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.