NAMES HAVE NUANCES

NAMES HAVE NUANCES Does a difference in names endue a given thing with a different character ? Is the sun no less the sun because of its name in the different languages of man? What of the moon, the earth, or any river, ocean or sea? What about you and me? If today, I am Saul and tomorrow, I am Paul, am I substantively different? What's in a proper name? Capitalization for one thing. Yet we do not capitalize sun, moon, or earth. However, we do capitalize Missouri, Miami, or John Doe. So, we make the lesser thing of implicitly more consequence than the greater thing by its mere capitalization. Names have nuances, to be sure, but that fact should never detract from their substance. Focus ever on substance and accord no names' nuances either primacy, prejudice withal.

FAMILY TREE

This simple poem, "Trees Are Tropes for Marriage ," was very well received, yesterday, at our youngest son's wedding in Kansas City, Mo. Kemet Dumas Coleman had urged me to write it, in keeping with the motif .of he and Lauren's (Huston) nuptial. I wrote the poem's top part and ended it with Joyce Kilmer's iconic poem, "Tree;" as the "something old," to accompany this poem's "something new," itself long idiomatic of weddings. It was a labor of love for me to write, and a profound joy for me to read at that auspicious event in our families' history. --- "Trees are tropes for marriage" Trees, as tropes, are marvelous natural metaphors for marriage; symbolizing community, nativity, probity, vitality, constancy, fertility, resiliency, majesty, fecundity, glory, history, divinity, perpetuity, and truth. Yet, Joyce Kilmer says it best: "I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree."

NWA COMING YOUR WAY

"NWA" COMING YOUR WAY! I was both appalled and amazed to watch the impact that "Super Fly" had on the black ghettoes across America in the 1970s. Could the most vulnerable and most dependent of us be so fatuous, so vacuous, that a movie could change their lifestyles? YES! From fashion to hairstyles to grill fronts to drugs, that film flipped the hood to the tune of "Freddie's Dead." And "Give Me Your Love." What I, in my naïveté, had seen as a film about black male/female cooperation and victory, they saw as "pimpin' hoes and slamming Brougham doors," for cocaine! That's when I began to recognize and acknowledge a disturbing disconnect between me and those in the ghetto, who see that "the world is a ghetto;" who are rank weeds wafting in wretched waters, badly lost and turned out! Lacking in proper education, historical knowledge, religious orientation, cultural assimilation, economic sustentation, political sophistication, family love and care, while conditioned to confine themselves to spaces defined by concrete, lowlife, metal, sirens, & mayhem, they become subject to desuetude, destruction, death. Then a friend visiting from the West Coast in the 1980s, asked if I had heard of gangs or "crack?" I replied: "Yes. Chicago and Philadelphia have long had marauding black gangs that kill and steal from black residents, but what is crack?" I said. He answered "You will soon find out, because it is coming soon to KC and coming nation-wide from the West Coast through gangs like the Bloods and the Crips." I was incredulous . Bad as things were in the '80s, could they get worse? Yes, they could and did! Rap music with its rhyming, lurid and violent lyrics led the way. Led by groups like NWA, who is still getting paid "Straight Outta Compton; reaping bank like a wanton! Fake "conscious " and faux aware, they still continue to impair, all the weak ones that they still snare, like the eagle and the hare. Hippedy hop. Hop! Hop! These thoughts are called to mind from the headline and the opening paragraphs of an article on Facebook that I posted today about NWA, wherein that writer wonders who is behind them, pushing their resurgence & why? Maybe we all should wonder that and investigate. I certainly will! http://allhiphop.com/2015/08/14/opinion-exposin-the-truth-about-nwa/

HATSHEPSUT TEMPLE

beautiful geometrical pedagogical

FATHER DICKSON'S CEMETERY AND ME

As a child, I attended James Milton Turner Elementary School in Meacham Park, a black subdivision in Kirkwood , Missouri, about 10 miles southwest of St. Louis. Turner established black schools in Missouri, as Assistant Commissioner of Education, after the Civil War, was a Missouri Prince Hall Mason Grandmaster, and Consul to Haiti during the Grant Administration, and attorney active in Oklahoma oil claims among black Indian heirs. Turner is buried here. We lived on Big Bend Blvd., near Sappington Rd. , near this historic cemetery . Father Dixon had organized the Knights of Tabor, a 50,000-member, secret, pre-Civil War organization of black men and women, who were armed and preparing to fight to end slavery, when the Civil War broke out; so, they joined the Union effort instead as individuals. Father Dixon, was an AME preacher, of epic proportions, is buried in this cemetery, that is named for him.

personal aphorisms

PERSONAL APHORISMS you first. others next. here-here. then, there-there. inside out before outside in. who am I before who are you. who are we before who are they. precept upon precept. line upon line. here a little, there a little. world without end. Amen.

PERPETUATION

As one perpetuates the memory of others one perpetuates the memory of oneself. It is the law of reciprocity embedded in nature as call and response; or seed time and harvest; sowing and reaping: Crystallized in the saying of Jesus "Whatsoever you would that men do unto you, do likewise unto them."

WHY WE CAN'T WAIT

"The Negro also has to recognize that one hundred years after emancipation he lives on a lonely island of economic insecurity in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity . Negroes are still at the bottom of the economic ladder. They live within two concentric circles of segregation. One imprisons them on the basis of color, while the other confines them in a separate culture of poverty. The average Negro is born into want and deprivation . His struggle to escape his circumstances is hindered by color discrimination . He is deprived of normal education and normal social and economic opportunities . When he seeks opportunity, he is told, in effect, to lift himself by his own bootstraps, advice that does not take into account that he is barefoot .... "Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation . They have deplored prejudice, but tolerated or a ignored economic injustice . But the Negro knows these two evils have a malignant kinship." P.12-13, "The Negro Revolution --Why 1963?" WHY WE CAN'T WAIT by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964, 2000)

What is your black definition of freedom?

WHAT IS YOUR BLACK DEFINITION OF "FREEDOM?" A definition of "freedom" would be a wonderful thing for blacks in year 2015. For slaves, it meant the end of slavery. For those later under "Jim Crow," it meant the end of segregation. For those without voting rights, it meant the opportunity to vote. For those in separate schools, it meant desegregation and busing. For those without jobs, it meant equal employment opportunity. For those with inadequate housing, it meant VA and FHA loans. For those wanting businesses, it meant access to capital, whether equity or debt, private or public . All of these things had been attained by prior generations of blacks through the end of the 1960s. That was over 40 years ago. What about now? What is the current definition of freedom? Or has it already essentially been attained, by those who seek it? Your thoughts please!

HELP

“HELP!” Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Tuesday, August 25, 2015 Help comes in many forms. Some help is easily recognized. Other help is not so easily recognized. Some help is welcomed. Some help is resented. All help is salubrious and appreciated. No “help” ever is injurious. Some help is immediate. Other help takes years, even decades, maybe centuries to activate. You shall know it by its fruits, if it helps, when it helps. An old lawyer once told me, “An ounce of preparation outweighs a pound of brilliance.” That helped. A late historian once told me, “Accuracy trounces error, as specificity, generality.” More Help. Euclid’s Elements teaches me “Prove and demonstrate all things, repeatedly, recursively.” Sublime Help. The Bible and the Quran and Lao Szu and Buddha embodied all the above kinds of help. Supreme Help. Similarly have these helped: Imhotep, Aesop, Plato, Augustine, Emerson, Einstein, Carver, et al. Extraordinary Help. Dear Reader, you help. By reading, understanding, sharing these words/ideas, you help. Indeed, the Greatest HELP of all, after Jesus Christ, is: YOU!

LOVE AND WOOLEN SOCKS

LOVE AND WOOLEN SOCKS Back in the late 1970s, I won a $25.00 gift certificate to an exclusive men's store here in KC that is no longer in business . Even though $25.00 was worth more then than it is now, yet and still, the only thing my gift certificate could buy was a pair of woolen socks. I felt cheated as I left. Woolen socks? Just socks? Well, I am still wearing those very woolen socks today. So, they were worth the outlay! My warm appreciation for the value of woolen socks went up even more recently, when a prominent discount shoe store here failed to carry them when I sought them. If you cannot think of a perfect gift for the special man or woman in your life, get them a pair or two of fine woolen socks. They will love the gift and the giver forever!

HOW THE SLAVES LEARNED TO READ AND WRITE

As I read the many, many letters written by black soldiers in the Civil War to newspapers as letters to the editor and articles, and the slave narratives written before that war, I now no longer wonder, as I once did, how these people came to acquire not only bare literacy, but to claim a fluid facility with the English language, given Southern laws barring it. They willed themselves to know! As such, they used every readily available means from each and every person and from each and every situation to acquire literacy, numeracy, and even scholarly proficiency in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, both in the reading and in their writing before 1861. Dr. Carter G. Woodson has, in his classic study, THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO PRIOR TO 1861 (1919, listed some of those means: "Many picked it up here and there, some followed occupations which were in themselves enlightening, and others learned from slaves whose attainments were unknown to their masters. Often influential white men taught Negroes not only the rudiments of education but almost anything they wanted to learn . Not a few slaves were instructed by the white children whom they accompanied to school. While attending ministers and officials whose work often lay open to their servants, many of the race learned by contact and observation . Shrewd Negroes sometimes slipped stealthily into back streets, where they studied under a private teacher, or attend a school hidden from the zealous execution of the law . "The instances of Negroes struggling to obtain an education read like the beautiful romances of a people in an heroic age. Sometimes Negroes of the type of Lott Carey educated themselves. James Redpath discovered in Savannah that in spite of the law great numbers of slaves had learned to read well. Many of them had acquired a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic . 'But,' said he, 'blazon it to the shame of the South, the knowledge thus acquired has been snatched from the spare records of leisure in spite of their owners' wishes and watchfulness. ' C. G. Parsons was informed that although poor masters did not venture to teach their slaves, occasionally one with a thirst for knowledge secretly learned the rudiments of education without any instruction. While on tour through Georgia, E. P. Burke observed that, notwithstanding the great precaution which was taken to prevent the mental improvement of the slaves, many of them 'stole knowledge enough to enable them to read and write with ease.' Robert Smalls of South Carolina and Alfred T. Jones of Kentucky began their education in this manner.... (P.206-207) "B.K. Bruce, while still a slave, educated himself when he was working at the printer's trade in Brunswick , Missouri . Even farther south where slavery assumed its worst form, we find that this condition obtained. Addressing to the New Orleans 'Commercial Bulletin' a letter on African colonization , John McDonough stated that the work imposed on his slaves required some education for which he willingly provided. In 1842 he had had no white man over his slaves for twenty years. He had assigned this task to his intelligent colored manager who did his work so well that the master did not go in person once in six months to see what his slaves were doing. He says , 'They were, besides, my men of business , enjoyed my confidence, were my clerks, transacted all my affairs , made purchases of materials, collected my rents, leased my houses, took care of my property and effects of every kind, and that with an honesty and fidelity which was proof against every temptation .' Traveling in Mississippi in 1852, Olmsted found another such group of slaves all of whom could read , whereas the master himself was entirely illiterate . He took much pride , however, in praising his loyal. capable, and intelligent Negroes." P. 210

FAMILIAL PHEROMONES FROM FATHER TO BETROTHED SON

FAMILIAL PHEROMONES FROM FATHER TO BETROTHED SON Family gatherings reinforce the family itself and each member. Our youngest son, Kemet, who will wed within the week, used to love our periodic family meetings so much, he would even suggest or request them at various times. Speaking now to you, as father-to-son, Kemet Dumas Coleman, your time has come for your own family convocations. Let me in love provide a few major insights. First, my mother and father loved family gathering too. The more the merrier, was their rule. That pertained to babies born, and raised up. It also pertained to family occasions, like vacations, school events. holiday feasts and barbecues, family visits, church, graduations, reunions, marriages. Memories flow from these most cherished of meetings. Traditions are explained and passed down. Newer members get to see, hear, touch, laugh with, talk to and with older members and their peers at them, as well. Stories and lies are told and retold. Hopes revealed and bonds of love are renewed. "Do not forsake the gathering together" says the Bible in the context of church. Families are the first church, by definition. In families, preparation is made for the outer world including speech, conduct, appearances, tidiness, courtesy, obedience, and order. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/… When families dissolve much is lost . Dissolution can be caused by crime, distance, divorce, dire poverty, disease, disability, death, war, other unresolved tensions. Sometimes, families can be in fact together but fail to exchange the vital, familial, pheromonal, ties that bind, and that cement love. "Pheromonal" is a metaphor for message board. It is taken from biology. Insects exchange such messages with each other as to the location of food, danger, etc. Family pheromonal disruptions can be the same as not meeting, at all, as collegiality, familiarity is destroyed or diverted to/ sporting events on television, cell phone or telephone conversations, texting, video games, computers, or myriad others. Fight against the insidious forces that would undermine familial pheromonal exchanges with your family, son. https://www.google.com/search… Resisting these sirens of familial distortion, dislocation, and destruction in this frenetic, cyber era requires a concerted effort by all, and by you in particular as the father, who sets the example, and collaborates with a wife, faithfully. Families are the molecules of the nation. Strong families make for very strong nations, states, communities, and individuals too. Marriage is the mustard seed of families. Great is the abundance born from that tiny seed, Kemet. May God's grace be upon you and yours, son, forever, always!

A BITTER PILL I KNOW

A BITTER PILL I KNOW Being black, alone, resolves nothing, solves nothing, does nothing. More is required. Motion is required . Effort and energy are required . Collaboration is required. Some folks like to exult that so and so was black. So? What did they do? That is the question. I like anyone, perhaps more than most, am interested in the history and achievements of my people. To that end, I am blessed to be able to study it, incessantly, and to be able to share some scraps of it with others that may not be so blessed nor inclined to do either: study it or share its scraps. Consequently, "woe is me, if I preach not the gospel" of black history, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:16. http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/9-16.htm Reactions based on color are reactions to fascism based on color in the "New World," as the Americas and Caribbean are known. "Blackness" or "Negritude" are inherently reactionary color-cultural templates to white supremacy, the basis of racism and Nazism. None of them, alone, do anything. Effort, energy, ineffable essences make the difference. This is a bitter pill, I know. It is easier to curse the darkness than to light a candle. But. The candle must be lit, and relit, again and again; and passed one to another, if we are ever to be free of the caul of ignorance that enshrouds our efforts and frustrates our motion.

FASCIST COURT DECISION FACILITATES POLICE BRUTALITY

FASCIST COURT DECISION FACILITATES POLICE BRUTALITY Graham v. Conner is a fascist decision . Facially its happy face is smiling--no one was killed--but internally it is a ravening wolf. The intended victims of this carefully, camouflaged decision have been unarmed black males, killed by police power, primarily. The word fascist is used, because in American life, and history, racism is a form of fascism, whose dictator is the white supremacy. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fascism Factually, the case involves a black diabetic man, Graham, who rushed into a store for orange juice to relieve his "sugar," and left, as abruptly, due to the lengthy line or wait. A police office, Connor, observing his hurried entrance and exit from the store followed him. Graham, the diabetic man, was riding in a friend's car, when the cop stopped it. Explaining his diabetic exigency to the cop was most unavailing. Connor made them wait to see if anything criminal had occurred at the store. Nothing criminal had occurred at the store. In the interim, Graham had circled his friend's car twice, add passed out on the curb. Back up arrived. Graham was roughed up, cops claiming he was drunk. Thrown into the police car head first, after being brutally handcuffed, he was also denied orange juice offered to him by a friend, which cops disallowed. He sustained a broken foot, and was finally taken home and released with ringing in his ears, bumps, cuts and bruises, and stress. He sued Connor and others claiming Fourteenth Amendment violations under 42 USC 1983, including the Charlotte, North Carolina police officers involved for the excessive force used against him by Connor, the cop, and cohorts. A directed verdict in favor of the police was entered by the District Court at the conclusion of Graham's excessive force case . The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court affirmed the dismissal. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded, holding that the Fourth Amendment, and not the Fourteenth, affords the correct textual standard for analysis in such cases. It then went farther rendering a standard and test for analysis under the a Fourth Amendment that has brought much grief to blacks in mushrooming police brutality cases that I deem to be fascist. While the Supreme Court reversal may have seemed favorable to Graham, in application it has been very harmful to victims of police brutality since it essentially immunizes the police from both criminal responsibility and from civil liability for their wrongs. The "counterbalancing test" applied in Graham v. Connor is skewed from the get-go.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_v._Connor The Court balanced the right of the individual against "government intrusion ." Missing is the societal interests embodied in the balance of the Constitution which are designed to check government excesses, especially bodily intrusions, upon individuals. Society embodies individual interests indivisibly and wholly; not the government which is, at best, society's agent; and at worse its oppressor and exploiter ! Tacitly, "sub rosa," the Court is saying that the governmental interest is the same as societal interest . This is not necessarily so, and is quite often untrue. The entire Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Emancipation Proclamation, statutory law, case law, and community custom, merely approximate the dynamic and ever-evolving societal interest in life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, all of which are God-given rights. The Constitution is a manmade, national constraint and covenant on the governmental abuse of citizens--members of society--by the delegated powers pledged to it by society. These divine rights, from whence all power derives, being societally-invested in government are greater than government's static powers. The Supreme Court's terrible decision in Graham v. Connor, makes government powers dynamic and makes society power static, inverting the process on its head . In 1989, in Graham v. Conner , the U. S. Supreme Court justified the use of deadly force by police officers whenever they perceived themselves in peril, when in the investigation or apprehension of any suspect. Though no deadly force was used against Graham, and need not have been brought up by the Court, it was setting a standard in future cases drawn of blood. Police could shoot to kill and get away with it under law! This inherently subjective test must be assessed from the perspective of the officers present at the scene, the Court said, not by persons not present, whether police or not, whether experts or not. Thereby, the police became judge , jury, executioner, all rolled into one. The court claimed that the dynamic fluidity of the rapidly evolving situation warranted the police disregard of Fourth Amendment (freedom from unreasonable search and seizure); Fourteenth Amendment (Due Process of law and Equal Protection of law); or Fifth a Amendment (Right against self-incrimination and presumption of innocence), protection of the suspects in preference to themselves! Enter the police state! So while the police may be on the front lines and front pages, the real bugaboo is the U. S. Supreme Court and its fascist decision --no other less caustic word will work--in Graham v. Connor . https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/490/386/case.html#396

DIVINE DYADS

DIVINE DYADS To say "there is nothing new under the sun," is not to deny that "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ." Both scriptures are metaphors for the discursive ritual of apparent constancy and relative change that embody day and night, life and death, male & female, hot and cold, and every other dyad extant, including the question of "to be and not to be."

"BLACK LIVES MATTER" TO WHOM IN THE 'FERGUSON'S' OF AMERICA?

BLACK LIVES MATTER IN 'FERGUSON' (OR ELSEWHERE) TO WHOM? Ferguson's symbolic impact was torpedoed by drive-by killers who fired through walls killing a 9-year child on her mother's bed doing homework. To whom do black lives matter in Ferguson or anyplace this happens? Not to those depraved, parasitical blacks! Who kill and hide; steal and hide; hate and hide; betray and hide? These do nothing but sow death, distrust, destruction. These reprobates hate all things "black" themselves, too! These drive-by killers don't care.. Armed robbers don't care. Gang-bangers don't care. Wife beaters and child molesters don't care. Female breeders without love don't care. Male breeders without love don't care. Who does care about any black life than their own in the "Ferguson's" all over America? http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ferguson-9-year-old-girl-shot-dead-homework-bed-article-1.2331544?cid=msn

PRAYING FAMILY

The family that prays together, stays together.

AUDACIOUSLY PRESUMPTUOUS

AUDACIOUSLY PRESUMPTUOUS As I was reading a reference to the famous Bakke case in BLACK ROBES, WHITE JUSTICE by Judge Bruce Wright (1993), I was reminded of my own personal, affirmative action experience. In February 1974, me and my good friend, Ron Hayes, went to the United States Supreme Court to attend an oral argument in the famous law school affirmative action case of DeFunis v. Odegaard. DeFunis is an earlier, no less notorious, predecessor of Bakke, which involved admission the University of Washington School of Law. Bakke involved the medical school admissions. Ron and I were good friends from Howard University, who had gone to different Washington DC law schools, thereafter. He went to Georgetown Law and I went to Howard Law. Both of us were second semester first year law students. We were roommates, as well, living in a Bladensburg, Maryland, apartment. With all of the hubbub about the importance of this case in the press and in our law schools, one evening we resolved to attend oral arguments in the DeFunis case the next day. We knew we that had to arrive early to get in line for the 9:00 a.m., seating given the limited seating options in the Court. "Early" to us meant 7:00 a.m. When we arrived around 6:30 a.m., there was already a very long line of students stretching around the block. We gasped! Oh my! What to do, now? Carefully perusing the line, we noted its monochromatic nature. There were no blacks in that long line. But, first things first. We parked. Then, we walked. And walked. And we walked briskly that dark, cold February morning. We kept on walking until we reached the line, looking for some pocket of sympathy, as we passed. Finding none, we kept on walking up the marble steps. The line tightened intuitively as we passed. No sympathy. So we walked inside the portico of the Court, right up to its big brass door. Then, when we got to the head of the line at the door of the high court itself, we simply and nonviolently cut the line! There we were standing in the very front of everyone else! What effrontery! what gall! "What kind of brazen affirmative action stunt could this possibly be?" the ensuing hushed silence seemed to inquire! A smoldering, smattering of murmurings behind us began to grow into vigorous remonstrance. Soon, it was punctuated by the barbed pronouncement, "Hey, you guys can't cut in front of us! We were here first." We did not respond nor turn around. Whereupon we were displaced at the front by those whom we had displaced, until we were pushed back about 20 or so persons from the front, where we came to rest. Throughout, we had never argued nor looked back. We just stood in line, affirmatively, with our all-white law school colleagues from the East Coast. At the appointed time, we were ushered into a certain section of seats that allowed us to watch the entire arguments of counsel, some 1.5 hours, including the Court's processional and recessional. Meanwhile, those more patient and polite members of the public who had stood in line much longer than we, were shunted in and out of the Court after 3 minutes of viewing in order to accommodate the massive crowds that were still waiting. If there is a moral to this story it is this: "Victory most often goes to the audaciously presumptuous." To this aphorism, I bear witness. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeFunis_v._Odegaard

NUBIAN PYRAMIDS

RAMSES ENCODED AND ENCRYPTED

maintenance is sustenance

MAINTENANCE IS SUSTENANCE Maintenance is sustenance. Otherwise, things fall apart; be they your home, your car, your business, family, marriage or self. Maintenance is sustenance in all things.

COMPLETING BOOKER T. WASHINGTON'S TRILOGY

COMPLETING BOOKER T. WASHINGTON'S TRILOGY The great and iconic Dr. Booker T. Washington, founder and first president of Tuskegee Institute, popularized the motto, credo, and the practice of "hands, head, and heart," relative to directing the education and the elevation of freed black people in the post-Reconstruction era and well beyond.http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/…/btwashington.ht… That was good. Indeed, that was very good advice and practice for a people who were newly "UP FROM SLAVERY;" who were accustomed to working with their hands, heads, and hearts, as slaves, and as free blacks, which 10% of all blacks were in 1861. Booker T. Washington's classic book, published in year 1900, was autobiographical and pedagogical for black people, who were catching hell from all sides, in their 'nadir.' UP FROM SLAVERY iterates and reiterates throughout its length and breadth, with ample anecdotes, incidents, and moral teachings, the vital, central importance of this familiar "three-H" creed. But, what of the rest of the body? What of the torso, the groin, the legs, and the feet. No body part is superior to any other. All parts have great symbolic and material value to their possessors, as the Bible so beautifully illustrates in 1 Corinthians 12: 14-27. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/… The feet represent stability. The legs represent mobility. The groin represents fertility, and the torso represents ability . These along with the hands , head and heart complete the man and woman, who together complete the other. It is time now to complete the important praxis urged by Booker T. Washington by reading or re-reading UP FROM SLAVERY, to secure its blessed teachings. For Truth be known, Dr. Washington was as divinely sent as President Barack Obama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or anyone else. Each and every one of us are divinely sent vital parts in our deliverance. http://www.amazon.com/Up-Slavery-Dover-Thrift…/…/0486287386…

"COVER-TO-COVER" CHRISTIAN

While some preachers prefer the Old Testament over the new, or the New Testament over the old, I prefer neither, and am equally accepting of both, being a "cover-to-cover" Christian, proudly girded in God's full armor !

SLEEPING IS A STATE OF GRACE

SLEEPING IS A STATE OF GRACE Sleeping suspends or diminishes all cognition, enabling states of awareness to rest and to reboot. Cognition is sensorial, conceptual awareness. The vital organs and bodily functions that facilitate life continue working through sleep, at reduced rates and states. Sleeping creeps upon cognition in humans incrementally. Slowly, it descends diurnally the like dew. You never know the precise moment that you fall asleep. You are, of course, conscious of being sleep at times, or not so at times, depending on the depth of sleep. "How did you sleep?" Do we know? Yes we do know. Consciousness tells us palpably, physically and mentally, how well we slept. Whether we slept like a log or a baby; or not at all due to pain, stress or other discomfort. As the old song goes "I didn't sleep at all last night, cause I was thinking of you." Consciousness, which is life's apprehension and appreciation of itself, innervates our total being. Every muscle, nerve, cell, hair, bit of flesh or tooth has life and has consciousness, even the soul. Consciousness never sleeps until death, bestriding both states of wakefulness: sleep's suspension or diminution of cognition and awareness' state of alertness. Sometimes sleep descends like a ton of bricks, as when one falls asleep at the wheel while driving. At others, as in medicine, or healing arts, administered drugs induce sleep, even comas, as anesthesia, to allow intervention. The boundary between being sleep and awake is blurred and often very indistinct, descending at will, when and where it will. Indeed, crossing over into sleep and returning revived from sleep are mysterious states of grace.

I WRITE TO READ TO WRITE

I WRITE TO READ TO WRITE I write for pleasure not for profit. Actually and truthfully, I write because I must write to breathe. Therefore, whenever I write, in whatever form that I write, except for assiduously recording those blessed bursts of breath from the "muses," better known as the dictates of the Holy Spirit, which flow through me momentously, I am free to be me completely. All real writers want readers. That includes me and defines me. But, unlike marketable writers, those rare, fortunate few authors that are popularly published, who my particular readers may be, makes no difference to me. They may be the rich, the poor, the young, the old, the in-between, or the yet to be born. It is all the same to me. I write the truth. Truth is the least marketable, least popular, least easily digestible of all of the genres. Yet, it is also the longest lasting of all genres, being read for ages, whose authors were often martyred, except for those who were artful enough to hide their heresies in the penumbra of prevalent piety or mythology. These, too, I read: for a writer is perforce a reader of other writers.

NO COACH NO PROBLEM

NO COACH NO PROBLEM When our sixth grade school soccer team lacked a coach for our wintry, Saturday morning games, that were played at Nipher Jr. High School against other area grade school teams, we did not despair. We coached ourselves. And we often won! Our school, being the James Milton Turner Elementary School in Meacham Park, Missouri , was all-black, in 1963, save for an occasional white girl who would alight sometimes, from somewhere. Whether by biased financing or other bottleneck, only our gym teacher, Mr. Williams, assisted us at all, as part of his normal duties. So. We dyed our own t-shirts green and gamely gathered to play soccer each, sometimes bitterly-cold, Saturday without a coach. We simply told the officials that we had no coach. And we played! Once play began, our speed and dexterity stood us well against the other boys' teams, until we met those with coaches and craftiness. Then we lost, our speed being used against us in repeated off-side violations. But, looking back, I rejoice that we persevered through the palpable lack of coaching impediment to play anyway. We learned self-reliance and self-confidence as children. Earlier, at the end of fourth grade, some of us had gathered during the summer at each other's homes to pursue lesson plans that had been specially prepared for us by Mrs. Bernadine Smith Davis, our outstanding fourth grade teacher. She had been brought in to deal with our bright precocity squarely. And did she ever! I got a whipping on the very first day! But had no problems the rest of the way! Like our gym teacher, Mr. Frank Williams, she was not permitted to help us over the summer or even to even attend. But, we diligently obeyed her regime at each weekly meeting and were beneficiaries for life of her love and her care for us. The point of this is to say that kids can do well when left to themselves with guidance from adults, whatever the obstacles may be. Their common endeavors and the collateral successes will stay with them and bless them for the rest of their natural lives.

deeds and destiny; man and God...

BELIEVING THAT AMERICA WOULD NEVER ELECT A BLACK PRESIDENT IS LIKE BELIEVING THAT IT WOULD NEVER RECOMPENSE BLACKS FOR ITS MANY WRONGS COMMITTED AGAINST THEM. BELIEF, ALONE, NEITHER DEBARS NOR DETERMINES DIVINE EVENTS . WORK DOES. SKILL DOES. ORGANIZATION DOES. PERSEVERANCE DOES. MONEY DOES. FAITH DOES. TRANSLATION: AS SPERM AND EGG MAKE LIFE , AS NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE MAKE ENERGY, SO ALSO DO GOD AND MAN MAKE DESTINY.

Rosenwald, Booker T, and 5,300 black schools in the South

Julius Rosenwald with Booker T. Washington and the proliferation of over 5,000 sturdy schools for our people throughout the South during the "nadir" in our history. Thank you Mr. Rosenwald for the money to build! Thank you Mr. Washington for the vision to see our need and for recruiting Mr. Rosenwald! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/movies/review-rosenwald-on-a-philanthropist-who-created-schools-for-blacks-in-the-jim-crow-south.html?_r=1

TREASON DENIED, TRAITORS UNTRIED, AND EQUITY

TREASON DENIED, TRAITORS UNTRIED AND EQUITY By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Friday, August 14, 2015 The debate over the Confederate flags and their memorabilia’s propriety on federal and state flags and sites squarely raises the question of treason and traitors. What is the treason and who are the traitors? Both sides in the Civil War and after it, both North and South, deemed blacks to be inherently, genetically inferior to whites. Both sides exploited, enslaved, segregated, disfranchised, murdered, lied to, discriminated against, the blacks for purposes of expediency, at various times, before and after the Civil War as well. So, perhaps; just perhaps, there were no trials for treason after the Civil War, because both sides were guilty of treacherous treason relative to the blacks. Nearly a million lives lost, a country almost bisected, and no one is a traitor? That may appear to beg the question, but it is true! http://www.futurity.org/civil-war-union-rebels-treason-725752/ No one was tried for treason after the Civil War. One thing is for sure. The blacks were not the traitors. They were the saviors. They saved the nation from dissolution, just as they saved themselves, and their heirs, from slavery. Abraham Lincoln belatedly enabled the Union’s enlistment of blacks as Union soldiers on January 1, 1863, due to “military necessity.” Dire straits! Twice before, President Lincoln had expediently countermanded the manumission field orders or enlistments by his Department Commanders; in the West, John C. Fremont, and in the South, David Hunter, in 1861, and in 1862, respectively. Both Generals had acted for the same reason as Lincoln later acted: “military necessity.” Civil War, needless to say, did not end the uncivil discord over the status of this nation’s ironic “saviors.” Through “Reconstruction,” through the “Hayes-Tilden Compromise,” through the “Jim Crow” era, through the “Civil Rights” and “Black Power” eras, through the “Reagan Revolution” era, and now into the present of “Barack Obama era,” incidents describing this continuing, uncivil discord around the citizenship and too-long-deferred entitlements of America’s blacks yet rages. Ironically, the blacks are the only non-traitors in the United States. The white North points the finger at the white South, which just as emphatically points back. The North argues “we the people” rights, with the South arguing “states’ rights.” Lost in the middle are blacks’ rights and entitlements. These have served as the fulcrum upon which the seesaw of American might and right rests. So, arguably, both the white North and the white South are, and have been, traitors to the rights of the blacks. Both have denied blacks, repeatedly, their earned equity in their nation, by pervasive, parsimonious, political, cultural, judicial, and economic compromises predicated upon the scurrilous, discredited “white power” paradigm. This “white power paradigm” rests upon precariously balanced Constitutional nee economic canards, fictions, and lies, whose cultural roots date back, quixotically, to the nation’s founding fathers. John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, were members of the Executive Committee of Five urging “with liberty and justice for all” in the Declaration of Independence, on one side. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, slaveholding Virginians, were part of the Committee of the Whole, of the same Continental Congress, on the other hand, who struck any references to slavery from that vital, unifying “Declaration of Independence.” So, from before the nation’s beginning, metal mixed with clay and oil blended with water, in an unholy concoction, in the nation’s first decree. This tacit agreement carried over into the Constitutional Convention, as implicitly reinforced by the Federalist Papers, that black rights would be subordinated for and to national unity. Sunset was set for 1808, when the importation of slaves would end slavery’s national “obloquy” as they termed it. But, the introduction of the cotton gin, slave smuggling, the Industrial Revolution, and notions of “Manifest Destiny” coalesced to bury the precariously balanced Constitutional canard about its end, under the far more imposing weight of ponderous profits to white men in the North and South. So, getting back to the Confederate flag, only those in the right can legitimately assert that right. That cancels the North and the South from the equation, as such. The blacks have persistently called for equity denied them in national sovereignty. This equity means, restitution, reparation, inculcation, as fully endowed citizens, with retroactive citizenship rights, dating back to the founding of our Republic and coming forward with interest. With commensurate equity, blacks will salute any flag, both flags, or a brand new flag, to reflect their and their ancestors’ true equity. #30

IS MORALITY MERELY A FREESTANDING BELIEF?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morality Is "morality" merely a freestanding "belief" in the innate rightness or wrongness of a given thing? Or is morality, itself, defined by and subject to even higher, more rigorous cosmic laws, that are susceptible of proof, demonstration, illustration, which lay at the base of all mankind and all "civilization," dating back, literally, tens of thousands of years? Given this latter question, one need not ask whether morality and religion are one and the same. They are clearly not. Religion evolved from the same spiritual source as morality and other disciplines, like mathematics, astronomy, art, music, agriculture, navigation. Yet, being divorced from its source, religion, as others named, lost its spiritual reference point from whence it devolved, and became that which was right in each man's or each culture's or epoch's, own eyesight or belief. I would postulate that the base of morality is rooted in and deduced from ancient geometry, from whence it derives its universal, conceptional, predictable impulses. Geometry is susceptible of proof, demonstration, illustration, and is embodied in the yet-extant mystifying, ancient megaliths dotting the earth's equatorial belt. Its spirit also suffuses all numbering systems, mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, navigation, art, construction, music, human laws, magic, writing, medicine, etc.

WHERE THE THUGS AT?

WHERE THE THUGS AT? "Where thugs at ?" Was formerly proclaimed by young, middle class, black boys enamored of gangs. They liked the boasts and the flair of their rare gangster air, lacking knowledge with which to contrast or compare thugs' depraved criminality In truth and in fact, thugs ain't got it like that! They'll shoot at each other; miss and kill an innocent brother! Yet, they won't stop a police threat or quash a usury debt against their own mother! "Where the thugs at?" Ferguson's first anniversary resulted in one casualty, as rivals shot randomly during a protest. The police lit up one as he tried to flee the vicinity, having fired on them initially! Now that the armed white posse has come, carrying open assault rifles in the streets of Ferguson, we'll soon see who's really bad, and who's gonna cut & run! "Where the thugs at?"

MORALITY AND GEOMETRY

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morality Is "morality" merely a freestanding "belief" in the innate rightness or wrongness of a given thing? Or is morality, itself, defined by and subject to even higher, more rigorous laws, that are susceptible of proof, demonstration, illustration, which lay at the base of all mankind and all "civilization," dating back tens of thousands of years? Given this latter question, one need not ask whether morality and religion are one and the same. They are clearly not. Religion evolved from the same source as morality and other disciplines, like mathematics, astronomy, art, music, agriculture, navigation. Yet, being divorced from its source, religion lost its reference point and became that which was right in each man's eyesight or belief. I would postulate that the base of morality is rooted in and deduced from ancient geometry, from whence it derives its universal, predictable impulses. Geometry is susceptible of proof, demonstration, illustration, and is embodied in the ancient megaliths and numbering systems, mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, navigation, art, construction, music, human laws, etc.

"entertainment"

As often as evil is entertained well aware, angels are entertaining us unawares.

MICHAEL BROWN, GALILEO, JESUS, AND AMERICAN JUSTICE

MICHAEL BROWN, GALILEO, JESUS, AND AMERICAN INJUSTICE Law is rooted in trial evidence, in theory. Trial evidence is "fact" as defined by the ruling authorities. "In theory," is said, because premise of "evidence as law" is the usual explanation, publicly given. In truth, American law is about the maintenance of those in normative power through the preservation of the historically primal white power paradigm. Pursuant to this primal, white power paradigm, truth is not "fact." Indeed, truth may not be admissible in trial evidence, at all in some cases, simply because it does not conform to evidentiary rules' prescriptions, state or federal, regardless of the merits. These rules are supposed to winnow distillate fact from the dross of ostensibly polluted evidence, which "facts" can then be presented to a petit jury with the judge's permission--presumably bias free--which petit jury will later decide guilt or innocence in accordance with jury instructions stating the law. However as the Hearsay Rule, itself, is a mess, so is much of American law. The hearsay rule is intended, it is claimed, to keep away from the hearing of the jury, biased or impertinent evidence. Hearsay is a statement made out of court that is offered in court to prove as evidence the truth of a matter asserted. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hearsay Many an appeal has turned on hearsay, including when a "declarant is unavailable"or http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_804; when available. It has no many exceptions --23 at last count--and exemptions, it can hardly be called a rule! https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_803 Clearly the hearsay rules and the rules of evidence need cleaning up and there are others as well! While this may be true, I digress for Michael Brown's case never got to a trial or petit jury, because it never got past the grand jury. Legal reform, therefore, must encompass much more than the mere washing of the "outside of the cup" to quote Jesus; it must focus on "the inside of the cup," the rules of evidence themselves. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/… The American system of justice is in tatters for all those disfavored folks, disfigured by racism. Yet, it works well for others, neither disfigured nor disfavored by race. To expedite this prevailing racist paradigm the legal system must always appear to be fair, but must never be so, to paraphrase Nicola Machiavelli in THE PRINCE. To pull this legal dissimulation stunt off, what appears must not be so. Otherwise, those disfavored and legally disfigured ones will not be obedient to the law. But will resist its overreach and overreactions, relative to themselves and will deem it to be tyrannical, not just . This development could lead to legal anarchy and to emboldened armed revolutionary zealotry, as the dissed folks, lacking viable alternatives, may inevitably resort to guerrilla warfare against the normative authorities. Joining the these dissenting folks, recent history has shown, may be that sizable minority of favored folks, sympathetic to their cause and to the nation's founding documents. So, given this glum prospect of the future of the American legal system's sinecures of arrogance, injustice and bias, it is likely that reforms will soon be instituted both inside and outside of the cup of American justice, by those with everything to lose, rather than to risk its complete rupture! These thoughts were brought to mind on this one-year anniversary of the martyrdom of Ferguson's Michael Brown, August 9, 2015, by a quote from Galileo Galilei. He was the 17th century Catholic priest/astronomer, who also was vilified and persecuted, for his writing the "truth" about the relationship of the sun and the earth, by the rulers of his church. His defense of the writings of another priest's (Copernicus) caused him to be brought up on charges of heresy. Caught between his love of truth--natural philosophy--and of his own life, he spoke by veiled analogy. Galileo used the analogy of the "movement of the shore, and the stability of the ship," in Copernicus' posthumously published proofs, to demonstrate that the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the earth. That the sun circled the earth was erroneously and dogmatically maintained as official church doctrine, for centuries until Copernicus and Galileo, who also invented the telescope. The Catholic Church demanded of its votaries as imposed truth, the belief that earth was the center and the sun was the satellite, based on Aristotle, Ptolemy, the Church Fathers' claims and scriptural misinterpretation. Galileo, to avoid the rigorous sanctions of the church, which ranged from death to torture to excommunication for official any "heresy," he spoke obliquely : "[N]either Copernicus nor his followers will ever use this phenomenon of the shore and the boat to prove that the earth is in motion and the sun at rest. They adduce it only as an example that serves to show, not the truth of their position, but the absence of contradiction between the appearance of a stable earth and a moving sun, to our simple sense experience and the reality to the contrary." (THE ESSENTIAL GALILEO edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro, 2008, p.166-7) No less deceptive than the stable earth and moving sun of Galileo's illustration, is the appearance of a fair legal system"and the reality of the contrary." Comparability may be found in the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, the police killer of Michael Brown, age 18, and his later, non-prosecution by the federal government as well. It did not make sense; being brazen legal mockery. As a consequence, a world-wide movement was born that boldly proclaimed: BLACK LIVES MATTER. To normative (white) observers, where they stand is "the place that is standing still", while all else moves; but as both iconic astronomers Copernicus, Galileo earlier demonstrated; as Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind before them remonstrated, and as Michael Brown and friends have in death explicated, about American Justice: what appears to be so, is surely not in fact so! hearsay Definition of hearsay in the Legal Dictionary by The Free Dictionary LEGAL-DICTIONARY.THEFREEDICTIONARY.COM

"THE GEORGIA BURNINGS"

"A few days after the convention, [August 1904] a major but short-lived uproar developed over an editorial in the 'St. Luke Herald.' Entitled 'The Georgia Burning,' the piece... read: "'The burning of two negro men at Statesboro, Ga., last week does not shock us. It used to, but now on airing each morning, we simply look to see how many negro men, women, and children the brave (?) Christian (?) white men of the South have murdered. "'We have no comment to make. The whole South is being Mississippized. When a negro is arrested, he might as well, nay better, fight the officer who comes to arrest him and kill him and get killed in return as to be locked up and die like a rat in a trap. "'It is better to die fighting . It is less painful than to be saturated with oil, placed upon a woodpile , set on fire, burned to death--and then have your bones sent by express to the president of the United States with the polite message, 'You won't have a chance to eat with these two niggers.' "'While some of the Southern papers see fit to denounce the murders, we have not seen one which calls upon the governor of Georgia to arrest the murderers and bring them before the law.' ------------ "For a few days, articles and one editorial appeared urging suppression of the 'Herald ' for inciting violence, but nothing came of it. The 'Herald' printed a robust response , which included the following paragraph: "'Our editorial was not inflammatory and the mere saying so ... does not make it so. If the Negro cry aloud in his anguish when he sees black men, women, and children murdered and burned to death, tortured in the most inhuman ways, if the Negro moans aloud at the very horror of his treatment, if the worm stepped upon turns over and utters a cry of pain, papers like the 'News Leader' say it is inflammatory.'" P. 95-96, "Theory into Action," A RIGHT WORTHY GRAND MISSION : MAGGIE LENA WALKER AND THE QUEST FOR BLACK ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT by Gertrude Woodruff Marlowe (2003)

YOUR HISTORICAL AZIMUTH

YOUR HISTORICAL AZIMUTH "Small world !" Is the typical idiomatic exclamation whenever we serendipitously happen upon a theretofore unknown kinsman or amazing mutual acquaintance. Just as we all have encountered such persons, many celebrated historical figures have done so, as well. My greatest pleasure in reading history is in deducing these historical connections. Their nexuses strengthen and lend viscosity to the periods or incidents in question, just like your chance "small word" meetings memorialize the moment, enriching it for you both. Try it! I call it the principle of historical azimuth; meaning that history should not only be read just vertically --for chronological empires, persons, dates and events--but also horizontally for kinship, friendship, or enmity. Both enrich and complete the view. Horizontal and vertical with your azimuth, your perspective or viewpoint, as prism, completes, your understanding and seals in the sweet savor of awareness . http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/azimuth

color struck

A new friend messaged me to inquire why blacks were so "color struck" given their common oppression? I responded: "Because color defines power in America, even as it delineated privileges or preferences then and now to and for people oppressed by colorless people who mutated from the primordial people thousands of years ago; which primordial people had lost their knowledge of self, over eons."

OLIVER OTIS HOWARD, EXCERPT...

"Before I was six years old my father, having some business in the valley of Hudson, made quite a long visit among his mother's relatives, living there. My grandmother's name was Desire Bailey, a sister of Dr. Rowland Bailey. On my father's return, he passed through Troy. For some benevolent reason he there befriended a little Negro lad and brought him to our house in Leeds, Maine. I remember well the night the boy first made his appearance in the household. His large eyes, white teeth, woolly head, and dark skin kept my eyes fixed on him for some time. while my father was telling the story of his advent. This boy lived with us for four years. As he was vigorous and strong, we had our plays together. The coasting, the skating, the ball playing, the games with marbles and with kites--all such things found us adepts. Also in work, such as comes to every New England farm lad, we toiled side by side, or at our respective stints in which we competed for success and finish. Edward Johnson, for that was his name, was always kind to me and helpful, but he was never cringing or slavish. I have always believed it was a providential circumstance that I had that early experience with a Negro lad..." p.12, "Autobiography of Gen. O. O. Howard," SCHOLAR'S CHOICE

FACIALLY NEUTRAL NEUTERING

FACIALLY NEUTRAL NEUTERING Often excessive government regulation is thought of as a rich Republican issue, rather than a black empowerment issue. In truth, excessive, needless, directed, and often racist, government regulations on the federal, state and local levels have materially hampered the growth and development of black businesses, historically . Lacking political clout, and/or the money to procure it as well, black interests have been routinely legislated, regulated, or prosecuted out of existence, to benefit more favored white competitors of these concerns. Facially neutral neutering has eviscerated a vast variety of black concerns as they lacked the knowledge to appreciate the encroaching evil or the requisite wherewithal to withstand its advance or escape its clutches! Everything from trash hauling, to secret society fraternal insurance, dry cleaning, securities, clothes washing, bricklaying , food catering, banking, healing, numbers lottery, education -- name it! --has adversely been affected by government regulation . This accounts for massive unemployment in black communities due to lack of jobs. This factually traumatic, historic phenomenon was brought to mind once again, when reading: "Meanwhile, Virginia had created an Insurance Commissioner , and it was obvious that regulation of insurance companies, including fraternals, would come to Virginia as it had come to other states. Secret societies viewed the possible intrusion into their affairs by a powerful white official with alarm." P.95, "Theory and Action," A RIGHT WORTHY GRAND MISSION: MAGGIE LENA WALKER AND THE QUEST FOR BLACK ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT by Gertrude Woodruff Marlowe (2003)

DEBT IS SLAVERY THAT SAVVY BLACKS MUST DESTROY

DEBT IS SLAVERY THE SAVVY BLACKS MUST DESTROY Lynching and terrorism were tactics employed to prevent blacks from improving their economic condition, after the Civil War. Later, along came debt. Remaining totally indebted to, and dependent upon, others for our daily bread and for the roof over our heads, in exchange for our relatively free labor, for the exploitation of others, was the reason for our expropriation from Africa and oppression in America. Politics, education, religion, the military, are all subordinate to economics. Indeed, they derive their existence from economics. To be free, one must first throw off the chains, whether imagined or real, of economic subservience to another and to keep them off! This is the great challenge in 2015, and beyond, facing savvy slave descendants in America: removing the economic chains. Therefore, by any means deemed necessary or expedient, this final liberating act must now be done. For unless one can sit in peace and at ease, under one's own vine and fig tree, free of external debt, one is yet a slave, since debt is yet a financial chain, just as pernicious as iron fetters!

PORTRAIT OF A BLACK FAMILY

Many of our people have been those who have dressed well, as families, for portraits and for other special occasions. Indeed, legislation was passed in certain states banning certain forms of dress to us in certain places and the manner of promenade due to jealousy!

Edible, eatable

All edible ain't eatable. All chew ain't chow!

power and glory amen

IGNORANCE IS BESTIAL

Ignorance is bestial not bliss!