Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Friday, October 31, 2014
ASTOUNDING FOREIGN SLAUGHTER IN AFRICA
It astounds me that Africans had co-existed, indeed thrived, among "wild animals" for untold millennia, without extermination--either way--yet, in the past 1400 years, Arabian and Europeans' descendants have decimated both by millions via slavery, slaughter and colonization !
LOVE FOR THE MASSES OF BLACK PEOPLE
"We of the vanguard often look with despair at these very characteristics of the masses. We feel that these easy-going traits constitute our chief racial weaknesses and chief hindrance to faster progress. This impatience on our part is understandable, but I believe it involves an underestimation. It takes no account of the technique for survival that the masses have evolved through the experience of generations. It does not give credit for the fact that in their ignorance and defenselessness, with the weight of outnumbering millions on their shoulders, they have persisted, they straightened up their bent backs by degrees, and from the travail of their agony buried in their laughter brought us forth as tokens of their potentialities. They used the methods available; and these methods were not always aimlessness and dumb servility. For one thing, they learned the white man with whom they had to deal. They learned him through and through without ever completely revealing themselves. Their knowledge of that white man's weaknesses as well as his strength came to be almost intuitive. And when they felt it futile to depend upon their own strength, they took advantage of his weakness--the blind side of arrogance and the gullibility that goes along with overbearing pride. It is possible that these masses might have done much better--I am not unmindful of their numerous shortcomings--yet, it is certain that they might have done much worse.
"The most vital factor in the future of any race is the power to survive; and the masses have an instinctive knowledge of their possession of that power. Firm confidence is theirs through having survived every degree of hardship and oppression to which any race could be subjected."
P.120-121, ALONG THIS WAY : THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1933)
Thursday, October 30, 2014
"HANDS UP DON'T SHOOT" AND ANCIENT EGYPTIAN 'KA'
why get in it if not to win it?
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
'ates' ad infinitum
‘ATES’ AD INFINITUM
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
1 LIFE LEVITATES
2 JOY JUVENATES
3 HOPE HYPOTHECATES
4 LOVE ILLUSTRATES
5 PRODUCE PERPETUATES
6 REST RESTORATES
7 DEATH DESICCATES
8 GOD GENERATES AD INFINITUM….
http://www.ask.com/wiki/8_(number)?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
MISSING ME
MISSING ME
Listening to the Joe Henderson Trio, just now, whose interesting jazz rendition of a Theolonious Monk composition had almost concluded, it occurred to me that such cerebral music is very much like its artistic equivalent in modern or avaunt-garde art: painting and sculpture; also cerebral not visceral; appealing to the preconditioned mind, not to the free and innate soul of mankind which likes its music and art based only on an untutored feel or sight. That is me!
While I can appreciate such art and music if I cannot feel it, it misses me.
WHAT IS THIS?
Physics - The Hand Is Quicker than the Eye
WHAT IS THIS?
Why is the hand quicker than the eye?
Can it be that we 'see' before we see?
That we 'hear' before we hear? We 'taste' before we taste? We 'feel' before we feel? We 'smell' before we smell?
Could it also be that we 'know' before we know that we know?
What is this? Precognition? Premonition? Both? Or Neither?
OR IS IT THE HOLY GHOST!
The Hand Is Quicker than the Eye
Focus: The Hand Is Quicker than the Eye Published October 20, 2004 | Phys. Rev. Focus 14, 16 (2004) | DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevFocus.14.16 When following a moving object, humans appear to anticipate the object’s motion in the way that best allows for unexpected speed changes. Human Hand Moves Proacti…
PHYSICS.APS.ORG
Monday, October 27, 2014
OF MAN AND MICROBES
THIS QUOTATION SO REMINDS ME OF OF THE NATURE OF MAN: POSITIVE, NEGATIVE AND IMBUED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT'S PATTERNING. THE QUOTE IS FROM A SCIENCE ARTICLE BELOW ABOUT A BREAKTHROUGH DISCOVERY INTO HOW A POWERFUL ANTIBIOTIC IS MADE IN NATURE BY SCIENTISTS.
"They discovered that the dehydratase did two things," Nair said. "One is that it added glutamate (to the nisin peptide), and the second thing it did was it eliminated glutamate. But how does one enzyme have two different activities?"
To help answer this question, Yue Hao, a graduate student in Nair's lab, used X-ray crystallography to visualize how the dehydratase bound to the nisin peptide. She found that the enzyme interacted with the peptide in two ways: It grasped one part of the peptide and held it fast, while a different part of the dehydratase helped install the ring structures.
"There's a part of the nisin precursor peptide that is held steady, and there's a part that is flexible. And the flexible part is actually where the chemistry is carried out," Nair said.
Ortega also made another a surprising discovery: transfer-RNA, a molecule best known for its role in protein production, supplies the glutamate that allows the dehydratase to help shape the nisin into its final, active form."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141026195415.htm
Sunday, October 26, 2014
LOGIC DOES NOT ALWAYS OBTAIN WITH MAN
LOGIC DOES NOT ALWAYS OBTAIN WITH MAN
In the human context, logic does not always obtain.
Just because A beats B and B beats C does not necessarily mean that A can defeat C, for example.
Recently, Detroit beat KC routinely in their division, but Baltimore beat Detroit. Yet, KC swept Baltimore in the playoffs, even more recently, to win the pennant and to play in the Word Series as AL champions versus SF Giants.
In the human context, logic does not always obtain.
MAHALIA JACKSON, "QUEEN OF GOSPEL"
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Mahalia_Jackson?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
THOUGHT I KNEW HER BECAUSE OF HER MUSIC, BUT I WAS WRONG. SIMPLE STUDY OF HER BACKGROUND EMBELLISHES HER GREATNESS. MIGHTY "QUEEN OF GOSPEL!" THANK YOU, MRS. MAHALIA JACKSON. AND THANK GOD FOR YOUR GIFT AND SOUL.
GRAVITY
Gravity equalizes, balances, stabilizes, naturally keeping all mankind grounded, and at ease, without regard to race, creed, language, gender, politics, education, wealth, weight, beauty, offender status, charm, age, heath.
Gravity is a gift of God whose effects we sense and feel, but whose provenance we cannot explain or define, except by reference to unknown origins.
What if Gravity was practiced on earth, as opposed to other memes and man-made themes, that separate us from the love of God found in gravity's divine governance?
EARTH'S OBLIVIOUSNESS
Saturday, October 25, 2014
SYNCHRONY
Nassim Haramein
Liked · Yesterday ·
The helical structure of DNA matches the helical path that the planets travel as the orbit the Sun as it moves rapidly through space. The Sun too is moving in a much larger scale helical path as it spirals out from the center of the galaxy...
The Resonance Project • Genetics • ScienceAlert • Physics-astronomy • Universe Explorers • The Mind Unleashed • World Congress of Quantum Medicine • (post by Jamie Janover)
Friday, October 24, 2014
BLACK TROOPS AT THE BATTLE OF WESTPORT
black troops at the "Battle of Westport" in 1864
May 26, 2011 at 5:41am
Larry,
Your surmise is indeed correct. At the Battle of Westport, actually, Lieut. Patrick Minor was in the field in command of the battery also known as Douglas' Colored Battery or Minor's battery. The battery was present at Byram's Ford on 22 October and in the reports appearing in the Official Records of the engagement it is referenced as Minor's battery. On the next day 23 October, the battery was located along present day 51st Street adjacent to McClain's Independent Colorado battery, firing south across present day Loose Park toward the Confederate Collins' battery located along 55th Street. Minor's battery in fact was able to disable one of the Confederate guns. Matthews' rank is also lieutenant not captain. Although Douglas was the senior commander, he did not participate in the field and instead was more involved in the recruitment effort. Lt. Patrick Minor, like Douglas, was a well educated man and a graduate of Oberlin. Unfortunately Lt. Minor suddenly died at Leavenworth in the spring of 1865; so far I have been unable to locate an image of him. As a result we have relied on the available image that we have of Lieutenant Matthews. A good mystery hunt would be to locate an image of Lieutenant Minor.
Roger Cunningham has written most extensively about this unit. His article appears in the Spring 2002 issue of the Kansas State Historical Society's quarterly history journal. Roger's account also appears as Chapter in his book on Kansas African American troops that was published the University of Missouri press in approximately 2007 or 2008.
Dan
DANIEL L. SMITH
Ankerholz and Smith
6900 College Boulevard, Suite 510
Overland Park, Kansas 66211
Tel: 913 345-2000 Fax: 913 345-2081
--- On Tue, 5/24/11, Larry Delano Coleman wrote:
BLACK CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS GET RETROACTIVE EQUAL PAY IN JUNE 1864
BLACK TROOPS IN THE CIVIL WAR: UNION AND CONFEDERATE
Thursday, October 23, 2014
THE WAY
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Tao?qsrc=3044
Back in 1985, in the final edition of my newsletter, THE NILE REVIEW, I published a religious, philosophical, theological monograph entitled "Exhalations from my Soul." It cited provisions from the Bible, the Quran, and Tao Te Ching in support of its foundational premise that: "God is." And where creeds overlap and buttress: God is. Today, I gained greater insight into the Way, the path, or the Dao, which as once described and embodied by Jesus perfectly reflects the Dao, western theology notwithstanding. There is an essential unity in everything beyond name or number.
evil is everywhere
AT THE DANCE
AT THE DANCE
Asking a girl to dance, especially to slow-dance, at a club or at a party can be an anxious, stress-filled moment for most males, both young and old.
The put-down, the put-off, or the public denial are all possibilities. Each carries its sting of embarrassment.
Having experienced all 3 at some point in my partying career, I offer a few words of advice to the fellows:
Start at the top and work your way down! Translation : ask the finest, the prettiest girls first. Then, keep asking until someone inevitably consents.
On the female-side, there are also the equivalent female stressors and anxieties of intra-female competition, which pretty girls (is any girl not "pretty"?) seem to handle more deftly than the less pretty ones, I have consistently found.
Whatever their motivation, when they consent, seize and maximize the valuable time! And enjoy the moment!
Woman is God's gift to man. Man is God's gift to woman. Enjoy the dance and your partner and go accordingly.
TAKE ME HOME TO DIE
"TAKE ME HOME TO DIE"
"Take me home to die," daddy commanded me, matter-of-factly, and without emotion, as he limply lay in a nursing care facility in St. Louis County, Missouri, in September 1998.
And so we did as we always did. Daddy's word was, as always, still law whatever his physical condition.
Yet, that simple, specific command contained such security, clarity and resolve that I have never forgotten it.
"Take me home to die."
When I am summoned by God from earnest labor to eternal rest, I hope and pray that I, too, shall have the grace, the ability, the courage, and humility to utter such revealing words as my father did to me on that day.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
TRICK-OR-TREAT
Hiding behind tradition, canonized scriptures, sacraments, rituals and vestments, real men/ woman are often hidden from view by their facade.
Secreting ones self, is not confined to man, nor to religion. Lions hide in the tall grass to hunt, as do crocodiles in river bottoms. Insects mimic branches and leaves, as do certain birds. Minerals mimic gold and silver.
Mimicry. camouflage, or hiding out, is particularly prevalent among politicians and nations. The Bible speaks of one people slyly pretending to be another from afar in order to escape their nearby Hebrew destroyers.
As Halloween approaches, all forms of guises and disguises, both masks and masques, will soon emerge. They too will solicit trick-or-treats of you. When they come knocking, respect them, as others have respected you.
many mansions
MANY MANSIONS
"Jesus said, let not your heart be troubled, if you believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."
John 14:1-2
Statistics apply to everyone; and yet they apply to no one. Each natural thing is unique, a special mansion of God. Stated otherwise, God has no ghettos, no "at risk;" no oligarchy; poverty; no creed; no seed; no need.
These words of Christ Jesus have buoyed my family and my ancestors for centuries. These words buoy me.
Appreciating that you are wonderfully and marvelously made for such a time as this, gives you the blessed assurance that you are who you are, made by special dispensation, and that you are where you are by grace; not accidentally, not randomly; but purposely and specially by God!
"I looked at my hands. My hands looked new. I looked at my feet. They did too." Slave singers with love, and with knowledge, of themselves as specially made by God, as mansions not made by hands, sang this song of celebration, when "human" scales fell from their eyes.
Such a divine, loving, overpowering conception of oneself transforms dry bones into great armies. It changes things! Without, one is lost and alone.
You too are a mansion not made with hands. Recognize it, revel and rejoice!
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
LONG GONE LIKE A TURKEY IN THE CORN
While reading HIS PROMISED LAND: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN P. PARKER, FORMER SLAVE AND CONDUCTOR ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD edited by Stuart Seely Sprague (W.W. Norton, NY: 1996), an extraordinarily good slave narrative, the author described how most of the runaway slaves would defer their departure until the early fall when the corn had ripened in the fields, since that was their primary food source while on the move. (p.137-138)
This brought to mind a song that our music teacher had taught us in the 3rd grade about "a turkey in the corn with his long clothes on....he's long gone." That song always struck me as strange, since turkeys obviously do not wear clothes. Intuiting a connection, I googled "turkey in the corn," and sure enough Lightening Hopkins, the legendary blues singer, has recorded a version of that song, which I play now about a runaway slave being that "turkey in the corn with his long clothes on, gone": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2yd3DRhAI0#t=70
Monday, October 20, 2014
BITE THAT APPLE
BITE THAT APPLE!
Licking an apple confers no nutrition. Biting, chewing and swallowing it does.
The same is true with all learning . Getting to the meat of the matter, and consuming it, is required before there is any nourishment conveyed.
To have read STOLEN LEGACY was an achievement for me; to have taught it was even better. But, until I had read the works that the late, great author George G. M. James had cited therein, for myself, I was doing little more than licking the glossy, outer surface of that apple.
Similarly, to admire geometry in the abstract, while failing to acquire or to apply its principles in my own life is the same thing as licking the outside of an apple. Euclid's 13-volume classic, THE ELEMENTS, was abstracted from earlier African sources that predated his presumed 4th century existence over 2,000 years; since they had been already applied in Egypto-Nubian structures, navigation, astronomy, calendars.
Culturally, saying that "so-and-so was black" based on what you have heard or once read somewhere, may help your tortured self-esteem a little, temporarily. But, the same forces who have denied personhood to you are still as active as viruses!
You must fashion your own antidote by acquiring basic understanding. Basic understanding does not come from licking the outside of the apple, neither does nourishment, my friend!
Bite, chew, and swallow that "apple" so that God may grant the increase!
DON'T BLOCK THE BLESSINGS
DON'T BLOCK THE BLESSINGS: LIGHT, WATER, FOOD, & AIR. BE LIKE THE PLANTS!
"The leaves along a twig of a plant or the stems along a branch tend to grow in positions that would optimize their exposure to sun, rain, and air. As the vertical stem grows it produces leaves at quite regular spacings. However, the leaves do not grow directly one above the other, because this would shield the lower leaves from the moisture and sunlight they need. Rather, the passage from one leaf to the next (or from one stem to the next along a branch) is characterized by a screw-type displacement around the stem. Similar arrangements of repeating units can be found in a pinecone or the seeds of a sunflower. This phenomena is called phyllotaxis ('leaf arrangement" in Greek), a word coined in 1754 by the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet (1720-1793)."
p.109, THE GOLDEN RATIO: THE STORY OF PHI THE WORLD'S MOST ASTONISHING NUMBER by Mario Livio (Broadway Books, NY: 2003)
Sunday, October 19, 2014
CHURCH AND STATE
Separation of church and state calls to mind the separation of the spirit from the body; the "soul" from both.
In Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh embodied both the church and the state; it is the oldest specimen of documented human governance, outside of Ancient Nubia from whose autochthonous loins it first sprang.
Down through the centuries since the epochal fall of Egypt (Kemet) and the ensuing dissemination of its arts, sciences, and philosophies to the ancient world,--and to our modern one--all nations have adopted from it what they would and could, leaving the rest as residual, "junk DNA."
That "junk DNA" was not junk at all, to borrow an analogy from biology, but contains the circuitry of a richer dynamic of connectivity of all things.
Nestled in that discarded circuitous connectivity is the fact of "God and man;" is the church and state; is the mind, body, and soul , archetypically.
http://biblehub.com/hebrews/4-12.htm
This separation of church and state; of God and man; of mind, body and soul, needs to be sutured together, restored as it was in the beginning. Then, can mankind become one; then can peace, joy, love, & wisdom reign.
CITY OF GOD
http://www.ask.com/wiki/City_of_God_(book)?qsrc=3044
I read an abridged version of St. Augustine's CITY OF GOD in 1984, long before I converted to Christianity in 1992. I later preached a sermon from it, "How Much Time Do We Have?" at St. Matthews C.M.E. Church in 1994, my parental church outside of St. Louis, Missouri, in Meachum Park. Augustine of Hippo, the "Father of Theology" was an "African Latin," as were other early church fathers like Origen, Tertullian, pre-papal Rome.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
BULLYING AS CONDITIONING
BULLYING AS CONDITIONING
Bullying is an outgrowth of at-home conditioning. It is not a normal state.
In grade school, I punched a classmate in his face, breaking his glasses, after my sister complained that he had been 'bothering' her.
Remembering that my parents had told me, repeatedly, to protect my sister from all accost-attempts, I swung on my 1st or 2nd grade classmate without more, doing the damage and making him cry!
Later that day, his father, who knew my father, came by our house and received money for new eye-glass frames, while telling my father about the incident. To my relief, I did not get in trouble although my father somewhat wryly grinned as he later inquired about the occurrence.
Years later, my sister told me that she had made it all up; that my classmate had not been 'bothering' her; that she just did not like him .
I was stunned! From hero to goat, I became in my own eyes, in light of the truth. My parents never brought the subject up again, and I never started any more fights, though I later had a few such scrapes on the playground .
But for my parents' blanket command to protect my sister at all costs, I would not have peremptorily punched that guy in primary school.
Thus, for me, at least, bullying is a matter of at home-conditioning, and it is not my natural state of mind.
As for you or others, I do not know.
Friday, October 17, 2014
CLICK SOUND
"In attempting to trace (or suggest) the development of pre-human sounds into verbal language it appears to me that one line of variation may be found in 'the growth of the conscious manipulation of the breath.' Conscious manipulation of the Breath lies at the origin of the Hottentot Clicks. Whereas the ordinary sounds of language are now made by the expulsion of breath, the Clicks are produced on the opposite principle.
"The Clicks and Clickers do not simply exhale their meaning in sound; they express it by the aid of inhalation; they first lay hold of the air and suck it into articulated sound. The Breath is prepensely drawn for the Click to be articulated. They are 'Inspirates' instead of 'Aspirates'."
P.257, THE NATURAL GENESIS by Gerald Massey (Black Classic Press, Baltimore, MD: 1883, 1998)
Don't know? Better ask somebody!.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Ov-ZbzNRY
This brother tore it up this morning!
Thursday, October 16, 2014
VOLUNTEER
Volunteering is fun!
Volunteering can be more memorable and more personally satisfying than working, strange as that may sound.
In volunteering, one freely gives of one's talents without the customary constraints of paid-employment.
Most importantly, one either fits oneself into a perfectly prepared place, or designs such to one's liking.
Finally, volunteering is fun, more fun than simply working by definition.
One is not paid, however. Neither are there many, if any, tangible benefits, although intangible benefits abound.
It is a more productive use of time than doing nothing besides sitting down watching television or idling.
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN, FIRST BLACK NOVELIST AND CIVIL WAR HISTORIAN
LORENZO CAIN OF THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS IS AN INSPIRATION!
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article402287/A-late-bloomer-Royals-outfielder-Lorenzo-Cain-making-up-for-lost-time.html
THIS INSPIRING STORY OF THE FLORIDA FRESHMAN WHO WAS CUT FROM BASKETBALL AND WHO GREW INTO BASEBALL AFTER THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST INSPIRATIONAL THAT I HAVE EVER READ. THIS IS TALE OF A WIDOWED-MOTHER, RAISED CHILD IS A 'GULLY-WASHER'!
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
collateral knowledge
COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE
Collateral knowledge or collateral information is that which connects any specific subject matter to the much broader field from which it sprang and which gives that bit life.
The connective tissue of common law is the humanities; but lawyers do not study the humanities, just law.
Astronomy is the connective tissue of religion, its producer; but, neither preachers nor theologians study astronomy, just religion.
Medicine is a byproduct of nature, but physicians and researchers do not study broader nature, from whose loins it sprang. Instead, they study their discrete part of nature.
And so it goes. Learning when severed from its life-giving ligaments is "dead;" sliced from its siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and grand parents by modern, narrowly conceived applications, it suffers!
Collateral knowledge yields a greater appreciation of the living whole; of its essential wonder and of its oneness.
Seek to consume collateral knowledge, whenever possible. It helps to make out one's meal.
"Fries with that?" asks the young uniformed server. "Yeah, why not," we typically respond, though quite collateral to our principal order.
And so is it with other knowledge: their 'fries' and other accoutrements.
"Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." said Jesus Christ, the Savior. Hence, collateral knowledge is meant by His reference to "every word ... of God." Amen!
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
WEEDING YOUR 'GARDEN'
JUST START
Monday, October 13, 2014
A BIPARTISAN POGROM FOR 'POOR BLACKS'
A BIPARTISAN POGROM FOR "POOR BLACKS"
The war on drugs began in 1983 under Ronald Reagan and has continued under every President, Democrat and Republican, since then, until the present day in 2014. That totals 31 years, and costing tens of billions of dollars, at least.
It has had disastrous consequences on "poor blacks," as many studies have demonstrated.
"Reconstruction," after the Civil War, began in 1866 under President Andrew Johnson, and ended in 1877 under President Rutherford B. Hayes, both Republicans. That totals 11 years, requiring only a few millions of dollars.
Reconstruction was generally favorable to freedmen, who were poor, as well as for poor whites, who benefited particularly by getting land and other benefits and emoluments.
The "War on Poverty" began under President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Democrat, in 1965, and ended under Richard M. Nixon in 1972. That totals 7 years, and tens of millions of dollars.
The War on Poverty was generally favorable to poor blacks and whites.
So, the disastrous "War on Drugs" has lasted longer than both "Reconstruction" and the "War on Poverty," combined, almost by a multiple of 2! And its costs have exceeded the others by 100-1 easily.
The net effect of this bipartisan pogrom has been to trap the "poor blacks" into a caste status, without economic or political escape options, only death or jail!
By "poor blacks" is meant lacking in economic vitality, lacking in spiritual ambience, and downtrodden mentally to expect nothing and to seek less.
Pogrom is used to express an intent to decimate that sector by policy.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
PETITION ONLY GOD
PETITION ONLY GOD!
One only petitions one's superior. One never petitions one's equal nor inferior, in power, wealth, and might.
A petition is like a prayer. From these latter two, one's equal or inferior, one simply takes what one wants, whether with or without the tactful observance of formal civility !
That one petitions at all is an explicit concession of one's inferiority, an admission of one's plain dependence.
One must necessarily pray to God. Need one as well pray to man? Is not the latter idolatry or uncivil flattery?
These thoughts occur to me as I read of the failed petitions proffered to the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, at various times, and specially on January 13, 1777, by Prince Hall and others, generally seeking in it, that which they already had, and have: "in common with all other men as a natural and unalienable right to that freedom which the general Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally upon all mankind and which they have never forfeited by any compact or agreement whatever..."
Why petition at all?
Why not simply take that which the "Parent of the Universe" has "bestowed equally on all mankind?"
Hence, no favorable action was taken on the eloquent petition, as like prayer, it was seeking the grace and the discretion of the body petitioned.
Is not the mere act of petitioning, itself, an action of benignly forfeiting that very freedom that one already has, in capitulation to those that are, themselves, incapable of delivering what is therein sought? Is not the petition, itself, an open-end compact or agreement for redress to man?
Can another man bestow upon you the breath of life? Then, neither can any man bestow freedom : only God!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h32.html
P. 64-65, "Antislavery and Education" PRINCE HALL LIFE AND LEGACY by Charles H. Wesley (1983)
Saturday, October 11, 2014
MUSIC SOOTHES MERCIFULLY
MUSIC SOOTHES MERCIFULLY
Music soothes the savage beast, it is said.
Certainly, snake charmers command cobras with flutes.
So, too, did the pied piper of Hamlin with his flute, leading rats to water.
David used to calm Saul with his lyre.
Arguably the music of Africans in America has had a similar affect, impact, and sensation on themselves and on their enslavers, subliminally.
After all, the brutality perpetrated against Africans, here, served as inspirational templates for such as the Union of South Africa, including, Rhodesia's apartheid repression; for King Leopold's Congo rape, and repression; for Benito Mussolini's Italian Ethiopian invasions and colonization; and for Germany's Adolph Hitler's Aryan Nazism, being anterior to them all and as racist!
"Sing us one of your songs of Zion," request the unnamed captors in the Book of Psalms : http://biblehub.com/kjv/psalms/137.htm
And we obliged in spirituals, hymns, gospels, work songs, blues, jazz, ragtime, boogie-woogie, bebop, choral song, chamber music, pop, orchestral compositions, rhythm and blues, rap, hip/hop, and everything in between these musical interstices!
We did it as much for them as for ourselves. We needed to be comforted. And we were comforted. And by and through our music, all of it, we happily survived and thrived, mesmerizing the world with soul and with harmonies heretofore unknown!
So music does heal the savage beast both within us and without us in this no-longer strange land that is home!
Friday, October 10, 2014
EINSTEIN'S TEMPLE OF SCIENCE
"In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have driven them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who offer the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of The Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still remain some men of both present and past times, left inside. Our [Max] Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him....
"What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it....
"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it....
"What place does the theoretical physicist's picture of the world occupy among all these possible pictures? It demands the highest possible standard of rigorous precision in the description of relations, such as only mathematical language can give. In regard to his subject matter, on the other hand, the physicist has to limit himself very severely; he must content himself with describing the most simple events which can be brought within the domain of our experience; all events of a more complex order are beyond the power of the human intellect to reconstruct with the subtle accuracy and logical perfection which the theoretical physicist demands...
"The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them... Nobody who has really gone deeply into this matter will deny that in practice the world of phenomena uniquely determines the theoretical system, in spite of the fact there is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles; this is what Leibnitz described so happily as a 'pre-established harmony.'...
"The longing to behold this 'pre-established harmony' is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself, as we see, to the most general problems of our science, refusing to let himself be diverted to more grateful and more easily attained ends. I have often heard colleagues try to attribute this attitude to his extraordinary will-power and discipline--wrongly, in my opinion. The state of mind that enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate attention or program but straight from the heart. There he sits, our beloved Planck, and smiles inside himself at my childish playing-about with the lantern of Diogenes..."
P.224-226, "Contributions to Science," IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein (1954, 1982)
AETHIOPIA AND ME
AETHIOPIA AND ME
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Friday, October 10, 2014
My mother’s father, when visiting us from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, boldly told me at age 12, early one morning: “I ain’t no nigger. I’m an Ethiopian.” This statement has steered me since, propelling me onward in my study of ancient African civilizations and cultures.
After all, if my grand-daddy is an Ethiopian, then, I must be too!
Even my worldly grandfather might have been surprised to learn, that the word “Negus” or “Nagus” means King or sovereign in the Ethiopian tongue. “The word negus is a noun derived from the ancient language Ge'ez verbal root N - G - Ś meaning ‘to reign;’” says Wikipedia, being mere letters away from the derisive term “nigger,” that was applied to, and used by, African slaves and their descendants, for centuries in the Americas and Caribbean.
While a student at Howard University years later, I came very close to marrying an Ethiopian student of Amharic origin, who was both beautiful and intelligent. But, alas, I was already committed to another beautiful and intelligent African American woman, whom I did later marry from my St. Louis home. Alas, such is life and love.
Apart from its denotation, Ethiopia or Aethiopia, has acquired an ancient, honorable cultural connotation celebrated, and copied by ancient Greeks and others, as the founders of Egypt or Kemet.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
THEORISTS AND EMPIRICISTS
"The theorist's method involves his using as his foundation general postulates or 'principles' from which he can deduce conclusions. His work thus falls into two parts. He must first discover his principles and then draw the conclusions which follow from them.... The first of these tasks, namely, that of establishing the principles which are to serve as the starting point of his deduction, is of an entirely different nature. Here there is no method capable of being learned and systematically applied so that it leads to the goal. The scientist has to worm these general principles out of nature by perceiving in comprehensive complexes of empirical facts certain general features which permit of precise formulation.
"Once this formulation is accomplished, inference follows on inference, often revealing unforeseen relations which extend far beyond the province of the reality from which the principles were drawn. But as long as no principles are found on which to base the deduction, the individual empirical fact is of no use to the theorist; indeed he cannot even do anything with the isolated general laws abstracted from experience. He will remain helpless in the face of separate results of empirical research, until principles which he can make the basis of deductive reasoning have revealed themselves to him....
"Planck introduced into physics the quantum hypothesis, which has since received brilliant confirmation. With this quantum hypothesis he dethroned classical physics as applied to the case where sufficiently small masses move at sufficiently low speeds and sufficiently high rates of acceleration, so that today laws of motion propounded by Galileo and Newton can only be accepted as limiting laws. In spite of assiduous efforts, however, the theorists have not yet succeeded in replacing the principles of mechanics by others which fit in with Planck's law of heat radiation or the quantum hypothesis. No matter how definitely it has been established that heat is to be explained by molecular motion, we have nevertheless to admit today that our position in regard to the fundamental laws of this motion resembles that of the astronomers before Newton in regard to the motion of the planets.
"I have just now referred to a group of facts for the theoretical treatment of which the principles are lacking. But it may equally well happen that clearly formulated principles lead to conclusions that fall entirely, or almost entirely, outside the sphere of reality accessible to our experience. In that case we need many more years of empirical research to ascertain whether theoretical principles correspond with reality. We have an instance of this in the theory of relativity."
P.221-223, IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein (1954, 1982)
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
WHIP APPEAL
WHIP APPEAL
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
Crystallized in this “do-nothing” Congress, and in these ‘open carry’ and ‘stand your ground’ state legislatures is the ‘will of the [white] majority of the American people.’
They pass the laws which embody the passions of the majority of our brainwashed countrymen who are secret, sub rosa, white supremacists, who affect to be otherwise in public, dissembling until they vote.
Police, prosecutors, judges, plus the states’ regulatory machinery are the consequential appointees, or employees, of this electoral process. These are the crack at the end of the whip. The whip is the thing.
Thus, in addition to whatever else may be done respecting the alarming acts of police brutality, and the justice process, possession of the whip, itself, is the best way to assure the survival of you and yours.
That’s what I call “whip appeal.”
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
triangulation
SOCIAL TRIANGULATION
The beauty of triangulation is that it relies on multiple perspectives to locate or to adduce any given point. How wonderful it would be, if humans applied triangulation in their social lives, as is now done in technology, astronomy, surveying, navigation; in contrast to a single linear viewpoint, now prevalent among mankind.
MOUNTAIN OF AMON, GEBEL BARKAL
STEREOTYPES
Monday, October 6, 2014
stimulant
Stimulants--
Appetite stimulates eating.
Thirst stimulates drinking.
Heat stimulates sweating.
Cold stimulates shivering.
Curiosity stimulates thinking.
Music stimulates moods.
Sleep stimulates dreams.
Pain stimulates anguish .
Pleasure stimulates bliss.
Trespass stimulates retribution.
Retreat stimulates chase.
Opportunity stimulates predation.
Celebrity stimulates publicity.
Habit stimulates repetition.
Females stimulate males.
Necessity stimulates invention.
Energy stimulates activity.
Doubtless there are many more stimulants, beyond these few that i have named.
Feel free to suggest them.
Usually, the subject can stimulate the object and the object can stimulate the subject.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
RISKS
RISKS
Risks accompany any endeavor regardless of its character. Risks also accompany complacency. If I must choose, my choice would be to act rather than not act; since action gives me a present sense of self-determination while inaction yields only a sense of fatalism. Both are, of course, illusions. But, the former one, action, is far more comforting to me.
WHY ARE THERE MISSIONARIES IN AFRICA?
WHY ARE THERE MISSIONARIES IN AFRICA?
Is there a need for missionaries in Africa, really?
What World Wars have Africans fomented? Whose legacy and history have they stolen? What people have they expropriated and enslaved in foreign lands? Whose national governance have Africans repeatedly overthrown? Whose images and cultures have Africans' "racism" excoriated as ugly backward, and primitive?
None.
Missionaries are not needed in Africa. They are needed in the nations which have committed such atrocities, and others, against Africans, unprovoked for eons.
Such savage nations are more in need of the gospel of peace, brotherly love, forbearance, than Africans, who've been scattered and peeled by Muslims and Christians!
Africans need to be left alone by "missionaries" who should ply their craft at home!