DEEP DARK SHADES

Deep, dark, shades of meaning attend my soul, my mind, and body; expressed in many magnificent ways

'SOLID!"

http://www.learner.org/interactives/geometry/platonic.html AS UNDERGRADS AT HOWARD, IN THE EARLY 1970'S, WE USED TO GRIP OUR FIST INTO A SALUTE, AND REPLY "SOLID," WHENEVER WE AGREED WITH AN ASSERTION. LITTLE DID WE KNOW THAT, IN DOING SO, WE WERE ALSO INVOKING FIVE ACTUAL GEOMETRIC SOLIDS PROVEN BY EUCLID'S "ELEMENTS," MATHEMATICALLY, THAT PREDATE EUCLID AND GREECE BY AT LEAST A THOUSAND YEARS THAT ARE ROOTED IN, AND THAT ARISE FROM, NUBIAN/KEMETIC (ANCIENT EGYPTIAN) CULTURE.

COTTON GIN MYSTERIES

COTTON GIN MYSTERIES by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman 10/30/13 After watching Henry Louis Gates' PBS presentation “Too Many Rivers to Cross,” last night about the “African American experience in America,” and on the cotton gin in particular, I was moved to recall the treatment of this revolutionary agricultural implement in other sources that I had earlier read. First, there was Patricia Carter Sluby in THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS; then, there was William Wells Brown's THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION. I had been most recently struck by Wells' use of the verb “introduced” rather than the verb “invented” to describe Eli Whitney's association with that epochal economic implement. William Wells Brown wrote: "The introduction of the cotton-gin in the South, by Whitney of Connecticut, had materially enhanced the value of slave property; the emancipation societies of Virginia and Maryland had ceased to petition their Legislatures for the "Gradual Emancipation" of the slaves; and the above two states had begun to make slave-raising a profitable business, when the American Antislavery Society was formed in Philadelphia in the year 1833. The agitation of the question in Congress, the mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, the murder of Rev. E.P. Lovejoy in Illinois, and the attempt to put down free speech throughout the country, only hastened the downfall of the institution." P.37, "Growth of the Slave Power," THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION, by William Wells Brown (1867) Sufficiently intrigued, I then turned to Patricia Carter Sluby's book for a more in-depth assessment of this crude eighteenth century tool's historical evolution and economic impact. Sluby wrote: “At the height of the slave trade, New England native Eli Whitney obtained a patent on March 14, 1794, for an invention dubbed the 'cotton gin.' This grant, issued a mere four years after the first U.S. Patent, gave Whitney full credit as the original, first, and sole inventor of the initial cotton engine. Was this true? Some doubt still lingers. “Whitney came south to study law and accepted a position as a tutor on a plantation called Mulberry Grove, a tract of land given by the state of Georgia to the Revolutionary War officer Major General Nathaniel Greene, who died in 1786. Greene's widow, Catherine Littleton Greene, had personally met Whitney in 1792 and offered him a position on the plantation. Whitney eventually busied himself in the plantation shops. “Mulberry Grove was in an area that produced upland cotton, a plant that had greenish fuzzy seed that was difficult to manually separate from the lint. Nearby, off the coast of Georgia, was a different kind of cotton—the long, silky Sea Island cotton that was easily ginned. Though easy to process, it was not favored cotton shipped offshore. By 1810, only one-tenth of Sea Island cotton, compared to upland cotton, was being exported. “The enslaved labored intensively to loosen the seeds from the cotton. It took ten hours for one slave to pick a pound of lint from three pounds of mixed lint and seeds. Some historians relate that Whitney saw people of color using a crude comb like instrument to perform this task. Being mechanically oriented from his earlier manufacturing days in his father's Westboro, Massachusetts, shop, Whitney improved upon and perfected the crude comb device. Contrarily, it was told that a bondsman named Sam bettered the device made by his father. Carter G. Woodson and Charles Wesley in The Negro in Our History recorded the opinion of patent examiner Henry E. Baker to be that 'slaves made certain appliances, experimenting with the separation of the seed from cotton, which, when observed by Eli Whitney, were assembled by him as the cotton-gin.' “In just ten days, allegedly, Whitney developed the famous cotton gin as an improvement over the crude apparatus to process cotton gin. The principal parts of his machine were the frame, the cylinder, the breastwork, the cleaner, and the hopper. The gin basically was a roller equipped with wire teeth that pulled the cotton fiber from the seed as spikes revolved between hopper slots. In a few years, cotton exported from the United States escalated from a mere 138,000 pounds per year to 6 million pounds per year.” pp.12-15, “Slaves as Originators,” THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY by Patricia Carter Sluby (Praeger Publishers, Westport Connecticut: 2004). Even if slaves did “originate” the cotton-gin as a labor-saving device, however, it could not have been patented by them due to their non-citizen status under American law. The first “utility patent” that was issued to a black person was that which was issued to “a free man of color,” Thomas L. Jennings in 1821, Sluby states, for his “early dry cleaning process, called scouring, to get rid of dirt and grease and renew clothing to its original appearance.” (p.15) She states: “Enslaved thinkers and tinkerers in antebellum days were forced to assign their invention rights to their master because of a citizenship technicality in the patent application oath. Simply put, slaves could not hold patents because they, as noncitizens, could not own property. Classified as intellectual property, patents can be assigned, sold, or transferred like real estate, a function denied slaves but not the master who often secured patents for the inventions of his chattel (obviously in an oath that he was the true inventor). The owner then reaped all manufacture and sale benefits.” (pp.30-31).

difficulty confessing error

Many good people have a very difficult time admitting a mistake or that they may have erred. They are afraid that they may be diminished thereby, and so they remain silent or turn to another topic without ever confessing their error. Pride often blocks humility. Arrogance often blocks truth. Jesus offers a way out in his experience with the Canaanite woman. Renewed power, however, comes from acknowledging one's error, remaining meek and moving on, as the Master teaches: Matthew 15:21-28 King James Version (KJV) 21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. 22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. 23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. 24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. 26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. 27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. 28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

SERENA IS PHAT

IRRUPTIONS OF UNCERTAIN COSMIC INNATENESS

One continually searches for corroboration, for verification, for validation. On some levels, this process is called "science"; on others it is called "faith." To some it is simple socialization. Babies must touch or taste what they see, and seek to see what they hear--other forms of corroboration. Adults are babies lacquered over with experience. Irruptions of uncertain cosmic innateness, entropy-based photon and matter mixtures, they are.

THE NATURAL GENESIS

"It is said that: 'Thebes is heaven on earth. It is the august staircase of the beginning of time.' Thebes is Teb or Apt, the birthplace, and the mother of birth, first personified in the abyss; next in the heaven of the Great Bear, and lastly as Apta in the Solar Zodiac. "The twelve signs of the zodiac were the twelve Totems of the Hebrew Tems. The system was full-blown under another type in the Kabalistic tree of the world, with its seventy-two branches corresponding to the seventy-two duo-decans of the zodiac. "The tree of seventy-two branches, as the figure of the seventy-two duo-decans, is of Egyptian origin. "They use the ape (Aan), says Hor-Apollo, "to symbolize the world, because they hold that there are seventy-two primitive countries of the world." This world was in the heavens where the station of the ape was at the equinox, the point of completion. The stars were totemic with the ancient Arab tribes. Jupiter was the star of the Jodam and Lolham tribes; Mercury of the Assad tribe; Sirius of the Kais tribe; Canopus of the Tay tribe. Others recognized constellations as totemic types. From these we come at last to the ruling planet and the individual's guiding star. These things did not begin with any vague general worship of the heavenly host. The God of Sabaoth is the deity of the seven stars, not of Argelander's map of millions, or the diamondiferous dark. Those stars were observed and reckoned by which time could be reckoned and position in space determined. The constellations were figured for use, the types were made totemic and became fetishistic; but the non-evolutionist who looks on fetishism as a primeval religion degraded to idolatry, might just as well look on the black race as a vey discolored or dirty kind of white. He has to be forced backward, step by step with face set all the while the clean contrary way. Fetishism began with typology, and both mythology and religion were the outcome not the origin." P.71, "Typology of Primitive Customs," THE NATURAL GENESIS, by Gerald Massey (Black Classic Press, Baltimore, Maryland: 1883, 1998)

LIFE LESSONS FOR MATH AND FOR MORE...

http://www.mathgoodies.com/articles/improve_your_grades.html THESE ARE EXCELLENT LESSONS FOR ANY SUBJECT, FOR LIFE AND FOR MATH; READ THEM, AND LEARNED A LOT. PLEASE SHARE WITH ANYONE!

read learn study

Reading, learning, studying is absolutely critical; is the key to black liberation! Similarly, its absence, lack was the key to our subjugation. The same hill goes up and down; such is life.

WHITE MAN, ANY MAN, AS GOD

The white man as "God"--or any man as "God"-- is a notion we need to dispel implicitly from our spirits, values, and institutions where it is so deeply ingrained as to be almost intrinsic, and for many almost indelible.

feel seek faith find

If you can "feel" that which you cannot, yet, see or touch, keep searching, in faith. You will eventually find it or it will find you.

HOSEA 13: 4-16

“But I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior except me. 5 I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat. 6 When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me. 7 So I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. 8 Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open; like a lion I will devour them— a wild animal will tear them apart. 9 “You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your helper. 10 Where is your king, that he may save you? Where are your rulers in all your towns, of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’? 11 So in my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away. 12 The guilt of Ephraim is stored up, his sins are kept on record. 13 Pains as of a woman in childbirth come to him, but he is a child without wisdom; when the time arrives, he doesn’t have the sense to come out of the womb. 14 “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction? “I will have no compassion, 15 even though he thrives among his brothers. An east wind from the Lord will come, blowing in from the desert; his spring will fail and his well dry up. His storehouse will be plundered of all its treasures. 16 The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.”[b] HOSEA 13:4-16

I SOUGHT MY BROTHER, EXCERPT...

I SOUGHT MY BROTHER: AN AFRO-AMERICAN REUNION, by S. Allen Counter and David L. Evans, foreword by Alex Haley, (M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass.: 1981) p.34, 40-41, 50-51, 70 “He went on,'We have come to visit your land. These men who are leading us are Africans also. They are Africans from a place called America, the United States.' They stared at us even more cautiously. The small children crowded around our boat. One of the bushmen smiled and said something to our interpreter that caused everyone to burst out in laughter. We did not understand but laughed in relief. The man came forward, shook our hands, and asked us to step out of the boat onto their shore. When we asked our interpreter what had been funny, he replied 'the bahjah wondered why if you are African, you wear the clothes and other accoutrements of the bakrah.” We laughed again but with a little embarrassment this time.... “Counter said to the interpreter (who acted as our bahjah), 'Bahjah, please tell the chieftain that we are African-descended people too—we are African-Americans. Our ancestors were the same as those of the people of this great bush nation. Our ancestors were forcibly taken from their communities in Africa and brought to this part of the world to provide free labor to Europeans. They were taken to a northern land. [Counter then drew a map of South America, Africa, and the United States on the ground in front of the chieftain.] Most of them died in the process, but many survived the subhuman conditions of the trip across the ocean and subsequent enslavement. We are the descendants of those Africans just as you are. We are your brothers, you are our brothers and sisters; we are all part of the same family, from the same ancestors; we have been looking for you and we have found you.'... “Evans told the bahjah, 'Tell the headman and the villagers that we have a poem which expresses our feelings.' He recited it very slowly, so that everyone would have time to absorb it as it was translated: 'I sought my friend and my friend forsook me. I sought my God and my God eluded me. I sought my brother and found all three.' “In a few minutes the villagers and leaders understood what we had said to them. They were now visibly affected, shaken, and joyful. Some of the older women began to cry. They were saying 'Gan Gadu (heavenly father) oh Gan Gadu, they are our people.' “The women came forward to touch us: some put their arms around us to hug us tightly, saying 'ba' (my brother); the men stood and extended their hands. They should our hands in the conventional Western fashion but put their left hand under our right elbow while shaking with their right hand. This is considered high tribute. It was like a big family reunion—a 350-reunion between two long-separated Afro-American groups. Some of the women handed us their babies and smiled as we held them. We hugged and caressed the children with all warmth and affection that we felt at that moment.... “We were moved to tears.... “[John Gabriel] Stedman had described this remarkable sense of community and generosity when he said of their forebears, 'I however think they are a happy people, and possess so much friendship for one another, that they need not to be told to 'love their neighbors as themselves'; since the poorest negro, having only one egg, scorns to eat it alone; but were a dozen present, and everyone a stranger, he would cut or break it into just as many shares.'”

STOP COMPLAINING, STUPID!

CONSISTENTLY SPENDING YOUR MONEY, OR YOUR TIME, WITH THOSE OR WITH THAT, WHICH DISCRIMINATES AGAINST YOU, OR AGAINST THOSE LIKE YOU, CONCLUSIVELY DEMONSTRATES THAT YOU ARE DESERVING OF, AND DESIROUS OF, SUCH ILL-TREATMENT. SO, STOP COMPLAINING, STUPID, PLEASE!

quantum slopes

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131024160519.htm#.UmpZ444WGGU.facebook Let your eyes look straight ahead, And your eyelids look right before you. 26 Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established. 27 Do not turn to the right or the left; Remove your foot from evil. Proverbs 4:25-27

GO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW

I Samuel 17:39 "And David girded his sword upon his armour, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And David said to Saul, "I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them." And David put them off him." Go with what you know, with that which has been proven to you, and, which you have proven.

"On Education" by Einstein

IDEAS AND OPINIONS, “On Education,” by Albert Einstein (Three Rivers Press, NY: 1954, 1982), pp. 62-63 “Darwin's theory of struggle for existence and the selectivity connected with it has by many people been cited as authorization of the encouragement of the spirit of competition. Some people also in such a way have tried to prove pseudo-scientifically the necessity of destructive economic struggle of competition between individuals. But this is wrong, because man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact he is a socially living animal. As little as a battle between single ants of an ant hill is essential for survival, just so little is the case with the individual members of a human community. “Therefore one should guard against preaching to the young man success in the customary sense as the aim of life. For a successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive. “The most important motive for work in the school and in life is the pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. In the awakening and strengthening of those psychological forces in the young man, I see the most important task given by the school. Such a psychological foundation alone leads to a joyous desire for the highest possessions of men, knowledge and artist-like workmanship.... “Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province. What can be done that this spirit be gained in the school? For this there is just as little a universal remedy as there is for an individual to remain well. But there are certain necessary conditions which can be met. First, teachers should grow up in such schools. Second, the teacher should be given extensive liberty in the selection of the material to be taught and the methods of teaching employed by him. For it is true also of him that pleasure in the shaping of his work is killed by force and external pressure.... “Thus the wit was not wrong who defined education in this way: 'Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.'...”

favor

FAVOR FAVORS THE FAVORED.

an original man

“Interestingly, the relationship between the Nation of Islam and its closest ideological component in the white community went beyond common ideology and rhetoric. During a secret meeting in Atlanta on the night of January 28, 1961, Malcolm X and Jeremiah X, the local Muslim minister, met with members of the KKK to discuss their mutual hostility toward integration. According to the accounts of Malcolm X and an FBI informant present at the conference, the two sides exchanged views on race, and the New York minister went so far as to attribute the whole struggle for integration to a Jewish conspiracy carried out by unsuspecting blacks. He also intimated that the Klan should kill those whites who advocated integration. Besides swapping platitudes with segregationists, the ultimate reason for attendance of Muhammad's representatives at the gathering appears to have been to protect Southern mosques from the threat of destruction at the hands of a revitalized Klan. Toward this purpose, they negotiated a non-aggression pact with the Klansmen specifying that Muslim affairs in the South would not be censured by the KKK as long as the Nation did not aid civil rights efforts there. “The KKK's motive for meeting with the Muslims was apparently to maintain segregation by bolstering the Nation of Islam as a viable vehicle of nationhood for African-Americans. Klan negotiators, according to one source, may have offered the Muslims as much as twenty thousand acres of Georgian land for use as a settlement for black separatists. In general the nocturnal dealings of the Nation of Islam and the Invisible Empire were mutually advantageous, and to some extent both sides seem to have kept their promises. Following the conference, Malcolm X, who would later regret his collusion with Klansmen, dutifully reported to Chicago the land offering made by the KKK. As for Jeremiah X, the Atlanta minister was now in good standing with the powerful Klan of the Peace[sic] State. He would later be warmly be received at KKK meetings as the representative of the Nation of Islam. … “The interactions between Muslims and white supremacists can only be explained in relation to the political context of the early 1960's and the organizational interests of the Nation of Islam. These contacts were probably not intended to result in working partnerships with segregationists, but instead, to preclude confrontations between Muslims and white racists and to increase membership. Muhammad recognized the growing strength of the Klan in the South and, like Marcus Garvey, chose to negotiate a truce before a war could break out between mosques and klaverns. In the event of hostilities, the outnumbered Muslims could not fight off a Klan onslaught, not to mention their silent supporters in Southern police departments and the general population. The options were between extinction and adjustment, and the Muslims chose the latter. “In regard to Rockwell, the decision to sanction his appearance at Muslim meetings was actually a recruitment ploy. The Nazi leader was supposed to represent a brutally honest white man who spoke “for all white[s].” He was a sort of bugbear that Muhammad used to scare blacks into the Nation of Islam. While these tactics perhaps gained the group some immediate benefits, cooperation between Muslims and white racists, albeit perhaps pragmatic at the time, certainly carried a price, as it had for Garvey's UNIA. Arguably, black nationalism as a philosophy and a program is potentially progressive when aimed at eliminating or minimizing the influence of those institutions, forces, and groups that have historically oppressed African-Americans. However, when black separatists seek accommodation and rapprochement with racists and reactionary elements of society, they compromise the moral force behind their struggle for liberation regardless of how noble their intentions may be. To a certain extent, Muhammad had done exactly that by entertaining the Georgia Klan and countenancing Rockwell. Even worse, he had allowed the nation to stray dangerously close to the ideological pathway of white supremacy.” pp. 152-153, 154-155, “Trials and Tribulations,” AN ORIGINAL MAN: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, by Claude Andrew Clegg III (St. Martin's Press, New York, NY: 1997)

HARLEM'S HELL FIGHTERS

"The final leg of departure took the regiment to the Battery, where it then boarded the transport steamer "Ericsson" and journeyed south. Along the route, New Yorkers filled the streets to cheer the city's black soldiers. The scene moved an editorial writer for the "Times" to write the following: 'Eight months ago the African race in this City was literally hunted down like wild beasts. They were shot down in cold blood, or stoned to death, or hung to the trees or to the lamp-posts... How astonishing has all this been changed! The same men who could not have shown themselves in the most obscure street in the City without peril of instant death, even though in the most supplicant attitude, now march in solid platoons, with shouldered muskets, slung knapsacks, and buckled cartridge boxes down the gayest avenues and busiest thoroughfares to the pealing strains of martial music. And everywhere they are saluted with waving handkerchiefs and descending flowers, and with the acclamations and plaudits of countless beholders.' "Stationed in Louisiana, the Twentieth ran afoul the South's white civilian population. The soldiers were treated badly and, as a result, took matters into their own hands. Their retaliatory action was written off by the district's inspector general, who offered the excuse that they were Northern blacks, New Yorkers, and therefore could not submit to Southern ways--a foreboding comparison to the utterances by South Carolinians in the autumn of 1917 when another regiment of black New Yorkers "invaded" the South. A jumpy War Department moved swiftly and mustered the Twentieth out of federal service. For the black soldiers of New York, the Civil War was over. "Now, a half-century later, Colonel Hayward of the Fifteenth New York, as he prepared to lead his troops through Manhattan to the Union League Club to receive its regimental colors, would soon find that when it came to the treatment of blacks in the South, history had a habit of repeating itself." P.65-66, "The Honor of the State," HARLEM HELL FIGHTERS: African American 369th Infantry in World War I, by Stephen L. Harris (Potomac Books, Washington, D.C.: 2003)

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER

LUKE 8: The Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9; Mark 4:1-9) 4And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: 5A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. 6And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. 7And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. 8And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 9And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? 10And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

MAAT

MAAT

A Voice from Harper's Ferry....

A VOICE FROM HARPER'S FERRY, 1859, “Osborne Anderson's Narrative,” by Osborne P. Anderson, pp.122-123 (World View Forum, New York, NY: 1861, 2000) “The truth of the Harper's Ferry “raid,” as it has been called, in regard to the part taken by the slaves, and the aid given by colored men generally, demonstrates clearly: First, that the conduct of the slaves is a strong guarantee of the weakness of the institution, should a favorable opportunity occur; and secondly, that the colored people, as a body, were well represented by numbers, both in the fight, and in the number who suffered martyrdom afterwards. “The first report of the number of “insurrectionists” killed was seventeen, which showed that several slaves were killed; for there were only ten of the men that belonged to the Kennedy Farm who lost their lives at the Ferry, namely: John Henry Kagi, Jerry Anderson, Watson Brown, Oliver Brown, Stewart Taylor, Adolphus Thompson, William Thompson, William Leeman, all eight whites, and Dangerfield Newby and Sherrad Lewis Leary, both colored. The rest reported dead, according to their own showing, were colored. “Captain Brown had but seventeen with him belonging to the Farm, and when all was over, there were four besides him taken to Charleston, prisoners, viz: A.D. Stevens, Edwin Coppic, white; Dangerfield Newby and Shields Green, colored. It is plain to be seen from this that there was a proper percentage of colored men killed at the Ferry, and executed at Charlestown. Of those that escaped from the fangs of the human bloodhounds of slavery, there were four whites, and one colored man, myself being the sole colored man of those at the Farm. “That hundreds of slaves were ready, and would have joined in the work, had Captain Brown's sympathies not been aroused in favor of the families of his prisoners, and that a very different result would have been seen, in consequence, there is no question.... “No, the conduct of the slaves was beyond all praise; and could our brave old Captain have steeled his heart against the entreaties of his captives, or shut up the fountain of his sympathies against their families—could he, for the moment, have forgotten them, in the selfish thought of his own friends and kindred, or, by adhering to the original plan had left the place, and thus looked forward to the prospective freedom of the slave—hundreds ready and waiting would have been armed before twenty-four hours had elapsed.”

THE NEGRO'S GOD AS REFLECTED IN HIS LITERATURE

In his classic work, THE NEGRO'S GOD, As Reflected in His Literature, (Atheneum, Studies in American Negro Life, August Meier, Gen. Ed., New York: 1938, 1968), Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, former President of Morehouse College, and former Dean of Howard University's School of Religion, strongly implied that there was no Negro theology, and that there were few Negro theologians. In his 1938 study of Negro religion, he wrote: “The most outstanding thing about this study is that the Negro's idea of God grows out of his social situation. The cosmological and teleological conceptions of God are conspicuous by their absence in Negro literature. Modern views such as … have not permeated Negro literature. The moral, traditional approach is the one “classical” Negro writers have used.... “His ideas of God, so to speak, are chiseled out of the very fabric of the social struggle. Virtually all of them express the unfilled yearnings of the Negro group, whether they be worldly or other-worldly. They developed, as can be validated historically, along the line of the Negro's most urgent needs and desires. Prior to 1860, the Negro's ideas about God, developed around slavery. After the Civil War, they grew out of the wrongs of Reconstruction. Since 1914, they are inseparable from the social and economic restrictions which the Negro meets in the modern world. “Unlike that of many people, the Negro's incredulity, frustration, agnosticism, and atheism do not develop as the results of the findings of modern science nor from the observation that nature is cruel and indifferent; but primarily because in the social situation he finds himself hampered and restricted. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Negro group has produced great preachers but few theologians. The Negro is not interested in any fine theological or philosophical discussions about God. He is interested in a God that is able to help him bridge the chasm that exists between the actual and the ideal. The Negro's life has been too unstable, too precarious, too uncertain, and his needs have been too great for him to become sufficiently objective to theologize or philosophize about God.” pp. 254-255

YOUTH'S UNCERTAINTY

The apparent chaos and asymmetry of the present generation is our "Uncertainty Principle." That scientific constant, made famous by Werner Heisenberg in physics a century ago as a postulate, has recently been experimentally proven to exist by a team of scientists. Similarly, this generation's uncertainty and lack of clarity, which is so vapid and difficult to measure, shall also, some day, be proven to have been equally potent. Fields must lie fallow after harvest to recover and to reinvigorate.

LIARS AND BIRDS

LIARS MUST LIE, LIKE BIRDS MUST FLY!

a voice from Harper's Ferry, Excerpt...

“After these incidents, time passed away till the arrival of the United States troops, without any further attack upon us. The cowardly Virginians submitted like sheep, without resistance, from that time until the marines came down. “Meanwhile, Captain [John] Brown, who was considering a proposition for release from his prisoners, passed back and forth from the Armory to the bridge, speaking words of comfort and encouragement to his men. “Hold on a little longer, boys,” he said, “until I get matters arranged with the prisoners.” “The tardiness on the part of our brave leader was sensibly felt to be an omen of evil by some of us, and was eventually the cause of our defeat. It was no part of the original plan to hold on to the Ferry, or to parley with prisoners; but by so doing, time was afforded to carry the news of its capture to several points, and forces were thrown into place, which surrounded us. “At eleven o'clock, Captain Brown dispatched William Thompson from the Ferry up to Kentucky Farm, with the news that we had peaceable possession of the town, and with the directions to the men to continue on moving the things. He went; but, before he could get back, troops had begun to pour in, and the general encounter commenced.” A VOICE FROM HARPER'S FERRY, 1859, “Osborne Anderson's Narrative,” by Osborne P. Anderson, pp.98-99 (World View Forum, New York, NY: 1861, 2000)

parent or player?

PARENT OR PLAYER? When I was 33 in 1984, I had a choice to make: Whether to be a parent or a player? I had a great job, a fine house, a nice car, deep education, no criminal record, no addictions, no significant debt, no health issues, and a wonderful family background of achievers. I also had a 5-year old son. My first wife was leaving to pursue other interests, I had learned summarily. What was I to do? Be a parent and raise my son, myself, or be a player, and let him leave with her so that I could "play the field?" Gut-check time! I chose to be a parent. Consequently, I thereby "chose the better part." Like Mary, sister of Martha, who listened to the counsel of Jesus--while Martha was working and complaining--I listened to the counsel of God in my spirit. In so choosing, I was blessed with another natural son, another beautiful wife plus her fine son, a better job, several other cars, many more achievements, and more joy than I deserve or could ever foresee. This personal testimony is published to aid someone, and is not intended to offend anyone. If I can help somebody then my living has not been in vain. Parent or player? Ha! No contest! Parent wins going away.... Amen!

the plight

The plight of the black man and woman is the fulcrum upon which this nation was built, and the central pivot around which it continually revolves: in war and in peace; in law and in custom; in arts and in science; in religion and in philosophy; in economics and in philanthropy; at the core of America's soul.

HARLEM'S HELL FIGHTERS, EXCERPT..

HARLEM'S HELL FIGHTERS: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN 369TH INFANTRY IN WORLD WAR I, by Stephen L. Harris (Potomac Books, Inc., Wash. DC: 2003), p.61-62 “For [Bill] Hayward there was no better symbolic place for the colors to be presented than at the opulent headquarters of the Union League Club at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street. As a member of the club, the colonel knew its history well and how it had always supported African-American causes, even if those causes brought danger to its own members. A case in point took place in 1863, during the Civil War, when the club had raised the all-black Twentieth New York Regiment in the aftermath of the city's murderous draft riots. “Boasting a membership of Manhattan's leading Republicans, the Union League Club had been created to support the Union Cause in the Civil War—a counterbalance to the Northern Copperheads, mostly Democrats sympathetic to the Southern cause. One of the founders was Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect who designed Central Park. Olmstead believed the club would “bring the prestige and social influence of a national business and cultural elite to the work of cultivating loyal opinion among the middle and upper classes.” He envisioned a “club of true American aristocracy.” Among its first members were former New York Governor Hamilton Fish; philanthropist Theodore Roosevelt; and George Lorillard, one of the city's wealthiest landowners. More than fifty years later, the sons of Fish and Roosevelt and a cousin of Lorillard would be clubmates and fellow officers of Colonel Hayward. “Meanwhile, in the midst of the bloodiest civil unrest in United States history, the raising of a black regiment in New York City took some daring. In a week long spree of violence that erupted ten days after the Battle of Gettysburg, more than one hundred people were killed and hundreds more maimed for life. The state militia battled Irish laborers, who believed the passage of the National Conscription Act was unfair because it hit the poor the hardest while leaving the wealthy, who could afford to pay their way out or hire substitutes to take their places, virtually unscathed. A number of Union Leaguers took advantage of the loophole and avoided the war. Theodore Roosevelt paid a substitute, a decision that his eldest son could never reconcile. “Mobs of men who did not have the same means as Roosevelt torched homes and businesses and tore up railroad tracks. While the heavy loss of life included Union Leaguers, the worst butchery was brought against the city's defenseless African Americans. Not only was the Colored Orphanage Asylum on Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street, which 237 children called home, set ablaze with a cry, “Burn the niggers' nest,” at least eleven blacks were slaughtered—lynched, knifed, shot, or burned and, in one case, dragged through the streets by the genitals.”

roots of racism

Racism began in colonial Virginia in the middle 1600's, when marginal groups merged and rebelled against the colony's aristocratic landowners. Petty whites and blacks--all equally indentured servants--rose up in the 1660's under another aristocrat named Nathaniel Bacon, in what is known as "Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion" in colonial Virginia. White indentured servants fought with black indentured servants against the Royalist rulers' ban against them acquiring access and entitlement to Indian lands, from which both were excluded. After the death of Nathaniel Bacon, by poisoning some suspect, the ruling class crushed the rebellion. The rulers then passed laws favoring the whites over the blacks, thereby dividing them. Blacks became slaves for life. Whites remained indentured until their terms ended. Then, they became eligible for land, seed, tools, and cash to start out on their own. With these disparities in place, enmity rather than amity was born between petty whites and now-enslaved blacks. Thereby racism was born and perpetuated to this day, though cracks are now in its armor.

BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND, EXCERPT...

BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND: HARRIET TUBMAN, PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN HERO, by Kate Clifford Larson (One World Books, Random House, NY:2004), p.231-232 “For African Americans both in the North and in the South, bigotry and injustice lingered. In Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York, for instance, African Americans faced daily indignities and resistance to their claims in transportation, education, entertainment, and employment. Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, for instance, were among many African Americans forcibly removed from trains and streetcars, because of the color of their skin, and so was Harriet Tubman. After the war, many such incidents occurred throughout the North; though slavery had ended, rampant discrimination against African Americans persisted. “ In mid-October, with a “half-fare ticket” in her hand, Tubman took passage from Philadelphia to New York on a late-night Camden & South Amboy train. When the conductor ordered her to the smoking car, she refused. She explained that she was working for the government and was entitled to ride wherever she liked. “Come, hustle out of here! We don't carry niggers for half-fare,” the conductor yelled at her. He physically struggled with her, but Tubman's legendary strength apparently outmatched him. Clinging tenaciously to some part of the interior of the compartment, she resisted his efforts to forcibly remove her from the train car. He called upon two other men to help; they pried her fingers loose from the car, then wrenched her arm and broke it. She was then thrown violently into the smoking car, further injuring her shoulder and possibly breaking several of her ribs. No one on the train came to her aid; in fact several passengers shouted epithets and encouraged the conductor to throw her off the train. She told the conductor “he was a copperhead scoundrel, for which he choked her... She told him she didn't thank anybody to call her colored person—She would be called black or Negro—she was as proud of being a black woman as he was of being white.”

surprising book facts

Woot! read'm and weep! The dumbing down of America is nearly complete!

many-named sun

That the sun has many names does not diminish its potency, nor enhance its vibrancy; so, too, with God, however known, or denominated by mankind.

BUS RIDE TO JUSTICE, EXCERPT..

BUS RIDE TO JUSTICE: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF FRED D. GRAY, CHANGING THE SYSTEM BY THE SYSTEM, by Fred D. Gray, Esq., (NewSouth Books, Montgomery, AL: 1995, 2013), P.31-33 “During the early months of my law practice, I had few clients and little to do. At lunchtime Mrs. [Rosa] Parks often walked to my law office, located one and a half blocks from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. We became very good friends. She would walk to my office and we would sit down and share our lunches. “For almost a year we met, shared our lunches, and discussed the problems in Montgomery. Among all those problems, the segregation on city buses was an especial affront to Montgomery's black citizens. Few blacks had cars in those days. We relied on buses. It seemed that the white operators of the buses went out of their way to humiliate black passengers, despite the fact that the bus company derived the majority of its income from black riders. “In the months before her own arrest, Mrs. Parks and I talked often about the situation involving Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old student at Booker Washington High School, who was arrested March 2, 1955, for refusing to get up and give her seat to a white woman on a Capitol Heights bus in downtown Montgomery. I represented Claudette Colvin in the juvenile court of Montgomery County. We discussed the possibility of a boycott. I told Mrs. Parks, as I had told other leaders in Montgomery, that I thought the Claudette Colvin arrest was a good test case to end segregation on the buses. However, the black leadership in Montgomery at that time thought we should wait. “When we threatened to stay off the buses, the city and bus company officials assured us that what happened to Claudette Colvin would not happen again. Of course, nothing really changed. Claudette, Mary Louise Smith, and Mrs. Parks were among a number of black females who had been arrested under almost the same circumstances for resisting segregation practices on the city buses during the year 1955.... “December 1, 1955, was a typical day in Montgomery. It was late fall, but it had not begun to get cold. Mrs. Parks and I had lunch together that day, just as we had done many times before. When 1 p.m. Came and the lunch hour ended, Mrs. Parks went back to her work as a seamstress. During our lunch, I informed Mrs. Parks that I had an appointment out of town that afternoon. I continued my work and left the office in the early afternoon for an out-of-town engagement. “Upon my return to the city later that evening, I was shocked to learn that Mrs. Parks had been arrested in an incident involving the buses. I immediately began to return the numerous phone calls informing me of her arrest. Subsequently, I met with Mrs. Parks, E.D. Nixon, and Jo Ann Robinson. “That day was, for me, the beginning point of all the monumental events that soon began to unfold in my life. My immediate little world began to change. And so did the larger world. I pledged to myself that I would wage war on segregation. The opening shot had now been fired. With Mrs. Park's arrest came the opening of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It changed the history of civil rights in Alabama, in the nation, and in the world. And it launched my legal career.”

INEXORABLE MUTUALITY

Because all persons and all things are "indissolubly connected in a web of inexorable mutuality," to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is often vainly difficult for the historian to confine itself, exclusively, to history; or a jurist to law; a physicist to physics; a writer to literature; a preacher to scripture; a musician to music; a politician to politics; a teacher to education; an athlete to sports; or persons to any one thing. We occupy the same space as all prior predecessors, and, metaphysically, the same time. So, how could it ever be, or have ever been, otherwise? Amen.

ALBERT EINSTEIN "ON EDUCATION" EXCERPT...

"Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But this is not right. Knowledge is dead; the school however serves the living. It should develop in the young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the commonwealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be destroyed and the individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an ant. For a community of standardized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in service of the community their highest life problem... "But how shall one try to attain this ideal? Should one perhaps try to realize this aim by moralizing? Not at all. Words are and remain an empty sound, and the road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal. But, personalities are not formed by what is heard and said, but by labor and activity. "The most important method of education accordingly always has consisted of that in which the pupil was urged to actual performance. This applies as well to the first attempts at writing of the primary boy as to the doctor's thesis on graduation from the university, or as to the memorizing of a poem, the writing of a composition, the interpretation and translation of a text, the solving of a mathematical problem or the practice of a physical sport. "But behind every achievement exists the motivation which is at the foundation of it and which in turn is strengthened and nourished by the accomplishment of the undertaking. Here there are the greatest differences and they are of greatest importance to the educational value of the school..." Pp. 60-61, On Education," IDEAS AND OPINIONS, by Albert Einstein (Crown Publishers, NY: 1954, 1982)

I SOUGHT MY BROTHER, EXCERPT...

I SOUGHT MY BROTHER: AN AFRO-AMERICAN REUNION, by S. Allen Counter and David L. Evans, foreword by Alex Haley, (M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass.: 1981) p.3-4 “In the battles against the Euro-American enslavers, the Bush Afro-American women fought alongside their men. In many cases when plantations were attacked and raided by the freedom fighters, the women assisted by acting as intelligence gatherers or by aiding their enslaved sisters to escape to the bush. In instances of military confrontation with army troops and mercenaries, many women were part of the front-line forces of the freedom fighters. There they fought valiantly, charging trained European soldiers and repelling them, fighting to the death, even when parts of their body had been blown off. “When freedom fighters raided the plantations, they took African women who were willing to flee to the bush, as well as those who were too frightened to escape. The white colonists viewing the freeing or capture of female slaves by the rebels an act of guerrilla warfare against the state because they considered slave women their property. “In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the African slaves were classified according to color. Although most were pure African, many were lighter the lighter complexioned result of forced miscegenation by Euro-American men. The offspring of these unions were referred to as mulattoes, samboes, quadroons and maesti. [John Gabriel] Stedman once said of Surinam that “Here, one meets not only with the white, the black, and the olive, but with the Samboe dark, and the mulatto brown, the maesti fair, the well-limbed quadroon.” A mulatto resulted from the union of a white man and a black woman. A samboe was defined as “between a mulatto and a black, being of a deep copper-colored complexion, with dark hair that curls in large ringlets.” A quadroon resulted from the mating between a “white male and a mulatto female.” A maesti (octoroon) was defined as “the offspring between a European [male] and a quadroon [female].” It is to be emphasized here that each of these mixtures resulted from the mating of a European, white male and a “colored” slave female. For as Stedman put it, “should it be known that a European female had intercourse with a slave of any denomination, she is forever detested, and the slave loses his life without mercy.”.... “While rebel slaves waged successful attacks against them, the militia suffered from malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, jungle rot, and very poor discipline and moral. Military victory over the rebels seemed more remote with each passing day. Moreover, advanced military technology could not be used against the menacing rebels. Cannons, cavalry, and ships were ineffective in the thick jungles and rock-strewn rivers of Surinam.”

SPINOZA, NEWTON, EUCLID

Benedict de Spinoza and Sir Isaac Newton: 17th century titans! Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jew, whose family was forced out of Spain in a purge. Spinoza rejected orthodox Judaism, preferring the heterodoxy of science, then known as "natural philosophy," which he studied assiduously, while grinding lenses to earn a living. Sir Isaac Newton, an Englishmen, also a theological heterodox, adroitly avoided taking the expected Anglican vows of priesthood, by a royal edict that allowed him to refine his natural philosophical inquiries in his secure sinecure at Cambridge. Both men were intellectual titans of the 17th Century, whose influence reverberates to the present day. Spinoza preceded Newton, by a few years, dying in 1677. Newton died in 1727. Spinoza published in 1677. Newton was first published in 1687. Both of these very wise men, in turn, are indebted to the alleged 4th Century B.C. Greek geometer, "Euclid,"a mythological personage--it seems, given the paucity of information about him or even accurate image of him. Euclid's earliest extant, geometry treatise was discovered, ironically, to have been recorded in an ancient papyri in southern Egypt/Nubia, dating back over 1,000 years before "Euclid"--the "Father of Geometry," was born! Moreover, geometry is most famously applied and exemplified in Egypt and Nubia in their temples, monuments, roads, megaliths and pyramid, rather than in Greece. These African edifices and constructions also predate Euclid's birth by eons. Euclid is by no means alone in being attributed to Greece by later "historians" for nefarious reasons. Nevertheless, let us focus on Euclid's geometry and mathematics, and draw therefrom moral and ethical lessons, as Spinoza and Newton later did in their books; not on Euclid, whose story varies from age to age, moving ever inexplicably north! I was struck that they both deal with motion and rest as their first axiom. "Axiom I. All bodies are either in motion or at rest." P.90, "Nature and Origin of the Mind," THE ETHICS, by Benedict de Spinoza, [Translated by R. H.M. Elwes] (Prometheus Books, Amherst NY: 1677, 1982) "Law 1 -- Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change by forces impressed." P.416, "Axioms, or the Laws of Motion," THE PRINCIPIA: MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, by Sir Isaac Newton, [Translators: I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman, Julia Budenz] (University of California Press, Berkeley: 1687, 1999)

CONTROL

Control the controllable--you! everything flows from that fulcrum...

Heiconia of Suriname

Heiconia of Suriname

parable of the talents

Matthew 25:14-30 English Standard Version (ESV) The Parable of the Talents 14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants[a] and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents,[b] to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.[c] You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

soul ignition

Emotional health and stability is at least as important as mental health and stability, if not moreso; the two being often confused and conflated. Emotions deal with feelings. Mental deals with cognition. While they often interact, and feed off each other, feelings come first! Emotional stability can withstand mental instability, but mental stability cannot withstand emotional instability. It must and does give way. Many African American slaves found emotional stability in Christianity, as adapted by them for their comfort. Worship comforted their hearts, and their souls, despite the insults, the pains, the humiliations that chattel slavery bestowed upon their persons, families, mentalities. "He restoreth my soul," of the 23rd Psalm captures this spirit readily. For truly emotions are spirit-based. The soul is ignition. Birth is cognition. Maturity enables recognition. Recognition leads to ambition. Ambition requires rendition. Rendition is followed by fruition. After fruition follows remission, the cessation of ignition and cognition. Thus, our ancestors sang "this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!"

natures

What is true in nature is also true in human nature.

Reading children...

bad apple

If it is true, that one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel, one would be well-advised to be ever prayerful and watchful of one's surroundings and acquaintances, and those of one's offspring; lest, you or they become thereby infected; or, that you or they become that bad apple, in turn!

ETHNOMATHEMATICS

"D'Ambrosio (1999) described Ethnomathematics as "a program in history and epistemology with an intrinsic pedagogical action...taking into account the cultural differences that have determined the cultural evolution of human mankind and political dimensions of mathematics." (P.150). In this respect, Ethnomathematics draws on the potential of cultures in providing tools for the reconceptualization of power, thereby reconfiguring the political, epistemological, and practical dimensions of mathematics. "D'Ambrosio (2004) contended that the role of Ethnomathematics in education is to: a) foster creativity by helping people capitalize on their potentials and invest in their strengths, and b) advance citizenship by promoting equitable rights and opportunity in society. Barton (2004) further prioritized the need for restructuring a new historiography of mathematics by humanizing the field and reclaiming its ethical and moral legacy toward preserving humanity." P. 198, "Ethnomathematics in the Classroom," by Iman Chahine, in THE BRILLIANCE OF BLACK CHILDREN IN MATHEMATICS, editors: Jacqueline Leonard and Danny B. Martin (2013)

NEHEMIAH 8:8-12

8 They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear[a] and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read. 9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. 10 Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” 11 The Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be still, for this is a holy day. Do not grieve.” 12 Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.

BALANCING THE ECONOMIC EQUITIES

BALANCING THE ECONOMIC EQUITIES By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Wednesday, October 09, 2013 To the extent that economic growth is a function of domestic consumption, growth is constrained and mitigated by flattened wages, personal debt and disproportionate taxes, of all kinds, upon consumers. At the bottom of world economic growth is U.S. domestic consumption, according to this article, linked below. Given this foundation, U.S. consumers are positioned to influence domestic and foreign economic policies. This means they have a say, by their simple organized consumption, regarding who is, and who remains, “poor” at home and abroad. “Organized consumption” means the creation of cadres of interested consumers who direct, and who are directed by, a consumerist global consciousness toward a specific goal, an ideal. The goal is an organized, bottoms-up approach to consumer spending (consumerism), which counterbalances the tops-down approach now prevalent among producers, foundations, and governments. That goal or ideal is the reduction of poverty at home and abroad through organized consumerism. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/imf-reduces-forecast-for-growth-but-expects-stronger-us-economy-next-year/2013/10/08/0b819aa8-3016-11e3-9ccc-2252bdb14df5_story.html?wpmk=MK0000202 A solution to cyclical growth dilemmas can be remedied by a crystallization of conscientious consumers’ cadres. By doing nothing, and acting individually as encouraged by prevailing cultures, consumers will remain as flotsam on the will of producers. By acting as self-interested cadres, they balance the equities. #30

ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT, EXCERPT...

ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT, “Camp Diary, Chapter 2,” by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, p.6-7 “November 27, 1862. Thanksgiving-Day... “It is a holiday wherever General Saxton's proclamation reaches. The chilly sunshine and the pale blue river seems like New England, but these alone... My young barbarians are all at play. I look out from the broken windows of this forlorn plantation-house, through avenues of great live-oaks, with their hard shining leaves, and their branches hung with a universal drapery of soft, long moss, like fringe-trees struck wit grayness... Numerous plantation-buildings totter around, all slovenly and unattractive, while the interspaces are filled with all manner of wreck and refuse, pigs, fowl, dogs, and omnipresent Ethiopian infancy... “Already, I am growing used to the experience, at first so novel, of living among five hundred men, and scarce a white face to be seen, of seeing them go through the daily processes, eating, frolicking, talking, just as if they were white. Each day at dress-parade I stand with the customary folding of the arms before a regimental line of countenances so black that I can hardly tell whether the men stand steadily or not; black is every hand that moves in cadence as I vociferate, “Battalion! Shoulder arms!” nor is it till the line of white officers moves forward, as parade is dismissed, that I am reminded that my own face is not the color of coal.... “At first, of course, they all look just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites. Most of them are wholly raw, but there are many who have already been for months in camp in the abortive “Hunter Regiment,” yet in that loose kind of way which, like average militia training, is a doubtful advantage. I notice that some companies too, look darker than others, though all are purer African than I expected. This is said to be partly a geographical difference between the South Carolina and Florida men. When the Rebels evacuated this region they probably took with them the house-servants, including most of the mixed-blood, so that the residuum seems very black. But the men brought from Fernandina the other day average lighter in complexion, and look more intelligent, and they certainly take wonderfully to the drill. “It needs but a few days to show the absurdity of distrusting the military availability of these people. They have quite as much average comprehension as whites of the need of the thing, as much courage (I do not doubt), as much previous knowledge of the gun, and, above all, a readiness of ear and of imitation, which, for purposes of drill, counterbalances any defect of mental training. To learn the drill, one does not want a set of college professors; one wants a squad of eager, active, pliant schoolboys; and the more childlike these pupils are the better....”

PUT YOUR SHOULDER TO THE WHEEL

http://www.taleswithmorals.com/aesop-fable-hercules-and-the-waggoner.htm PUT YOUR SHOULDER TO THE WHEEL

PLASMA

Our people, African Americans, have acquired the properties of plasma by reason of centuries of oppression. Plasma www.universetoday.com Anyone who took elementary science in grade school recalls the lesson about the three states of matter, right? That was the one where we were told that matter

READ OR NOT. THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

Blacks do not read the hundreds, the thousands, of books that could be of benefit to them, in their alleged quest for identity and "consciousness!" Instead, they prefer to blame others for what "they" have not "taught" them in school, in church or in the media; thereby seeking to escape "self-responsibility," an accursed word, in the hood where glorification of the victim profits its predators! This is the root of the problem underlying black America's continued repression: ignorance of self--"black" self and human self! "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, " says Hosea 4:6. This means all people, including blacks. No one can eat for you, drink for you, breathe for you, learn for you! These are definite duties and needs that only you can do for yourself! So, if you would be free, read about yourself, study about yourself, so you may know what to seek and how! In so doing, it would be well to learn about and to study about other people and other things for balance. "Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I will also ignore your children," concludes Hosea 4:6! Read or not. The choice is yours!

PLASMA...

Recently, plasma has joined gas, liquid and solid as a new, confirmed state of matter. I wonder, given that, whether on and off; is and is not; or existence and nonexistence might not be someday supplemented to include another state of being or nonbeing?

RUINS OF EMPIRES

HARRIET TUBMAN, PHYSICIAN-HEALER

"On February 20 [1864] the Union regiments were met by unexpectedly heavy fire from Confederate forces at Olustee. The Eighth USCT was newly trained and had never been tested in battle before. Surprise fire from rebel regiments left the soldiers of the Eighth in disarray and confusion, which was exacerbated by Seymour's conflicting orders. Nevertheless, they fought hard and bravely, earning the regiment a place on the rolls of Civil War heroes. In less than two hours, over half the regiment's men were left dead, wounded, or missing in action, including the regiment's commander, Colonel Fribley, and several other officers. Montgomery's brigade, along with the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, and other regiments soon arrived, giving the Eighth the chance to withdraw and regroup. But the fire was so heavy, that Seymour ordered the withdrawal of all Union forces on that field, leaving behind hundreds of dead and wounded. Most of the regiments suffered high losses, but the black regiments suffered the most. The advancing Confederates killed many wounded black soldiers, who could not retreat with their regiments, compounding an already devastating situation. It was a humiliating failure, and cost the Union its hoped-for control of Florida. "Whether Tubman witnessed the Battle of Olustee or not, she was most likely called to Sanderson, where the wounded and dying men crowded the railroad station, or to Jacksonville to tend to the wounded and exhausted soldiers brought there. Tubman’s skill at curing soldiers stricken by a variety of diseases was well known. At one point during the war, Tubman was called to Fernandina, Florida, by the Union surgeon in charge, to help cure the men of debilitating, often deadly dysentery. When she arrived, “they were dying off like sheep.” She prepared a medicinal tea “from roots which grew near the water which gave the disease.” She went into the swamps and dug some roots and herbs and made a tea for the doctor [who had been afflicted with the disease] and the disease stopped on him,” she told Emma Telford. “And then he said, ‘give it to the soldiers.’ So I boiled up a great boiler of roots and hers, and the General told a man to take two can and go round and give it to all in the camp that needed it, and it cured them.’” p.224-225, BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND, HARRIET TUBMAN:PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN HERO, by Kate Clifford Larson (Ballantine Books, NY: 2004)

AMEN

Let the church say "Amen!"

MICHELLE OBAMA CAMEO

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace...

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace; Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is error, the truth; Where there is doubt, the faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled, as to console; To be understood, as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. (author unknown)

old fishermen smile

An old man, like an old fisherman, smiles as he reflects back upon them that got away, and them that didn't.

ethnomathematics

"What is Ethnomathematics?" "At its inception, Ethnomathematics as an epistemology emerged in response to a longstanding history of disclosing a deliberate devaluation of the mathematics developed and and expanded by non-European civilizations... Early accounts on the history of mathematics are fraught with chronological and epistemological trajectories depicting mathematics as a creation of Western civilizations that conquered and dominated the entire world. Bishop (1990) described Western mathematics as "one of the most powerful weapons in the imposition of Western culture" (p.52). In a similar vein, D'Ambrosio asserted: [When talking about Western mathematics] especially in relation to Aboriginal's or Afro-American's or other non-European people's, to oppressed workers and marginalized classes, this brings the memory of the conqueror, the slave-owner, in other words, the dominator; it also refers to a form of knowledge that was built by him, the dominator, and that he used and still uses to exercise his dominance. (As cited in Vithal & Valero, 2003, p.547) "However, new perspectives on the history of mathematics that challenge the "classical" Eurocentric views have recently emerged acknowledging and emphasizing the contributions of non-Western indigenous to the development of science and mathematics (Ernest, 2009, Joseph, 2011). Such meta-narratives and discourses legitimize the epistemological vision advanced by Ethnomathematics and have inspired many researchers and educators around the globe to recognize the need to demand respect and human dignity for communities on which Western knowledge and values have been imposed." P.197-198, "Ethnomathematics in the Classroom," by Iman Chahine, THE BRILLIANCE OF BLACK CHILDREN IN MATHEMATICS: Beyond the Numbers and Toward a New Discourse, edited by Jacqueline Leonard and Danny B. Martin (2013).

"BOTH-ISM'S"

"Both-ism" Since the 2013 federal government shutdown began, I have noticed that a number of FACE BOOK posts have condemned both political parties, as though they were equally culpable for this treasonous act, this embarrassment for democracy, and international disgrace. In fact, as President Obama has correctly stated, it is but one rabid "faction" of the Republican Party -- some 40 intransigent "Tea Party" conservatives--who hold the sway with Speaker Boehner--that are responsible for this fiscal crisis. Yet, "both-ism" prevails among those who would throw a rock and hide their hands. "Both-ism" lurks among Republican sympathizers seeking to deflect away the blame, the consternation and ennui away from their invidious ideologues! "Both-ism" also pertains to the 150 year anniversary of the Civil War, which the slaves called "The Freedom War," consistently. From the perspective of the slave, whose bold and ever-increasing, "self-liberating" flights to the North, especially to Canada, greatly precipitated that apocalyptic conflict, the Confederate enslavers were wholly at fault! Those non-abolitionists Union-types that enforced the federal Fugitive Slave laws, even after the war began, were only tangentially so. "Both-ism" again asserts itself in the internecine struggle among blacks themselves relative to the practices of Booker T. Washington and the theories of W.E.B. DuBois, whom Washington had offered a job at Tuskegee Institute, which Dubois turned down, preferring disputation. "Both-ism" asserts that both men contributed good and bad to the struggle for black advancement, that neither was right or wrong. I read such comments frequently which says more about the commenter's historical knowledge, or lack thereof, than it does about the actual deeds. Persons say "Well, Dr. DuBois wrote books." So, did Dr. Washington, including one these "bothies" should read, UP FROM SLAVERY. Or, they say DuBois left an institution, the NAACP. Of course, Washington left Tuskegee University, which he had founded, in the midst of Alabama during the early 1880's. DuBois was simply the first "colored" employee of the white-founded NAACP, that was organized to oppose the practices of Washington, specifically. In the current climate of blame assessment, the fallacy of "both-ism" may be more discernible than at other times; hence, this essay.

MEMORIZATION IS GOOD

Memorization is good Today's "innovative" educational theorists either condemn memorization outright, or they condescend to discount it as "mere memorization," devaluing it thereby. How vain! Memorization has ancient roots. There is nothing "mere" about it. From memorizing speech patterns, the alphabet, numbers, names of persons, places, and things, to memorizing one's own name, address and telephone number, memory is both primal and manifest in mankind! African griots memorized the entire history of a people, being in training from their youth for this honor, which enabled them to recount for days. Others have memorized the Quran, like Suleiman Diallo of America and England, whose memory won him freedom from slavery and renown. Egyptian priests-scribes spent 40 years, at a minimum, in intense memorization of mathematics, hieroglyphics, astronomy, history, science, religion, from their youth. Today's condemnation is just another of harmful concoctions that we blithely, and absentmindedly, consume to our hurt, harm, hilarity. People without memory are the lost, known as amnesiacs. Yet, these corrupt educational theorists have confounded the pedagogy with their harebrained, "innovative" products, like memorization is bad! We're lost! Is it any wonder that little kids can recite rap lyrics from memory, but not the multiplication table? We'd better wake up before memory is gone and there will E none of us! Memorization is good! Use it!