OKLO, GABON, WEST AFRICA'S "NATURAL FISSION NUCLEAR REACTOR" DATING BACK 2 BILLION YEARS

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo A NATURAL NUCLEAR FISSION REACTOR IN GABON, WEST AFRICA'S OKLO MINE 2 BILLION YEARS AGO BEFORE MAN IS KNOWN TO EXIST? HOW CAN ANY OF THIS BE SO? YET IT IS SO! WHY ONLY NOW DO I KNOW, WHEN THE DISCOVERY OF ALREADY USED URANIUM 235 WAS THERE IN 1972? WOW! "There is strong geochemical evidence that the Oklo uranium deposit behaved as a natural nuclear fission reactor in Precambrian times: some of the mined uranium was found to have a lower concentration of uranium-235 than expected, as if it had already been in a reactor. Geologists found that it had been in a reactor before—two billion years ago. At that time the natural uranium had a concentration of about 3% 235U, and could have gone critical with natural water as neutron moderator.[1]" May 28, 2015 - In 1972, a worker at a nuclear fuel processing plant noticed something suspicious in a routine analysis of uranium obtained from a normal mineral source from Africa. As is the case with all natural uranium, the material under study contained three isotopos- ie three forms with different atomic masses: uranium 238, the most abundant variety; uranium 234, the rarest; and uranium 235, the isotope that is coveted because it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. For weeks, specialists at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) remained perplexed Elsewhere in the earth’s crust, on the moon and even in meteorites, we can find uranium 235 atoms that makes up only 0.720 percent of the total. But in the samples that were analyzed, which came from the Oklo deposit in Gabon, a former French colony in West Africa, the uranium 235 constituted only 0.717 percent. That small difference was enough to alert French scientists that there was something very strange going on with the minerals. These small details led to further investigations which showed that least a part of the mine was well below the normal amount of uranium 235: some 200 kilograms appeared to have been extracted in the distant past, today, that amount is enough to make half a dozen nuclear bombs. Soon, researchers and scientists from all over the world gathered in Gabon to explore what was going on with the Uranium from Oklo. What was fund in Oklo surprised everyone gathered there, the site where the uranium originated from is actually an advanced subterranean nuclear reactor that goes well beyond the capabilities of our present scientific knowledge. Researchers believe that this ancient nuclear reactor is around 1.8 billion years old and operated for at least 500,000 years in the distant past. Scientists performed several other investigation at the uranium mine and the results were made public at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to News agencies from Africa, researchers had found traces of fission products and fuel wastes at various locations within the mine area. Incredibly, compared with this huge nuclear reactor, our modern-day nuclear reactors are really not comparable both in design and functionality. According to studies, this ancient nuclear reactor was several kilometers long. Interestingly, for a large nuclear reactor like this, thermal impact towards the environment was limited to just 40 meters on all sides. What researchers found even more astonishing, are the radioactive wastes that have still not moved outside the limits of the site as they are still held in place tanks to the geology of the area. However, Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, former head of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and Nobel Prize winner for his work in the synthesis of heavy elements, pointed out that for uranium to “burn” in a reaction, conditions must be exactly right. For example, the water involved in the nuclear reaction must be extremely pure. Even a few parts per million of contaminant will “poison” the reaction, bringing it to a halt. The problem is that no water that pure exists naturally anywhere in the world.

CHILDREN ARE BOOMERANGS

Not teaching your children their manners, their ABC's, addresses, & numbers before sending them to school or off to church is like unleashing a wild beast upon others. Part of parental responsibility is perpetual child-rearing, without limitation. Like the Australian aborigines' boomerangs so ably prove, what you send out, will come back to you!

SINGLE PERSONS KEEP SEARCHING WITH CONFIDENCE

Godliness and grace is not limited to 4 walls, nor faith to any particular doctrine. God is. Therefore, all of you single persons in quest of a suitable mate, he or she also, is. Keep moving, looking, working, and perfecting your gifts, with your light shining!

PRISTINE AND PRETTY

EMERSON IN EGYPT

“Philae and Parnassus” “On October 23, 1872, he sailed with Ellen for England, the Continent, and Egypt… After seeing Alexandria and Cairo, they set off by boat up the Nile. He found it ‘a wonderful country, but easily seen. Egypt is practically nothing but a strip of land, only a green ribbon on either side of the Nile, but 520 miles long.’ Emerson found it humiliating not to know the language. Egypt put questions to which he had no answers. ‘The sphinxes scorn dunces,’ he wrote in his journal. He was more interested in the organic foundation of Egyptian forms. ‘The lateen sail is the shadow of a pyramid: and the pyramid is the simplest copy of a mountain, or of the form from which a pile of sand or earth takes when dropped from a cart.”… “The traditional goal of a trip to Egypt was the island of Philae, the jewel of the Nile, situated near Aswan, where the Nile widens at the first cataract. The point marks the edge of ancient Egypt, and the beginning of ancient Nubia, now Sudan. Philae was a small island, less than a thousand feet long, and five hundred feet wide. The Italian explorer, Belzoni said it contained ‘the most superb group of ruins I have ever beheld together in so small a space of ground.’ The temple of Isis at Philae was the last place where the ancient Egyptian religion had been practiced until it was closed down by Justinian in the sixth century A.D. “Emerson always associated Philae with the tomb of Osiris. He knew from Plutarch that Isis had opened the coffin of Osiris and that Osiris’ body had been torn apart and scattered. Isis later buried the pieces bit by bit as she found them. Emerson was really attracted to Egypt by the wish to see the tomb of ‘him who lies buried at Philae,’ his son noted.” pp.568-9, EMERSON: THE MIND ON FIRE by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (1995)

SOMEBODY NEEDS TO TELL THE POLICE

Somebody needs to tell police trainers/officers that we, black Americans, are not the enemy, nor the bad guys, as their training and brainwashing and hiring declares. Somebody should also convey that same message to judges, prosecutors, etc.

"WHITENESS" IS AN OCCULT AMERICAN INVENTION AND CONCORD

The Dred Scott v. Sanford decision of 1857 affirms the founders' exclusion of blacks from the clause "we the people" based on 'white' cultural concurrence in black inferiority. This Caucasian Compromise began running with the amended draft of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and ran on through the United States Constitution of 1789. This sneaky, occult, unspoken "whites-only" concord is tacitly ratified in Thomas Jefferson's classic, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, "Query XIV " (1785). This grand consensus was "reconstructed" after the Civil War's all-too-brief Reconstruction-Era which ended in 1876, and ran until the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, when black freedom fighters' pluck finally destroyed it !

INDENTURED SERVITUDE OF EUROPEANS AND AFRICANS IN AMERICA CAME BEFORE SLAVERY

There was a time before chattel slavery in the British colonies of Maryland and Virginia. In that roughly 60-70 year colonial window, there was only indentured servitude for a term of years (usually 7) of Africans and Europeans. This was before "whiteness" was invented. However, the profitability of colonial mercantile interests and plantation expediency required a division between the Africans and Europeans. This was especially so after the "Nathaniel Bacon Rebellion" in the 1660s respecting access to aboriginals' lands. Thereafter, the colonial legislatures created "whiteness" by bestowing certain material advantages on whites denied to blacks. They also did this to separate any union between indentured servants against their colonial masters over land. Slave patrols were then created to enforce these differences and to collect and corral blacks from running away to freedom

FOR MY PEOPLE

For My People BY MARGARET WALKER For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power; For my people lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years, washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching dragging along never gaining never reaping never knowing and never understanding; For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and company; For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we were black and poor and small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood; For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and play and drink their wine and religion and success, to marry their playmates and bear children and then die of consumption and anemia and lynching; For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something—something all our own; For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh; For my people blundering and groping and floundering in the dark of churches and schools and clubs and societies, associations and councils and committees and conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches, preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by false prophet and holy believer; For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations; Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control. Margaret Walker, “For My People” from This is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Copyright © 1989 by Margaret Walker. Reprinted by permission of University of Georgia Press. Source: Poetry (November 1937).

NATION-CIDE

NATION-CIDE Like Muslim suicide bombers, like pilots who deliberately crash their passenger planes, like those who take their own lives, one wonders whether those white American mavens of money and power have reset this nation's future on another suicide course, from which it was barely rescued by black soldiers in the Civil War? This "browning of America," popularized in mass media and funded studies, is discreet coded language for the perception of the prospective diminution of that old "whiteness" construct, as the prevailing national modality, paradigm, and pathology. That real "Brown Bomber" is felt and feared, by its proponents & practitioners as the fulfillment of perverse prophesy as penance for grievous sins against man and God in its maltreatment of blacks, and non-white others for so long! Some would rather crash the country, rather commit "nation-cide," to utterly destroy it, than to see such an horrible eventuation! Such "nationciders" are our nation's legal, social, political, and economic suicide bombers, pilots, and faux-patriots. They are uber-rich expatriates, multinationals. They are bankers, brokers, business-men and women who lie, steal, cheat and kill. They are federal and state: judges, prosecutors, and police who disembowel justice and fairness every day. They are legislators who pass facially-neutral yet discriminatory laws. They are executives and administrators who fail their duty. They are scholars, lawyers, doctors, journalists, preachers and teachers who look the other way, instead of help. They are scientists, engineers, technicians, who have little regard for the impact of their contrivances and research. They are that vast non-informed electorate whose votes are always the proxy of maniacal demagogues. They are also those who do not vote, who do not read, do not really care what happens, having been down for so long, that down "don't bother them no more!" They are all of us who do less than we could and should do in our daily lives to avert this doom! Nationciders awake!

JACOB, RACHEL, JOSEPH, MARY--MICHELANGELO'S SISTENE CHAPEL, 1512, MASTERPIECE

Just now had time to study this 1512 painting by Michelangelo. Never having visited the Sistene Chapel, in the Vatican, nor ever seen or read of the existence of this image before, my mind is blown. Great post, Renee Curtis. Tremendous post! Thank you!

LESSONS IN TRAGEDY AND VICTORY

LESSONS IN TRAGEDY AND VICTORY Life is not a bowl of cherries. And, even if it were, all cherries have pits, to avoid, to spit out! Pressure shapes and molds people as it does the earth's mantle. With heat and friction and time and water, treasures are wrought. Though wrought, they still must be retrieved, dug up and fashioned into usefulness. If not, treasures are just dirt, dross. These examples apply to black boys and girls living in America, particularly--although they may be as applicable more generally. My focus is local. So is our future. Each of us must teach our 16-year old and younger black boys and girls about the just-released black man, Prince Johnson, who spent 44 years in jail, after having been tried as an adult and convicted of murder at age 16, in Florida. At 16, he was once just like them, when in jail! This man did not pull the trigger of the gun that killed the wife of an ice cream vendor during a robbery. All agree on that. But, that fact did not stop him for going to jail. His fingerprints were later found on the stolen cash box. His fingerprints were in the system already for possession of a weapon in another incident. So, they convicted him by reason of his circumstances and by reason of his presumed associations--his friends or his friends of friends ! There is a lesson there for our youth as well and their friends. Any Negro will do when lynching parties were formed in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Guilt or innocence did not matter to the mob; nor did facts, family or alibis--only race! Anything that may persuade them to do that which is right, and to dissuade them from the company of undesirables, must be done! Thereby, they might learn that there are traps in American law lain just for them, specifically for them, sometimes only for them! There are lessons and morals even in tragedy, as there are in victory, for them, youth at/under 16, indeed, for us all of any age http://kulturekritic.com/2015/05/news/man-jailed-as-teenager-for-murder-he-did-not-commit-released-after-44-years/

THE CHICKEN, EGG, AND YOU

THE CHICKEN, EGG AND YOU Which came first the chickens or the eggs might be answered by recasting the question as this: "Which came first, terms or their differences? Better yet, that came first which now is, not that which is not, fully manifested nor open." That which is, that of which we presently are aware, in the here and now, necessarily, is first. We cannot be aware of that which is not present and perceptible to us. "Came" connotes manifestation. Since the chickens were placed first, in the query above, they are the predicate for what follows, eggs. Had eggs been placed first, in the above query, eggs would be the predicate for for what follows, chickens. First in line is the first in mind for assessment. "The first hen to cackle lays the egg," Mama used to say to us. So, anything's placement factors in formulation, in any formulation. That suggests it is the answer, a thing's placement in formulation "Which" evokes a linear reply, urging an "either or" answer. Now if you view life linearly or serially, your answer will reflect which. If quantum, you'll answer both, urging mutual immanence. If you easily succumb to tacit suggestions, or, are liable to linearity, chicken is irresistible! If not, then not, but, few are not! So which came first, the chicken or the egg? The answer lies in you, to paraphrase Solomon.

INSULT TO LAW ITSELF

An Insult to Law Itself! Benjamin Banneker, famed scientist of African descent, once advocated the establishment of a national department of peace as a counterpoise to the existing war department. His idea was politely discussed, briefly, but it was never seriously considered. Doubtless, a similar fate awaits my idea that an innocence bureau be established within the justice department to seek exculpatory evidence on behalf of an accused with the same public resources by which inculpatory evidence is sought in their prosecution. The long line of innocent black men released from jail, after decades, through having been unduly convicted in accordance with prevailing, often erroneous standards, and false or contrived evidence, is an insult to law itself! The interests of justice are best subserved by the application truth and fairness, to proven facts, whether the end be that of guilt or of innocence for persons accused; not by lies and larceny disguised as objective and fair!

A DOUBLE VICTORY

A DOUBLE VICTORY In William Still's classic work THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (1877) is an account of an exceedingly absorbed abolitionist, Abigail Goodwin of Salem, New Jersey, who would deny herself "even necessary apparel" in her zeal to help the escaped slaves who sought succor from her! (P. 611) What struck me, however, was the opening sentence of her letter to William Still about another selfless abolitionist, female friend, Esther Moore, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whom Still profiles ahead of Goodwin in his book. That sentence reads: "I sent E.M. (Esther Moore) forty-one dollars more by half than I expected to when I set about it." Formerly I would have glossed over that sentence without even endeavoring to do the math to determine how much she had expected to send originally. Now, however, since I have been reading, and thoroughly enjoying, math problems from the ancient Egyptian "Rhind Mathematical Papyrus," as set forth in Robin Walker and John Matthews' remarkably wonderful book, AFRICAN MATHEMATICS: HISTORY, TEXTBOOK AND CLASSROOM LESSONS (2014), I am not the least bit intimidated, and have, in fact, willingly engaged in this problem solving ! I solve the problem as follows: 41= X + X/2 41= 3/2X 41x2/3=X 82/3=27.33 X=27.33 Now, that's what I call a double victory! Lord be praised!

ELVIS MITCHELL COLEMAN, WWII VETERAN, HONORED BY HIS SON

Great image and sentiment, as you bow in homage to our late father, Elvis Mitchell Coleman, at Jefferson Barracks Memorial Cemetery, in St. Louis County, Missouri, Rev. Edwin Martin Coleman, love ya, baby brother!

CHICKEN SOUP

Homemade (by me) chicken soup for a rainy Sunday repast. Praise God! Bon Appetit!

MORALITY

Meditations on Morality By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Saturday, September 28, 2013 Relations among men are governed by spoken and by unspoken rules. Perhaps, the most well-known is the “Golden Rule,” which says “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The standard is “you.” Its companion is love, as in “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Again, the standard is “you.” Because the standard is “you,” your conception of yourself governs your morality with respect to others. It also reflects your self-conception by your outer conduct. Morality, thus, moves from the inside of you to the outside of you. “You” might be a person, a family, a community, a city, a state, a nation, a religion or a race. “Who am I, what am I, why am I, where am I, when am I, and how am I” are the most fundamental questions undergirding morality, and undergirding “you” and I. “Morality” is particularly human in its application. Humans are insensible to the world around them until they acquire self-consciousness from others like them. Such self-consciousness consists of the answers to the 6 foregoing questions. Love, care, and comfort are the first things felt. Am I fed, am I warm, am I dry? Am I held? If not, why not? What happens when I cry? What if I scream? Non-verbal communications such as these are life’s first human instructors. They form the setting for the jewels of understanding that will be later fitted into that setting. Morality is foremost among these jewels. Its setting must be inlaid love. Amen.

Robert Church of Memphis and similarity to Thomas Pendergast of Kansas City, Missouri

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/04/a_real_life_lucious_lyon_the_former_slave_who_built_a_beale_street_empire_and_transformed_memphis/Powerful ! A similar underworld connection, as mentioned here about Memphis, fueled Kansas City's world-famous jazz and businesses in the 1920-30's, courtesy of the "boss," Mayor (Democrat) Thomas Pendergast ! Gripping !

EVERYONE ON EARTH IS AMENABLE TO EARTH

Everyone on Earth is Amenable to Earth By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Saturday, May 23, 2015 Everyone on Earth is amenable to Earth. Bar None. “Amenable” means : “willing to agree or to accept something that is wanted or asked for; able to be controlled, organized, or affected by something.” Thus, All human beings—indeed, everything on Earth—is able to be controlled by, organized, or affected by, this Earth, its laws, facts, and fellow creatures. These thoughts come to mind as I meditate on Memorial Day menus, many of which definitely consist of one or more kinds of pork. Malcolm X, most prominently, mercilessly vilified pork, --and pork eaters,--even though he and his father ate pork, before Malcolm became a Muslim in prison. Upon his release from incarceration, Malcolm became amenable to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. As he had pork, Malcolm, following his forced estrangement from the Nation of Islam, in the 1960’s, Malcolm also vilified the Hon. Elijah Muhammad for his alleged serial adulteries. Mr. Muhammad’s book, HOW TO EAT TO LIVE, survives the deaths of both great, black men, Malcolm and Muhammad. That fact, alone, is a testament to, and ample demonstration of, the fact that everyone on Earth is amenable to Earth. Bar None. Therefore, whether you eat pork or not; eat beef or not; eat fish or chicken or not; or eat meat or not, your death is nevertheless assured on Earth. What is more all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Malcolm a convicted thief, pimp and burglar can hardly vilify his teacher Muhammad, given his own history. Similarly, Muhammad, a native of Georgia—and an intergenerational pork-eater—not to mention, convict, and alleged adulterer, can hardly castigate what or how other’s eat, given his history, and aberrant form of North American Islam. The point is this enjoy your holiday, and each dietary delectable of whatever they may consist! And praise God for the provision of such subsistence, as I do in my own book, THE COLORED GREEN TREE! All things are of God. Thus, nothing of God is not good; indeed, everything God had made is very good!

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND MEMORIES

Memorial Day Weekend Memories Memorial Day weekend, though sometimes chilly, was the happy harbinger of summer's heat and festivities, for us kids and teens, in Rock Hill/Webster Groves, Missouri, near St. Louis, in the 1960s! Cardinals' Baseball on the radio. Everybody's Daddy's barbecue on the grill! Family, and extended family, fun felicitously unfurled with our American flags, that were flown up and down Eldridge Avenue from the porches of black World War II Army veterans like my great father, the late, Elvis Mitchell Coleman, father of eight bright children that were born to him, by Margie Dean Coleman, Mama, & loving Queen Mother! Hospitality was the order of the day, as a wide array of cousins, aunts, uncles, and all varieties of "kin" unceremoniously dropped in and stayed to enjoy the fun, frank political discussions, and mouth-watering aromas from "Bo's" grill. Swimming at the community pool, commonly known as "Forty Acres," was also in order, as this was the weekend that our pool officially opened for the season. Just felt like reminiscing about this day, the joyful start of Memorial Day Weekend celebrations in Missouri! Thank you for reading!

POLISHED

That which is polished has the brightest sheen, whether chrome, mirror, gem, or child. Polishing is adoring. Adoration adduces patency from latency in all things.

STATESMEN AND POLITICIANS

STATESMEN AND POLITICIANS Friday, May 22, 2015 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Statesmen are concerned with the state; politicians consider the polls. Statesmen design grand agendas; politicians burrow into holes. Statesmen project and proclaim; politicians connive and disdain. Statesman balance and weigh; politicians strut and display. Statesmen pursue sublime wisdom; politicians pursue present frisson. Statesmen seek the virtuous and good; politicians divide the neighborhood. Statesmen are too often betrayed; politicians are as often quietly paid. Statesmen uphold the public trust; politicians do only what they must. Statesmen are few and far between; politicians are plentiful, brash & mean. Statesmen legislate what is incumbent; politicians work only to stay incumbent. Statesmen very seldom get elected; politicians’ electoral districts are well protected. Statesmen cherish their opportunity; politicians exploit their importunity. Statesmen’s works survive their demise; politicians’ misdeeds are scandalized.

COSMIC MITOSIS

COSMIC MITOSIS Nothing and no one is solely self-determined. Everything and every one is affected or effected by others; & connected to others. As John Dunne has famously said, "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...." https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html Otherwise stated, certain factors or forces: known and unknown: near and far; seen and unseen, felt and unfelt; help to influence and to determine each aspect of our lives, our loves, our destinies. These factors and forces exist and operate with us, within us, for us, through us, by us, yes, even in spite of us, toward consummation. Ultimately, we humans are but an infinitesimally tiny part of a vast whirling vortex, whose vortices extend outwardly and inwardly beyond the range of our profoundest conceptions. Yet, simultaneously, we are somehow made very self-aware, very assertive, and very perceptive, ascribing unto our human selves consciousness and cosmic uniqueness. Yet, still doubting that such wondrous grace could be so. We have been ever bold to ascribe to ourselves primacy, even human supremacy over all other life forms on earth. In so doing, we had earlier, for 2,000 years at least, deigned our planet, Earth, to be the center of our solar system, indeed, the center of the universe itself, around which all stars and planets and celestial objects, revolved in annular homage and in extraterrestrial tribute to us, or so we imagined. So confident were we, that we proselytized others to believe, to submit to, our capacious--so we deemed them--religious and scientific doctrines and axioms. Yet, slowly, inexorably, the truth about our too-comfortably, collusive construct of grand human pretensions began to seep, bit-by-bit, into plain view slowly, insidiously, inevitably. Eventually, science and religion, though once tightly bound together as one, began to divide to unravel, to replicate, to reproduce themselves anew, with each partaking of the other's essences, insensibly. As a consequence this renewal, they also came to an apparent parting of the ways, science to the left; religion to the right, in an energetic dance of spooling dissolution, an ephemeral meiosis, a cosmic mitosis. An epistemological, "War of the Worlds"- type, battle scorched earth by fire and by attrition; it devolved into competing normative paradigms, battling for supremacy over the the hearts and minds of mankind in schools, books, pulpits, media. http://www.ask.com/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama) Here now we sit, survey, and survive, in the midst of these whirling vortices, these "star wars," being daily bombarded, while being bombastic, dumbed-down and dumbfounded, too, in quest of uncertain respite! We humans, all and each, by merely living and working and loving and studying, may also be thereby contributing to, and participating in, this ever-evolving scientific and religious rapprochement-process, automatically, and intuitively. In doing so, we too may be unconsciously searching for a satisfactory solution, a righteous reconciliation of the former one, thence two, now three most elusive vectors: science, religion and human love. Amen.

ZERO MEETS ZERO

Since we bring nothing material to this life at birth, and take nothing material from this life at death, the measure of life must not be material! So what is life's measure, since zero meets zero?

MANY WOMEN FOLLOWED JESUS AND CARED FOR HIS NEEDS

MANY WOMEN FOLLOWED JESUS AND CARED FOR HIS NEEDS Mark 15:40-41New International Version (NIV) 40 Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph,[a] and Salome. 41 In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there

SMALL STEPS

SMALL STEPS If the journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step, as Chairman Mao Tse-Tung once said, then every additional small step leads inexorably to that end.

NEED CRIES OUT

NEED CRIES OUT When an engine makes noise, give it oil. When a baby makes noise give milk. Whenever any downtrodden people make noise, give them jobs. Need cries out! And makes noise. Of some kind!

MAKERS AND BREAKERS

MAKERS AND BREAKERS Law breakers, treaty breakers, and promise breakers have a long glorified history in American life. In truth, many of these very same white persons have also, as often been, paradoxically, the principal law makers, treaty makers, and promise makers, truth be known. Those who make'm, break'm! Yet, despite having blithely broken their very own sacred, civil, common law, documents, treaties and promises, since 1789, the year of the United States of America's founding, they yet have the gall to hold themselves out as blameless, as as honest, as lawful, moral, and righteous, while hypocritically labeling, excoriating, condemning American non-whites as being lawless, immoral, unrighteous, dishonest, and blameworthy! They have perfumed the air with high sounding phrases. They have hidden their baleful visages behind beatific creeds. They are forever boasting of their heritage and system of universal rights and human love. But, inwardly they are the ravening wolves that Jesus Christ decried centuries ago; Remus and Romulus' whelp. http://biblehub.com/matthew/7-15.htm Of course, life has few absolutes. Even precious minerals like silver, rubies, emeralds, diamonds and gold have a quanta of impurities--or exceptions. Such impurities or exceptions are no less very true of law maker/breakers, treaty makers/breakers, and promise makers/breakers, of all "races." Therein lies the rub! Which is which? The scriptures teach that bad seed, tares, were secretly sown into the field at night, by "an enemy," while the men were asleep. When the good and bad seed sprouted, servants inquired what should be done, given their admixture? Just pull them up? The householder explained that they were to leave them alone, until the harvest. Then, he would have the reapers pull the tares up, first, to be burned: thereafter he would have them gather the wheat into his barns. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/… This simple scriptural lesson is pregnant with penetrating, and bountiful teachings. First, "an enemy" is ever around to destroy, confound, undermine, or dilute your labors. Such you cannot resist because you must "sleep!" Upon discovering the baleful trespasser's deeds, showing patience and diligence is preferable to acting hastily or precipitately, lest you throw away the good with the bad. Good and bad, i.e., wheat and tares are recognizably different even to non-specialists like servants. However because their root structures become one, that is, entangled during their youth, removing one risks jeopardizing both lives, both wheat and tares. At harvest, at maturity, their root structures will have become sufficiently disentangled to enable the efficient reapers to discern and to deracinate, to pull up, the subversively trespassing tares, first, for burning, leaving the primordial wheat for reaping later and ingathering into barns. So, too, like the tares, is the American legal system, which though descended in substantial part from the common law of England, boldly deviated away from that law, to avoid the hated antislavery turning of that law, in the 1772 Somerset case , which outlawed slavery on British soil. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart This turning away has corrupted its field of wheat, and was "an enemy" that sowed in its tares with the wheat of human rights, democracy, and the republican form of governance. All have been tainted since before America's 1789 founding, even before its original July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. There, in that sacred oath, the first tares were sown in the Congressional committee's amended "Declaration" which omitted "imposed slavery," as a grievance against, as a basis for separating from the Mother Country, the United Kingdom. Then it necessarily followed that slavery was incorporated into the Constitution, and into all else that was uniquely American, whether law, treaty, custom, trade, art, education, religion, or promises. All things were thereby tainted by this original American turning away from freedom to slavery; from its professions of freedom to its hypocritical practices of bias, prejudice and racism, whose prolific infectiousness yet pollutes and proliferates, as I write. Every societal level is affected, is infected, state and federal; public and private ; religious and secular; business and charity. Fortunately, right now, the time of the harvest is upon us. Though the tares yet tarry amid the wheat, the reapers, are patiently deracinating it more and more each day, to the glory of God and man. There may yet be a harvest of righteousness for the world!

Attorney Ashleigh Mahala Dickerson of Alaska and me

Attorney Ashleigh Mahala Dickerson of Anchorage and Wasilla, Alaska, is pictured here with me on her lovely wooded, 160-acre estate in 1994. Our family flew into Juneau, Alaska, following the National Bar Association Convention in Seattle, Washington, that year as phase 2 of our family vacation. From Juneau, we rented a Chevy Lumina van, and took the ferry to Haines, whence we departed for Fairbanks and then Anchorage and back to Haines the ferry, Juneau and home. While driving about Alaska, we visited this remarkable Bison-sister of the Howard Law School class of '42 or '43. At her invitation, we spent the night in her palatial 5-bedroom, indoor-heated-Olympic sized pool, residence. She regaled us with her life story; her being the first black this or that, i.e., member of the Alaska House of Representatives; first black female member of both the Alabama, Alaska, and Indiana bars; and childhood playmate and neighbor of iconic Rosa Parks! What most blew me away, though, was that she had homesteaded her land, in the 1940s, while she was a single mother of twins, during which 5-year period she lived in a trailer with her boys, and her dogs, in the Alaskan wilderness! She has written her amazing autobiography and graciously mentions our family's visit in its epilogue. Thank you, wife, Lyla, for finding this photo!

LEARN AND APPLY MATH TO BE FREE

LEARN AND APPLY MATH! Back in the early 1980's, black history scholar, John G. Jackson of Chicago, Illinois, sent me a letter requesting that I find the volume of a certain cylinder. Flummoxed by his request and still more than a little bit intimidated by mathematics, I never even bothered to try to solve it, but remained curious as to his motivation all of these years. Today, while reading AFRICAN MATHEMATICS: HISTORY, TEXTBOOK AND CLASSROOM LESSONS by Robin Walker and John Matthews, (2014) I found that the "Rhind Mathematical Papyrus" from ancient Egypt contains "the earliest documented implied value for pi in a written document" (p.24) while learning, how, by formula, ancient Egyptians thousands of years ago, had found the volume of cylinders--Dr. Jackson's question to me! Dr. Jackson is the author of INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS; MAN GOD AND CIVILIZATIONS; and CHRISTIANITY BEFORE CHRIST. He was my house guest in 1983, when he came to Kansas City to lecture at my invitation , when I was still actively promoting black history and knowledge by newsletter & lecturers. I think he was telling me that mathematical mastery is as much a part of black history as facts and dates, and that learning and applying math is our solution to what binds us!

VACUOUS INERTIA

VACUOUS INERTIA Whatever somebody else would have you believe about yourself is entitled to no weight at all. Don't you know you better than others? Let them bark at the moon. If you would be so pitiable as to permit others--whether family, friends or foes--to define and/or to delimit your self-concept, and of your latent capacity, then you deserve to be so defined and so dominated, having demonstrated your utter unworthiness even to pretend to be anything better! A blank blackboard or a blank whiteboard are equally amenable to anyone's scribble, even that of a child; the boards' blankness evincing and symbolizing that vacuousness attendant to inertia.

COMING TO TERMS

COMING TO TERMS "Coming to terms" is a common expression which implies that an agreement has been reached between two or more persons or parties. These terms, if written, are called contracts, covenants, and sometimes testaments. The verb "implies" is used, because some agreements lack voluntariness, being forced on or coerced upon the other by law, custom, or other constraints. Disproportionate bargaining power is often involved here, as involves sharp practices, usury, or sometimes fraud or illiteracy. Or, if "voluntary," the parties may have made a "mutual mistake" as to the meaning of certain material terms in their contract, where the same word means different things, to each, like the material term, "chicken." A famous lawsuit, involved whether a delivery of guinea fowl was indeed a "chicken" to buyers, or was a mutual mistake sufficient to void the contract's terms? So "coming to terms" whether an international treaty, marital vows, commercial transactions, or religious doctrines assumes that you understand and that you consent to the terms in good faith. If you do not, do not sign! The more "terms" there are, the more possibilities there are to err.

you and me

Your personality is more important to me than your profession. Your virtues matter more than your vocation. And your depth is more interesting than your degrees .

Uniquely particular purpose

OUR OWN UNIQUELY PARTICULAR PURPOSE God places each of of us here, now, for some uniquely particular purpose. In so doing, God invested us with the intelligence, sensibilities, aptitudes, the interactive ecology, human and other, and environment to execute, and to fulfill that purpose. That unique and particular purpose is one each creature of creation is invested with, whether fish, or birds, or stars, or microbes, magnetism, gravity, chemicals or light. Our duty and mission as mankind is to discover that purpose and to carry it out to completion. That is our true alms-giving to God. We need not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing, teaches Jesus in Matthew 6. Instead, when we find our uniquely particular purpose, we must tell no one; instead we must sell all that we have and buy that field wherein our secret treasure, our particular purpose is hiding!"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." Matthew 13:44

ISOLATED KILLINGS OF BLACK MEN

Isolated killings of black men. however tragic, senseless and gruesome they may be, are more for psychological affect than for material effect, on the corpus of remaining black people. They connote more than they denote. They inflame and terrorize, and actually stimulate more resistance than ever due to their savagery! These thoughts occur to me, as I read about the fate of captured or surrendering black troops in the "On to Richmond," chapter in LIKE MEN OF WAR: BLACK TROOPS IN THE CIVIL WAR 1862-1865, by Noah Andre Trudeau (1999); well-remembering that black troops were the critical factor, the "sable arm," that actually won the war for the North, because it was literally "liberty or death" for them! Trudeau writes: "Tragically, the fate of black soldiers captured in this campaign differed little from that suffered by their comrades in the West. Charles Hopkins, a white New Jersey soldier captured during the Wilderness fighting, was marched along with other captives to the Orange Court House and placed in the basement of a building that was being used as a holding pen. On the morning of May 9, the POWs were aroused with a cry, "Hey thar you-uns, if you want to see a nigger hang look 'round right smart." Hopkins and his companions scrambled to the window of their cell, "and sure enough they were just pulling up one of Burnside's black heroes in full uniform, the New Jerseyman recalled... An even more chilling incident was related in the matter-of-fact entry for May 8 in the diary of a Virginia cavalry man named Byrd C. Willis: "We captured three negro soldiers the first we had seen. They were taken out on side of the road and shot, & their bodies were left there." P.214 This reminded me of the fate of Michael Brown of Ferguson and of Eric Garner of a Staten Island, in the ongoing struggle for African American freedom.

CIVILIZATION AND BLACK PROGRESS---RECONSIDERED...

The scriptural pericope below came to mind as I read, "Civilization the Primal Need," in CIVILIZATION AND BLACK PROGRESS SELECTED WRITINGS OF ALEXANDER CRUMMELL (1995), where, in March 1896, he states: "I doubt if there is a man here in this presence who has a higher conception of Negro capacity than your speaker; and this of itself, precludes the idea, on my part, of racial disparagement. But it seems manifest to me that, as a race in this land, we have no art; we have no science ; we have no philosophy; we have no scholarship .... The special need in such a case is the force and application of the highest arts; not mere mechanism; not mere machinery ; not here handicraft; not the mere grasp on material things; not mere temporal ambitions... To make men you need civilization; and what I mean by civilization is the action of exalted forces, both of God and man. For manhood is the most majestic thing in God's creation; and hence the demand for the very highest art in the shaping and molding of human souls." P. 196-7. What struck me about this bold statement is its failure to lift up science or mathematics; nor manufacturers or inventors among the blacks; nor history! His call for the highest art is apparently limited to opera, symphony and fine arts like painting, heedless of spirituals or other products of African American culture, which this Episcopal priest claims not to disparage! Could have fooled me! Matthew 7:24-27English Standard Version (ESV) Build Your House on the Rock 24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

REVIEW OLD FEDERAL/STATE CIVIL RIGHTS CASES FOR BIAS

REVIEW OLD FEDERAL/STATE CIVIL RIGHTS CASES FOR BIAS How wonderful it would be if all wrongly decided civil rights cases in federal or state court were also subject to the same or similar review or renewed scrutiny as wrongly decided criminal cases in both courts have finally, recently begun to undergo from the past! The exact, same injustices and discrimination operative in one class of cases were also operative in the other. Both also resulted in actual "injury" being present as well, albeit monetary, in the civil rights cases context. If only Congress would see fit to fund this review and the Supreme Court would sign off, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of hard working, non-criminal black people would be helped financially, their attorneys, and their too long-suffering families would also be commensurately enriched! And justice would prevail!

DON'Y PLAY SECRETARIES CHEAP!

DON'T PLAY SECRETARIES CHEAP! "Secretary" is one contemptible term and position in too many of our black organizations. Some dilettantes deplore its drudgery. Other persons despise its perceived docility. Yet, its association with gender-identity--being deemed best fitted for the female--is its big turn-off, for men and for women. Worst of all, perhaps,is that "secretary"is deemed to be substantively subordinate to more exalted positions like President, Vice President, even Treasurer. In truth, however, Secretary is one of the most important posts that any organization could have! Many states require a Secretary's sworn attestation or seal on all official documents, when no other exalted inscription is required. The term "secretary" has fallen into contempt unfairly and improperly in this era. Another term for secretary is "scribe," a term from ancient civilizations that denoted those that were most learned and literate,most capable of good record-keeping. Another synonym for secretary is amanuensis, a most mysterious-sounding name. These are they that are employed to take dictation or to copy documents. http://i.word.com/idictionary/amanuensis This subject came to mind when I reflected that I had proudly and diligently served as Secretary in several organizations that I had founded over the years. Then, today, in affirmation, I read that John Wesley Cromwell, Esq., who graduated Howard Law School in 1874, and whose outstanding history book I am now reading--THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN HISTORY; MEN AND WOMEN EMINENT IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN OF AFRICAN DESCENT (1913)--, which book inspired the great Carter G. Woodson to found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History; when I read that Cromwell had been the Secretary for the American Negro Academy, founded by the esteemed Episcopal priest Alexander Crummell in 1897, I just stopped threw up both of my hands and shouted, "Hallelujah!" http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/cromwell/bio.html I could also add that Richmond, Virginia's Maggie Lena Walker, a colored woman, who was the first female banker in America, at the turn of the 20th century, had famously, formerly been the Secretary of the Independent Order of the Sons and Daughters of St. Luke, which fact explains its long term efficacy and vitality. I need not mention that the great, Cathy (Liggins) Hughes, the Chief Executive Officer of RadioOne, and a multimedia empire, had also started out as Executive Secretary to the General Manager of Radio Station WHUR-Fm, 96.3. Don't play Secretaries cheap. Put your best person in that position!

LIFE AND DEATH CORRELATE

DEATH SUBLIMATES US Life and death correlate such that one is never without the other; both subsist upon a much greater substrate that we cannot apprehend, yet still subliminally feel, hear, sense, see, taste, smell in a wondrous euphoric, harmonic blend. Therefore, mysteriously and indeed implicitly, these things we strangely know. Fearing death is also fearing life, like fearing the left is fearing right; fearing the up is fearing the down---the is and the is not; the outside of the cup and inside. We may not have asked to come here, but we are surely all here now; death is our only ineluctable exit portal that shall sublimate us away someday or night! Back to our primal place of inscrutably divine essences from whence we have surely originated and must ever as surely return, after finishing this earthly run.

OSTENTATION AND APPLICATION

OSTENTATION AND APPLICATION Ostentation is to application as dressing up is to dressing down. One displays glorious feathers, the other's rarely leave the ground. While ostentation files petitions, application takes the prize; being resolute in its renditions, yet rarely one to patronize. One accedes to civil rightness, the other engages civil wrong; one dazzles the public's eyesight, its opposite is seldom known.