup>th</sup> and “U” Street, N. W. , to Ben’s Chili Bowl, in a vain attempt to procure a legendary half-smoke, newly popularized--indeed sanctified--by an unannounced, but televised, visit of President-Elect Barack Obama during the previous week.  The line was too long to get in, so we shopped among the outdoor vendors at a nearby Ethiopian flea-market, where all things Obama were on sale.  After purchasing a few items, we headed to Northeast Washington to the residence of my late mother’s first cousin, Edward Merriweather, our obliging host.

 

Edward and his wife, Clementine, both retired school teachers, are natives of Canton, Mississippi, also my birth place.  Their sense of family and hospitality are overwhelming.  They spoiled us.  We certainly did not lack for anything.  Providentially, we resided only three blocks from the D.C. Armory subway station, our means of transportation to and from the inauguration at the Capitol.

 

The morning before the inauguration, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, I attended a Howard University Law School Alumni Association luncheon,  at Marriott Hotel, 14<sup>th</sup> and Pennsylvania, N.W., where I  delivered the invocation, which was keynoted by Congressman Gregory Meeks of New York, who was a year behind me at law school.  The empty seat on the dais next to me was to have been occupied by Illinois Senator Roland Burris, another Howard Law alumnus, but he did not appear.  At the luncheon, I was pleased to see my good friends, and Howard Law graduates Kamau King, Kwame Osei Reed, Donald Thigpen, and Robert Bell, all NBA stalwarts, among others. That evening we finally got our half-smokes from Ben’s!

 

Finally, the day of reckoning arrived.  We had been warned to arrive early due to record crowds.  We heeded that advice, but it did not matter.  The crowd was prehensile, contiguous, viscous, alive.  Getting to one’s designated area was an act of grace, subject to fluid dynamics.  The logistics were designed to effectuate the very diverse crowd’s control, not to expedite movement, nor to differentiate among ticket holders.  No official knew anything about anything, except “keep moving.”  After hopelessly battling the Mall crowd for 4 hours, and finally being blocked by a phalanx of mounted police, I had a choice to make:  stand where I was and see and hear nothing pertaining to President Obama , in the cold. Or, catch the subway back to my cousin’s house, where food, beverages, warmth, a television and a front-row seat awaited me.  Hello, Brother Obama!  And good-bye, my brother!  I booked.

 

Headed back to the subway station, I encountered my lovely wife, standing in yet, another  long serpentine queue, of course.  Serendipitously, I had somehow passed her in route to the National Mall, even though she had caught the train, before me.  When I told her I was headed back to Edward’s home, owing to the lack of accessibility for “silver” ticket holders, she declined my invitation to return, and ignored my admonition about lack of access, and stuck it out.  She claims that she ended up hearing, but not seeing anything, being blocked by a tree near the wading pool.  As for me, I saw and heard; ate and drank; was warm and well-seated, enjoying instant replay.

 

God bless America, and to each his own!

 

Below are links to some photos of our beautiful First Family:

 

http://news.aol.com/main/politics/article/obamas-in-new-york-city/452442?icid=webmail|wbml-aol|dl1|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Fmain%2Fpolitics%2Farticle%2Fobamas-in-new-york-city%2F452442

 

 

 

 

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: A BIOGRAPHY (BOOK REVIEW)

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: A BIOGRAPHY, by Gary R. Kremer (Greenwood, an imprint of ABC-CLIO LLC, Santa Barbara, CA:2011)

A BOOK REVIEW

11/09/12

...

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

I am a fan of Gary R. Kremer, the author of GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: A BIOGRAPHY. I have read all of his books, including GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER: IN HIS OWN WORDS published in 1987. Both books I commend highly to anyone interested in Carver, a very unique man.

“Familiarity breeds contempt,” goes a well-known adage. Such is definitely the case with Carver, whose story we think we know by osmosis. Because we think we know him from school, black history month presentations, or otherwise, few bother to get to know him in earnest. That is unfortunate for the indolent. Carver was, is, and will forever be, a force of nature in all dimensions: spiritual and physical.

Though born in Diamond, Newton County, Missouri, in 1863, a slave, a beautiful 200-acre National Park Service Visitor's Center and Interactive Museum now graces the very grounds from which Arkansas bandits stole him and his mother, when he was but a sickly infant. Pursuing the thieves from his southwestern Missouri farm, somehow, his master, Moses Carver, was able to retrieve baby George. The fate of his mother, however, who was never recovered, nor heard from, remains unknown.

His rescue, itself, evokes that of the Biblical baby, Moses, from the Nile River by Pharaoh's daughter.
Throughout life, Carver felt like “a motherless child.” Though his desuetude was mitigated by the companionship of an older brother, James, who also lived on the farm, it was never satisfied. Carver retained his mother's spinning wheel, in remembrance of her, all of his life. Moses and Susan Carver, a childless, white couple, raised James and George after the Civil War ended, as a family members.

The book traces Carver's educational exodus from Diamond to neighboring Neosho, Missouri, where he attended a colored school in the home of the Watkins family, with whom he lodged, in exchange for services. It takes us through Kansas, then perceived as “the promised land” by persecuted former slaves. After witnessing a lynching of a black man in Ft. Scott, Kansas, he moved to Olathe, In Kansas, Carver eventually finished high school. Here also, he was denied admission to Highland College due to race, which omission, retrospectively shamed that institution into “admitting” and conferring an honorary degree upon him in 1996 . While in Kansas, he had also been a “sod-buster” in western Ness County, Kansas, homesteading in a 17 acre plot, living in a sod hut, while trying to eke out a living in bitterly harsh conditions, including drought.

Like many others, he abandoned that spartan existence, after a year. During the interim, he had been featured in the local newspaper, joined a literary society, sung in a church choir, painted floral scenes, read his Bible, sewed, darned, and spun cloth, when not tending to reluctant crops. He never had a wife. Gary Kremer has identified a female romantic interest at Tuskegee that he maintained for three years.

He was educated at Iowa State University, graduating in 1896, when he joined Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, as the agricultural/horticultual department at that, then fledgling, institution founded by Washington in 1881. There joint gifts and determination occasionally led to disputations over the years, but “for the good of the race,” they toughed it out triumphantly.

Kremer's book accords recognition to Carver as the original “chemurgist,” now a multi-billion dollar industry in which widely diverse products are synthesized from organic substances. He is best known for his chemurgy, particularly as pertains to the sweet potato, peanut, and soy bean, from which he derived hundreds of practical applications, which he imparted, gratis, to the world.
Dr. Carver was a man of great faith, whose trust in God was complete. He recognized no distinction between the Bible and science, as extremists on both sides needlessly argue. He quotes from the Old Testament book of Job 12:7-10 (NIV): 7 “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;8 or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.9 Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?10 In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” Carver also explains that “Science is the truth” in response to John 4:24: “God is a spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."


Buy the book, read it and be blessed!

THANK YOU LORD FOR PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

THANK YOU LORD FOR PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Thursday, November 08, 2012

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

 

THANK YOU LORD FOR THE CUES AND THE CLUES

THANK YOU LORD FOR THE GOSPEL AND THE BLUES

THANK YOU LORD FOR THE DADDY AND THE MOMMA

THANK YOU LORD FOR PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA!

 

THANK YOU LORD FOR THE JOY AND THE PAIN

THANK YOU LORD FOR THE SUN AND THE RAIN

THANK YOU LORD FOR FINESSE OFF THE SCALE

THANK YOU LORD FOR FIRST LADY MICHELLE!

 

THANK YOU LORD FOR MALIA AND SASHA

THANK YOU LORD FOR KANSAS AND MOMBASSA

THANK YOU LORD FOR ENABLING THIS DAY

THANK YOU LORD FOR THE USA!

 

 

 

 

Excerpt: THE EQUALITY OF THE HUMAN RACE

“But the fascination did not last long. As soon as easier relations allowed Western travelers to visit India, to journey through fabled Hindustan with its renowned Benares and Chandernagor, cities whose evocatively poetic names awakened in the soul ineffable yearnings, Europeans realized, alas, that the Brahmanic race they had thought of as White was not White at all. Their disappointment was total, for they could no longer delude themselves.  Nevertheless, they continued to classify those Indian populations as White, just as they persisted in labeling ancient Egyptians even Ethiopians as White. The scholar D’Omalius D’Halloy seems to have been the first to have had the courage to openly challenge this ethnographic heresy. While he accepts Cuvier’s classification, D’Halloy makes the following remark:  ‘The illustrious author of Regne animal identifies three branches within the White race, which he lists in this order: the Aramaic branch; the Indian, German, and Pelasgian branch; and the Scythian and Tartar branch.  Although this classification is based upon linguistic and historical considerations rather than on natural rapprochements, I decided to use it in my work, because it is the most generally accepted. But when all these people speaking languages considered related to Sanskrit are grouped within the same branch, the result is that an almost Black people, such as the Hindus, ends up belonging in the same branch as the whitest among the White peoples.’

“Notwithstanding D’Halloy’s judicious observation, the authors of every ethnographic work persisted in identifying the Hindus as a White people. But to mask the quite apparent inconsistency of this classification, they adroitly replaced the term White race with the phrase Aryan race, which is a meaningless expression, for it refers neither to some set of natural characteristics nor to some geographical reality.”

 

THE EQUALITY OF THE HUMAN RACES, by Antenor Firmin, p. 260 (University of Illinois Press, Champaign: 1885, 2002)

  

 

Two African American Christian men

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone. Mark 10:18

kingdom of heaven is within

Luke 17:20-21

New King James Version (NKJV)

The Coming of the Kingdom

<sup>20</sup> Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; <sup>21</sup> nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’<sup>[a]</sup> For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Ignorant righteousness is often the prey of knowledgeable evil. "Study to show thyself approved before God, a righteous person who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth!"

The least of these

President Barack Obama would be better served in his new term by working with and for the "least of these," which includes the great bulk of our, long-forgotten, African American people!

African American Christian

President Barack Obama is, archetypically, today's nonesuch, paragon, nonpareil. But, tomorrow there will be others, many others, who, like him, also are transformed African American Christians, thoroughly steeped in the history, lore and legacy of each, while exemplifying the same, by love, in Jesus' mighty name!

Siamese Crocodiles

FUNTUNFUNEFU-
DENKYEMFUNEFU

"Siamese crocodiles"

symbol of democracy and unity

The Siamese crocodiles share one stomach, yet they fight over food. This popular symbol is a reminder that infighting and tribalism is harmful to all who engage in it.

ORIGINS: FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION, by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith

“In 1979, Alan Guth,a physicist working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California, hypothesized that during its earliest moments, the cosmos expanded at an incredibly rapid rate—so rapidly that different bits of matter accelerated away from one another, reaching speeds far greater than the speed of light. But doesn't Einstein's theory of special relativity make the speed of light a universal speed limit for all motion? Not exactly, Einstein's limit applies only to objects moving within space and not the expansion of space itself. During the “inflationary epoch,” which lasted only about 10<sup>-37</sup> second to 10<sup>-34</sup> second after the big bang, the cosmos expanded by a factor of about 10<sup>50</sup>.

“What produced this enormous cosmic expansion? Guth speculated that all of space must have undergone a “phase transition,” something analogous to what happens when liquid water quickly freezes into ice. After some crucial tweaking by his colleagues in the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Guth's idea became so attractive that it has dominated theoretical models of the extremely early universe for two decades.

“And what makes inflation such an attractive theory? The inflationary era explains why the universe, in its overall properties,looks the same in all directions: everything that we can see (and a good deal more than that) inflated from a single tiny region of space, converting its local properties into universal ones. Other advantages, which need not detain us here, accrue to the theory, at least among those who create model universes in their minds. One additional feature deserves emphasis, however. The inflationary model makes a straightforward, testable prediction: space in the universe should be flat, neither positively, nor negatively curved, but just as flat as our intuition imagines it.

“According to this theory, the flatness of space arises from the enormous explosion that occurred during the inflationary epoch. Picture yourself, in analogy, on the surface of a balloon, and let the balloon expand by a factor so large you lose track of the zeroes. After this expansion,the part of the balloon's surface that you can see will be flat as a pancake. So too should be all the space that we can ever hope to measure—if the inflationary model actually describes the real universe.

“But the total density of matter amounts to only about one quarter of the amount required to make space flat. During the 1980's and 1990's, many theoretically minded cosmologists believed that because the inflationary model must be valid, new data would eventually close the cosmic “mass gap,” the difference between the total density of matter, which pointed toward a negatively curved universe, and the critical density, seemingly required to achieve a cosmos with flat space. Their beliefs carried them buoyantly onward, even as the observationally oriented cosmologists mocked their overreliance on theoretical analysis. And then the mocking stopped.”

(italics added)

ORIGINS: FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION, by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith,pp.84-85 (W.W. Norton & Co., NY, London:2004)