FRIENDS AND RELATIVES

DADDY sat on the side of his bed pensively thumbing through a thick, rubber-banded, stack of departed friends' and relatives' funeral programs. "One day,people will reminisce on us, while thumbing through our funeral programs, too, Daddy." I said. He quietly smiled, and kept thumbing through.

RUDIMENTS ELEMENTS

RUDIMENTS, ELEMENTS. Marks. Letters. Numbers. Drawing. Notes. Began someplace. Sometime. Somehow. Someones’ . Connected marks communicate. Connected letters spell words. Connected numbers quantify. Connected drawing makes art. Connected notes make music. Mankind says that it knows how , when, where, even among whom, these rudiments of letters, numbers, drawing, and notes were raised up, codified , quantified, connected in beautiful, useful , replicable forms. Doubtless speech followed similar patterns of coherence , adherence. Possibly repeatedly in the sojourn of mankind movements, encountering people; making marks upon earth for millions of years speech became a necessary element. Maybe indeed mankind itself manifested , infested on earth in similar millennial nature. Perhaps as marks, letters, numbers, drawing, notes came, became, formulae, words, maths, art, music, and then other elements, rudiments came , became all that we now eat, sleep, do, say, make, teach, revere, play with, contemplate, there yet remains something else; infinitely things else, to arise for someones, somewhere, somehow, someplace. Perhaps we are still rudiments in the process of becoming increments of a broader integumentary being that we abide within infinitesimally now. Perhaps not.

STILL HERE!

STILL HERE BY GRACE African Americans have made their involuntary home, the United States of America, a superpower by their free slave labor, peonage, discriminatory practices. Thereby, they received less than was their true due , less than was fair market share for centuries. Their color, hair texture, appearance made them vulnerable in comparison to indentured “whites”, who for a time into the mid-18th century shared the economic fate of the imported Africans. So in the middle 18th century, the future President, author , American philosopher, Thomas Jefferson, codified a color-based rationale to placate “Christian” slaveholders’ consciences . He wrote a secret book that later was to be publicly disseminated, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (1785). In “Query XIV.” of that book of racist propaganda, the “enlightened” man justified his own, and that of all now-“white” slave owners’, lifetime encroachment upon the lives of enslaved African people and their descendants’ lives as well forever. Ironically, an “Ethiopian,” Dogon-descended, African man of science, Benjamin Banneker was famously corresponding in 1791 with Thomas Jefferson about his scurrilous book. Benjamin Banneker, was a freeborn, first American wooden clock maker, largely self-taught mathematician and astronomer, almanac author, Maryland farmer, husbandman, actuarial table maker, and the main surveyor of the team designing the nation’s new capitol, Washington, D.C. Banneker’s personal example put to shame the lies about innate African inferiority that Jefferson had claimed for an entire class of man. But Banneker was not alone when it came to African inventiveness and technical mastery to which the United States of America was prime beneficiary. From the space age of the present day to the cotton gin of a former day, countless numbers of able African American inventors , designers, builders, technicians , within and outside of agriculture, and education, have enriched Americans’ power internationally. Not just free labor and inventions, though, but perhaps preeminently in culture, in music, the arts, drama, film, television, radio, recording, and especially athletics, from the Olympic Games to Adolph Hitler’s “Aryan race” shame, black America has contributed mightily to America while being its despised minority. The American Revolution itself was remarked as beginnings on March 5, 1770, with the killing of Crispus Attucks in the “Boston Massacre.” Attucks was a black man who was killed by the British while protesting. Peter Salem at the Battle of Bunker Hill killed the British commander . Salem was another black man. James Armistead (Lafayette ) a Virginia slave and double agent for the American patriots betrayed the British general in chief, Cornwallis, into a siege trap from which there being no escape he was forced to surrender , lest his troops starve! That shrewd deed in 1781 ended the fighting between the late “Mother Country” and her precocious child! So, one might say that the blacks began and successfully ended the Americans’ “revolution” although they were not freed in recompense, as a class as promised by patriots! As with the American Revolution, the blacks once again rescued the United States from the British in the War of 1812. England had burned down the “White House”, causing its occupants to flee. But at the decisive Battle of New Orleans in 1814, the blacks famously helped General Andrew Jackson to defeat the British. But the promised free land, freedom, benefits promised to the Africans were not forthcoming ! In the Civil War, “Freedom War,” the Africans sided with the Union forces by 200,000 soldiers and sailors and with over a million “contraband” (slaves escaping to Union lines) who greatly helped preserve the Union, the nation, who also helped, this time, by liberating themselves by force of sable arms ! But after the end of Civil War came constitutional amendments: 13th (slavery); 14th (equal protection and due process of law); and the 15th Amendments (federal voting), with the enabling statutes in laws. These new “rights” were castrated by United States Supreme Court’s decisions, starting in 1866 with New Orleans’ “Slaughterhouse” , Louisiana’s “Cruikshank” and more. We now-African Americans, entered a “nadir” (low spot) period in American society of being neither slave nor free, but another: “Jim Cow,” i.e. segregated socially, amerced politically and economically, and later terrorized—lynched, burned out, bombed out, shot and killed in Wilmington , NC, Tulsa, Oklahoma , East St. Louis, Illinois, Omaha, Nebraska, Springfield , Illinois and Missouri, dozens of other locales, in “white” riots, pogroms, coup d’etats from 1898-1943 and beyond that! But here we are! We are still here! In 2020 due to the grace of God! We Here! Due to the faith and works of our forbears still here, and grateful!

HISTORIC BLACK CHURCH CLOSINGS

Ironically, Brooks Chapel A.M.E. Church in Butler, Bates County, Missouri, also founded in 1871, has closed this year. I formerly pastored that church, 1995-2004, and was blessed with people who had “a mind to work!” We formed the Amen Society and erected a statue to the first black troops to fight in the Civil War in 2008, on the main square in Butler on the Courthouse grounds. In 2012, the State of Missouri dedicated a 40 acre park site at the Battle of Island Mound location; to honor the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, who fought October 1862! They defeated Confederate cavalry twice the size of their infantry before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. Visit Butler, Missouri, and see it yourself! https://www.wftv.com/news/trending/historic-black-church-boston-be-sold-after-nearly-150-years-worship/RZTG63AUOJD7VDPKXTGOTAQHVA/?fbclid=IwAR361yab_DnQjVG_jK98Js4lDOmsnqmRwlswcu4ARRBQ6q9alp_IC-plN7c

AVERAGES AND ESSENCES

AVERAGES & ESSENCES Averages say everything. Averages say nothing. If and when we speak of numbers, items, people, ideas, averages identify nothing in particular & everything in general. As to any one thing, one idea , person, like you, for example, averages do not identify you. They cannot particularize you; for you are unique. I am unique. Grass shoots are unique. Water drops & light are unique. Dusts are unique. Uniqueness notwithstanding, grass is; grasses are & grow, because of averages ; water is water because of averages. Man and woman are identified as such due to averages. With essences, however, averages are wholly inaccurate inapplicable. Averages cannot apply, they do not apply to essences. Essences exist before time and space; before night and day; before existence existed. Essences preexist life everlastingly to everlasting. Essences are divine. Essences are of God are from God. Human beings are earthen essence. Divine numbers without averages in essence, but within earth averages. Individuals are both averages and essences simultaneously: in one instance evanescent; other eternal.  I am not average; nor are you or we average; nor are we averagable in essence. We are unique figments of indefatigable, undefinable, divinity. Amen.

CURIOUS

Curious how the “law of ‘93 and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 were constitutional, binding not only on the State but on each citizen of a State’” as correctly noted by leader, Frederick Douglass, in LIFE AND TIMES; but the Supreme Court in the “Civil Rights Cases” of 1883, and in the “United States v. Cruikshank” , 1876, said that the 13th and 14th Amendments’ provisions were not applicable to private persons, but only to the States in criminal or civil cases. Thus, in “Cruikshank” white terrorists, murderers of black voters in Louisiana in 1872 were freed; and in the “Civil Rights Cases” combined from five states, public accommodations, public transport, and theaters were and could be legally denied to black patrons too! Such “in-your-face” legal skullduggery persists even into the present day with respect to the privileges, immunities of blacks in comparison to whites’ in the United States of America under Trump!

SUNDAY SCHOOL

MY SUNDAY SCHOOL I used to teach Sunday School as a boy at St. Matthew C.M. E. Church in Kirkwood, Missouri in the early 1960s, age 12. But one day I was moved from teaching children to studying with the adults up in the choir stand. I was soon remanded back to the catechism class, after I began to correct the adults’ reading errors and asking penetrating questions. That was how I began to sense the disconnect between my incipient curiosity and the orthodoxy of the religious experience in our church. Mine was exploratory, wondrous, alive, seeking. Our home church’s vantage point was traditional, fixed. There had to be a clash. It came in the Sunday school teaching report related above. But it continued through my reading BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER by Lerone Bennett, Jr., at age 16. I sought permission to teach black history to the youth of the church. Not only did that pastor say “no,” he actually preached against the black history proposal in a sermon in which he said that “Black was ugly! Stick your hand in a jar of axle grease. That is black and ugly.” I was hurt! Remorseful . For years I then stayed away from church, any church. But, having been “raised up right” , brought up, in the spiritual, African American, philosophically-penetrating base of perceptions, conceptions intuition, of Southern Christianity, that saw through false facades and masks to the hidden truth of Jesus Christ, I was also beholden to its brush-arbor sapience, Siren-song’s holy salvation. Rather landing on the rocks, as in Greek mythology , lured by fanciful lusts, the “stones” were rolled away from the catacombs of inquiry. I saw God in nature, in the stars , in myself, in Jesus Christ, in my fellowmen, in life and after-life! So, in capsule, I have explained me to my inner self and to whomever. My story, testimony may also help someone, who may have struggled. 

WHAT ABOUT US?

WHAT ABOUT US? Back in the 1970’s in KC, I sent out over 100 packs of information to black pastors offering to speak free on black history in black history month. I got one response , who first said “yes” then said “no” due to a sudden funeral. In the 1980’s I sent out to each member of the exalted (CBC), Congressional Black Caucus, a different information packet pertaining to black reparations. In it, I had proposed federal legislation forgiving all kinds of federal income taxes and state income taxes on black people for 15 years as recompense for depravity. I never received any response from any of these alleged leaders of any kind, not even an acknowledgement of receipt. They are more fearful than the black preachers about us! “You will know the truth and the truth will make you free,” words of Jesus Christ are two-edged swords!

UNGODLY COMPETITION

Furthermore, it will profit the Negro nothing to enter into ungodly competition for material possessions when he has gifts of greater value. The most valuable contribution which he can make to American civilization must be made out of his spiritual endowment. He must do it in self defense, and in defense of America. She needs it. Without it she will never dispense justice, and will be consumed by her own folly and wrath. The Negro has helped save America physically several times. He must make a larger contribution to her spiritual salvation . Who knows but that the divine purpose for bringing him into this country was that, in due time, he might just make such a contribution . “The tragedy in this problem solving enterprise is that the Negro is not being taught the tremendous achieving powers of his virtues. He is not being taught to glorify what he is. When he learns that he has the leaven that is needed in this American lump, he will put it in. In other words, he will proceed to use his spiritual powers and give new meaning and give proper evaluation to the Beatitudes, and at the same time , give new impetus to the development of a real Christian civilization. “When the Negro learns what manner of man he is spiritually, he will wake up all over. He will stop playing white, even on the stage. He will rise in the majesty of his own soul. He will glorify the beauty of his own brown skin. He will stop thinking white and go to thinking straight and living right. He will realize that wrong reaching, wrong bleaching, and wrong mixing have ‘most nigh ruin’t him’ and he will redeem his body and rescue his soul from the bondage of death . “The final values of races are computed almost entirely in terms of high ideals and noble purposes lived up to. Jesus told his ambitious, materialistic disciples that the kingdom—the glory which they craved—is not here and is not there—it is within you. In other words, it is not what you have but what you are inside of yourself, that counts. “I believe it is the Negro’s sacred duty to spiritualize American life and popularize his own color instead of worshiping the color (or lack of color) of another race. It can be done in Negro life, in pictures, in plays, in books, in spirit, if the Negro would spend as much time glorifying his own character as he now spends imitating the color and the foibles of the white race. The Negro can become the most beloved and most lovely race in the world. His happy spirit and varied hue make him the very spice of life among other races . No race is richer in soul quality and color than the Negro. Some day he will realize it and glorify them. He will popularize black.... “Preachers, teachers , leaders, welfare workers ought to address themselves to the supreme task of teaching the entire race to glorify what it has—its face (its color); its place (its homes and communities); its grace (spiritual endowment). If the Negro does it, there is no earthly force that can stay him.” P.53-55, “With All Thy Getting,” (1927), NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS (2019) edited and annotated by Kelisha B. Graves

NATURALLY ME

JUST BEING NATURALLY ME Having to choose one thing over another thing is not nearly as appealing having both things: it and its opposite in due time. We pit spiritual against material as though they were exclusive of one another. In fact they are phases of each other; one being favored at one time, the other at another time; but always both are present, viable. But the false philosophy of “either-or” exclusivities is as frustrating as the separation of inhalation from exhalation in breathing; separation of intake from outgo in eating and drinking. These are but phases of natural processes. So, a balanced philosophical orientation accepting both, countenancing reconciliation of both supposed opposites as but natural phases of human growth processes, is more beneficial than self-estrangement, fake abdication. We already well know in life both of the extremes and their means. We already have both. We already have done both or we will do both in our lifetimes. Estrangement of the self from one or the other: be it “God and Mammon”; good and evil ; life and death is untenable, is unreal. It may also be unnatural as celibacy. For God is all and all. But we would legislate for God. We would speak for God; would purport to know the mind of God, by personifying God! These thoughts are my thoughts. I do not seek your assent nor money. Speaking of money, we are taught that the love of money is the root of all evil. If that assertion is true, that truth has dissuaded no one from money’s (or money’s equivalent) avid pursuit. Mankind has being avidly pursuing money by billions of, individuals, homes, churches, mosques, temples, tabernacles, government, businesses, schools, everywhere, ancient, medieval, modern! Money is a vital necessity! If you benefit from these exercises , well and good . If not I apologize for having wasted your precious time that it has taken you to read this . If we are born in sin, what does it matter if we engage in more sin? If all have fallen short of the glory of God, merely by being in existence, why carry on the charade of faith? God is a fact because we are facts. In knowing God, we know ourselves. Why not be what we were always and are forever? That’s both: right and wrong; good and evil; wise and foolish; educated and uneducated ; perfect and imperfect! Sour/sweet. What I write, I write for refreshment. For my personal philosophical ease. May our God add a blessing to my writings, to what I have written & to all facts that have been truly stated. Amen.

BREAD OF LIFE

BREAD OF LIFE Mama told me as a boy that if I should have but one piece of bread and my 7 younger siblings had none, then, I must divide my bread into 8 parts. Then we all have something good to eat. I have tried to live by her teaching.

ETHIOPIA: FIRST CHRISTIAN NATION

ETHIOPIA: FIRST CHRISTIAN NATION Having definitely learned today, 2-16-2020, that Ethiopia was the first Christian nation, I must pay honored reverence to all our African ancestors who knew it, who intuited it, and who practiced it, without really “knowing” the definitive truth of it. Mind you I had long suspected that such was indeed the case since my teen years. I searched doggedly for confirmation in books, in churches, in conferences, in travel to Ethiopia and to the Coptic Church in Egypt. But only today, February 16, 2020, did the truth of Ethiopia’s primacy become crystal clear thanks to me, through the convergence of three sources cited below Biblical and archaeological research in 2020: https://www.ibtimes.com/ethiopia-first-christian-nation-1110400 https://www.topbuzz.com/article/i6768914208680575494?app_id=1106&c=fb&gid=6768914208680575494&impr_id=6794075131804354822&language=en®ion=us&user_id=6774246406460572678 https://www.bible.com/bible/392/GEN.2.10-13.CEV These three sources fiercely came upon me with a power of certainty. So, I thank God for Mama and for Daddy’s persistence , insistence, faith, hope, charity, love, devotion.

WILLIAM STILL

WILLIAM STILL: ‘AMANUENSIS’ OF AFRICAN AMERICANS FREEDOM Many escaping slaves left mules, horses in the stalls, preferring to flee afoot. But a few slaves not only took mules and horses, but wagons and carriages too to expedite escape. Others are even known to have fled by boat, trains, ships, or box! Read the iconic UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by William Still (1877) to learn how we got over organized, secretly, systematically, as blacks, and got away by the thousands from slavery, by any means necessary. Many depots and entrepôt could lead to freedom for you and your family . William Still’s story is so amazing . It was nothing short of being fantastic, but real, the way it intersects with so many heroic and wonderful people. The “amanuensis” (scribe) of African American philosophers and people was the writer/record-keeper, William Still, of Philadelphia and New Jersey.

DAYS OF TEARS

Today I finished reading DAYS OF TEARS (2005). It’s written by Julius Lester , another great Missouri writer, like Mark Twain , William Wells Brown, Maya Angelou and others. This novel, historical novel , is hard to put down. In fact, I could not put it down! I weep in homage and gratitude for the labor of the great author, whose translation of Joel Chandler Harris’ BRER RABBIT (1999) I am now reading. It is something to marvel about as well! This book, though , elevates the spirit of mankind over the social conditions or color of mankind in historic human facts. “Read’m and weep” in faith, happiness, joy, fact , fiction, fear, life, death. And most importantly in our freedom!

ENERGY EMISSIONS

ENERGY EMISSIONS Language is energy as is music as is symbolism as is graphics as is dance as is produce; food, water, work, rest, sleep, playing, study, being, are energy. Mankind is energy, independently , collectively, integrally & divinely; as such mankind is sensuously energy. Fusing will ,ideas, desire, precisely, on a given end with material energy is sufficient to manifest that fusion in space and time which are energy templates in our dimension of life . Mass, magnitude, magnetism , heat , cold, speed, orbit, proximity, lightness, darkness, gaseousness, all and more are energy, including color, character, content, courage . EVEN refuse , trash, animal waste, human waste, vegetable waste and atomic waste, is energy waiting to be recycled by nature or mankind. Energy is power. Plain, apparent , hidden , occult . Intellectual energy is power, derived from intelligence. Intelligence derives from God, being of God, a sensuous byproduct of God that is “manna” to mankind to eat, to drink, to mine, to work, to manipulate, to illustrate, measure , calculate, calibrate , codify, clean. Everything is energy for everything derives from God, excluding none!

AKSUM (AXUM) EXCAVATIONS

https://www.topbuzz.com/a/6768914208680575494?app_id=1106&c=fb&gid=6768914208680575494&impr_id=6794075131804354822&language=en®ion=us&user_id=6774246406460572678 ETHIOPIA WAS THE FIRST CHRISTIAN NATION. SO SAYS GENESIS 2, SO SAYS MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY.

GENESIS 2 ETHIOPIA

10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. Genesis 2

SAW THEM GOT YOU

“I SAW THEM, BUT GOT YOU” Saturday, February 15, 2020 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Some traffic tickets are more memorable than others. I do not recall my first ticket. Others have followed it. One more memorable example is this: One Easter Sunday morning in 1975, our car was stopped in South Carolina by a state highway patrolman. Ours was the last car in a long convoy heading back to D.C. from out of Atlanta. We all had all been “getting up pretty good” as the good ole boys used to say, back in the day. Of course, by me being the last, I was getting up the least of these. Stated differently-- they had been “getting up pretty good.” I was merely, more or less, tagging along “at the back door” as truckers and CB-radio folks used to say. We may have run along, like that, for about 50 miles, when we approached a high hill on I-95 north. The Holy Spirit said “Break it down!” I had barely taken my foot off of the gas, off the accelerator, when I saw him, “with his ears on.” And he saw me! “Now ain’t this a bite,” I said to myself, more or less. “Now, please tell me, what self-respecting, South Carolina State Highway Patrolman, is going to be out here on the highway, instead of in some church, on this bright Easter Sunday morning--for Christ’s sake!--writing speeding tickets?” I groaned audibly. Anyhow, that long, D.C.-tagged, vehicular convoy, meanwhile, kept right on “getting up pretty good”! Gone! The officer pulled me over and approached. I said nothing until after he spoke. ”I clocked you going 80 miles per hour in a mph 55 speed zone. Hand me your license and insurance, please.” I complied. When he had written the ticket and returned to my car with it, I confessed. “Officer, I admit that I was surely speeding. But you must’ve seen that convoy of 20 or more cars that was speeding ahead of me.” He replied: “Yes. I saw them. But I got you.” He tipped his hat and was gone. THE END

AFRICAN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS 2

AFRICAN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS Philosophy is overarching insight, inspired by God. “Overarching” means all inclusive cosmic, infinite, infinitesimal, life & death. God is true philosophy’s inspiration, calculation, originator, destination invigorating force, repository, end. Philosophy is “nature” explicated in the life of mankind; seminal matter endued with latent-patent purpose. Philosophy also endues all else: life, non-life; conceptions, perceptions, time space matter energy intuition. Philosophy insinuates beings with a sense of self; a power of discerning; innate mathematics, imagination, mental frameworks, templates with values. Given the foregoing definition of philosophy, I deduce that the following persons were African American philosophers: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for a human rights practice and philosophy of massive nonviolent civil disobedience against segregation in the South; Honorable Elijah Muhammad for a conceptual creation of black Islam that he implemented in the Nation of Islam, that taught self-pride, self-determination, black history and strong moral disciplines; Dr. William E. B. DuBois for renown black scholarship and for promulgation of the social integration paradigm for African Americans, through the NAACP, Atlanta University and independently ; Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington for the founding of Tuskegee University in 1881, home of his “hand head and heart” philosophy of racial self-help, race-personal pride, working, industriousness, perspicuity, love. Washington also wrote 12 books explaining this natural philosophy as applied in practical conditions of life. To this above twentieth century list, I would add iconic Frederick Douglass for a capacity to peer through surfaces into essences in his variegated life as: a slave, fugitive slave, abolitionist , editor, publisher, orator , diplomat, bank president, government official in Haiti, Washington DC; author sans pareil , self-taught autobiographer. Harriet Tubman was also a philosopher based upon a faith in Jesus Christ that not only sustained her with $40,000 reward for her life; but her natural faith in God enabled her to liberate directly or indirectly over 1,000 slaves in 19 journeys from North to South and back; including one military journey as a leader of a river expedition in two gunships in South Carolina that netted a rescue of 700+ slaves alone in the Civil War and destruction of rebels’ provisions; she had previously scouted-out target plantations. She did this despite her unpredictable, but spiritually renewing fainting spells. Leaving the nineteenth century , I would lift up Bishop Richard Allen as a philosopher, for this former slave not only founded the world-wide African Methodist Episcopal Church, but had co-founded the Free African Society earlier. He bought his own freedom and that of his brother by chopping wood, hauling salt , while preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to colored people, with noted white Methodists along the eastern seaboard . He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad from Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church on Sixth and Lombard Streets. Bishop Allen had bought the lot on which the church sat, and had hauled a blacksmith shop to the lot as the first church. He did this on cobbler earnings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bethel served as a respite, a place of rest and refreshment for slave-refugees; while doubling as a Masonic Lodge (the third in the country for blacks) where he was Senior Warden and Rev. Absalom Jones, founder of the black Episcopal denomination, was Master. Bethel was a community resource in addition to being a school and a church. Richard Allen helped banish the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793: by tending the sick, burying the dead; organizing the blacks to nurse , to help out the dying whites, who had promised legal equality to blacks for their healthful kindnesses. (Some blacks had been as children immunized against the viral disease in Africa, resulting in a false belief that all blacks were immune to the disease! Wrong! Immunized only the ones who were immune). The federal government officials (then located in Philadelphia) fled en masse. But when the peril had passed, most whites not only reneged on that “legal equality,” but scoffed at the blacks’ indispensable help as being merely benevolently opportunistic for fees. This list is by no means exhaustive of the full number of black philosophers in African American history. Add to the list ones who befit this short criterion.

1 CORINTHIANS 3

1 Corinthians 3 New King James Version (NKJV) Sectarianism Is Carnal 3 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; 3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and [a]behaving like mere men? 4 For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal? Watering, Working, Warning 5 Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. 7 So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. 8 Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. 10 According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. 11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13 each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. 14 If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17 If anyone [b]defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. Avoid Worldly Wisdom 18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”; 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come—all are yours. 23 And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

AFRICAN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS

AFRICAN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS Philosophy is overarching insight, inspired by God. “Overarching” means all inclusive cosmic, infinite, infinitesimal, life & death. God is the philosophy’s inspiration, calculation, originator, destination invigorating force, repository, end. Philosophy is “nature” explicated in the life of mankind; seminal matter endued with latent-patent purpose. Philosophy also endues all else: life, non-life; conceptions, perceptions, time space matter energy intuition. Philosophy insinuates beings with a sense of self; a power of discerning; innate mathematics, imagination, frameworks, templates with values. Given the foregoing, definition of philosophy, I deduce that the following persons were African American philosophers: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for a human rights philosophy of disobedience; Honorable Elijah Muhammad for a conceptual creation of black Islam that he implemented in the Nation of Islam; Dr. William E. B. DuBois for scholarship and for promulgation of the social integration paradigm for African Americans; Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington for the “hand head and heart” philosophy of self-help, race-personal pride, working, industriousness, perspicuity, love. To this above twentieth century list, I would add iconic Frederick Douglass for a capacity to peer through surfaces into essences in his variegated life as: a slave, fugitive slave, abolitionist , editor, publisher, orator , diplomat, bank president, government official in Haiti, Washington DC; author sans pareil , self-taught autobiographer. Harriet Tubman was a philosopher based upon a faith in Jesus Christ that enabled her to liberate directly or indirectly over 1,000 slaves in 19 journeys from North to South and back; including one as a leader of a river expedition in two gunships in South Carolina that netted 700+ slaves alone in the Civil War that she had previously scouted. She did this despite her unpredictable, but spiritually renewing fainting spells. Leaving the nineteenth century , I would lift up Bishop Richard Allen as a Philosopher for this former slave not only founded the world wide African Methodist Episcopal Church, but had co-founded the Free African Society earlier. He bought his own freedom and that of his brother chopping wood, hauling salt , while preaching the gospel with noted white Methodists along the eastern seaboard . He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Mother Bethel A.M.E. on Sixth and Lombard Streets sat on land he had bought as a cobbler in Philadelphia. Bethel served as a place of rest for slave-refugees; doubling as a Masonic Lodge for blacks of which he was Secretary. He helped banish the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793: tending the sick, burying the dead; organizing the blacks to help out the dying whites, who had promised equality for their kindness, as federal government officials fled en masse. But when the peril had passed, whites not only reneged on equality but scoffed at the blacks help as being merely benevolently opportunistic. This list by no means exhaust the number of black philosophers in African American history. Add the ones who befit this short criterion.

LINCOLN DID NOT FREE ONE SLAVE

THE TRUTH IS THAT LINCOLN DID NOT FREE ONE SLAVE. HE LACKED THE JURISDICTIONAL POWER IN THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, "THE SOUTH" TO FREE ANYBODY, SLAVE OR NOT. AND HE LEFT AS SLAVES THOSE IN BORDER STATES (MISSOURI, KENTUCKY, DELAWARE, MARYLAND), WHERE HE RETAINED POWER BY FORCE OF ARMS. IT WAS THE SLAVES, THEMSELVES, WHO FREED THEMSELVES BY RUNNING AWAY, BY ROWING AWAY, THEREBY RISKING RETURN TO SLAVERY BY UNION OFFICERS, UNDER OLD LAWS, SECESSION OR NOT. THIS PATTERN OF ESCAPE AND RETURN CONTINUED, UNTIL A LAWYER-COMMANDING OFFICER, MAJOR GENERAL BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER, COINED "CONTRABAND OF WAR" NOTION TO JUSTIFY HIS REFUSAL TO RETURN 3 ROW-BOAT ESCAPING MALLORY SLAVES AT FORT MONROE, VIRGINIA, MAY 1861 TO THEIR REBEL OWNER, CONFEDERATE COLONEL MALLORY. THEREAFTER, THE VIRGINIA SLAVES BEGAN FLOCKING TO THE "FREEDOM FORTRESS" F FORT MONROE, NEAR HAMPTON, FOR PROTECTION, THAT THE 3-ROW BOAT SLAVES HAD "LIBERATED", FOR THEM BY COURAGE, COMMON SENSE CALCULATION. EVENTUALLY CONGRESS SAID ANY "PROPERTY" USED BY THE SOUTH AGAINST THE UNION IN THE WAR WOULD BE CONFISCATED. SLAVES WERE STILL DEEMED "PROPERTY", WHEN THE FIRST CONFISCATION ACT WAS PASSED IN AUGUST 1861. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fort_Monroe_During_the_Civil_War#start_entry ON AUGUST 31, 1861, UNION GENERAL JON C. FREMONT, COMMANDER OF THE WEST, IN ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, ISSUED HIS OWN "EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION" FREEING MISSOURI SLAVES. PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN RESCINDED FREMONT'S ORDER ON SEPTEMBER 11, 1861. BUT, SOME MISSOURI SLAVES WERE FREED BY IT, AND "EMANCIPATION DAY" IS NOW CELEBRATED IN SMALLER MISSOURI CITIES DUE TO IT EVEN NOW! LATER IN MAY 1862, LINCOLN RESCINDED A LIKE FREEDOM DECLARATION OF MAJOR GENERAL DAVID HUNTER, UNION COMMANDER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, WHO HAD FREED THE SLAVES OF GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, AND FLORIDA, AS "MILITARY NECESSITY". http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/hunter.htm AROUND THAT SAME TIME IN MAY, 1862, ANOTHER SMART SLAVE, ROBERT SMALLS, OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, HAD REMARKABLY STOLEN A CONFEDERATE BATTLE SHIP. HE WITH ITS 8-MAN SLAVE CREW WITH ALL OF THEIR FAMILIES ON ABOARD, SAILED PAST ROWS OF CONFEDERATE MINEFIELDS, COASTAL FORT BATTERIES, BEFORE DAY IN THE MORNING. ONCE OUTSIDE THE REBEL HARBOR, THEY SURRENDERED THEIR SHIP UNDER A WHITE FLAG TO THE SHOCKED THE UNION FLEET THEN-BLOCKADING CHARLESTON HARBOR. SMALLS WAS THE PILOT OF "THE PLANTER," SO KNEW THE CONFEDERATE CODES, WATERS, AND HAD SEIZED THE VESSEL WHEN THE WHITE CAPTAIN AND OFFICERS WENT ASHORE FOR THE NIGHT IN CHARLESTON.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls A SECOND CONFISCATION ACT WAS LATER PASSED BY CONGRESS JULY 1862. IT DECLARED DEATH TO TRAITORS AND FREEDOM FOR THEIR SLAVES, OR LESSER PUNISHMENT, IN THE DISCRETION OF THE COURT. http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/conact2.htm IN SEPTEMBER 1862, LINCOLN WARNED THAT HE WOULD ISSUE HIS EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION FREEING THE SLAVES, UNLESS THE SOUTH SURRENDERED. IT DID NOT. SO HE ISSUED HIS EPIC "EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION" ON JANUARY 1, 1863, FOR THE UNION'S "MILITARY NECESSITY." IT ENABLED THE RECRUITMENT AND ENLISTMENT OF BLACK MEN AS UNION SOLDIERS/SAILORS. THEREAFTER OVER 200,000 BLACK SAILORS AND SOLDIERS HELPED THE UNION DEFEAT THE SOUTH, PRESERVING THE UNION, AND PROCURING FREEDOM FROM CHATTEL SLAVERY FOR THEMSELVES.

LINCOLN

“By omissions and evasions, by half-truths and quarter-truths and lies, by selective quotations and suppressed quotations, by begging the question and forgetting the question and ignoring the question, by committing all the logical fallacies in the book, and by inventing new ones, by all these methods, and others, and by the biggest attempt in recorded history to hide a man, Lincoln defenders have managed to turn a separatist into an integrationist and to fool all the Black people and all the White people, save one or two, all the time. “How do you hide such a man, and how do you make him a symbol of twentieth century community? More importantly and more dangerously , why would you want to make such a man a symbol of integration and the American Dream ? “The answer , in part, is that Lincoln is theology , not historiography . He is a faith , he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom have a vested interest in ‘the great emancipator’ who are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him.... “The fascinating question here is not how people have managed to hide Lincoln , but how they managed to hide him while writing thousands of books about him. Whatever the answer, they never stop talking about Abraham Lincoln in America, and they never stop hiding him. And with rare exceptions, you can’t believe what any major Lincoln scholar tells you about Abraham Lincoln and race.” P.113-115, “Fooling All the People All the Time “ FORCED INTO GLORY: ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S WHITE DREAM (1999) by Lerone Bennett, Jr.  In the epigrams preceding this pivotal chapter 6, “Fooling All the People,” the late Lerone Bennett, Jr., quoted Lincoln , viz: “History is not history unless it is the truth.” That is indeed a fact. Much that passes under the broad rubric of “history” is not true: be it ancient, medieval , modern. This is a fact for the very same reasons asserted by Bennett above. Lying is a profitable religion and has been so for over two thousand years . Lying cabals created comfortable compacts for those who benefit by your and my ignorance of the truth in history and and all else involving knowledge!

1804, 1807 LOUISIANA EXPEDITION

York is not mentioned in the return to St. Louis of his former expedition master, William Clark in 1807, nor Merriweather Lewis. York may have returned previously after 1804, to live upriver with Indians, who mistakenly thought he was leader of the expedition because of his dark skin, woolly hair, great strength, like the buffalo or Bison. An author named Zeonidas Leonard claimed to see York in the 1840s among the Crow. https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/what-did-explorers-lewis-and-clark-do-when-they-got-back-st-louis?fbclid=IwAR3x0b3o_8yroPqCdOMcu5sdxq5xB3_RHoUydFl67tcaQ8Mtsvp-7U5vfWc#stream/0

LOVE

LOVE TRANSCENDS . ENDURES. SUSTAINS.

STARS

CAN STARS SKILLS ENABLE WEALTH? Stars tell us about crop planting , harvesting; about fishing, tides, weather. Almanacs contain such information for farmers, laymen and fishermen, others to use. Do stars tell us more than this, about human nature, events, results, daily matters or future money? Nancy Reagan, I have read, made use of a staff astrologer as First Lady, during Ronald’s last term. It worked out well enough for them. This line of inquiry comes from my reading of POLITICS by Aristotle, wherein he wrote 2500 years ago : “There is the anecdote of Thales the Milesian and his financial device, which involves a principle of universal application, but is attributable to him on account of his reputation for wisdom. He was reproached for his poverty, which was supposed to show that philosophy was of no use . According to the story, he knew by his skill in the stars while it was yet winter that there would be a great harvest of olives in the coming year ; so, having a little money he gave deposits for the use of all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus, which he hired at a low price because no one bid against him . When the harvest-time came, and many were wanted all at once and of a sudden, he let them out at any rate that he pleased, and made a quantity of money. Thus he showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but their ambition is of another sort.” P. 1142, Book 1 chapter 11 (1941) Incidentally learning counts too, but my inquiry was about stars’ efficacy in explicating human controversies. Thales knew stars . As did Benjamin Banneker of American black history. I do not know stars but I am here , still here, and can learn, if inclined to do so by a prospect of prosperity.

I LOVE NIGERIANS

I LOVE NIGERIANS Nigerians are the colonial patchwork of the British , much like we Americans. Hausa, Fulani, Ibo, and a host of others, Christian and Muslim make up Nigeria, where the “Biafra War” was fought in the 1960s & 1970s. When I was at Howard I had some very good friends who were from Nigeria. One of them, Toxi Yomi Takosi, flew to St. Louis from Lagos in 1974, in order to attend my first wedding. I have lost touch with him. While practicing law in Kansas City, Missouri, I was blessed to have several clients from Nigeria and one Nigerian friend among the ranks of lawyers. They were good to me. I viewed them as black not by nation. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the founder of free Nigeria obtained a Master’s degree, at Howard University. Like me, we are linked by place of our beloved pedagogy. We are kindred alumni. I landed in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1983, while beginning a 3-week tour of East and Southern Africa . We had made earlier plane stops in Dakar , Senegal and Abidjan, Ivory Coast, before reaching Lagos without drama or incident. All was quietly sedate. But Lord! in Lagos, when that plane began to fill up with Nigerians, a party broke out! Not true, literally, but atmospherically, as seasoned black Americans had said it would. Nigerians are energy ! My seat -mate on our 12-hour flight across Africa was going on a Hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. I learned this by gestures and my Michelin map. He spoke no English . I spoke no Arabic . But we communicated to the point that I was able to trade with this northern Nigerian Muslim: he traded his airplane meat for my butter! I named him El-Hajj Hussein. He loved my naming him honorably.

RIGHTS

RIGHTS Rights are innate in life, connate for and of Life. Life itself bestows rights at birth by breath of life . Rights appertain to life exclusively. Rights follow life. Rights derive from the same divine source as life, life’s twin; life’s cosmic cognate & dyad . Ascription of rights to law, society, governments, constitutions abase rights and life by idolatrous deceit. In bowing before “Baal” one sins as surely as did Old Testament sinners. “Baal “ being anything but God who gives life and rights simultaneously. Rights therefore are gifts from God ; gifts of God; are of God’s essences . Any ‘right’ to exist is a right to ‘life’. No “man” is capable of conferring existence nor any rights. Mankind can confer its privileges , licenses. These are privileges; licenses but public or private contracts, implied or express, which die upon death . Divine rights “live” infinitely: never dying nor aborning being from God. People assert knowledge of rights when stopped by police, unaware that they have no rights, but only have revocable privileges, licenses . The nature of the right bestowed by God at Life is like a “seed.” Within the seed is its conditional algorithm, conditional identity & conditional destiny, depending upon the soil in which it lands & environmental and developmental factors in seed’s life. Resources sustaining seeds include air, rain, nutrients, soil suitable for it. Human seeds’ resources consists of “money”—retail means of exchange needed to acquire sustenances like food, shelter, clothing, family, love, training, protection, development . As seed is not sufficient unto itself, money is not sufficient unto itself. Both are parts of a divine panoply whose limits none may see forever, to whose end money & seed defer. The translation of this is : “All things come of thee, Oh Lord; and of thine own have we given thee.” Amen 🙏

HIGHER GROUND

Higher ground. Apex. It seems to me that a grander view of life may help to identify mind-sets, may help to multiply virtues, may help to amplify aspirations, may help to reconcile philosophies that have waged internecine wars over world views, relentlessly, since well before Roman times; before Greek times; before Phoenician times; before Assyrian times; before Persian times; before Hittite times. Stretching back into ancient Egyptian-Ethiopians times. The world’s first documented peace treaty was 1269 BC, between Egypt and Turkey. The Treaty of Kadesh is one name. That marks a time-line ; parameters back of which to study. To study for what, seeking what? Seeking that spirit that prevailed in Egypt, under Ramses II, and in Hatti under Muwatalli II. Akhenaten was the Pharaoh who lost northern Syria that Ramses II could partially regain. The Egyptians’ Gods were Ptah, Ra, Amun, Ramses II , the signing Pharaoh . Egyptians’ MAAT philosophy was rooted in the gods . https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Egyptian%E2%80%93Hittite_peace_t…  

FLIM-FLAM

FLIM-FLAM FOLDEROL Deceit, craftiness, lies, disguise, trickery, comedy, disinformation, deviousness , impersonation and the like are gifts of nature to vulnerable living things. Animals plants insects birds microbes and mankind employ this secret flim-flam folderol closet of deft things whenever they have discern the need to conceal , evade, flee, surprise , ambush, or to outwit: enemies, prey, sponsors, paramours , parents, spouses, friends , siblings, opponents etc. Deceit and lies are useful to save life and to take life; to enrich and to maintain the status quo. Flim-flam is as virtuous as forthrightness when it succeeds. Harriet Tubman made frequent use of flim-flam to escape the clutches of slavery and pursuing slave masters’ dogs to help many hundreds more to do so! General Tubman coyly, craftily , cleverly, ingeniously, spiritually divested the masters of flim-flam folderol at their own game with no shame,by stealing away their most valuable property : African slaves ! Everybody everything everywhere makes strategic use of flim-flam folderol —be they weak or strong—-to overcome, to conquer odds. Reintroducing my African American people to an as-ancient implement in their closet of capabilities is but fair, considering that all others are engaging in film-flam to suppress us mentally, physically, spiritually. Meet game with a more deft game! Flim-flam folderol defies the folly of getting caught or killed by being discoverable! —the “redcoats” are coming—Use the flim-flam. Creep creep creep into your closet and emerge as Superman/woman! Emerge as their worst nightmare ! Booker T. Washington was a wizard of flim-flam, using it to educate the lowly left-behind, betrayed freemen of the Reconstruction-era South into the modern industrial world of work and self-reliance, by being as sharp, as perceptive, creative, bold as the were the racists of Alabama New York, Washington, D.C., which worked to re-enslave, to curtail the advances of former slaves by law, by resorting to, by rewarding, by encouraging European emigration. Flim-flam is not always fraud! It is , can be as frequently an art of war!

AM RADIO REFLECTIONS

AM RADIO REFLECTIONS Electrical carrier beams and modulating waves make AM-radio waves. These were graphically depicted on a black board by my college professor decades ago. For whatever reason that event was recalled by me this morning within the context of philosophy. I had wondered how “known” technology principles affected human mental spiritual conception perceptions? I had read that the early Christian Church has adopted an Aristotelian geocentric view of the cosmos, which caused it to reject Galileo’s heliocentric views. Gradually of course it relented as reflected by the fact that Galileo was not killed. These thoughts, which may or may not be absolutely true, animate me. Yesterday , you see, I had read that aspects trigonometry were known in Timbuktu, West Africa., a place that “is usually presented as the traditional hunting ground for slaves. Very few writers have shown any interest in the contributions of West Africans to science and technology. Thus there has been very little research that challenges the perspective that all West Africans have ever been historically is to be under the whip of other peoples.” In BLACKS AND SCIENCE, VOLUME TWO (2016) Robin Walker further wrote in its profound preface : “There are some interesting findings that appear in this text:...Timbuktu astronomers used the cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant functions of trigonometry.” Because I had labored mightily with trigonometry in high school , junior year, (perhaps because the young female Greek-surname teacher was not only beautiful but voluptuous ); and perhaps also, in part, because Momma had told me that she had struggled with trigonometry in high school, herself—signaling assent to under-achievement—trigonometry’s challenges continue to abide in me. Therefore, I self-deduced that: if trigonometry had a philosophical foundation, like a book has a back, perhaps I might be able to better grasp its principles mathematically . Rather like the carrier beam and modulation wave combination gave us early AM radio, philosophy and trigonometry may co-communicate clarity to my spiritual/mental health.

CONNECTICUT YANKEE

Tonight I finished reading A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT (1899, 2005) by Mark Twain . It was an interesting book; one that pretended to be fantasy, when it was really thinly veiled heresy: a religious and political “sacristy” holding forms of slavery, democracy, aristocracy. It is typically “Twain,” however; but not nearly so masterfully declaimed Twain as in PUDD’N HEAD WILSON, TOM SAWYER, HUCKLEBERRY FINN, INNOCENTS ABROAD, or ROUGHING IT, all which I have read and enjoyed. That said CONNECTICUT YANKEE is worth your while this winter 2020.

'FAILED' PUBLIC SCHOOLS

‘FAILED’ PUBLIC SCHOOL INTEGRATION CAUSED THE CHARTER SCHOOLS “Failing public schools “ is a mantra promoting charter schools, which are not very much better, if any better at all , than others when it comes to educating young people. These thoughts were quickened by remarks by President Donald Trump during February 4’s “State of the Union” address. He presented a single mother and her 4th grade daughter in the gallery who had become beneficiaries of some kind of scholarship to a charter school. While I am happy for that mother and young daughter, I yet wonder about efficacy of charter schools. I was once appointed to a state of Missouri education committee in the early 1980s, where state VIP’s decried “at-risk” youth. Of course I retorted “all youth are ‘at risk’ not just blacks, not merely inner city youth.” No one in school is safe . Naturally the mother and daughter were African American. The focus of the struggle since the 1968 riots has been integrating the schools, at the expense of educating scholars. The post-1968 focus of most of the civil rights organizations and their misleaders was to get the “right” to sit beside white students by black students, primarily by the NAACP ‘s LDF litigation . Integration of the races, education by osmosis, was supposed to be the “cure” for what had for so long ailed education in American public schools, they held! Not the content of the curriculum, not the lifting of the distortions of inferior black culture and race in textbooks, perspectives, attitudes. Not caring anything about the perverse effects of the dissolution of the blacks’ schools, or their environmental impact: unemployed teachers , staffs , administrators; split up homes; proliferation of slums, busing for integration was a philosophical view of American life that was hammered home by the principal post-1968 integrationists after the death of Martin Luther King , Jr., who had attended black public schools in Atlanta, Georgia, and also black Morehouse College. Certain post-1968 schools which were separated by politics, were segregated, by residential housing patterns were caused by previously prevailing Jim Crow” laws. But the “cure” may have been worst than the “disease,” if there was a disease not a con game, existing to start. After “Brown v. Board” in 1954, there was not a disease! To “cure” what was not sick, just financially estranged from a fair share of tax money required to maintain a state of equity, a semblance of equality, did not require the decimation of sacred traditions: the closing of traditional neighborhood schools. Who needs diseased, inferior black schools, civil rights misleaders, and brainwashed organizations quietly whispered? Why not fire all of the black teachers, staffs, administrators? Clear these out! The mad destruction of entire black communities, which their schools had anchored for decades was the consequence. The destruction was not just physical. Slums, vacant homes, caused by families moving away to the suburbs to escape the “disease” , resulted, true. But, collateral conceptual destruction catalyzed the pall-mall of lowered expectations, hopes, perceptions. The “cure” required the separation of families into different schools to satisfy magnet themes’, theories, and pupil race ratios devised by so-called experts. These theories had never been proven in practice; but they were good enough for their experts to get well paid by as-inane , feckless, tainted school boards pursuant to rich contracts. Enough. Education is my passion. Having attended public schools in Missouri from 1956-1969, I have personally witnessed much of what I have written of. Indeed, I filed a brief amicus curiae (friend of the court while employed as an Assistant United States Attorney) in federal court in KC in the case “Jenkins v. State of Missouri” in 1984. The landmark case went twice to the United States Supreme Court. I know whereof I speak. As I represented no party, my brief was unacknowledged in the main; except peripherally; for everyone advanced interests opposing the basic views that I had advanced. Even so, I continue to abide my own views that integration, per se, is not necessary for students to learn and that the remedies adopted by the courts were anathema to blacks , even if they were promoted by blacks and some whites who hold to a subliminal secret view of innate black inferiority; whence mass integration; whence, now, charter schools urged by Donald Trump.

SUCCESSFUL CHILDREN

SUCCESSFUL CHILD RAISING IS A MUST! Children must be taught who they are, what sex they are , where they are, and where they are from, as matter of good taste, and good home training . The evolving maturity of the child and the sensibilities of the adults will have to determine the mode, manner, frequency of such training lessons; if they are “lessons”, as opposed to natural conversation to, with inquiring minds upon their own issues, events, acts, observations. These thoughts arise from my own unique life, experiences, challenges, readings from having been successfully till now a child, parent, grandparent. Your experiences   may be different. So be it. Training children from a child in the way that they should go is a matter of self-knowledge, self-confidence and self-love, are indispensably musts! “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Prov.22:6

BORROWINGS

The fact that certain recent civilizations have “borrowed” things from others that were more ancient; that they have elaborated on these; that they may have ruthlessly plagiarized them, is no reason for you to lament, for you to be mad at them. Nature spreads its infinite bounties in innumerably many ways: fire, flood, blood, wind, rain, snow, ice, hail, semen, excrement\; school, church, farm field, sea, earthquake, etc. No one need deprecate propitiation of the diverse gifts at all! “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” some may say. Indeed imitation is a most powerful form of flattery. Emulation is greater than mere imitation. For emulation is adulation, is preservation, is promulgation, ritualisation , consecration. Dispense, therefore with your unnecessary brooding, useless consternation , so that you may learn, relearn, the wisdom of the ages, from every source there is, was, may ever yet be. Amen.

MUSINGS ON MISSOURI

MUSINGS ON MISSOURI ACTIVISTS’ MURDERS As a resident of both “coasts” of Missouri , St. Louis County and Kansas City, who has studied, with interest, Missouri’s black history, I note curiously, the seeming political similarities of murders of preeminent Missouri activists in this black history month. Sticking to the big cities, on the “coasts” without venturing below or above, I cannot but acknowledge similarities between Howard University Law School-educated attorney-activist, Homer G. Phillip’s 1931 murder, in St. Louis City; he had engineered and won a big bond issue at the polls to build a hospital for blacks that others wanted to divert for whites. He won! That hospital famously bears his name. The case of Lincoln University at Jefferson City, Missouri-educated, litigator-activist, Lloyd Gaines’ yet unexplained “disappearance” after winning admission to law school at the University of Missouri in 1939, in a landmark United States Supreme Court decision, is mighty mysterious! Ruefully, I also note the 1970 political murder of legislator, Freedom Inc.-co-founder, Leon Jordan, and the after-hours’ club thug-like murder of social activist , SAC-20 founder, Bernard Powell in 1979. People die everyday. Every one is going to die by some means. The point here is whether there might be a sordid Missouri nexus associated with each of these activist deaths? I do not know. I am content to ask the question in black history 2020!

azimuth not asthma

AZIMUTH NOT ASTHMA Being able to weigh the earth, to measure earth’s dimensions, distances to and from other heavenly bodies, that is good stuff! To be able to do the same in space applying the same principles there as we have done here for centuries, for millennia, speaks to the power that seethes through us in season . How wonderful if we could but put the same rigor into righteousness as we put into these lesser effects. Such has already been done on the earth for centuries, for millennia; for mankind is divine, if now diverted to lesser effects of blest divine nature. Strive on till our inevitable seasonal change comes. For such one comes with a certainly of day/night. But we do not measure it cannot measure it any more than we can measure the mean between time and space, life and death; destiny and anteriority. Yet when the arc of the heavens turn, return, when renewal, revival comes , when the recognitions of transitions comes. Such will surely come as celestial azimuths place us in the heavens & earth, it will come. Evidence of its truth coming is in its truth passing by, within the planet, through this plane with laws, codes, of nature, science, philosophy, man.

PLATO'S TIMAEUS & GOD MIN

We are told that Plato was a student of Socrates . But Plato has written that he, and other Greeks were taught by Egyptian priests, whose very limited knowledge the black priests deemed to be “like that of children.” @ Plato’s “Timaeus.” Plato himself studied for 22 years in what had then-remained of ancient Kemet-Egypt-Mizraim 300+ years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

BRER-RABBIT & TAR-BABY REVISITED

THE "BRER RABBIT-TAR-BABY STORY" FROM ANTEBELLUM AFRICAN AMERICAN ORAL HISTORY, APART FROM ITS LITERAL SENSE, CAN SUGGEST THAT WE ARE INDELIBLY LINKED, TIED-INTO THIS LAND, THIS COUNTRY, THIS CULTURE; THAT EVEN AFTER WE ARE FREED BY BEING HURLED INTO THE THORNS AND THICKETS OF THE BRIAR PATCH, FROM THE ADHESIVE TAR-BABY'S GRASP OF OUR PAWS, WE ARE STILL IN THE SHRUBS.

SAME SPOT

God willing, I will be watching the 2020 KC Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade from basically the same spot that I watched the KC Royals 2015 World Series victory Parade: my living room!

NO "EVIDENCE, NO "TRIAL"

THE SEVEN HOUSE MANAGERS FATALLY ERRED BY BOLDLY ASSERTING IN THEIR SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL'S OPENING STATEMENT AGAINST PRESIDENT DONALD JOHN TRUMP, THAT THERE WAS "ALREADY OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE." AGAINST HIM TO PROVE BOTH COUNTS OF THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL INDICTMENT. THAT IS BECAUSE LEGAL "EVIDENCE" IS ADDUCED ONLY AT TRIAL, BY WITNESSES, DOCUMENTS, OTHER EXHIBITS. LEGAL EVIDENCE IS NEVER "EVIDENCE" BEFORE TRIAL, NOR BEFORE SENATE TRIAL OF PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT. THERE HAVING BEEN NO EVIDENCE ADDUCED AT TRIAL, THERE WAS, NO "TRIAL", JUST POLITICAL HISTRIONICS.

GEBRE MESQUEL LALIBELA

The Kebra Nagast (The Glory of Kings), an Ethiopian holy book, which interpretsThe Bible , was written during the reign of Gebre Mesqel Lalibela as were the eleven megalithic stone-carved Christian churches that were built in the 12th century in his reign. There was an attempt to typify Jerusalem symbolism, natural characteristics, artifacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebre_Mesqel_Lalibela?fbclid=IwAR1YG6qsgfTur8XHTXg2sH8GDRuBz_wcfP7i7oetxp70Lbr7FhuAEoZAGN8

SUPER BOWL SON

Son Hotep is part of an overwhelming contingent of Kansas City Chiefs fans in Miami, Florida, for the Super-Bowl! Go Chiefs! Enjoy yourselves Chiefs fans! Thanks Imhotep for the love!❤️

BILLIE HOLLIIDAY BEATITUDES

“Ain’t nobody’s business if I do “ a classic song by Billie Holliday stands in stark contrast to “Your body is not your own [1 Cor 6: 19-20] ; “ which foils, “Each must bear its own burden [Galatians 6:4-5].”