HUMAN BEINGS

WE HALLOWED HUMAN BEINGS Because all antecedents precede and all subsequents, then, followed, all between them had to be hallowed. Hallowed by all prior, then, sanctified by all post; embodied in nature, and inspirited inside with the Holy Ghost. Such is mankind's dual mystery of birth, combined bearing, transient being; so its: hearing seeing feeling smelling touching tasting intuiting. I rejoice in this, my mysterious amalgam! 

FAMILY BENEFIT FLOW

FEDERAL FAMILY BENEFIT FLOW Individual and familial are words that rhyme and correlate, in that one grows from the other, families deriving from individuals, who have united in life to produce more life . Upon this broad base of individuals and families grow more productive communities, that replicate the same template; meaning: growth, correlation, production, on which more communities, families, grow, correlate, and produce societies. Therefore the base of society is the family and the individual. This fact is also the best way to improve our society. Start with family, with the individual, not the state or the city . That is how federal income taxes flow up. This is also how federal improvement benefits must flow back down from the government agencies to individuals, families. This family-centered process of benefit redistribution eliminates unneeded state bureaucracy that burdens and siphons off resources. The federal government has the capacity, personnel, infrastructure to redistribute improvement funds for families and individuals from taxation that now go to businesses. Businesses consist of families and individuals themselves, so they are not excluded, just fragmented into family and individual components. This mechanism does not purport to say what the federal benefits are that may flow back to improve the individuals and families ; neither does it say how much the flow may be. That is political, not mechanical as this family and individual direct redistribution benefits flow claims.

YEARS END GRATITUDE

MY YEARS' END GRATITUDE I never could have come through, but for you. But for, indeed, without you, without too many people who are known, or unknown for me, to name. Grateful to you all am I ! For giving me, for giving mine, merely a piece of your time! All time being the most precious of possessions . Thanks to you! Thanks to everyone! 

material spiritual

Material things begin and end; spiritual do neither.

ABOUT TIME

TALKING ABOUT TIME Time, space, other dimensions as well, may be outside of God, our Creator, but time is encoded in instinct for animals, perhaps in plants and microbes and insects . But our biological algorithms predetermined our time in this space (the hairs on our heads) and adapted us to be able to conceive of and to calculate time and space and other dimensions. Indeed that same life logarithm enables us to "feel" God in everything and everyone around us, and to imagine God as a metaphor or myth, whose actual existence we embrace and embody, as being as real as we. I recall writing a poem at 18, at Howard U, in the School of Fine Arts: "Time Ain't We Is!" At age 43 or 44, I recall preaching my first sermon at my home church, St. Matthews CME Church, in Meacham Park, Missouri (near St. Louis) titled: "How Much Time Do We Have?" The query was taken from St. Augustine's CITY OF GOD, an abridged version of which I had read earlier in the 1980s.

WHITE-BLACK MINDS

FREEING WHITE-BLACK MINDS Freeing white American minds is as vitally important as fortifying black American minds to seek the truth about themselves, God, life, love , power, history, nature, and their opposition. "We are inextricably linked in an inescapable web of mutuality" by history, teaches the sagacious Rev . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who walked, talked, lived, marched in America in my lifetime! 

WHAT FORCE?

What force, what energy, moves: meteors, stars, planets, galaxies; what keeps them regular in orbits, perennially?

PERNICIOUS PLAGIARISM

PERNICIOUS PLAGIARISM 12/27/17 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman “Copying off” of someone else's work product, then claiming their work to be your own is plagiarism: otherwise known the theft of intellectual property, in legal parlance. From grade school to academia, from the commercial world to the charitable world, from ancient days to modern, it has been practiced. I have been subjected to plagiarism—the most extreme form of flattery—in various ways, some innocent, others much less innocent. First, two younger brothers confessed to me that they each had submitted my 1966 elegaic poem, “The Legend of Ali,” in class as their own creation for credit. Next, after law school, my poem, “The Post-Bakke Blues,” was palmed off for publication as his own, by a former friend. Lastly, a Baptist preacher presented as his own my spiritual vignette “Exhalations from My Soul,” with my name whited out as its author, to a table of other preachers, where I was sitting! 'All things come of thee, O Lord; and of thine own have we given thee.” 1 Chr. 29:14. Interestingly, extremely few ancient Egyptian megaliths, artistic, literary creations bear the names of their authors, architects, engineers, etc., perhaps, in recognition of this scriptural fact—that all things do come from God, including man, himself, man's medium, as well as mankind's manifold methodologies. This lack of ascribed authorship allowed less scrupulous cultures to claim as their own the works of others, even to the point of claiming them as their own: e.g., “whitening” Ethiopians and Egyptians! Today, however, certain intellectual property claims reach into the realm of genetics, botany, science. Indeed, some very presumptuously perspicacious persons and cultures have claimed God as their own! So, given the extent of pernicious plagiarism being practiced in our era, mine is pale by comparison.

AFTER GETTYSBURG,....

AFTER GETTYSBURG ... Molten hell hailed from the pale, gray skies ominously hovering over Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1-3, 1863, where tens of thousands of exclusivity American white men: Union blue under General George Meade, Confederate gray under General Robert E. Lee, viciously fought, injured, and killed each other, totaling 51,000 white men who were dead, injured, missing. White men having warred against each other to decide the national destiny, had as gallantly lost their lives in their original "white men's war", their purposefully , politically, lily-white "Civil War," that was being raged to decide the status of America's 4.5 millions of black people: slave or free? equal citizenship or no citizenship? To decide the integrity of the United States of America itself, united as one, or confederated by North/South divisions ? To the blacks, for whom the political white men's "Civil War" was then, and still is, the black people's "Freedom War," their sable arms decisively decided that war's outcome, after Gettysburg! That was when victorious black troops boldly marched through Richmond, Virginia, in triumph in April 1865, saluting Abe Lincoln! http://www.historyplace.com/civilwar/battle.htm

PAINE'S "RULE OF 'RIGHT"

THOMAS PAINE'S RULE OF 'RIGHT' Thomas Paine, that brilliantly eloquent, itinerant, English-American "Founding Father," who is now being accorded less historical stature, in the iconic American colonial pantheon of heroes by orthodox American historians, was the most poignant pamphleteer, of that fiercely fervent era bestriding the American Revolution, 1776-81. Paine, in addition to having written COMMON SENSE, THE CRISIS, and other patriotic works, Paine is also reputed by the more heterodox historians as being the first, anonymous, author of the original, slavery-condemning, "Declaration of Independence," whose draft authorship is now principally ascribed, after its condemnatory references to slavery were excised, to slave-owner, President Thomas Jefferson, chair of the Continental Congressional editing committee. Thomas Paine had also written, in 1780, his own "notes on the state of Virginia" before the more slavery justifying NOTES ON THE STATE VIRGINIA (Query XIV) in the later, better known, book by Thomas Jefferson in 1785, of that name. Thomas Jefferson's book, being one secretly printed, selectively circulated, when Thomas Jefferson still served as Secretary of State, in the nation's still formative stages, in 1785, has been reprinted and publicly released in many editions, since its early very occult release. Meanwhile, Thomas Paine's earlier version is now buried in his essay entitled "Public Good," that I am now reading, a few excerpts of which I have gladly shared below. Paine's purpose was to discuss the geography of "Virginia," itself dating back to its original charters, patents, grants, all of which were clearly ambiguous, in the context of a political feud over land. In so doing, he moves from plats to universal philosophy on "right," its definition, proof, and application to land boundaries in the new nation. Thomas Paine writes: "When we take into view the natural happiness and united interests of the states of America , and consider the important consequences to arise from a strict attention of each, and of all, to everything which is just, reasonable and honorable; or the evils that will follow from inattention to those principles; there cannot , and ought not, to remain a doubt, but that the governing rule of 'right' and mutual good must in all public cases finally preside.... "That difficulties and differences will arise in communities ought always to be looked for. The opposition of interests, real or supposed; the variety of judgments; the contrariety of temper; and, in short, the whole composition of man, in his individual capacity, is tinctured with a disposition to contend; but in his social capacity there is either a right which, being proved, terminates the dispute, or a reasonableness in the measure, where no direct right can be made out, which decides or compromises the matter. "As I shall have frequent occasion to mention the word 'right ', I wish to be clearly understood in my definition of it.... "A right, to be truly so, must be right in itself; yet many things have obtained the name of rights , which are originally founded in wrong. Of this kind are all rights by mere conquest , power or violence. In the cool moments of reflection we are obliged to allow, that the mode by which such right is obtained, is not the best suited to the spirit of universal justice which ought to preside equally over all mankind. There is something in the establishment of such a right that we wish to flip over as easily as possible, and say as little about as can be. But in the case of a 'right founded in right ' the mind is carried cheerfully into the subject, feels no compunction, suffers no distress, subjects its sensations to no violences, nor sees anything in its way which requires an artificial smoothing." P.254-256, "Public Good, December 30, 1780," THOMAS PAINE : COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955) [As an attorney and an ordained AME minister , I duly note Founding Father's Thomas Paine's reference to the rule of RIGHT, not the more customary, "rule of law," which may or may not be right ; and, which in the case of African Americans is very rarely right, whether applied in courts by judges, prosecutors, or jurors, or by cops on the streets; or elsewhere! Thomas Paine's use and definition of 'right' in his essay, "Public Good," is most eloquently and succinctly stated by Rev . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1967 "Christmas Sermon," when he said: "means and ends cohere" if in the right.]

PRAVITY

IS PREVENTING PRAVITY POSSIBLE? "Pravity" means wickedness, evil , corruption. It is the root of the word, depravity. Plotinus, an ancient African philosopher, used pravity in his classic, third century work, THE ENNEADS, to say that merely to look upon pravity is to be corrupted by it. Reading his words, I had thought instinctively of that pravity upon persons who viewed "Medusa" of the snake-hair in Greek mythology; and of the "Sirens," whose alluring sounds and songs attracted lost sailors to destruction of shipwreck . Both myths Medusa and the Sirens having been other forms of pravity. I then thought of that pravity that is so prevalent in modern media, of both the entertainment and of the news genres. I had noted how that, even today, pravity is ever upon us: corrupting, influencing, attracting young and old alike, by repetition and reward, despite our prior presumed knowledge of Greek mythology and our own presumed knowledge of the proven human ramifications from behavioral modification experiments like those infamously involving "Pavlov's dog." Plato, predecessor of Plotinus, in his book THE LAWS, says that the ancient Egyptians averted pravity by prescribing forms of art and music that were permissible for thousands of years, explaining that nation's longevity, wonders, and powerful influences upon others. Moses in the Bible employed the raised ensign of a snake to rid the Hebrew children of their plague of snakes. I am not sure what, if any particular thing might be done, if any, to rid our nation of its pravity , but it will not hurt to study how it might be done by those interested!

HAPPY MERRY JOYFUL

"ORIGINAL INTENT?"---NOT !

"Original intent," the so-called alleged, "conservative" standard of judicial review, whose notable adherents include : U.S. Supreme Court Justices Taney, Scalia, Alioto, Thomas, etc., is not really original, as it falls well short of true, "original intent" in this sense: the original "Declaration of Independence" criticized colonial African slavery and Indians' oppression, that both were imputed to King George III, as evils imposed upon innocent Africans/Indians & upon freedom-loving Americans, by a cruel monarch. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html

RULE OF 'RIGHT'

"When we take into view the natural happiness and united interests of the states of America , and consider the important consequences to arise from a strict attention of each, and of all, to everything which is just, reasonable and honorable; or the evils that will follow from inattention to those principles; there cannot , and ought not, to remain a doubt, but that the governing rule of 'right' and mutual good must in all public cases finally preside.... "That difficulties and differences will arise in communities ought always to be looked for. The opposition of interests, real or supposed; the variety of judgments; the contrariety of temper; and, in short, the whole composition of man, in his individual capacity, is tinctured with a disposition to contend; but in his social capacity there is either a right which, being proved, terminates the dispute, or a reasonableness in the measure, where no direct right can be made out, which decides or compromises the matter. "As I shall have frequent occasion to mention the word 'right ', I wish to be clearly understood in my definition of it.... "A right, to be truly so, must be right in itself; yet many things have obtained the name of rights , which are originally founded in wrong. Of this kind are all rights by mere conquest , power or violence. In the cool moments of reflection we are obliged to allow, that the mode by which such right is obtained, is not the best suited to the spirit of universal justice which ought to preside equally over all mankind. There is something in the establishment of such a right that we wish to flip over as easily as possible, and say as little about as can be. But in the case of a 'right founded in right ' the mind is carried cheerfully into the subject, feels no compunction, suffers no distress, subjects its sensations to no violences, nor sees anything in its way which requires an artificial smoothing." P.254-256, "Public Good, December 30, 1780," THOMAS PAINE : COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955) [As an attorney and an ordained AME minister , I duly note Founding Father's Thomas Paine's reference to the rule of RIGHT, not the more customary, "rule of law," which may or may not be right ; and, which in the case of African Americans is very rarely right, whether applied in courts by judges, prosecutors, or jurors, or by cops on the streets; or elsewhere! Thomas Paine's use and definition of 'right' in his essay, "Public Good," is most eloquently and succinctly stated by Rev . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1967 "Christmas Sermon," when he said: "means and ends cohere" if in the right.]

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. "CHRISTMAS SERMON" 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jeyIAH3bUI

SHOVELING SNOW, SORTA...

BLESSINGS

To be: Living, Aware, Well, And Loved; Is to be Blessed

MERRY CHRISTMAS

THIS HERE, THAT THERE! Why worry about what we cannot know, if magnitudes of that what we can know remain unaddressed ? Solving knowns solves unknowns. To know that, solve this: firsts, first. Loosed in heaven, loosed on earth; bound in heaven is bound on earth. In this dimension, do this . In that dimension, do that. Do not worry ! Amen.

MISTLETOE MYTERIES

MISTLETOE MYSTERIES Mistletoe is a parasite. A parasite is a life form that subsists off the labor of other life forms for nutrition and hydration from birth to death; it is a non-mutual relationship between species , where one exists at the expense of the other. The Bible speaks of "parasites," being the apostrophes for human parasites described in Romans 11:16-27. These late comers exalt themselves against the root and the branches of the primal tree, onto which they were grafted in, being but "wild olives." https://biblia.com/books/nkjv/Ro11.16-27… Read, reflect, revel in God's word! Christmas 2017 is a most apt time to read , reflect, revel in God's word as it pertains to the mistletoe toe mysteries that walk, talk, live, love , reproduce and rule among us all.

REVERTING TO ROYALTY

Focusing on Obama is too narrow. Trump is reversing, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, reverting back to royal charter era privileges of Britain's King George III. Trump's family enjoy royal, monarchical privileges, opportunities.

TIMES

THOSE TIMES THESE TIMES There are those times when we have to walk alone, cough alone, sit alone, to think, to meditate, to pray. "Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever! Amen!" All then becomes better, is clearer. Recalibration is rejuvenation of the mind, body, and spirit, in the wee hours of the morning. One does as one must in reference in deference to the source of all, the end of all!

GREAT GIFT!

Great Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Years', Martin Luther King's Day, Black History Month gift, or birthday gift, for book lovers! Get it at Amazon.com. May God bless!

CHARACTER TESTING

CHARACTER TESTING OFFICIALS A test of moral character must be imposed on public office seekers, akin to those tests imposed upon lawyers or doctors entering their professions. A public trust is being discharged. Such a trust must not be entrusted to persons of low, questionable or even worse, despicable characters! This idea comes from KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853). Therein she writes: "Legree is introduced not for the sake of vilifying masters as a class, but for the sake of bringing to the minds of the honorable Southern men, who are masters, a very important feature in the system of slavery, upon which, perhaps, they have never reflected. It is this: 'that no Southern law requires any test of CHARACTER from the man to whom the absolute power of master is granted.' "In the second part of this book it will be shown that the legal power of the master amounts to an absolute despotism over body and soul; and that there is no protection for slave 's life or limb, his family relations, his conscience, nay, more, his eternal interests, but the CHARACTER of the master." P.39 In contemporary American society, 2017-2018, character tests may well have dissuaded some people from seeking elected or appointed offices, involving the public trust .

DESCENT

DESCENT OF WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING Mankind existed multiple millennia before books were ever invented; before scrolls, parchments, paper were ever invented; long, long, before before the fact, act, the art of writing, itself, was invented, in Africa. Mankind was in Africa before anything was invented. We are their inventive progeny. They are here in us , with us, in spirit, and in deeds. These prior people, our forebears, without books, scrolls, parchment pens, writings, relied upon nature, natural history to teach them how, when, what to do. They studied the patterns, correlations, associations. (That would be good for us to do .) They rose with the sun, slept with the moonlight, followed the stars, religiously, diligently, for seasons. Mankind watched the tides, birds, animals, plants, insects, fish. They listened, tasted, sniffed, tried this, that, and the other, over time and place repetitively, and they taught each other over campfires, in the hunt, in the gardens; while fishing, sowing, weeding, reaping, working. Some people died off, became extinct, for whatever reason; as did certain plants, animals, insects, fish, lands, rivers, seas, birds and bees. These extinctions were the result of frictions, having recurred over the billions of years of earth's existence, before man's existence. (Climates all changed before man!) But Homo sapiens kept on living. In the course of time, perhaps, say within the past 10,000 years, our forebears produced by accretion, by repetition, certain glyphs that represented ideas and sounds into forms : forms of writings , forms of mathematics, forms of knowledge, forms of religion. These forms were all passed down to us, in forms of tablets, hieroglyphics, hieratic, demotic, thence: books , scrolls, parchment, on papyrus, paper, in stone stelae, in construction and invention, in music, dance and art. The ancients' Divine Laws, science, arts, crafts, precepts, instructions, prescriptions, formulas, recipes, poetry, chronologies, charts, units of measurement, methods, values, tools, taboos, psalms, proverbs, short stories, wisdom tales, that were formally recorded by men all came from nature, to men of God. In this way , all our holy books and knowledge came to us by descent.

ENTHRALL

COMMANDS OF GOD ENTHRALL Commands of God are quieter than silence, being unseen light we feel, we taste, we intuit all as love in life. Be blessed in acknowledging them! Amen 🙏

OPERATOR

INFORMATION OPERATOR How joyful! How delightful! I spoke to two young ladies, whose diction was pure, articulation immaculate , whose sweet spirits were musical. It was refreshing to talk to them! It did remind me of an earlier time in Cook Hall, in my Freshman year at Howard, 1969-1970, when I had happened upon an information operator, while using the common hallway telephone. She also spoke beautifully , musically on the Hall phone; so much so, that before I knew what was going on, we had begun to "conversate"--brothers say--that is: i rapped to the sister. This led to that, which led to the other, and before too long that telephone operator and a female friend had made their way up to the 4th floor of the mighty Cook Hall. When they arrived and I laid my eyes upon them, I said to myself: "Sweet Jesus!" They looked like sin! I quickly passed them off to some brothers down the hallway, who were more willing than me to risk infamy, or worst, in being hospitable to visitors. They moved on. I closed the door. I asked no questions, and I heard no more! Just goes to show you that one dimension, however charming, is not determinative of the whole!

WEST IS WEST

I do not tweet. But, I have read that Bison brother, Ta-Nahisi Coates of Atlantic Magazine, has suspended his Twitter account, rather than to engage in demonstrative dialectics with the Ivy League scholar with the big Afro, who also attacked President Obama. That man--Cornel West--seems to want to simulate the venal attacks, ad hominem attacks, of DuBois on Booker T. Washington and Marcus Mosiah Garvey, of the early 20th century. Those attacks by DuBois and other Ivy League "Niagara Movement" Negroes as well as DuBois, certainly detoured and seriously divided the black nation, until M. L. King, arose in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. William Edward Burghart DuBois was a paid United States government agent, according to Dr. Tony Martin's RACE FIRST. DuBois had first urged blacks to "Close Ranks," in Crisis Magazine and to go fight in World War I, abroad, in Europe, segregated from U.S. forces, despite lynching, race riots and Jim Crow, at home. DuBois was later made, curiously, the United States' "Minister Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary," to Liberia to divert the 500,000 acre land deal that was set up by Liberia for the African Americans (UNIA), but was redirected to Firestone, instead, after the sabotage of the Black Star Ship Line; the trial; imprisonment and deportation of Marcus Garvey back to Jamaica. While in Ghana in the 1960s, to celebrate Nkrumah's elevation to President of an independent Ghana, Dr. DuBois' U.S. Passport was revoked; so he, having already in intervening years, fallen from U.S. grace, died in Africa, which Marcus Garvey never reached . I do not say, here, that Dr. West is an agent. Enough it is that West is West. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-nehisi-coates-neoliberal-black-struggle-cornel-west?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Wise economic Christmas is an Epiphany

The massive "after-Christmas" sales can reduce the heavy financial burden on the lowly greatly enabling worship and feasts with family and friends thru the Epiphany! That is having your cake and eating it too! http://www.calendarpedia.com/when-is/epiphany.html

AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT

NO ONE IS TO BLAME We naturally think of Western Europe, when we speak of the 400 years of the African slave trade. But, anterior to Western European expropriation of Africans by 600 years, at least, was the Arab or Islamic slave trade. It dates back easily to the early 8th century, because in the 9th century, Al-Jahiz published his book in self-defense THE SUPERIORITY OF THE BLACK OVER THE WHITE, in defense of the Zanj, the blacks, his people in Basra . I have read this book, after learning of it from the works of Joel Augustus Rogers. Of course, both streams of the African slave trade were fed by the stupidity and cupidity of African Chiefs and so-called wise men. So, no religion is to blame, in that sense: neither Christian  , Muslims, nor Africans. Perhaps destiny is to be faulted, if anyone or any culture! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jahiz

PRIMAL PLACE

OUR PRIMAL PLACE Self-love is first. Family love comes next . Community love comes last. Each stage of love's development depends upon the previous ones. The person is foremost . Its home-life follows and contributes. Then follows community training, values. There are not hard, fast categories. They all flow into and out of each other. Everything begins with you, ends with you, if pertinent to you. In examining self, an extraordinary fact reveals itself: our life. We hear. We smell, feel, taste. One becomes aware of warmth, cold, dry, wet, touch and nourishment. Light is painful. Sight hurts the eyes. Eyesight is better, much more comfortable with eyes closed, away from burning light: a bright, persistent insistent light. It is an obtrusive light that will not go away, even at night. Adapting to light, accepting its inevitable presence, we learn, is the first of life's many lessons. The inner self is life's, is love's primal place, the womb, sanctuary. The place prior to birth, that's resonating always within us as memory, where we revert to, psychically at times of pain , of stress, for peace and release inside. But we are here. No longer there. So here, we ourselves must emerge to meet the sources of self's poking, prodding. People are like the light: bright, persistent, insistent; cooing, wooing, oohing, aahing all the time! We learn soon enough that we too are scions of light and life to others now in their primal places inert, yet inchoate. From the primal place we have come ; to the primeval place we must return. 

DIVINE ALGORITHM LOGARITHM

DIVINE ALGORITHM LOGARITHM Because we enter in at different spaces and times, on ever moving objects, we cannot see things the same, feel things the same, hear things the same, nor taste things same. Nor can we know the same. Our uniquely individual diversities enrich the community's of senses and of sensations undergirding the divine natures of nation's on earth. Each one is material. Each one is significant. Each one is blessed to be able to be blessed and alive. It is our mission to find an algorithm of coexistence, a logarithm of light, of law, of love, to insinuate, supplant , supply the senses and sensibilities of sovereign dominions' imperial estrangements from divine grace. Easier said than done, to be sure; but a clue is uniquely in ourselves. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm

VIEWING KANSAS CITY IN 1976

VIEWING KANSAS CITY IN 1976 When I first hit KC in 1976, it was live and alive. Bristling with activity. There were concerts promoted by Lewis Gray Productions. There was Freedom, Inc., then-led by Harold "Doc" Holliday. Bruce Watkins was wheeling and dealing. Rev. Emanuel Cleaver II preached; Arthur Bryant was still alive and barbecuing, as was J. Reuben Benton and Lucille Bluford, owners of the "Kansas City Call." Nor can I forget Horace Peterson nor Bernard Powell; nor Alex Harris nor Jim Threatt, nor E. Frank Ellis, Julia Hill, Inez Kaiser, Alvin Brooks, Phil Curls nor Alan Wheat. And ever there was Ollie Gates; Sonny Selectman , and many many more. If the KC fire is no longer blazing , at least it is now banked, secured by Marion Jordan. I have greatly enjoyed Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas, having made friends and money on both sides of the State Line and Missouri River. Would that they had only learned to enjoy the vibrant diversity of each other, rather than allowing the low down denizens to dominate their lives, characters, their conviviality .

HELP COMES ALONG

HELP COMES ALONG IN MOTION You never know who can help you. My first job in Kansas City was a reference from a guy at Bar review class, whom I did not know, but, who apparently knew that I needed work. Newly arrived from D.C., I had left Howard U. Law School without a job, in 1976, yet confident that all would work out fine, be well, somehow, nevertheless, by God . Fortunately, my former roommate from Kansas City, who had been employed in KC as its first-black federal court law clerk, allowed me to live with him in his apartment. Both of our wives were still behind in D. C. Meanwhile, we were roomies again, in KC, for a couple of months, while we studied for the Bar exam and I tried to find work. So, yes ! New city. No house. No work. No wife! Such was life for me in 1976, from Memorial Day, until just before Labor Day, as I tried to study for that July's Missouri Bar. The job interview went well . I was hired as a Regional Attorney for the U.S. Department of Labor, in KC., working in the same office as the wonderful brother who had given me the job tip. Around that time, I had also found a cute little duplex on a tip from another brother at Bar review, who lived nearby the place. So. With a house and a job, I was ready to return to D. C. to get my wife, who had remained there, alone, working, packing, (and probably praying) for my/our success in my job search , house hunt, Bar exam. I did not pass the Bar in July, 1976, but settled and secure, I passed February 1977's. Labor Day weekend, my brother, Harold, drove our U-Haul truck cross-country trailing my wife and I in our car. By the grace of God, we made it! First to St. Louis, then to KC, where we had decided to live. Why KC? My best high school friends were living there, then; my first wife had attended college there and her friends were there; I wanted to be a Missouri lawyer and KC is westernmost Missouri, still. So, help comes from many places, when you begin your journey, begin moving along, especially from people either you do not know, or just barely know, by God's grace !

NATURE

Nature begets nature; abides nature; follows, survives nature; absorbs nature; conceives nature : naturally, recursively. Amen.

SWSS CHEESE, CHEMISTRY

SWISS CHEESE & CHEMISTRY SET Swiss cheese and a chemistry set stand out to me from childhood. I made a fuss about Swiss cheese after seeing its vapors floating on "Mighty Mouse." It was a popular television program in the late '50s and early '60s in St. Louis. Mighty Mouse would literally float on its smoky aroma. I knew it had to be good! I pestered Mama to buy Swiss cheese incessantly. So, she did. I took a bite! Yuk! Did not like! Around that same time, I became enamored of chemistry sets, from the shiny pages of BOY'S LIFE MAGAZINE . Their glitter, clutter, gave an air of scientific knowledge and sophistication that appealed to the nascent scholar in me. Once again, as with the Swiss cheese before it, I pleaded and pestered my parents, until I got one for Christmas. What joy! What happiness! But, looking at my round cardboard box, I was still secretly disappointed that I had not gotten a big metal one with a fancy microscope. But I opened it, anyway. I quickly grew bored of reading its trite formulas, warnings, instructions and simplistic outcomes. I immediately tired of its tedium and abandoned it to the reservoir of exhaustion: trash can. My point here is that children may ask, children may get; but joy is capricious; happiness mercurial in ones who need not buy; but just ask; the very ones who do not know that advertising gimmickry is incessant , insistent, unending! Anyway, "Merry Christmas" to you!

IMAGINATION

IMAGINATION To the extent that the ubiquitous fact of imagination is even remotely amenable to, is somewhat susceptible to lexical definitions, it may be partially described as: "intuition; subsonic resonance; felt phenomena; sensory suggestion ; sublime submission to all essence."

ENGAGING COUNSEL

A very few committed people can do what a gross number of laissez-faire people cannot do. Here, I speak of ideas and actions. I have found this to be true from grade school through college; then again, in Butler, Missouri, when I pastored Brooks Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church for nine years, 1995-2004, in rural Bates County. Reading in COUNSEL FOR THE SITUATION by William T. Coleman, this fact, about the work a very few committed people can do, was reaffirmed. I discuss briefly these few people's ideas' enduring impact. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead Epigram of chapter 17, "The Brown Team," in COUNSEL FOR THE SITUATION: SHAPING THE LAW TO REALIZE AMERICA'S PROMISE (2010), p.120, by William T. Coleman with Donald T. Bliss Bill Coleman, the past Secretary of Transportation, has to my sheer delight, outlined the legal thought processes of that small, committed group of gifted attorneys and experts, into which Coleman had been invited to brainstorm in January 1950, as the first black Supreme Court law clerk, by Thurgood Marshall, then head of the NAACP 's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., which was then-on "West 40th Street in Manhattan" in New York, not in Baltimore, Maryland, as now. This assemblage was a peerless juridical war college of which he writes: "Some faces were familiar and some were not, but over the next five years, I came to know the most dedicated , energetic, and innovative group of people whom I've ever had the privilege of working with." Among this bevy of lawyers, the first to be mentioned, beside Thurgood Marshall, was Robert Lee Carter. "Carter had graduated from Lincoln University and had been a star pupil at Howard Law School under the tutelage of [William] Hastie and [Charles Hamilton] Houston before receiving a master of law degree at Columbia....He became Marshall's deputy and ran the staff with an iron fist, making sure court deadlines were met, and freeing up Marshall to travel the country. He was more radical than most of his colleagues...Carter was the lead attorney in the Topeka desegregation school case , one of the five cases consolidated for argument in 'Brown v. Board of Education'....In the 1950s Carter and Marshall were an effective duo, complementing each other in skill and temperament , although they later went their separate ways." Next mentioned are Spottswood W. Robinson III, "also a Howard Law School graduate and a student of Houston's and Hastie's. He and his law partner, Oliver W. Hill, Jr., were in charge of the Virginia desegregation school cases. Robinson became the dean of Howard Law School and was appointed to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit...Robinson was Marshall 's cerebral soul mate, a pragmatic strategist, a graceful writer and a smooth oral advocate...The tall, balding Oliver Hill had been a classmate of Thurgood Marshall [at Howard Law School], with whom he competed for first place...He lived to the age of 100 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom." Other Howard University Law School members of this historic, iconic, legal think-tank were: James M. Nabrit of Northwestern Law School, who "later served as Howard Law School dean, president of Howard University and an ambassador to the United Nations...He and George Edward Chalmers Hayes were the lead counsel in the Washington school desegregation case. Hayes graduated from Brown University and Howard Law School; he later taught at Howard and served as its general counsel. " Another member of this select group was Charles T. Duncan, "A graduate of Dartmouth and captain of its ski team, Charles graduated from Harvard Law School. He later became a professor and dean of Howard Law School and corporate counsel to the District of Columbia." I make special note of the Howard University Law School, not only because it is my alma mater, but also because as I had earlier graduated from Howard's School of Communications in 1973. Historical consciousness was a legacy of the Howard experience at every level. But there were other members of this cadre who had no association with Howard in William Coleman's book, including Coleman, himself. William T. Coleman had graduated Harvard Law School, as had the earlier named iconic deans, Charles Hamilton Houston and William Hastie, who were instructors , legal theorists, at Howard Law School. In addition, "Constance Baker Motley, a graduate of Columbia Law School...joined the LDF as its expert on housing issues. Quiet but tenacious she earned the respect of her male compatriots by her persistent advocacy... She later became U.S. district court judge for the Southern District of New York.... "One of the few white faces around the table was that of Jack Greenberg , a twenty-five year old lawyer, just out of Columbia Law School. After many years as director-counsel of the LDF, Greenberg became the dean of the College of Columbia University. Other "white faces" he notes are Louis H. Pollak "my friend and fellow associate at Paul, Weiss; Charles Black, a quirky Texan and professor at Yale Law School; and Jack Weinstein, a professor at Columbia Law School and evidence expert. "Robert R. Ming Jr., ...worked his way through Northwestern Law for School, graduating at the top of his class as an editor of the school's law review...was a professor of law at Howard for ten years , and later taught at the University of Chicago. An excellent writer, he drafted many of the key legal briefs . "As a younger, newer member of the team, I listened in awe to the debates , forming my own views from heated arguments among the battle-scared veterans. I supported Robinson and Carter's passionate plea for a strong frontal no holds barred attack on segregation per se. But I was wary of Jimmy Nabrit's view that we should not even allege the inferiority of the unequal colored schools, lest we give the Vinson Court yet another opportunity to sidestep the issue of 'Plessy's' continuing Constitutional validity. Like Marshall, I favored the hedge strategy--the 'two-stringed bow.' We would argue that at the very least the facilities were inferior and therefore unconstitutional, but we would not risk a total loss if the Court proved unwilling to overrule 'Plessy.' "I was skeptical of Carter's proposal to use the research of psychologist Kenneth B. Clark (a City College of New York professor) on the adverse effect of segregation on black children. Clark and his wife, Mamie, had conducted tests on Negro children using black and white dolls. The Negro children liked the white dolls better--they thought white dolls were smarter and prettier. I agreed with Robinson that we should make a purely legal case. From my clerkship days I imagined with horror how skeptical justices might derisively view evidence based on children's dolls... But Marshall was persuaded by Carter to use whatever sociological or psychological evidence supported our position. And some say it worked." Id. P. 120-123.

HUMAN GOVERNORS

HUMAN GOVERNORS Whether humans' "consciousness" is superior to that of plants, animals, fish, microbes, or of any other living (or non-living) thing, is seemingly a philosophical question. I cannot speak to "superiority" of any kind, or culture, due to innate limitations of human knowledge, and our inevitable bias, prejudice. Perhaps, all other categories of other living, or non-living things, in existence or now extinct, may now, or might previously have, similarly entertained biases and prejudices toward us as have we toward them? Governors limit human speculation, dividing knowable and unknowable.

TALK IS NOT CHEAP

TALK IS NOT CHEAP, BROTHER! "Talk is cheap!" Words hurled like a curse! Their stupid, intoxicated utterer rose up unsteadily to fight, knocking over chairs, tables, drinks, in doing so. "Pour whiskey! Give that drunk ass nigger another drink! Might sober his drunk ass up, 'fore he stumbles over here and gets his ass kicked!" This hypothetical barroom tableu has been played out, is yet being played out, by those brothers who deprecate the power of language, the divine power of the word; but who epitomize its innate lexical potency, by untoward misconduct ! "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John 1:1. There is nothing "cheap" about words, talk, or speech. "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." Romans 10:17 Get you some words, my brothers!And some power to expend, rather than to depend on some ignorant, drunken stupor to perambulate in! "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Proverbs 15:1 Life and death live in the power of the tongue . "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit." Proverbs 18:21 There is nothing cheap about life, nor speech my beloved people; so, grab hold to the power of the word, which was in you by reason of life!

RECALLING MY OWN BLACK HISTORY

RECALLING MY OWN BLACK HISTORY Entering into 2017 winter solstice , I look back upon persons and events of my life that were extraordinary. First, the people were: Mrs. Bernadine Smith Davis; Ms. Lydia Brooks, Mr. Buddy Webb, Rev. Christopher Columbus Butler, Wiley Harris , Dr. James Edward Cheek, and Professor Samuel E. Yette. Why were they extraordinary? Mrs. Davis was our 4th grade teacher at James Milton Turner Elementary School, near St. Louis, Missouri. She spanked me on the first day of class. Her love for us was manifested in her having lain down the "rule of law" through me to my classmates, from the start! I was chastened, humbled, obedient from then on, as were we all! At the end of the school year, she gave to us, who were interested, a summer curriculum to complete by moving from house-to-house on a weekly basis, to keep us mentally sharp. Ms. Lydia Brooks taught us in 5th and 6th grade. She brought to us a reading expert into our classroom, who had just been in Florida at a writer's convention. She asked us which authors we had read on our own. When I told her of "Walter Farley," who wrote "The Black Stallion." She smiled, whispered to Ms. Brooks, and said that Farley had been an assembly speaker in Florida! Mrs. Brooks had also stated publicly, later in the spring of 1963, "Don't any of you 'little fast girls' let any of these boys get you hemmed up in dark corners." No one said anything. Luckily for me one of those "little fast," 6th grade, girls hemmed me up , after school, in a stairwell ! There she rolled, we rolled, in ecstasy fully clothed, quickly, fearing discovery! At the end of the 6th grade, I was also reading on a college grade level in comprehension, thanks to Mrs. Davis' and Ms. Brooks' tutelage. Mr. Buddy Webb was our excellent Civics teacher at Webster Groves High School. Each day, we read or discussed in class syndicated opinion makers like James Reston, Tom Wicker, and more. To my delight, I suggested that we add SNCC's President, H. Rap Brown's book, DIE NIGGER DIE to the classroom litany. He agreed, and ordered it! Shock! Decades later, when I was a practicing attorney, he invited me back to our high school assembly, where I spoke to the student body. We had founded the "Students for Black Awareness and Action" there in 1968. It was still ongoing after 30 years! Rev . Christopher Columbus Butler was the pastor of St. Matthews C.M.E. Church, in Meacham Park, Missouri, our family's home church. At 16, I asked him for permission to teach a black history course to the youth. He not only said "no," but he also preached a sermon against the idea, saying "Black is ugly! Stick your hand in a jar of axle grease. That's ugly!" That seemed ludicrous to me, but my protests to my parents were unavailing . So, I stopped going to the church, any church, till years later. However, in my law school years in Washington, D.C., he came to the city to visit on business. Mama called me, told me to entertain him, while he was there. We had dinner together. I asked his interpretation of "For he that has, the more shall be given, and from him that has not, even what he has will be taken away?" He replied "faith." I said it meant money. He then said that I was a "philosopher." I had never been called that before. But I now realize how right he was in retrospect! My next impresario is "Uncle" Wiley Harris, now deceased. He was my first wife's maternal uncle. He literally shamed me into applying to Howard University, in the fall of 1968, during his visit to St. Louis from Cleveland, Ohio. While I was waiting for his niece to descend the stairs for our date, he asked me if I was planning to go to college, after I graduated? Sure, I said. Where? he asked. Oh, somewhere with a big strong black student union , I replied. Oh! You like black people, he asked. Of course, I said. I am black myself! Then, why not go to a black university? I was stunned and shamed by the directness of his inquiries probing my blackness! He quickly followed up: "Matter of fact, go to the best! Go to Howard!" Of course, I knew of the many, many famous, honorable, graduates of Howard. He was merciless. Sensing weakness, he said: "That solves it! You like black people, so go to the best black school." Just then, into the living room came my date, his niece, Frankie, to rescue me from her astute Uncle Wiley Harris. This wise and noble man, who had so greatly affected my life, although he did not attend college, himself! Howard University is everything that they say that it is, and more! I arrived on the yard in August 1969. Dr. James Edward Cheek, formerly of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, was a freshman with me in 1969. We had pursued separate paths until the spring of 1970, when black students at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi and Southern University in Baton Rouge , Louisiana, were killed by police, for demonstrating against the Vietnam War, after the "Kent State Massacre" in Ohio.Howard was renown for its politically conscious student body, dating back to the 1940s, at least. Howard students had taken over the Administration building in 1968. The core group of leaders was still there. That student takeover had brought in Dr. Cheek, who had been involved in student protests, himself, before acquiring his doctorate. We raged about what to do being that we were the black university! We met and came up with the idea of shutting down Howard, in sympathy with Kent State, Jackson State and Southern. Of course, there was the issue of finals and graduations that were complications! Not everyone was a freshman in Liberal Arts, as I was. There were graduate students, medical, dental , law students to consider. The matter was taken to Dr. James Cheek. "Cool as a cucumber," he agreed to close down normal classes and to suspend final exams. Students had the option of accepting their then current grade or accepting a "P" for "pass" with complete academic credit. That floored us, flipped us. He had outdone us in his daring! One bad dude was he! No finals, but, mandatory class attendance, in which we discussed being black in America from that class' subject matter perspective. My 3.75 grade point average at the end of my first year, 1970, was due in substantial part to Dr. Cheek! Professor Samuel Yette , author of THE CHOICE, and formerly a reporter at "Newsweek Magazine" was my journalism professor in 1972. I had enrolled in the new School of Communications, and I was then-Feature Editor of the "Hilltop," the student newspaper founded by Howard alumna, Zora Neale Hurston in 1924. Dr. Yette was a great teacher! We had a quiz every day that he graded and returned. We also read Plato's REPUBLIC as a class assignment, my first reading of the classics, which I had formerly scoffed at as Greek, thus, "white," out of my ignorant naïveté . Plato's ideal philosopher-king government was modeled upon those in ancient Egypt, a black civilization, where Plato was educated . I have had occasion to use the teachings of Plato's "Republic" in several allied spheres, legal, historical, theological. I owe it to Dr. Yette! And to Howard U. This vignette is longer than I had hoped it would be. I wrote it upon the prompting of the Holy Spirit. I have not gone beyond 1972, my undergraduate days. That is enough; more would be too much. I owe too many people who helped!  As it is, I thank you, Dear Reader, heartily for sticking out year's end walk down memory lane with me!

MAMA'S WISDOM

"I thank the Lord for this much," our very wise, late, mother used to say, about any "gift," great or small, or in-between, that we had received. Some wisdom must be grown into with spiritual maturity to be known.

WE ARE GOD'S

WE ARE GOD'S Our bodies being temples of the Holy Ghost, that we have of God, our faces are the facades of God; and our minds are the minds of God. "What? Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own ?" 1 Cor. 6:19 https://www.google.com/…/%3fsearch=1+Corinthians+6:19&versi… Our thoughts and ideas are also of God; our works are works of God. "For you were bought with a price : therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." 1 Cor. 16:20 Congratulations!

CAPITAL HILL

All Congressional representatives are beholden to all of the people, of U.S., not merely to the locality, or political parties to which they nominally belong. This fact is too often lost in the haste to satisfy this interest or that. Narrow-mindedness and partisanship erode the fabric of community binding all.