GREAT HEART WARM SPIRIT

GREAT HEART, WARM SPIRIT Late Missouri State Senator, Hon. Harold S. Caskey, did the Amen Society of Butler, Bates County, a tremendous favor in 2008, when he corralled the last $11,000 in donations from local businesses needed to allow completing the purchase and installation of our United States Colored Troops (USCT) memorial statue that now sits on the Courthouse lawn in Butler. We members of the Amen Society, a scion of the now-defunct Brooks Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, (AME), in Butler, had launched an effort to raise the funds needed to commission erection and dedication of a statue honoring the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry. They had fought (and won) the “Battle of Island Mound,” outside Butler, October 28-29, 1862, defeating a band of Confederate cavalry guerrillas that was twice their size! We launched our memorial fundraising effort in 1999 to commemorate the now-forgotten , too-long-unacknowledged, memory of those fallen soldiers: black free men, escaped slaves, and a Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma, who had fought and died heroically in the first battle of the American Civil War (our “Freedom War”) that black men unofficially fought. Prior to it, black men had not been allowed to fight for their people’s freedom in what was then regarded as a “white man’s war .” I had read LIKE MEN OF WAR : BLACK TROOPS IN THE CIVIL WAR, 1862-1865 (1998) by Andre Noah Trudeau while I was then the pastor of Brooks Chapel AME Church. None of our church members nor any attendees of our small, 3-member congregation, located 60 miles south of Kansas City, had ever heard of the battle, much less of the fallen volunteer-soldiers. We resolved as a congregation to rectify that horrendous historical situation! To consecrate, to console, the desolate remains of those nameless fighting men! Thus, we formed the Amen Society to popularize our memorialization efforts in the local community and more broadly. After garnering $19,000 from a period beginning in 1999, our spirits had sagged, as had our fundraising. It was then that we began sniping at each other out of frustration at our stalled project. By now, in 2008, our first local president, and church pianist, Mrs.Elmora Burton was dead , and I was away from Butler, now pastoring a church in St. Joseph, Missouri. But, I had to come back for a pep rally and for a prayer meeting to assure the Amen Society that God did not bring us thus far to leave us! To hold on faithfully to God! Then came an unexpected blessing! Late Sen. Harold Caskey called our church and Amen Society treasurer, Mrs. Mildred Wright, to ask how much we needed to finish completing our memorial statue ? Mrs. Wright told him that we still needed $11,000 to complete paying our sculptor, Joel Randal of Muskogee , Oklahoma, and to pay for having our statue mounted. Senator Caskey replied “You’ll have the money this afternoon !” He then solicited and received $1,000 from eleven local businesses which he gave to Millie! She paid Joel Randal, our patient, gifted sculptor, who completed our statue! Transported and supervised mounting ! We dedicated it on October 2008 in a public ceremony with a parade, speakers, food. I was among the speakers. During my brief remarks I told the outdoors, seated audience that the work needed to realize that honorable day’s unveiling was attributable to many people, some wishing to remain anonymous . “But one critically important person is now sitting behind me on the dais. If I were to fall over backwards, I would fall directly into his lap!” I said. Senator Harold Caskey, a blind man, was seated directly behind me, and seated beside smiling Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, who applauded! Sen. Harold Caskey nodded and smiled enthusiastically! Great man! God bless his memory as well as our colored soldiers’! Amen!

RACE MATTERS

RACE MATTERS IF BLACK LIVES DO NOT

MANNERS

MANNERS Manners matter materially in the lives and in the well-being of everyone: babies, infants, children, teens , adults, athletes, entertainers, fans, spouses , siblings, elders, families, public officials, employers, employees, customers, vendors, solicitors, police, preachers , teachers, clients, lenders, borrowers, servers, professionals, beggars, friends, neighbors, online , offline . The fact is manners describe our relationships with people. Manners are like lubrications, ball-bearings, cushions, heat , air conditioning. Manners feel. Manners feel . Manners feel . Manners are some of our earliest lessons that we learn at home. Saying “yes, no, yes ma’am , yessir, excuse me, thank you, I am sorry , forgive me, allow me, trust me, help me, congratulations, may I, how are you, how do you feel, condolences, etc. “ Manners are also doing right, behavioral codes, governing interactions. Manners address behaviors , like—speak when spoken to; don’t poke around in other people’s business; stay in your lane when driving; obey the law; observing table manners; dressing properly for special occasions; raising children properly to respect the persons and property of others; disciplining with deterrent love. “Home training” are manners. Parents know that a badly behaved child reflects directly back upon them, especially in school and church! Mothers cut their eyes sharply at disobedient children. Their eyes silently “you’d better straighten up and fly right!” Daddies glances glint “greetings.” In larger families, older siblings are trained early to be responsible for their younger siblings’ behaviors, manners, as well as remaining responsible for themselves to their parents , and to the younger ones. Manners are the cords that wrap us up in that “inextricable web of mutualities” that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr spoke eloquently of . We are here together. We must make the best of our being here together by observing “The Golden Rule”—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Respect yourself . Respect others! Manners matter materially in our lives. Amen.

ENLIGHTENMENT ERA LIARS

ENLIGHTENMENT ERA LIARS Why was it necessary for certain “Enlightenment era” Anglo-Saxons, “whites,” to lie for so long, for so notoriously, so inaccurately about ancient Africans’ history, philosophy, mathematics, technology, and then, to continue lying about these forward for centuries? Millions of Africans who were marooned from Africa, were transshipped across the Ethiopian Ocean ( renamed the “Atlantic Ocean” after 1800) emaciated, enslaved, from the fifteenth century through eighteenth century. These African were the direct descendants of the ancient Africans who are celebrated by the classic authors as the “tallest, handsomest and most just of men, the favorites of the gods.” They were already being held captive in the Americas in the 17th & 18th centuries. Their labor, know-how , ingenuity , creativity, elasticity, beauty, endurance & power, were already being exploited as slaves . African slaves had for centuries been kidnapped by credulous tribesmen, stowed in barracoons for European traders. Trades were made for slaves in the New World, then shipped overseas, by millions. Did not centuries of African captivity and enslavement, cultural destruction, family separation, repeated resales into chattel slavery , forced illiteracy & innumeracy, more than prove the innate inferiority that whites’ enlightenment lies had claimed? Why did whites’ descendants further have to compound abusive misprision by lying, by consistently misrepresenting the truth? These “white” men, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, were all said to have been learned men. As such, they would have been, at least, minimally, familiar with the great Greek and Roman classics of Homer, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus of pre-Christian era. Just as surely, were these early American Presidents, “our founding fathers”, aware of the works was of Plato, Aristotle and others . These wise Greeks, these ancient authors , wrote effusively of the Africans’ ingenious gifts to ancient civilizations, to whom all later civilizations were indebted; particularly the United States of America! These enlightened men knew better. They had to have known better to have had the gall, the temerity to secede from England, the mother country! They knew; even if the tribally-locked-in Africans themselves did not know better of their own ancient black African forbears’ place in history! Whether the enslaved Africans’ collective racial amnesia was due to brainwashing by later foreign conquerors; whether it was due to later forced migrations, to flee subjugation (as Dr. Chancellor Williams claims in THE DESTRUCTION OF BLACK CIVILIZATIONS); or whether amnesia was due to the death of preexisting cultures of written recordation, instruction, or for others, forgetfulness of past, happened. I must conclude, therefore, that because my surmise is that “the founding fathers” knew of the ancient Africans’ foundational contributions to global civilizations, by reason of their having been learned men who read the ancient classics where the truth is lain plain; which later tribalized Africans did not know of their forbears, America’s founding fathers feared that someday Africans might rediscover their true divine capacities, their former identities as the founders, of arts and sciences, not their flunkies; as the original leaders, not the “inferior” followers! Such knowledge may surely destabilize, destroy slavery, whose secret efficacy rests upon circumscribed minds, hearts, ambitions, behaviors in circumscribed circumstance. That is why Thomas Jefferson lied in his book NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, “Query XIV” (1785) that was first privately published; generally republished since. He lied about black people’s allegedly innate intellectual incapacity and black women’s (whose sexuality he demeaned as akin to that of “orangutans”), despite his trysting with one such sister, Sally Hemings, his own enslaved woman, and slave breeder. Thomas Jefferson’s lies were also doubly exposed by his famous 1791 exchange of correspondence with the great Benjamin Banneker, of Maryland, a free, self-taught black man, who was also an astronomer, mathematician, actuary, surveyor of African descent , who had completed the survey of Washington, D. C., after Pierre L’Enfant left the major work incomplete. Benjamin Banneker had also constructed an accurate-time-keeping wooden clock, (America’s first). Banneker was also a landowner, farmer, who had famously published an almanac (with Jefferson’s endorsement) in five states, Maryland , Virginia , Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey for six years until death in 1806. In conclusion, the enlightened founding fathers lied because it was in the nation’s economic interest to lie to Africans and to lesser whites and others about the utter worthlessness of the enslaved Africans, to justify their heinous Labor conscriptions. Their lie is belied in books of integrity. But if one does not read, the lie ceases to be a lie; rather it becomes truth of our destiny!

IN PRAISES OF ELDER SIBLINGS

In praise of elder siblings. We learn a lot from older siblings. I did anyway. My big brother Buddy was my ace boon coon! He taught me many things from his Gary, Indiana, perspective . Women, dancing, signifying, gang banging, sex, boxing. Buddy’s real name was Elvis Mitchell Coleman, jr. He wore a process a/k/a a “conk” as a teenager. He was a player! I met Buddy, for the first time, in 1957. I was six. Buddy was twelve. He and Hazel, Buddy’s big sister and mine were born to Daddy’s first wife, Inez, who died in childbirth . They lived with their maternal grandparents in Gary; attended Roosevelt High School “The mighty Velt”. Daddy took us to Mississippi to visit his parents, after they first arrived. We had big fun and high adventure in the country, including being saved by Big Mama from the dogs! The dogs were trained to protect the hogs that me and Buddy were irritating with corncobs laying about for amusement. We barely made it safely onto the screened-in back porch before Big Mama shooed the growling dogs away with her flapping apron and her voice ! Hazel Jean was a pretty girl. I was not as close to her as I was Buddy, because she was a girl. Girls hung with girls. Guys with guys in those days. But music was one thing that we could all collaborate on. They loved Ike and Tina Turner—“Darling? Yes, Tina? It’s starting to get next to me!” Of course, Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler , Jackie Wilson, the Sherrelle’s and more were worn out on the record player! My beloved brother Buddy is now gone. And my lovely sister Hazel is as lovely as ever. I feel their spirits whirling around. I offer this encomium in love to them both.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

“On the contrary, the absence of this primary faith is the presence of degradation. As is the flood, so is the ebb . Let this faith depart, and the very words it spake and the things it made become false and hurtful. Then falls the church, the state, arts, letters, life. The doctrine of divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all; now he is an appendage , a nuisance . And because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot be wholly gotten rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons , and denied to all the rest, and denied with a fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base voice of the majority usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul. Miracles, prophesy, poetry, the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the belief, nor in the aspiration of society ; but when suggested seem ridiculous. Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses.” P. 67, “An Address to Harvard Divinity School Class of 1838,” THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON (2000)

THOMAS PAINE ON EUCLID

“I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges universal consent and belief, and that is ‘Euclid’s Elements of Geometry;* and the reason is, because it is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its author, and of everything relating to time, place, circumstance. The matters contained in this book would have the same authority they now have, had they been written by another person, or had the work been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical certainty of who was the author, makes no part of our belief of the matters contained in this book.” *[Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years before Christ, and about one hundred years before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria in Egypt.] P.69, “Part Two,” AGE OF REASON by Thomas Paine (2014)

BAPTISM OF MALACHI

Me and pastor John Hunter of FAME church (LA) administering baptism to Malachi Alexander Coleman, younger brother of Jalen Imhotep @ August 2009

SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM

Capitalism is a byproduct of slavery not the cause of it. Chattel slavery historically preceded capitalism and Adam Smith. Having the order correct, clarifies many things

GEOMETRY IS EGYPTIAN

GEOMETRY IS EGYPTIAN “The evolution of the idea of the fourth dimension of space covers a long period of years . The earliest known record of the beginnings of the study of space is found in a hieratic papyrus which forms part of the Rhind Collection of the British Museum and which has been deciphered by Eisenlohr. It is believed to be a copy of an older manuscript of the date 3400 B.C. , and is entitled ‘Directions of Knowing All Dark Things. ‘ The copy is said to have been made by Ahmes, an Egyptian priest between 1700 and 1100 B.C. It begins by giving the dimensions of barns; then follows the consideration of various rectilinear figures, circles, pyramids, and the value of pi (). Although many of the solutions given in the manuscript have been found to be incorrect in minor particulars, the fact remains that Egypt is really the birth-place of geometry. And this fact is buttressed by the knowledge that Thales, long before he founded the Ionian School which was the beginning of Greek influence in the study of mathematics, is found studying geometry and astronomy in Egypt.” P. 45, “Historical Sketch if the Hyperspace Movement,” THE MYSTERY OF SPACE by Robert T. Browne (1919, 1977)

WONDERS OF ENOUGH SPACE

WONDERS OF ENOUGH SPACE Space is healthy to life. Air to breathe . Room to stretch. Space to sleep, walk, run, play, grow. Lack of space warps personality; is confinement, is jail. Containment depresses, represses, suppresses the wingspan of souls. Space is healthy and very necessary. I think of space as I read the mentally stimulating book of philosophy , THE MYSTERY OF SPACE: A STUDY OF THE HYPERSPACE MOVEMENT AND AN INQUIRY INTO THE GENESIS AND ESSENTIAL NATURE OF SPACE by Robert T. Browne (1919, 1977). Thoughts of space animate me again while reading NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS: A DOCUMENTARY PORTRAIT OF AN EARLY CIVIL RIGHTS PIONEER, 1900-1959, edited and annotated by Kelisha B. Graves (2019). Therein Dr. Graves summarizing the chapter, “Racial Violence, Social Justice, Politics, and Democracy,” writes “She believed that black people had an equal inheritance in the Bill or Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Even if Burroughs admonished black people to never abandon their patriotism, she simultaneously maintained that African Americans were a unique group with their own flavor and spirit. As she argued , black people needed space and opportunity to express their difference through ‘cultural things’ (‘The Challenge of the New Day’).” P. 94-95. I thought also of the capacious space that I experienced as a child in Mississippi romping on our grandparents’ farm with my cousin, Howard Smith. We watched birds fly , busted watermelons on the ground and devoured them head-first! I thought of Meacham Park where we lived next to a wooded area and a big field where I led my siblings on “explorations;” or where I flew my kites high into the sky. I thought about Rock Hill, Missouri, five miles east of Meacham Park, where we lived a mere four houses away from the green haven of the campus of Steger Jr. High School’s twenty acres, more or less, of: a rocky winding creek, baseball fields, basketball courts , cross-country track, football fields, practice fields, flowers, trees, the architectural splendor of our school building, itself, whose windows let in sunlight and afforded us lush visages. I thought of the Dunbarton Campus where our Howard University Law School moved after our first year on our main campus, off Georgia Avenue. I wrote of the space at Dunbarton, nestled amid mansions, embassies, azaleas & old growth trees, behind which streamed Rock Creek amid a wooded secluded space of brush , fern, moss. An open field behind our law school led down to its Walden-like respite from wearing case law. Our law school was up Connecticut Avenue on Upton Streets in far northwest Washington, D.C. My article was titled “Dawn of Dunbarton.” It appeared in Howard’s “New Directions Magazine” in 1974. I have known space. I love space. I am enamored and predisposed towards space. Our home has lovely space inside and outside for which I give God the glory. As everybody needs love, —oh yeah—everybody needs space: human, plant, animal, mineral, microbe, solar, lunar, galactic, aquatic. Everything needs space! Amen.

RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

WE ARE THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX We who are Africans and diaspora Africans must study everything, everyday, to be able to learn what is true, and what is false about history. We have been lied to about ourselves. We have been reconfigured, historically reconstructed by successive waves foreign conquerors, invaders, traders, priests, philosophers, archaeologists, for over 2500 years , dating all the way back to before Rome, to back before Alexander of Macedonia , to back before Cambyses of Persia, back, way back. We did not know that we were “black”. We did not see our color as substantively meaningful. They did. They do. More than colors, though, they saw our fabulous arts, science, medicine, jewelry, foodstuffs, navigation, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, schools, temples, monuments, writings, mathematics, beauty, ancient mastery as simply irresistible. Our history was so ancient it merged with prehistory. So much, even surviving elders, priests, learned people, had forgotten too much of it. Two million years is a very long time. We desiccated like a dry bone in a desert. We ossified! We were members of nations, of tribes. It is quite a terrible thing even to be able to be lied to about oneself! Don’t you know yourself? To be ignorant of oneself , of one’s history, of genealogy, of cosmology. That bespoke ignorance of oneself! Ignorance of self-awareness allows one to view oneself as unnecessary as unnatural; as unworthy, basically inhuman. That such ignorance might befall woebegone Africans who were sold by their naive and stupid tribesmen for centuries to Christians and Muslims, is more easily understood , than that native, remaining Africans did not know any better than this! Forgive me, please, Dearest Reader, for venting, bewailing our fate as African Americans. Yet, but for our fate, sad as it was, I would not be here. Nor would you! It was necessarily the foreordained case, indeed, divinely, cosmologically the case, that we Africans need to have experienced what came before, so that we may thus become, what we must now become, in order to extricate ourselves from our privileged state of despondency! “Privileged?” Privileged yes! Fact is that in 2020, despite the Covid19, despite Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies , despite their white supremacy, white terrorists, and black terrorism & credulity; despite it all, and whatever! We are still here! We are naturally privileged to speak the ever-expanding English language, ‘lingua francs’ of earth.We are alive! We are Americans. We reside in the richest, most militarily, financially, scholastically, culturally, powerful nation on earth, that we have and still do materially contribute to! And we are still climbing, still rising to our divine destiny! We are a riddle of the Sphinx! Amen!

PRIZE OF DIVINITY

THE PRIZE OF DIVINITY “It will be discovered finally, perhaps , that the energy spent in elaborating complicate series of analytic curiosities has been misappropriated. It will then be necessary to turn the attention definitely to the study of that which lies not at the terminus of the intellect’s ‘modus vivendi’, but which is both the origin of the intellect and its eternal sustainer—the intuition, or life itself. This can result in nothing less than the complete spiritualization of man’s mental outlook and the consequent inevitable recognition of the underlying and ever-sustaining one-ness of all vital manifestations... “Just as the tide flowing in flows out again, thereby restoring the ocean’s equilibrium , so the mind ascending in one generation beyond the safety mark has its equilibrium restored in the next century by a relinquishment of the follies of the former.... “There is but one life, one mind, one extension , one quantity , one quality , one being, one state, one condition, one mood, one affection , one desire, one feeling, one consciousness. There is also but one number and that is unity. All so-called integers are but fractional parts of this kosmic unity. The idea by the word ‘two’ really connotes two parts of one unity and the same is true of a decillion, or any number of parts. These are merely the infinitesimals of unity and they grow less in size and consequence as the divisions increase in number. The analysis of unity into an infinity of parts is purely an ‘a posteriori’ procedure. That it is an inherent mind process is a fallacy. All our common quantities, as the mile, kilometer , yard, foot, inch, gallon, quart, are conventional and arbitrary and susceptible of wide variations. As the basis of all physical phenomena is unity; it is only in the ephemeral manifestations of sensuous objects that they appear as separate and distinct quantities.... “Under the most charitable allowances, therefore, there can be but two quantities—unity and diversity; and yet not two , for these are one. Unity is the one quantity and diversity is the division of unity into a transfinity of parts. Unity is infinite, absolute, and all-inclusive. Diversity is finite although it may be admitted to the transfinite, or greater than any assignable value. Unity alone is incomprehensible . In order to understand of its nature, we divide into a diversity of parts; and because we fail to understand the transfinity of the multiple of parts we mistakenly call them infinite. “When analysis shall have proceeded far enough into the abysmal mysteries of diversity; when the mathematical mind shall have been overcome by the overwhelming perplexity of the maze of diverse parts, it shall then fall asleep and upon awakening shall find that wonderfully simple thing—‘unity.’ It is the one quantity that is endowed with a magnitude which is both inconceivable and irresolvable. The one ineluctable fact in the universe is the incomprehensibility and all-inclusivity of ‘one-ness.’ It is incomprehensible, inconceivable and infinite at the present stage of mind development. But the goal of the mind is to understand the essential character of unity, of life. Its evolution will then stop, for it will have reached the prize of divinity itself whereupon the intellect exalted by and united with the intuition shall also become one with the divine consciousness.” P. 41-44, “Prologue,” THE MYSTERY OF SPACE (1919, 1977) by Robert T. Browne

DAVID WALKER AND EARLY FREEDOM WRITERS

DAVID WALKER’S ‘APPEAL, ‘ OTHER EARLY AUTHORS David Walker, author of his iconic “Appeal” of 1829, is credited as being the ‘first’ African American freedom pamphleteer, and “black nationalist”. I found this very doubtful, given James Forten , Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, Paul Cuffee, Robert Purvis, Prince Hall, Olaudah Equiano, Phyllis Wheatley and other 18th-19th century black writer-freedom fighters . Don’t get me wrong. This is not to diminish the power of David Walker’s work, which still informs me years later. l thoroughly loved reading “David Walker’s Appeal in four Articles: Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America”. I read “Appeal” in high school and was amazed that there’d been so many so-called “black militants” of the 1960s-early 1970s, who did not read it, nor, for that matter, not read much of anything ! The fact remains, however, that David Walker, was not the first, nor was he the only black pamphleteer, author, writer, affirming black personality . As early as 1813, sailmaker James Forten, had published anonymously a successful diatribe opposing legislation in Pennsylvania threatening to take away voting rights of free blacks in Pennsylvania. Of equal note, was Richard Allen’s and Absalom Jones’ 1794 “A Narrative of the Proceedings of The Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the year 1793.” Although published in pamphlet form, it described ,salutarily, their African Methodist Episcopal Church’s and African Episcopal Church’s valiant work saving white people from near-death, nursing, sanitizing , burying the dead, in the Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793. This is not to diminish but to contextualize David Walker. Along these lines, David Walker, was a Prince Hall mason, member of the African Lodge, No. 459, Boston, dating provisionally at 1776, formally dating from 1784 . That is the site of the first Masonry lodge of Africans in America. Prince Hall had received its Charter directly from the Grand Lodge of London, England, when the American whites refused one. Around the same time, Guinea’s Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavas Vasa, wrote a very revealing autobiography (1789) describing his capture in Africa ; his enslavements in Caribbean, North America and later liberation. He recounts his fruitful antislavery efforts in Great Britain, his maritime experiences, his education, his sailing to ports of entry in multiple environments. “The Interesting Narrative of Olaudio Equiano” was published in 1789, the year the American government opened. So, he may be the first of the stable of esteemed authors of African American narratives. His book is as vitally wonderful as its peers. I dare not omit gifted poet, Phyllis Wheatley , whose 1773, “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” was the first book of poetry to be published by an African American. Although not autobiographical it was as spiritually exhortative as male peers’. Wheatley was the most famous African in the world in 1773. Contrary to unwarranted criticism by some contemporary African Americans, she was no “Uncle Tom” as this poem attests :

COVID19 COSMOLOGY

COVID19 COSMOLOGY Is Covid19 a caul? An energy field? Is it even matter? We apprehend its presence and its effects seemingly; but we do not know what it is, where it’s from, why it is . Whatever it is, whatever its consistency may ultimately prove to be, if Covid19 has an identifiable consistency, it has certainly unquestionably bewildered, bewitched, bedeviled , all of mankind since at least January 2020: medically, scientifically , politically, financially, commercially, culturally, theologically, educationally. The only discipline that seems to have escaped the social ravages of Covid19 is philosophy. Philosophy subsumes the study of cosmology, which is the study of existence: intuitively , astronomically, and allegorically. This necessarily means God. Phantasmagoric as Covid19 may be, it is still not more phantasmagorical than we. We literally cannot see the forest for the trees. We dance all around the obvious. Nothing has ever swallowed the earth up whole, at once, not even day and night. Not even an eclipse: lunar or solar. That says that whatever else Covid19 may be, it originates far beyond our solar system . I invite fellow cosmologists to come forth to help us reconcile this interstellar gift with its interstellar counterpart, mankind! Amen.

DUSTY IDEAS

Ideas are wind-blown dusts, crossing over yards, fences, cities, states, nations, plateaus, mountain ranges, oceans, continents, ages.

MY LIFE AND AN ERA

“After my father had suffered a cerebral vascular accident in 1956, he refused to accept the limitations placed on him by his inability to use his right side, including the hand with which he wrote. He had many tasks to do, he insisted , among them the writing of his autobiography. He had long been a frustrated and unfulfilled writer; and I am convinced that if he could have eked out a living as an essayist, novelist, or columnist, he would have gladly done so. With several rejected manuscripts and some unfinished ones in his files, he abandoned them; and with a determination borne of the realization that his time was limited, he began to write about his own life. Once he had recovered sufficient strength to maneuver his own body, he began to write his story and thus fulfill a dream. Day after day, he sat before his manual typewriter carefully and precisely typing out, with the index finger of his left hand, the story of his life.... “It was not until several years after his death that I came to appreciate fully how committed my father was to being a writer... I knew, of course, that he had attempted, unsuccessfully , to launch a weekly paper, the Rentiesville ‘News’, when I was not much beyond the infant stage . Later, he would write an occasional piece that appeared in Tulsa’s African American weekly, the ‘Oklahoma Eagle.’ By the time I was in high school, I believed that his nightly habit of reading and writing was, somehow, related to his work as a lawyer.... “I learned what it meant to practice law in an environment where equal justice under the law meant that a black lawyer had to overcome overwhelming odds in securing that justice. I also learned that it took all that my mother and father had to rise above the hostility of the all-black village where I was born, a town that was under the control of members of one religious denomination who had no interest in the well-being or, indeed, the fate of those, such as my family, with other religious affiliations. I came to learn that our poverty resulted not from poor management but from the inability of my father to convince would-be clients that a black lawyer could prevail in a court of law regardless of the deep-seated prejudices of those who administered justice. He was unable to convince them often enough to make it possible for him to earn a comfortable living for his family. Sad to say, the would-be clients were realists who did not want to risk their fate in the hands of one whom the judge and jurors would have little or no respect.” P. xiii-xvii, “Buck Colbert Franklin: Appreciation,” MY LIFE AND ERA, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BUCK COLBERT FRANKLIN (1997) edited by John Hope Franklin and John Whittington Franklin

ASSEMBLAGE

ASSEMBLAGE Forsaking assemblage due to popular fears of contagion by Covid19 may be unprecedented in our history, if not in all of natural history. Do birds, ants, fish, other mammals, ever forego assemblage out of fears of contagion, as has man? Is Covid19 comparable to the various plagues previously known to us? Or is it something unique? If there is wellness there is also illness . If there is life there is also death . If there is affliction, there is remission. These facts we already know . But the fear of assemblage seems to be new to mankind. Fear is not new. Death is not new; nor is illness new. It is the fear of death, illness that discourages assembly. There is no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4 further reads : “18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” Indeed the whole book 1 John 4 is rich! So too is the entire Bible rich! for fearful and superstitious people like us who fear being what we already are, spiritual beings: who must assemble to eat , to work, to play, to recreate, for fun, faith, school, commerce, family reunion, learning, multiple forms of entertainment: all kinds of sports contest. Ultimately one must do what one must do. Amen.

MINNESOTA'S "MISSISSIPPI" RIVER

MINNESOTA’S MISSISSIPPI RIVER “Liberal” Minnesota is still home of the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River at Lake Itasca, Minnesota. There it leaves the Lake Itasca Park, and heads north for miles, before reversing course, and flowing south, bisecting the nation, before falling upon the Gulf of Mexico. Our family wet our feet, ritually, there in its headwaters. In doing so, we were paying homage to our Missouri, Mississippi Louisiana, forbears, whom its waters had metamorphosed, spiritually, vitally, culturally, indeed, prolifically. We were on vacation, at Itasca, after having attended the annual National Bar Association convention of black lawyers in Minneapolis in 2006, as was our then-customary summer family adventure. Amen.

"NO COUNT"

“NO COUNT!” “No count” was a synonym for ‘worthless’ used by elders in Mississippi & in Missouri. They would say that “such & such was no count”, meaning they did not amount to much. I was pleased to read today the artful way that no count was used by Robert T. Browne. He was an early 20th century philosopher, African American, whose book, THE MYSTERY OF SPACE (1919), I received today. Its “preface” states: “Mathematics is the biometer of intellectual evolution. Hence, the determination of the ‘status quo’ of the intellect at any time can be accomplished most satisfactorily by applying to it the rigorous measure of mathematical method. The intellect has but one true divining rod and that is mathematics. By day and by night it points the way unerringly , so long as it leads through materiality; but, falteringly, blindly, fatally, when that way veers into the territory of vitality and spirituality.... “In chapter IX attention is invited to some of the extremities of mathematical laws wherein it is shown that, because mathematical goods are strictly of intellectual texture and fabric, vain is the hope of reaching any reliable certainty with respect to many vital questions , even regarding space itself, by means of the mathematical method. The intellect , and, therefore, mathematics encounter the most formidable stricture when effort is made to maneuver in the field of vitality and realism. In addition, it is shown that, when pushed to the utmost logical limits, metageometry proves not only futile, but emphasizes the need for a sharp turning of the path of search from the intellectual or material to the spiritual or intuitional. Indeed, it becomes painfully certain that the Golden Fleece of profounder knowledge will be discovered never by expedition whose bark has its sails set for the winds of mathematical seas. But contrarily , a new bark , moored at the furthermost shore of the sea of intellectuality with sails set for the winds which come from the realm of intuitional perception must be seized. Whereupon, by the straightest line, we shall, at the last, land upon the shore of realism, truth of all inclusive.... “And while we disclaim any intention acceptance of them as final, authoritative declarations, we shall be satisfied if the readers of this volume be incited to solve for themselves the problems which these queries naturally suggest . Happy indeed shall be the outcome if there be any who, following the path sketched herein, shall find the solution to the MYSTERY OF SPACE and apply its meanings to the enhancement of the values of the intuitive life.” P. ix-xii. Being no count is making no good account of one’s time, mind, energy, mathematically spiritually intuitively !

INTELLECTUAL TRANSCENDENCE

William Damani KeeneLarry, MANY THANKS! I've wondered if Douglass and Fermin had met. Fermin was a Brother of deep insight. I used his quote to start a discussion thread in 2012 that at this point has 84,506 views. QUOTE "If we could prove, on the basis of recent advances in our knowledge of history, that the Egyptian people were not a White race, as so many have constantly maintained through rigid adherence to systems of thought and retrospective pride ever since Egyptology [determined]the overwhelming importance of this ancient nation, what further argument could be mustered to salvage the doctrine of the inequality of the races? The answer is, none. "The anthropologists and scientists who support such a theory realize its inanity to such an extent that they have resorted to all sorts of conceptual subtleties, construed all kinds of specious arguments into convincing reasons, accepted all types of scholarly ravings as serious probabilities, all in order to make people believe that the ancient Egyptians were White. "Caucasian presumption could not suffer the idea that, in the first flowering of progress, a race Europeans consider radically inferior could produce a nation to which Europe owes everything, for Egypt is responsible for the original intellectual and moral achievements which constitute the foundations of modern civilization. Fortunately, light is being shed today on all the basic issues, particularly in the field of Egyptology. Scientists from all the great nations have conducted research in the field with enthusiasm and with a sense of emulation even rivalry, to the greater glory of science. It is becoming impossible, then, to resist the evidence of facts and to remain captive of obsolete theories." -- Antenor Firmin, The Equality of the Human Races, p. 227-228 (2002) https://onnidan1.com/forum/index.php... Larry Delano Coleman I defer to your sagacity, dear brother, in quoting Antonin Firmin. His groundings with Douglass, although brief, underscore the value of temporal transcendence. It is unfortunate that Firmin could not make it to the pinnacle of Haitian politics. At least, he left his book, which some of us have read. Perhaps, we can make more of Haiti's President Hyppolite's appointment of Douglass as Haiti's representative to the Columbian World Exposition in Chicago in 1893; two year's before the Cotton Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, where Booker T. Washington arose, continuing aspects of Firmin, Douglass, Hyppolite.

INFALLIBLE ARMS

ARM YOURSELVES WITH KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING, AND TRUTH.

AMERICAN MAVENS

AMERICA’S HIDDEN ‘MAVENS’ The actual killings of unarmed compliant black men by police are deliberately provocatively murders that any sane human population regardless of race, color, creed, education, age is bound to abhor as wicked evil. These senseless fellow citizen killings defy law , logic, ethics, morality & any kind of sense! Who derives profits from such executions? Surely someone, somewhere hidden behind the police terrorists, profits from the vacations, bonuses, perks, promotions that are awarded to police who kill black men & black people! Lawmakers are they who heap rewards on the assassins! Whoever they are, they enable, fund lawmakers. These residual, antebellum, spooky, Uber-wealthy, 2020, ghostly, ‘skulls & bones’-type of venal, vicious perpetrators of secret cabals—whomever these occult secret mavens may be—must be a focus of a fierce feral search by fired-up, avenging citizens, to honor credal righteousness, for just balancing, black redemption! These hidden mavens are the inviting “soft targets” like the unarmed compliant blacks , who are being murdered by their lethally programmed-to-kill-blacks, malicious police, too often shielded by judges! These bipartisan, politically defended, federally judicially sanctioned, publicly-media armed, taxpayer-supported, programmed, police are the visible tools of the invisible “maven” powers, true rulers of American hypocrisy, called globally a ‘democracy!’ These occult mavens merit a very deep cleansing , a similar, intensively deep-cleansing, to that used against invisible Covid19. It would be best for all, if the inside folks, those who know them best, among police, lawmakers, evil cabals would identify, then, would extirpate by root and branch, eliminate racist, cretinous, miscreants who dishonor their integrity, who dishonor justice, and who dishonor innocent blacks’ lives; who disgrace their own lives by breaches of plighted oaths to protect & serve all our people.

PYOGENIC PRESIDENCY

Ours is a pyogenic presidency under Donald John Trump in 2020. It is one in which underlying infections are being vetted, visibly, globally, epidemiologically, politically, economically, culturally. Suppurations are necessary.

TRUMP REOPENS CHURCHES

TRUMP REOPENS CHURCHES President Donald J.Trump’s Covid19 “reopening of the faith houses” may not only be illegal and unenforceable. But it is probably unconstitutional for violating separation of church and state , and not being among the powers delegated by the people to any government. But legalities apart, Trump’s temptation is much like that of Satan to Jesus, after his having fasted 40 days in the wilderness. Most relevant to May 2020, Memorial Day weekend, is the Satanic temptation of Jesus Christ to jump from the pinnacle of the temple as proof of the power of God to rescue him before he even dashed his foot against a rock. Jesus stayed put ; saying “Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God.” Of course, President Trump’s challenge is more than personal, political, legal, philosophical, constitutional. It is broadly eschatological. It is a very bold move! “Eschatology” is a part of theology that is concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind. For it raises the question whether religion is among the rights retained by the people, or whether it too was delegated to the state and federal governments under, in the 9 & 10 constitutional amendments? I say that the manner of exercise of one’s religion, even whether opts to exercise any type religion, is obviously a non-delegable power that is divinely personal to all, being non-delegable as a matter of human law. Below I quote the story from the Bible: Bible Matthew, chapter 4 « previous chapter | next chapter » The Temptation of Jesus. 1 * a Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2 b He fasted for forty days and forty nights,* and afterwards he was hungry. 3 The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” 4 * He said in reply, “It is written:c ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’” 5 * Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, 6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’”d 7 Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’”e 8 Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, 9 and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”* 10 At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’”f 11 Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.”

LOST WAX

“Breaking the mold” is not merely a lost-wax sculptural technique from West Africa, nor is it merely a mathematical computing technique from ancient East Africa, for breaking the molds encasing our minds, is as essential as art and math.

COVID19 IN ANTHROPOCENE

No sooner had the new "Anthropocene geological era" been popularly proclaimed, did Covid19 subtlely appear to remind vain "man" that all age's epitaphs, geological and others, are authored by God who orders all beings' scale, dimensions.

JUST SPELL MY NAME RIGHT

JUST SPELL MY NAME RIGHT! In print journalism class in the early 1970s at the, then-new, Howard University School of Communications, we learned that with regard to politicians and their political campaigns, this basic newspaper truism : “Please spell my name right! it does not matter what you say. I still get free publicity.” President Donald Trump rose to Presidential power in 2016 by repeatedly saying so many outrageously absurd things that “objectively” savvy, wary newspapers, radio, television, internet carried hourly, often as their lead story every day. One story was that he was going to build a wall along the border with Mexico; and that Mexico was going to pay for it! What a huge whopping lie! But it led the news for days on in, into and after inauguration. People are busy and so dizzy in the whirling milieu of social adherence to norms of work, social life, consumption, few have time or desire to reflect. They just scan, sniff a familiar fragment of fragrant political information & take a big bite! That is all that it takes. Like Pavlov’s behaviorally modified dog, their stimulus responsiveness-reward-getting training kicks in. They salivate! A point here is that news media are contributing to the reelection of Donald Trump by apparent or feigned ignorance of the basic rule of political coverage that is cited above. They deny it, but do it. The most recent example of Trump-trampling is the claim that he is taking a tablet a day of hydroxychloquine (his highly touted “cure”)to ward off coronavirus Covid19. He has been doing it for a week, he claims. News! Well to quote Reagan,”there you go again!”

LIFE AND LIVING

LIFE AND LIVING Life is given but living is work. Responsibilities attend gifts. Especially is the above true of your life first . You must take care of yourself ; then your beloved ones; then the rest. These facts are true of others. Another truth is that helping others helps yourself also. For the life we live is codependent is multifactorial; requires care from others than ourselves to negotiate everything for self. So like Jacob’s ladder there is ascent and descent with life’s mechanism, factotum, needs. I need you. You need me. We need other people to sustain ourselves in these given lives. Mutualities are necessities in dealing with life’s variations.

SON

Son, you can come humbly or come hubristically. But however you come, come manfully; come meaningfully. Do not come sniffing & licking! But come home hard! Come strong! Come correct. Come determined!

PUDDIN' PIE'S MAMA

PUDDIN’ PIE’S MAMA Fabled Missouri raconteur, Mark Twain, has written a lesser known novel, PUDDN’ HEAD WILSON, that is every bit as good as his other books, though it is not as well read . In my 1960s teens, in Rockhill, Missouri, the radio, record player and our sweet music were all of the teenage rage! Singing groups consisting of males and females sprouted, flourished, faded like spring’s colorful flowers in a verdant field in Rockhill @ the Webster Groves School District. One of our greatest crooners, ever, was a brother by the name of PUDDIN’ PIE. I never did know that singer’s real name. I guess that Puddin’ Pie was the name that his mother bestowed on him as a child. For he was a righteous man. Puddin’ Pie was, locally, a well renowned singer in our 1960’s black neighborhoods . He was virtually, if not literally, a true doppelgänger of Smokey ‘Bill’ Robinson in voice, looks, style, personality. Puddin’ Pie was older than me, but I respected, revered, his suavity. He never made it big. Nor did any of the members of his group, whose names I do not recall, except one: Wank Woods, who lived down our street, Eldridge, in Rockhill, St. Louis County, Missouri. None went big time . Frankly, I only heard Puddin’ Pie’s group sing once, up at Douglass School in the gym during some kind of concert when I was about 13 or 14 years old. It was enough. It was almost too much for me, their harmony, rhythm, grace, steps! The brothers were bad! A few years later me and my late, incomparable, friend and brother, Theodore Roosevelt Bush, jr, a/k/a, Ted Bush, who lived just down the street on Eldridge, would, with me, attempt to reprise Puddin’ Pie and Wank’s example at the Steger Junior High School talent show in 1966. We sang “What’s Your Name” by Don and Juan, to great fanfare and acclaim. But we did not win a prize. Yet “What’s Your Name” is the only song reprised at our class’ 50 year’s reunions. Puddin’ Pie , Ted, me and others also came together in the summer of 1969 around a lighted candle stick in sort of a communal expiation ritual of a spiritual genre. Me and Ted had just graduated from high school. Yet we “never could say goodbye” to our convivial camaraderie fostered in our creative struggle to establish dignity and respect for our black fellows via our club called “Students for Black Awareness and Action” at Webster Groves High School. So, in the after-glow of our graduating, we began to commune around a burning candle with friends, like Clarence Moore, Carlos Thompson, Victor Falwell, Charles Thomas, Delores Simmons and more, for one night a week, after work, in a circle. Hereby we “grounded” with brothers and sisters. Well, into this mix, one night, swooped Puddin’ Pie to our complete surprise and utter delight! “What is Puddin’ Pie doing here?” I asked myself. We soon found out! Ted, who was then the more spiritually affianced communer among us was declaiming on certain matters of religious ritual, as the candle flickered. Puddin’ Pie said something inaudible. Ted , who knew Puddin’ Pie from his previous visits to see Ted’s older sister, addressed Puddin’ Pie familiarly directly. “Who you gonna call Puddin’ Pie, when your stuff gets real deep ? When it’s too deep for you to handle by yourself? “ Ted inquired pointedly. Ted pressed on passionately! Ted repeated “Who are you going to call on Puddin Pie?” The candle’s flame flared up. Puddin’ Pie squared up to Ted, paused perfectly, briefly said: “I’m gonna call on my Mama!” Needless to say, Puddin’ Pie’s on-time repost to Ted’s direct personal challenge to testify, very dramatically broke up the communal meeting that evening. All Mama’s indeed ranked with God in our group. Little-knowns, indeed, unknowns when recalled,by someone, after death, become better known. For life is but an episode, not the end of human drama. Memory is divine conservancy.

KNOW YOURSELF AND BE YOURSELF

KNOW AND BE YOURSELF Watching as viral devastation is being wrought globally by the novel coronavirus, Covid19 , I earnestly labor for analogies: In Nature. Astronomy. History . Philosophy. Mathematics. Physics. Agriculture. Hunting. Fishing. I labor for analogies to explain not only Covid19, but the viral process by which my people became marooned forever from Africa, groomed as slaves, entombed, to be known as African Americans. I draw blanks, consistently, in seeking analogies for 2020’s Covid19 epiphany & seeking analogies for the great falling away, great falling down from the renown ancient greatness of Africans themselves . Their fall, our fall—for, in truth, they are we and we are they—took four thousands of years to reach nadir. It began in very ancient times, as allegorized in the Bible’s Old Testament . We are on the stinging end of a brutal bullwhip’s crack . Our bloody whipping began over four thousands of years, if we count back from the Fourth Dynasty downward to 2020. The Fourth Kemetic Dynasty that built the Great Pyramid at Giza that still stupefy, still bedazzle modern men of all nations, was built by Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek) in the Fourth Kemet Dynasty. It was planned and executed by highly educated astronomical mathematical wizards, geniuses, scribes, priests, skilled quarry men, ferry men, Stone finishers, laborers , artists , commissary workers , cooks, butchers, physicians , architects, over a 20-year public works process during annual inundations of the Nile. Fourth Dynasty was the apical mathematical, philosophical, technical, theological , magical, literary apex of ancient world civilizations . So imply Plato, Homer,Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Aristotle, all of whom lived hundreds of years after the last dynasty . Unfortunately “Africans” did not have much to say about their now allegorical “fall”, about our penultimate fall, exceptions notwithstanding, except as being occasionally quoted commentators to the catastrophes, involving the demise of African civilization. This may be because the term “African” was alien, to natal indigenes. It was imposed by Rome on a northern province along the Mediterranean Sea, now denominating the rest. As I meditate on these things in 2020 during the Covid19 ionization of Earth, I can but marvel that we remain intact. For millions have perished as victims of the earlier ionizing: invasions, transgressions, colonizations, expropriations, befalling our tribal forbears in processes of homogenization which they were unwittingly complicit in , due to the loss of acuity! loss of ingenuity; loss of sapient adaptability back to the Fourth Kemet Dynasty, which ended 2500 (BC) years before the birth of Jesus, The Christ, posthumously sainted, an African philosopher-priest. Jesus Christ’s ethnic identity was “hidden” from the rest of us by certain Renaissance artists who were paid to paint him like themselves, as white. None can blame them . Each artist needs pay; dogs wag its own tail. “African” artists had and have a duty to depict their Savior as themselves as well! But, far more malevolently, less forgivably, Kemet, itself, was painted white! Kemet—the black land—was renamed “Egypt” by Greeks. Kemet’s celebrated sciences were all plagiarized. Kemet’s savants were whitened; its holy obelisks removed to Rome, to Washington, to Paris, London, Berlin. Kemet’s art, relics and sacred papyri were hoarded away in European and Asian museums. “Egyptologists” even today, as done since the early 1800’s under Napoleon, continue to dig into tombs, temples, move monuments in the name of science; dam the Nile, staunching her helical sediments-flooding periods, that birthed time, that birthed earth-breadbasket Nile Delta. Doggedly pillaging, claiming, finds exhumed in Kemet and Lower Nubia as parts of the mythical “Great White Race” written in high school history, literature books, featured in fake movies. They wrest away our divine legacy, stolen from us, treacherously. Fortunately our images are left in stone, in indelible inks; pigments attest to our jurisdiction over Kemet. Of course, we are now literally marooned, from Africa, like Joseph in Genesis. We are the slave-descended Africans, most of whose memories have been wiped clean of any knowledge of the truth, about themselves, kin or collaterals: ancient, medieval, present. Much like computer hard drives, our conscious minds have been wiped clean of all prior data for reprogramming. Many African Americans do not even want to know their antecedent African history, nor of antecedent theological truths, claimed by later Jews, Christians, Muslims, Masons, Gnostics, Neoplatonists , etc. So traumatized have we been, indeed, so alienated, isolated, ashamed of ourselves are we, that too many of us live timid, disordered lives. We pretend not to be frightful, blighted, disassociated in life. Yet all of the while disjointedly our daily lives are atomized, assailed, deracinated, by ream after ream of baleful, detrimental, programming. Our “trained” minds subsist on television, videos, movies. Fortunately, soul music, whose beats and lyrics do speak subliminally to our contrite, weary spirits spiritually, secularly, albeit separately. Yes some don’t want to know. True knowledge burdens “like a heavy load.” In truth, one need not be of necessity an African history scholar. But one must know something; one must know enough to defend one’s integrity and to equip one’s dependents with awareness. For truthfully “many roads lead to Rome.” Thus it would be sufficient, surely far better, however, if one were natural, not unnatural in the lifestyles, ideas, actions, thoughts, feelings, relationships to God, to oneself, family, community. Being natural is how God made us for such a strange time as this, when the earth is being reordered all at once naturally. Nature is hardwired in human sensibilities. Be you!

WATER BABIES

“We were all water babies, my three brothers and I . Our father, who was a swimming champ (he won the fifteen mile race off the Isle of Wight three years in succession)?and loved swimming more than anything else, introduced each of us to the water when we were scarcely a week old. Swimming is instinctive at this age , so, for better or worse, we never ‘learned’ to swim. “I was reminded of that in the Caroline Islands, in Micronesia, where I even saw toddlers diving fearlessly into the lagoons and swimming, typically, with a sort of dog paddle. Everyone there swims, one is ‘unable’ swim, and the islanders’ swimming skills are superb . Magellan and other navigators reaching Micronesia in the sixteenth century were astounded at such skills and, seeing the islanders swim and dive, bounding from wave to wave, could not help comparing them to dolphins. The children, in particular, were so at home in the water that they appeared, in the words of one explorer, ‘more fish than human beings.’ It was from Pacific Islanders that, early in the twentieth century , we Westerners learned the crawl, the beautiful, powerful ocean stroke that they had perfected—so much better, so much more fitted to the human form than the frog like breaststroke chiefly used until that time.) “For myself, I have no memory of being taught to swim and; I learned my strokes, I think , by swimming with my father—though the slow, measured, mile-eating stroke he had (he was a powerful man who weighed nearly eighteen stone )was not entirely suited to a little boy. But I could see how my old man, huge and cumbersome on land, became transformed—graceful like a porpoise —in the water; and I, self-conscious , nervous , and also rather clumsy, found the same delicious transformation in myself, found a new being, a new mode of living, in the water. I have a vivid memory of a summer holiday at the seaside in England the month after my fifth birthday, when I ran into my parents’ room and tugged at the great whale like bulk of my father . ‘Come on Dad!’ I said. ‘Let’s come for a swim!’ He turned over slowly and opened one eye. ‘What do you mean, waking an old man of forty-three like this at six in the morning?’ Now that my father is dead, and I am almost twice the age that he was then, this memory of so long ago tugs at me, makes me equally want to laugh and cry.” P.3-4, “Water Babies,” EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE (2019) by Oliver Sacks