Hot Air Balloon

Sunday, February 13, 2011
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
HOT AIR BALLOON

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a little boy who loved his Daddy very much. He thought his Daddy could do anything.

They lived near St. Louis, Missouri, where the St. Louis Cardinals play big league baseball.

One day, they went to a baseball game. There, Daddy bought his son a big red hot air balloon, which was tied to a long plastic string. The hot air in the balloon made the balloon float up in the sky. But, the long plastic string, when held tightly, kept the balloon from flying far away.

The little boy loved his big red balloon. He played with it throughout the game. When they ate popcorn or drank soda pop, Daddy would tie the balloon to his son’s chair to keep it safe.

After the game, Daddy reminded his son to hold onto tightly to the balloon’s string. Otherwise, he said, the hot air, in the balloon, would cause it to fly far away.
All the way, in their car, the little boy held on tightly to his balloon’s long pretty plastic string.

As soon as they got home, though, a bad thing happened. A big gust of wind blew the balloon out of the little boy’s hand while his father was picking him up from out of the car. Up, up, and away it went! Higher and higher the balloon floated! It was being carried farther and farther away by the wind!

“Daddy!” cried the little boy. “Catch my balloon!”

But, Daddy could only watch, sadly, as the balloon floated away. It finally came to rest in the top of a tall oak tree, in someone’s back yard, about block away.

“Sorry, son.” He said, “There are some things, even Daddy’s cannot do, like catch a hot air balloon!”

The little boy wept bitterly at his double loss. The first loss: being the loss of his big red balloon. And his second loss: the realization that his Daddy, whom he loved very much, could not, after all, do everything as he had formerly thought, like catch a hot air balloon.

Soon, the little boy’s loud, piteous cries brought his mother outside to comfort him and to dry his tears.

“Ssh. See,” she said as she smothered him with kisses. ”You can still see your balloon, so you still have your balloon. See there it is! Listen! SsShhh! We don’t have the sun, or the moon, or the stars, either. Do we? Do we?” she asked.

“But, we can see them all – the sun, moon, and stars--so they’re still ours. So, we still have them. So, stop crying like a baby! Where’s Momma’s big boy? You still have your balloon! It’s just safe, now, in that tree! Now, tell me, who won the ball game?”

The little boy, somewhat overwhelmed by his mother’s wit, stopped crying. Mother’s wit had stumped him, and diverted him. He did not know who had won the game. He had been too caught with the balloon to notice or to remember, if he had ever known.

All he could do now was to quietly watch his big red hot air balloon float playfully in the wind in the distant oak tree top by its long, pretty plastic string. It remained there for many days, steadily diminishing in size, till one day, it was gone.

“The Cardinals won” said Dad. “Kenny Boyer hit a home run.”

INTELLIGENCE

Intelligence is a gift from God given at birth, if not sooner. It is therefore independent of education. Yet, "education" is a strong means by which the intellect's discoveries and tools are disseminated to others and built upon. Intelligence expresses itself in myriad ways. So, while the two are separate, each is weakened by the other's absence. They go together harmoniously. Intelligent people seek education in areas of interest due to their appreciation of its value.

Since this was originally posted, a study debunking the validity of so-called IQ tests has been published, affirming all that was said above! Praise God for confirmation and affirmation!

Here's the link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121219133334.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29

THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY by Patricia Carter Sluby (Praeger Publishers, Westport CT: 2004)


A book review

11/25/12
...

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman


This engrossing book,THE INVENTIVE SPIRIT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS: PATENTED INGENUITY, is the definitive reference on black inventors in America.

Its author, Patricia Carter Sluby, is a Registered Patent Agent and a former U.S. Primary patent examiner, whose prior book on this subject is entitled Creativity and Inventions: The Genius of Afro-Americans and Women in the United States and Their Patents (1987). So, her current book arises out of a lifetime of labor in this arcane and vital field of endeavor. Her love for her work infuses each page.

With machine-like efficiency, the book commences with a quote from Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, “Congress shall have power...[t]o promote progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Her “Preface” commences with a 1925 quote from Maggie Lena Walker, the legendary Richmond, Virginia, banker and philanthropist of color, that “...in this twentieth century, the woman or man who has brains and uses them will succeed.” The book follows with “Acknowledgments,” “Introduction,” 7 substantive, profusely illustrated/photo-laden, chapters; a “Conclusion,” “Appendix I: Minorities in the Practice of Intellectual Property,” “Appendix II: Roster of African American Patentees: Utility grants from 1821;” notes, bibliography, and index—altogether some 313 pages.


Beginning with an 1833 quotation from Edward H. Everett's address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, Patricia Carter Sluby's “Preface” establishes right away that blackness is anciently synonymous with invention. An 1886 edition of the A.M.E. Church Review contains an article by Professor R. R. Wright, which cites Everett:

“Go back to an earlier period in the history of the black race. See what they were and what they did three thousand years ago, in the period of their glory, when they occupied the forefront in the march of civilization; when they occupied, in fact, the whole civilized world of their time...We received it from our European ancestors; they had it from the Greeks and Romans and Jews. But,” said he, “where did the Greeks and Romans and Jews get it? They derived it from Ethiopia and Egypt—in a word, from Africa.”

African slaves, being non-citizens—as all blacks were, prior to the U.S. Constitution being later amended-- could not hold patents, a form of intellectual property, until after the Civil War. Such inventions were registered in their masters' names, or in the names of other whites. Paradoxically, Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederacy, had earlier attempted to procure a patent for a propeller riverboat invented by Benjamin T. Montgomery, a slave of his brother, Joseph, in Mississippi. This device was used by the Confederate Navy in the Civil War. Montgomery, who had been encouraged to read and write by his benevolent master, died in 1878, being born in 1819 in Virginia.
Sluby's marvelous book is full of many such anecdotes and raconteurs, as that of Benny Montgomery —far too many to mention here! It shall suffice to say that this book lists and describes every invention by blacks in America, including some inventions which are traditionally attributed to whites, like the cotton gin. Short autobiographical sketches are also given of such prolific mavens as Garrett Morgan, Granville T. Woods, Lewis Latimer, Dr. Percy Julian; along side these are those, like Henrietta Bradbury, a Chicago housewife who developed and patented a torpedo firing mechanism in 1945!

It covers modern day inventors like Dannette Connor-Ward, who invented the herbicide “Round-Up” in her employ at Monsanto, Lonnie Johnson who invented the “Super-Soaker squirt gun” and others in such disparate fields as nuclear physics, ophthalmology, and sublimated civil rights veteran, Bob Moses' “Algebra Project” to bring math literacy to school age children.

Reward yourself! Buy and read this book!

#30

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We are gods

Suppose that we are the only humans in the universe, Reader. That would make us "gods," not humans @ Psalm 82:6...In fact, we must be "gods," assuming that we ARE at all! Right now! One light year--not to mention a billion such years-- is a long way for anyone, or for anything, to travel at light-speed, just to see us--whatever we are, if we ARE, bypassing all others along the way!

Bill Sharpe ft. Dave Koz-- "Get Your Groove On"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqIdkxyVTXg&feature=player_embedded#t=84s

Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb! Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb!

Non-stomp funk fulminates with a bumpty bump-bumpty bump!

As a driving, thriving bass summons old souls from the deep.

An impetuous drummer tippy-tips, tippy-tips, captive to his own percussions.

"Come and join us!" Calls the unctious interlocutor "Get your grove on!"

An intrepid sax probes private places, furtively. Darting daringly in and out.

The chorus and rhythmic background spawns comic background radiation.

While George Clinton's spirit irradiates in the aurora borealis with a bumpty bump-bumpty bump!

"Funk not only moves, it also removes!" Hey! Dummm-dum dum-dum-de dumb

Excerpt: from "As to the Leopard's Spots: An Open Letter to Thomad Dixon, Jr." by Kelly Miller

“There is no hard fast line dividing the two races on the scale of capacity. There is the widest possible variation within the limits of each. A philosopher and a fool may be not only members of the same race but of the same family. No scheme of classification is possible which will include all white men and shut out all Negroes. According to any test of excellence which you’re and Mr. Watson’s ingenuity can devise, some Negroes will be superior to some white men; no stretch or ingenuity or strain of conscience has yet devised a plan of franchise which includes all members of one race and excludes all those of the other.

 

“Learned opinion on the other side ought, at least, to weigh as much against your thesis as your own fulminations count in favor of it. You surely have high respect for the authority of Thomas Jefferson. In a letter to Benjamin Banneker, the Negro astronomer, the author of the great Declaration of Independence wrote: ‘Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit that Nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of other colors of men, and that the apparent want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America.’”

 

Kelly Miller, “As to the Leopard’s Spots: An Open Letter to Thomas Dixon, Jr.,”  in RACE ADJUSTMENT: ESSAYS ON THE NEGRO IN AMERICA, p.37-38 (1909)

"Radicals and Conservatives" by Kelly Miller, an excerpt

"The radical and conservative tendencies of the Negro cannot be better described than by comparing, or rather contrasting, the two superlative colored men in whom we find their highest embodiment -- Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, who were both picked out and exploited by white men as the mouthpiece and intermediaries of the black race. The two men are in part products of their times, but are also natural antipodes. Douglass lived in the day of moral giants; Washington lives in the era of merchant princes. The contemporaries of Douglass emphasized the rights of man; those of Washington his productive capacity. The age of Douglass acknowledged the sanction of the Golden Rule; that of Washington worships the Rule of Gold. The equality of man was constantly dinned into Douglass' ears; Washington hears nothing but the inferiority of the Negro and the dominance of the Saxon. Douglass could have hardly received a hearing today; Washington...

would have been hooted off the stage a generation ago. Thus all truly useful men must be, in a measure, time-servers; for unless they serve their time, they can scarcely serve at all. But great as was the diversity of formative influences that shaped these two great lives, there is no less opposability in their innate bias of character. Douglass was like a lion, bold and fearless; Washington is lamb-like, meek and submissive. Douglass escaped from personal bondage, which his soul abhorred; but for Lincoln's proclamation, Washington would probably have arisen to esteem and favor in the eyes of his master as a good and faithful servant. Douglass insisted upon his rights; Washington insists upon duty. Douglas held up to the public scorn the sins of the white man; Washington portrays the faults of his own race. Douglass spoke of what he thought the world should hear; Washington speaks only what he feels it is disposed to listen to. Douglass's conduct was actuated by principle; Washington's by prudence. Douglass had no limited, copyrighted programme for his race, but appealed to the Decalogue, the Golden Rule, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States; Washington, holding these great principles in the shadowy background, presents a practical expedient applicable to present needs. Douglass was a moralist, insisting upon righteousness to public affairs; Washington is a practical opportunist, accepting the best terms he think it possible to secure."

Kelly Miller, "Radicals and Conservatives," in Race Adjustment: essays on the Negro in America, pp. 19-20 (1909)