ALREADY FEELING FRAUGHT 2019

ALREADY FEELING FRAUGHT: 2019 Already feeling October. Feeling all November. Already festive, feeling December. New Year's Eve of 2019! Fully feeling in sentient September. Feeling chill. Feeling change. True. Feeling bold, feeling blest and blue. Feeling! prophetically feeling, I do. Feeling fraught but feeling no fear. Feeling wondrously, marvelously clear! feeling blessed being here! bearing witness, singing praises! Feeling that ineffable inability, but the virtuous virtual liability to self and to others who may not feel, who cannot feel, who do not feel as I now feel: to do something, to do anything positive, providential, profoundly profitable, that I personally can about such urgently insurgent internal feelings, but sing! Thus mimicking Wheatley, Dunbar, Cullen, Hughes, Weldon Johnson, I sing songs of the sensations that I feel! Of God's influences, infiltration. I sing! 

FITNESS TO SERVE OR JUDGE?

FITNESS TO SERVE OR JUDGE? "Fitness to serve" compared to what? Is the issue with the Senate's Supreme Court confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Is it one that is to be applied to other legal people? Other judges? Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? Each other? Jesus? The standard "fitness to serve," as any other standard, must be , can only be, viewed through the prism of personal experiences or values. I am, for example, a 67-year old, retired, black, preacher, historian , writer, philosopher, Missouri attorney, who matriculated at the first American black law school, Howard University in Washington, D. C., graduating in class of 1976. Therefore I judge all else through the prism of my own personal experiences, values, and learning. So do you! by and from your own! By that standard, the nominee is unquestionably "fit to serve," based on my knowledge and experience of my peers, of the national history. Reason, philosophy, law, religion, history have fared poorly compared to pique, especially prior nonplused pique, arising from the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill donnybrook in 1991, neither of whom ever went to Howard U. They both confounded me! speaking of Coke cans with a hair on top of them, but not of having had coitus, not having had conjugal nor even of digital penetration! No less so am I also confounded by Ford-Cavenaugh! He says, she says! But neither say that there was coitus! no sex, no penetration digital nor penile of the vagina, nor anal orifice; not even a kiss was testified to by him or her! In my mildly, older male-female world of acceptable black social interaction, even "grinding" while slow-dancing would have been deemed to have been a sexual assault by today's emergent legal, feminist standards and definitions. They are all too nebulous for older black men like me to completely conceive much less to understand! So who is fit to serve gets down to, resolves itself in who is fit to judge?

GREAT TEACHERS ARE TIMELESS

GREAT TEACHERS LIVE ON Thursday, September 28, 2018 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Life and death coexist. Each tempers, distinguishes, accentuates the other. In like manner, spiritual and material exist; may even pre-exist life and death. Man being of some consistency of each is privy to the power, potential of each. As ferns, as crustaceans, as seeds, even fish, leave fossilized remains embedded in earth for exhumation eons after “life,” so too, great men leave teachings for others. These teachings, if decoded, transcribed, translated, and transmitted emit new life. Thereby, it may be said that these teachers have not died , since their lessons live. Thus, it is well said that “The letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth.” But, quoting what is elsewhere written is not nearly as good, being but words, is not nearly as important, as just doing, being, living, whatever may be quoted by anyone. Great teachers taught these things about life and death, about material and spiritual. Thus, great teachers, like great teachings, live on, co-terminally, with life and death.

BEING "AMERICAN"

BEING AN "AMERICAN" FIRST Being "American", first, means: our beloved nation, that is so seminally dedicated to its founding doctrine: philosophical, theological, political, economic, social, ideal; it needs, it wants, declares, ordains, pursues, movement toward these patterned premises of its epic divine creation: that all men, women, children, are "created equal," as people of it in it. Being an "American," first, means putting these epic ideals ahead of all others, whether they are: crass creeds, political parties, prejudices, rude discriminations, discouraging words, dastardly deeds, inhumane practices, or dissembled pretexts of all kind that diminish their pursuit. Being an "American," first, means venturing into, investigating, all limits of earth, space, nature, science, including domains of human thought, consciousness and personality, in all of their attainable dimensions. Being "American" summons the greatness in man to be man.

JOE COLE OF MEACHAM PARK MISSOURI

REMEMBERING MR. JOE COLE Remembering Mr. Joe Cole is easy. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, we, isolated, young men and boys in Meacham Park , Missouri, a black, unincorporated community, outside St. Louis , were blessed to be loved and mentored by Mr. Joe Cole. We blacks were not reached yet by social recreational services available to our white male peers in adjoining Kirkwood, Missouri, in the final, fading days of segregation. Any opportunity to swim in a pool, ice skate on a rink, or to camp-out overnight were among those that were somehow furnished by Mr. Joe Cole to us, in the big, tattered, yellow school bus that he would used to ferry us about, afar from Meacham Park's insular confines. I moved away from Meacham Park at age 12, but before I left, I had learned to swim, partly to ice skate, and had been on my first camp out, courtesy of Mr. Joe Cole, a mentor. I thank God for this great man! who was husband, father, mentor, hero to many young men and boys, that otherwise would have lacked what he made available to us, diligently. https://www.google.com/…/joe-cole-kirkwood-humanitarian-die… http://www.kirkwoodpres.org/…/club-44-camp-brochure-2016.pdf

CONSISTENCY IN APPLICATIOM

CONSISTENCY IN APPLICATION There are scores of books on black inventions, black inventors, of the American slavery era, 1789-1865, and afterwards in the United States of America. Despite these persons' work products' , well-documented, huge successes in revolutionizing fields such as agriculture, shipping, transportation, railroads, communications, and many other economic segments that have all greatly enriched America and the world, as well, derivatively, formal knowledge of these products and these persons is spotty, at best. Knowledge is not self-actualizing. It must be put to use to be of value to mankind . Knowledge's practical uses must likewise be organized, systematized, toward productive, practical ends that are short-term and longer in scope and impact. https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi127.htm https://www.ilfbpartners.com/family/ag-innovators-mccormick-john-deere-part-illinois-history/ http://www.areachicago.org/the-ghosts-of-slavery-in-corporate-chicago/

POWER

Power preexists in space, time, existence. It is but natural then that power emits from conflation and segregation, fission and fusion.

CONTENT CONDUCT CORRELATES

DOES CONTENT CORRELATE TO LATER CONSUMERS' CONDUCT? The extent to which television , video, and movie content may, can, or have influenced viewer conduct, is in need of closer examination, confirmation and amelioration . We already know that repeated advertising affects consumer buying habits. People buy as they are programmed. Do people also act as they are programmed also? Is viewership contributing to crime, homicide, violence, epidemiological disorder through banal viewership imprint on certain vulnerabilities in the psyches, sociology of viewers? To the extent that it is, at all, a bit player in deriding the wellbeing of families, communications must be reined in as deleterious destructive to the national, international health!

UNITED STATES OF ENMITY

UNITED STATES OF ENMITY African American heroism requires that one have consciousness of a nature and stature as that named. Otherwise heroic is other than this. In 1789, the nation United States of America came into being from the interregnum of post-colonial state. Therefore, before 1789, there were no Americans, but British colonials. Africans, except to those who were earlier freed, were enslaved British colonials by stature and by nature. But clearly Africans knew that they were Africans, who were subject to British colonial laws, values and authorities, even if they were not "white"; a new term of political art that was then emerging, in use for distinguishing Africans from the non-African, non-Indian, others--British colonial servants of Western European descent in the Americas. Upon the United States of America coming into being, we, the African Americans, also came into being. We assumed the nature and stature of African Americans in the United States and were Americans abroad. Earlier Africans were simply that, Africans. Thus, some early names used relative to them (and us) were these: the African Baptist Church, African Lodge, African Methodist Episcopal [Zion] Church, African Colonization Society, African Free School, emphasizing the African. But in being non-"white," African Americans still did not become truly recognized as citizens of the United States of America politically, until after the "Freedom War" to us, and Civil War to others, culminated in the ratification of the 13, 14, 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America in 1866, 1868, 1870, respectively. But even those doctrinal amendments meant nothing; made little actual difference to the "white" scofflaws who zealously ruled the country, politically, culturally, economically. American scofflaws have been at times. Democrats, Republicans, both and neither; as have we throughout American history. We are "united" in enmity for the law; doctrinal law versus applied laws, we covet doctrine; they applied. The United States of Legal Enmity! This fact can be proven in history: "The Maryland senator William Pinkney, who fought so hard for Missouri to become a slave state, dismissed the revolutionary ideals of his forefathers. He scoffed, 'the self-evident truths announced in the Declaration of Independence are not truths at all, if taken literally .'... "By 1826, he [John Randolph from Virginia] was publicly voicing his opinion that the Declaration of Independence was a risky document , for it clearly asserted that 'all men are born free and equal,' an idea he rejected 'for the best of all reasons, because it is not true.' ... "Slavery's advocates would go to amazing lengths. They seemed willing to ignore the obvious and even the law... "[T]erritorial governor, William Henry Harrison ... made one attempt after another to grow slavery in the Indiana Territory.... "Vincennes, the town where Harrison was already forcing enslaved people to build his huge brick mansion in the wilderness--trying to replicate the plantation homes of his birthplace just as he tried to replicate a culture of slavery, inequality and privilege... "[W]hen Harrison's petition to extend slavery into Indiana was denied , he was furious. So he decided to turn his back on the federal government and create a slave state, passing a law with the help of local judges that stated that while enslaved people could not be brought into the territory to live and work there , they could be brought in as indentured servants, and their enslavers could pick the length of their indenture bond without their agreement." P. 48-49, THE BONE AND SINEW OF THE LAND by Anna-Lisa Cox (2018)

INTERNET

Internet's theoretically infinite personal communications' and capacious researching capacities definitely undermine historical mind-control, that has been basic to hegemonic governmental information, monopolist power, and political economic control.

WHEREVER WE ARE

WHEREVER WE ARE THEY ARE Wherever we are they are. Whether in a wheat field or with sons of Job. Whether in the Garden of Eden or Heaven. Wherever we are they are. They are evil. We are good. They are default. We are gestalt. The proven way to escape them is to "out" them: out-think them, out-work them, out-produce them, out-love them, out-fight them. If not, evil will "out" us! Wherever we are they are abiding. 

SCHRODINGER'S AFRICAN AMERICAN CAT

This famous 1935 cat thought experiment reminds me of our African American historical experience, in which we are the cat living in a state of quantum superposition in a sealed steel box, both alive and dead, depending on the perspective of the observer . NO NONE COULD BE SO NAIVE AS YO DOUBT THAT THE GREATEST EPIC OF HUMAN HISTORY IS OR COULD BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN QUANTUM SUPERPOSITION, THE DIVINE STATE OF BEING AND NON-BEING, LIFE AND DEATH, HERE AND THERE, ALL IN THE WILL OF GOD ! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastet

BLACK DOUGH BOYS AND GI'S RETICENCE

It is a sad, notable, notorious African American fact that very, very few of our forefathers who fought in World Wars I or II were ever sanguine enough to discuss their experiences. Whether this was due to shame, pain, enduring traumatic rage fueled by futility; or whether it was a higher form of deferred bravery bequeathed to us, I do not know and can never know.

HE ROSE! WE RISE!

HE ROSE! THEY ROSE! WE RISE! That Jesus was born, lived, taught, was crucified, till dead , was buried, and rose from the grave, to teach a greater lesson of triumph over evil, is a basis of Christianity "the way." Jesus was a gem who was placed into a setting of sin among men on earth . "Sin" being the purposeful failure of many to live up to divine standards, in the Old Testament of the Bible, which Jesus quoted and taught by word, deed, example. Absolution of sin required sacrifice. Jesus' offering himself up to die on Golgotha hill on an old wooden rugged Roman cross was Jesus' oblation, Christ's sacrifice for man. His resurrection was mankind's glorious redemption. When Jesus got up from the grave on the 3rd day, he repeated the miracle of the raising of Lazarus on the 4th day. When Jesus got up the Book of Matthew says many saints also got up from the grave . That fact, that revelation, miracle, portent should say something to the rest of us, as to the power of Jesus Christ in us . https://www.google.com/…/%3fsearch=Matthew%2b27:52-53&versi… Those saints who rose are those who come into the consciousness of Christ by a divine power of God. They are not limited to 2,000 or more years ago. Neither is Jesus! He lives right now as do the saints! He rose! The saints rose. We rise! Amen.

NO ONE THING ANSWERS FOR ALL

NO ONE THING IS THE ANSWER No one thing answers for all things. Billions of stars. Sun earth moon. Ovaries and testes. Nutrition and hydration. Aeration and oxidation, Bible and Quran. Torah and Ptahhotep. Life and death. No one thing answers all things: no one person, generation, era.

PHYSICAL SPIRITUAL EARTHLY HUMAN LAWS

Physical Spiritual Earthly Human Laws As physical beings we are subject to physical laws. As spiritual beings we are subject to spiritual laws. As earthly beings we are subject to earthly laws . As humans we are subject to human laws. There may be other laws to which mankind is subject. But minimally these apply.

NORTHWEST TERRITORY

African American history and Haitian history have common bonds in English and French colonialism, especially in the "Northwest Territories," the vast property ceded to the United States by the British at the Treaty of Paris, at the end of the Revolutionary War, in 1783. The Northwest Territory was claimed by both the French and the English. Both imperialist nations had moved militarily, diplomatically, religiously, and commercially to dispossess the Indians, Spanish, and each other, of these lands. They had also waged a long, losing battle with encroaching American settlers, free blacks and whites, for these rich lands, lying west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River, bound by the Mississippi River on the west, Canada, north. In Anna-Lisa Cox's masterful book, THE BONE AND SINEW OF THE LAND: AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN BLACK PIONEERS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY (2018), the author describes the dynamics: "Within only ten years of abolishing slavery and declaring equality among mankind , France turned its back on its ideals as well. Just as in the United States, there had been an almost immediate attempt to restore slavery, with French slave powers making a plea for a return to the practice in 1795. "Just eight years later much had changed, and in 1803 France went to war to reinstate slavery in all its colonies. Napoleon Bonaparte 's colonial minister Denis Decres defended the moves, arguing, 'Liberty is a food for which the stomachs of the negroes are not yet prepared.' The island of Saint-Dominique only managed to stay free by once again fighting the French for its liberty. But the people of the French island of Guadeloupe lost their battle and were reenslaved ... "Meanwhile , the men of color who had stood up at the 1794 convention in Paris as supposedly full and equal citizens--those revolutionaries from Sainte-Dominique --were being arrested . Some were deported while others died in French prisons. And in 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned emperor ... "But this did not immunize the United States from a backlash of its own; it just looked different and grew more slowly. But this did not make it less terrible or destructive.... "Ohio was the first state carved out of the Northwest Territory, and whites in that state were also the first to reverse the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, using the word 'white' in their state constitution as a criterion for full citizenship when Ohio became a state in 1803. By all that was just, these states should have held the right to vote as sacred as freedom from slavery...Every new state created out of the Northwest Territory would follow suit. But this did not destroy the hopes of African Americans and their allies that the dreams of equality would still become a reality. "After all, the fervor for freedom was one reason there were free people who would come to the frontier of the Great West. In 1790 there were roughly 58,000 African descended people counted as free in the nation's first census, but by 1810 there were roughly 186,000. When New York finally decided to pass legislation officially ending slavery in 1827, the number stood at roughly 320,000. This was the largest number of free people of African descent existing in any New World or European nation at the time, except for the revolutionary island of Saint -Dominique , which was now called Haiti. This was a blossoming, a blighted one to be sure, but still bearing fruit." P. 38-40

PAINE "CONSTITUTION"

"I see by the papers that you have had a Convention to remodel the Constitution--I very soon saw that the Constitutionalists would overthrow the Constitution by rashly using that power entrusted to their moderation--The spirit of the Constitution required prudence, and the Actors substituted temper and party in the room of it and thereby subjected the legislation of every year to the caprice of election day-- "I wish most anxiously to see my much loved America--it is the Country from whence all reformations must originally spring--I despair of seeing an Abolition of the infernal traffic in Negroes--we must push that matter further on your side of the water--I wish that a few well instructed Negroes could be sent among their Brethren in Bondage, for until they are enabled to take their own part nothing will be done-- " P.372, "To Benjamin Rush, March 16, 1790," THOMAS PAINE, COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955)

NATURAL THEOLOGY

NATURAL THEOLOGY Our self-love does not wholly satisfy. That is because we "know" that we did not create ourselves. We "know" that there is a greater, more capacious Creator-love, than mere self-love--essential as self-love is to all sound mental health. That universal eternal love is divine, the love of God (however known or named!) to which we are all privy with all the rest of life. That is the same love of God, which cannot be "known" cognitively, nor held in hand materially; but which is felt sensually: that love may best be expressed and experienced spiritually, empathetically.

MAN NATURE

MAN NATURE LIFE AND DEATH Hormonal surges, urges in humans must surely find companionship in nature, however configured it is, for if not, none would reproduce itself. One might broaden this hypothesis to include the heavens from just the earth. Stars are born in galaxies somehow, daily, hourly, periodically, constantly. If they are born, then, they also die, as do we, continually. Life and death are shared by man and nature on earth and in heaven.

wind and water

Wind and water are soft, until they become riled and restless. Then watch out! Softness becomes hardness!

MAYHEM IN MICHIGAN

VALUES AND VALUES SYSTEMS We must work as hard as ever to guard ourselves and dependents against unremitting, unacceptable, negative influences from media and from elsewhere. That means that we first must have in place certain values and the values system that will allow us to assess the intrinsic valuable worth to ourselves and our dependencies of various popular human behaviors for us and ours. Without values and a value system that we internalize, exhibit, share, and require of dependents, we and our dependencies, can easily be caught up is social catastrophe! I have in mind as I write this the young school girl in Warren, Michigan (near Detroit) who was stabbed to death by her class mate in school over some boy! To make matters worse, I read in the article that at least one of these two 17-year old black females who were caught up in this unseemly neo-domestic conflict, was an A-student, maybe they both were! I attribute this conduct to lack of values, described above; but that's just me. What do you think? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/school-stabbing-danyna-gibson-tanaya-lewis-warren-suspect-murder-fitzgerald-high-school-a8539256.html%3famp

WINNING WITH BIENIEMY

WINNING WITH ERIC BIENIEMY The offensive juggernaut that is the Kansas City Chiefs football team in 2018 has many masterpieces, that are within its confines and camp! My focus today on Chiefs' Coach Andy Reid's band of blitzkrieging football marauders is the current offensive coordinator and play caller, Eric Bieniemy of Colorado. While rookie quarterback, Patrick Mahones has a very quick, strong, accurate arm--among the best in the National Football League--with matching bloodlines and a mental makeup from a father who was an outstanding professional baseball player, yet, nevertheless, this first year talent must operate within an intricate offensive system, whose levers are being pulled, whose buttons are being pushed, by Eric Bieniemy, K. C. Chiefs' Offensive Coordinator. Eric was picked by Andy Reid to succeed Chiefs' former offensive coordinator, Doug Pederson, now head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, Reid's old team that formerly featured other great black quarterbacks, Donovan McNabb, and Randall Cunningham. Eagles are now world's champions! Bieniemy served under Pederson and under Reid since 2013, when he was Chiefs' running back coach and was producing outstanding Chiefs' running backs, bestriding the fateful injury to Jamaal Charles, former star Chiefs' running back. Eric was promoted to Offensive Coordinator in 2018, after Doug Pederson's departure and I sing of his virtue now based on football intuition, the dazzling array of fast talent on the Chiefs and the time-tested leadership of Andy Reid! All of which was on garish display on Sunday, September 16, 2018, when the Chiefs hammered the Steelers with Mahones' six-touchdown pass display, out dueling "Big Ben," a future hall of famer's 4-TD passes. Go Eric! Go Patrick! Go Chiefs! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bieniemy

TEACHINGS OF PTAHHOTEP

"23. Repeat not extravagant speech, neither listen thereto; for it is the utterance of a body heated by wrath. When such speech is repeated to thee, hearken not thereto, look to the ground. Speak not regarding it, that he that is before thee may know wisdom. If thou be commanded to do a theft , bring it to pass that the command be taken off thee, for it is a hateful thing according to the law. That which destroyeth a vision is the veil over it." P. 51, "The Treatment of Servants," THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAHHOTEP, THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE WORLD (2016)

A BABY'S CRY

A BABY'S CRY AT MIDNIGHT Few sounds are so piercing as a year-old baby 's cry at midnight. A tiny baby's cry, any time, is one divinely designed, acoustically and genetically, to motivate immediate movement toward its deft sound. But a cry at midnight, awakes and shakes, the very equilibrium of its listeners to the core. When our one year old grandson, Miles, let loose last night, my slumber was rattled. Grandma, A veteran of such things, seemed to be taking an excessive amount of time to stem the choral tide coming from the mouth of our Miles. So, I decided to assist her, as much for my benefit, for as theirs, by sending a her a quick, quiet text. It simply directly read: "Give Miles his bottle please!" It worked. Don't know if she read it, or did it, but in a short period of time thereafter, that absorbing sound of Miles' ceased! "Kind of blue" was grandson, Miles Coleman's, compelling midnight melody, evocative of the trumpeter of immortal fame. Whether muted by bottled milk or muted by musical accessory, vivid sound is a sound, from any source, especially babies', that signifies, signals, summons all. "At midnight the cry rang out, "The bridegroom has come! Come out to meet him!" Matt. 25:6, applies also. Silence is most conducive to sleep!

ENUMERATORS

WHERE ARE OUR ENUMERATORS? Who are black America's counters, enumerators, tabulators, estimators? Who are the persons, groups, who determine our macroeconomic and microeconomic moves, based upon their more accurate calculations? Those who have habitually lied in our faces @ history, news, religion , politics, everything, have no reason to be honestly forthcoming about numerical facts pertinent to blacks, now, do they? What incentives are there in truth for them, when lying has worked so well, wondrously so! If not them then whom? Or what? And if there is no such source, why not? Maybe it is more profitable to go along, to get along with only the numbers of sponsors: of donors, of supporters, than to find our own! "Garbage in. Garbage out." This is rubric that is not limited strictly to computer data. It is as pertinent to every kind of information input and output: economic, demographic, algorithmic data of all kinds. Smart people always count, record, measure, weigh, tabulate, quantify, assess, their money, produce, etc. Our people must count if we are to make a proper accounting of our fiscal outlay and realize a profitable condign return. For us to be of any account, we must be able to count! It is immature, dangerous, lazy, down right trifling, to rely on, to trust, to react to the latest statistics about us, delivered to us by others, as though they were the truth about us, sacerdotal, sacrosanct . Numbers are personal information, private information, privileged information also! Trust none but one tried and true with the most powerful information about you and yours, or else suffer.

BOUNCED CHECKS

BOUNCED CHECKS AND IMBALANCES The system of "checks and balances" in American government that was used to deny African American depositors' return of equity in the 1870s' Freedmen Savings Bank pilferage scandal; that was used in the 1880s in the "Civil Rights Cases," to declare "unconstitutional" the "Civil Rights Act of 1875;" that was used in the 1890s against "Plessy v. Ferguson," to reinforce and legitimize Jim Crow segregation might now more profitably be used to thwart Trump!

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

"'Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice,' [Alexander Von] Humboldt said, that 'is familiar to his soul.' These sounds were like voices from beyond the ocean that transported him in an instant from one hemisphere to another. Like the tentative pencil lines in a sketch , his new understanding of nature based on scientific observations 'and ' feelings was beginning to emerge. Memories and emotional responses, Humboldt realized, would always form part of man's experience and understanding of nature. Imagination was like 'a balm of miraculous healing properties ', he said.... "On 7 February 1800, Humboldt, Bonpland and Jose , their servant from Cumana, departed from Caracas on four mules, leaving behind most of their luggage and collections.... "And on the way from Caracas to the Aragua Valley Humboldt had noted the dry soils and bemoaned that the first colonists had 'imprudently destroyed the forest.' As the soils had become depleted and fields yielded less, the planters had moved west along a path of destruction. 'Forest very decimated,' Humboldt scribbled in his diary.... "As Humboldt described how humankind was changing the climate, he unwittingly became the father of the environmental movement.... "It was all an ecological chain reaction . 'Everything,' Humboldt later said, 'is interaction and reciprocal. "Humboldt was turning away from the human-centered perspective that had ruled mankind's approach to nature for millennia: from Aristotle, who had written that 'nature had made all things specifically for the sake of man,' to botanist Carl Linnaeus, who had still echoed the same sentiment more than 2,000 years later, in 1749, when he insisted that 'all things are made for the sake of man.' It had long been believed that God had given humans command over nature. After all, didn't the Bible say that man should be fruitful and 'replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth '? In the seventeen century the British philosopher Francis Bacon had declared, 'the world is made for man,' while Rene Descartes had argued that animals were effectively automata--complex, perhaps , but not capable of reason and therefore inferior to humans. Humans, Descartes had written, were the 'lords and possessors of nature.'... "Humboldt, however, warned that humankind needed to understand how the forces of nature worked, how those different threads were all connected ." P.61-68, "Arrival: Collecting Ideas," THE INVENTION OF NATURE, ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT'S NEW WORLD by Andrea Wulf (2015)

WHENCE "LIFE?"

WHENCE MY LIFE? The phrase "Ontology recapitulates phylogeny," is an expression that stumped me when I first heard it expressed by my first legal employer, late Tedrick A. Housch, Jr., former Regional Solicitor at the United States Department of Labor in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1976. What the heck is that I asked him? He said it means that we are the sum total of our entire past. That struck me as logical, so, I let it go. This morning, September 11, 2018, I picked it back up. I looked it up. It is a 19th century phrase invented by a German philosopher and biologist named Ernst Haeckel. He said that "ontology'" is the sum of all of the intermediate parts of an organism's ancestors expressed throughout evolution "phylogeny." Looking it up has helped, but left me asking what of the "life" of us and the "life" of our ancestors, as opposed to mere physical forms? In short, whence is "life?" Neither German, Ernst Haeckel nor Englishman, Charles Darwin account for "life" the sustainer and producer of ontology, phylogeny, biology, philosophy, et al. Since the extremely few humans who will ever read this précis are or were perforce "alive" in order to read its contents, each one is competent to ask, to answer, their life's question. Our ancestors asked and answered that question with the wonder and worship of "God" variously named, known, beloved, believed to be, described, represented, taught and imagined from/in imagery, mentally. We too must ask and answer the question of "whence the life," and "whence my life?" not just the form of being, but the fact of being also! Whence came the spiritual essence of life, the energetic power of our of life; in short "the breath of life?" What does life mean for us , what does life mean to us; and what is life to our progeny, to posterity? Just being here as we are means something. The life we live, the life we share, means something. Why? Because out of all of the hundreds of millions of possibilities that were engendered in the process of your ancestral reproduction you/we are here. We are here and are still here! Before one can know oneself, well, one must also come to know God. God is the missing link of Haeckel's ontology, thus phylogeny evolution.

BOOK OF JOB

We, eight black men, in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1989, "The Temple of Faith," once communally read aloud the entire "Book of Job," from the same circulating King James Bible , while standing in a circle under a spreading bay tree at outside of the W. E. B. DuBois Learning Center. After that reading, we felt as Prophet Job must have felt, following his epic ordeals: exhausted from hours of standing, reading, hearing but blessed.

TRUTH OBLITERATES OBLOQUOY

TRUTH OBLITERATES OBLOQUY The antiquity and ubiquity of the racist evil that we blacks confront into the 21st century did not just begin in the 1500s American slave trade, nor in the 800s Islamic slave trade. It began sooner than either. Our black oppression being mental, physical, moral, social, spiritual, intellectual, and commercial, dates all the way back the fall of the Rome in the 400s and its Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium aka Constantinople, Turkey, in 1453). By the 500s, the literary, technical, scientific appropriations of black culture were completed by the Greeks, who passed them on to Rome . Obliteration of the remains of the last black gods: Osiris, Isis, Horus (whence the "trinity" transfigured) had been effected. Our black scholars of the earliest Christian era in Africa, whether from Augustine of Hippo, Origen, Terrtullian, were all Christians . Their scholarship was the perfection of Christianity. More ancient black civilizations that had preceded, that had produced, these legendary Christian black scholars were lost, apparently were unknown to them, having perished a thousand years before them. So too gone were the old African nations (now "pagan"); their arts, crafts, sciences, astronomy, music, distilling, writing, religion, building, mathematics, law, agriculture, etc., renamed Egypt (Kemet), Ethiopia (Nubia), were also gone. All were raided by waves of invaders who plundered and plagiarized at will. Lastly, when the enslavers came for us, neither we (nor they) had any knowledge (then or now--in too many instances, sadly) of who we blacks were, what we came from. We suffered the opprobrium of oppression in a new land, in a new world. In it we were hewers of wood, drawers of water, miners, soldiers, explorers; sowers and harvesters of tobacco, indigo, rice, cotton, sugar cane, corn, wheat. In short, as slaves, American blacks built the infrastructure of the new nation. Its laws, infrastructure of its governments ' checks, balances, power allocations, taxes, and of those of the society itself were all built upon the premise of, the fact of, our continued ancient spiritual, intellectual, ignorance of who we really are and were, facilitating our further, continued, exploitative "enslavement", in its myriad forms. Thus the way out for them and for us is to know, is to live the truth. It is what shall free all from obloquy.

AMBER ROSE OF TEXAS

Relative to the female Dallas, Texas, police officer, who killed an innocent black man, in his own apartment, who is now claiming that she thought she was in her own apartment, named "Amber;" her highly improbable utterance, even if untruthful probably suffices to satisfy police "fear for their lives" defense standards established to protect the police by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the era of Trump and well before him, excuses need not have made sense, when it came to whites' killing or injuring black people. As long as any sort of audible reason or excuse was advanced, articulated, by the allegedly offensive white person, the duty and burden of proof remained on the black person to carry if they were still alive. No inquiry was made into believability at the production stage of evidence. Rather, any inquiry into the merits was postponed until the trial on the merits. But, the merits too often were never reached in civil cases due to motions for summary judgment, a technique of civil procedure that empowers the judge to determine the sufficiency of rebuttal evidence in advance of trial, without live testimony, on affidavits . So the United States Supreme Court declared in the '60s and '70s after its Green v. McDonnell Douglas decision. The same principle was reasserted by it again in Tennessee v. Garner in 1989, in a police brutality case, which easily enables cops to kill with impunity, so long as they articulate the flimsiest of lies. No expert witness can testify against them, nor can anyone else: supervisor or another cop who was not present at the time of the occurrence! In the criminal context, which I am much less experienced with than things civil, pattern criminal jury instructions must follow federal law as set forth by the Supreme Court. Who knows? Once that exculpatory police "fear for their lives" jury instruction is used, it is at least possible that a Texas jury will let "Amber" walk free! In truth the laws, politics, policies , and law enforcement agencies were, and are all aligned against black people by the vast, majority-white-supremacist population. This has been the actual case since the nation's founding in 1789. Our ancestors were "miracle workers!" So too are we, those who yet survive, thrive, multiply, and prosper in this fiery furnace and this lions' den, this rugged cross, that was intended for our post-Civil War doom!

WHAT IS SOUL?

WHAT IS SOUL? "For Leonard Barrett, 'soul signifies the moral and emotional fiber of the black man.' The potency of this quality makes it a 'force' which, he says, demonstrates 'strength , power, intense effort, and the will to live.' : "'Soul-force is that power of the Black man which turns sorrow into joy, crying into laughter, defeat into victory. It is patience while suffering, determination while frustrated, and hope while in despair. It derives its impetus from the ancestral heritage of Africa, its refinement from the bondage of slavery, and its continuing vitality from the conflict of the present.' "'Soul-force' is the basic ingredient of black survival. "On a philosophical level , 'soul' indicates a conception of human nature in opposition to that generated by the Western worldview . This conception is at the bedrock of African American musical response. The rationalistic epistemology of the Western metaphysic necessitates a particular view of the essential nature of man. The essence of man's being becomes thought in isolation from other functions, sensations, and responses . "As Western society, through the centuries, became more and more rationalized and rationalistic , its theorists valued the mode of objectification more and more. This value spilled over into the culture as a whole. Emotional response, identification and involvement of less and less value, until these tendencies generated by a scientific world view, affected people's abilities to feel and to express feelings. It is precisely that quality of human response to which the concept 'soul' refers. Moreover, it is that ability of the human being to feel which is, according to the African worldview essentially human. But that ability is not set in contradiction to thought; rather the two--thought and feeling--are understood to be inextricable and to be necessary for an accurate perception of reality. African epistemology and its attendant view of the essence of man, brings us closer to a phenomenological approach to learning. It therefore defies the doctrinaire and ideological rationalism of the West." P.224-225, "African American Spirituality," by Marimba Ani nee Dona Richards, in AFRICAN CULTURE THE RHYTHMS OF UNITY (1990) by Molefe Kete Asante and Kariamu Welsh Asante I SAY: "Soul" is the spiritual accretion of Africans in America.

NEW YORK TIMES ANONYMOUS OP-ED

Insubordination to the Constitution by writing an anonymous op-ed , in the "New York Times," when "Founding Father," Thomas Paine 's serialized anonymity, "Common Sense," drove patriotism and inspired the American Revolution in his pamphlets? I think not. Donald Trump is more like King George III (or desperately, despotically wants to be!) No! I applaud the anonymous author as being in-keeping with the earliest (and finest) journalistic traditions of the now-United States of America! Insubordination to Trump's treasonous tyranny is the highest form of historical American patriotism!