THANKS ALABAMA!

THANKS ALABAMA! As significant as was the 98% of black women, and the 93% of black men, who voted for Doug Jones is the 32% of Alabama white people who did not. Given the closeness of that special- Senatorial contest to fill Jefferson Sessions' seat, so freighted down with tyrannical "Old South" symbolism and alt-right Donald Trump buffoonery, each vote in favor of Doug Jones was as valuable, as were each non-vote for the former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roy Moore. Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to Alabama!

BABIES CAN COMMUNICATE

ZORA NEALE HURSTON, excerpt.

Back in the early, halcyon 1970s, the U.S. ambassador from Benin, formerly known as "Dahomey," West Africa, apologized to an assembly of black activists and scholars at Cramton Auditorium, Howard University, for his country's culpability in the African slave trade. He was attired in regal robes and spoke beautiful French, which was translated into English by his translator. His appearance and apology was unforgettable to me. Benin's ambassador's apology came back to mind to me today, while reading Zora Neale Hurston 's autobiography, DUST TRACKS IN THE ROAD (1944, 1995). She wrote: "One bit of research I did jointly for the 'Journal of Negro History' and Columbia university, was in Mobile, Alabama. There I went to talk to Cudjoe Lewis.... "He arrived on the last load of slaves run into the United States and was the only Negro alive that came over on a slave ship. It happened in 1859 just when the fighting between the South and the Abolitionists was moving toward the Civil War.... "He told me in detail of the circumstances in Africa that brought about his slavery here. How the powerful Kingdom of Dahomey, finding the slave trade so profitable, had abandoned farming, hunting and all else to capture slaves to stock the barracoons on the beach at Dmydah to sell to the slavers who came from across the ocean. How quarrels were manufactured by the King of Dahomey with more peaceful agricultural nations in striking distance of Dahomey in Nigeria and Gold Coast; how they were assaulted, completely wiped off the map, their names never to appear again, except when they were named in boastful chant before the King at one of his 'customs' when his glory was being sung. The able-bodied who were captured were marched to Abomey, the capital city of Dahomey and displayed to the King, then put into a barracoon to await a buyer. The too old, the too young, the injured in battle were instantly beheaded and their heads smoked and carried back to the King. He paid off on heads, dead or alive. The skulls of the slaughtered were not wasted either. The King had his famous Palace of Skulls. The Palace gates had a massive of skull-heads. The wall surrounding the grounds were built of skull-heads. You see, the Kings of Dahomey were truly great and mighty and a lot of skulls were bound to come out of their ambitions. While it looked awesome to him and his warriors, the sight must have been gruesome and crude to western eyes.... "One thing impressed me strongly from this three months of association with Cudjoe Lewis. The white people had held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was : my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. That did away with the folklore I had been brought up on--that the white people had gone to Africa, waved a red handkerchief at the Africans and lured them aboard a ship and sailed away. I know that civilized money stirred up African greed. That wars between tribes were often stirred up by white traders to provide more slaves in the barracoons and all of that. But, if the African princes had been as pure and as innocent as I would like to think, it could not have happened. No, my own people had butchered and killed, exterminated whole nations and torn families apart, for a profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. What is more, all that this Cudjoe told me was verified from other historical sources. It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory. Lack of power and opportunity passes off too often as virtue .... "Cudjoe 's eyes were full of tears and memory of fear, when he told me of the assault on his city and its capture . He said that his nation, the Takkoi, lived 'three sleeps' from Dahomey. The attack came at dawn as the Takkoi were getting out of bed to go to their fields outside the city. A whooping horde of the famed Dahomean women warriors burst through the main gate, seized the people as they fled from their houses and beheaded victims with one stroke of their big swords. "'Oh, oh ! I runnee this way to that gate, but they there. I runnee to another one, but they there, too. All eight gates they there. Them women, they very strong . I nineteen years old, but they too strong for me. They take me and tie me. I don't know where my people at. I never see them no more.'" P.164-166, DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD, by Zora Neale Hurston (1995)

WHY WORRY?

WHY WORRY? Aiming low is unnatural. The sky is on high with the sun, moon, stars , planets, clouds, comets, meteors. Ambition aims high. Climbs mountains. Sloth accepts less , seeks less, is satisfied with less. Our spirit is from on high. Our body is from earth. Perhaps this is as it should be in the natural scheme of things. Some go high. Others low. If so, then, why worry with religion, education, things designed to lift? 

LEGACY OF DIVINITY

A LEGACY OF DIVINITY Our epoch in human history, in natural history, is inscribed by us each day on the walls of time. It is an actual fact that the things that we do, or do not do, resonate, radiate, educate, fascinate, long after we are gone. As we research the humans who lived hundreds of thousands , millions of years ago, recording our observations of our forebears, so our descendants will do with us, as dutifully, as certainly. Work therefore assiduously to assure that what is read and is recorded of us, about us truthfully depicts the lives that we live, lead, love as being worthy of adoration, emulation, celebration, aspiration. Caveman wrote upon walls. They drew upon experiences to teach us facts about how they lived, worshipped, prospered. We read and we marvel that these ancient ancestors who domesticated fire, animals, nature, agriculture, who formulated numbers, letters, languages, arts and sciences; fishing, navigation: all we now use, might have known, could have known, that their lives were not their own, to ruin or to waste away, but the progeny, legacy of divinity.

ST. LOUIS BLACK RADIO

I remember Spider Burks; the Rocking Mr. G-George Edward Logan; Bernie Hayes; and the mighty Steve Byrd, on whose # 1 show we appeared as "Students for Black Awareness and Action," from Webster Groves High School in 1968 and in 1969. St. Louis black radio truly rocked our teenage lives.

VESSELS

VESSELS Vessels hold content. "Chosen vessels." Earthen vessels . Cheap vessels. Alabaster vessels . Empty vessels. Human vessels. Contents of vessels vary: from oil to grain to meal to flour to sugar to water to beer to wine to powder to mankind. Vessels do not fill themselves nor determine the character, nor the capacity of their contents, as tools. Rather, vessels are modeled, made, filled by others, including humans. Humans being "animated" beings, who are "self-conscious" seem to be independent with two options: They may choose to accept or to reject their lading or assignment. "Options" implies that humankind may choose not be what he/she was modeled and made to be. This further tacitly implies the presence of "free will" within human vessels That implication is not true. "Free will" is modeled within mankind, within its own range. As trees bend in the wind; as molten rock flows as lava; as clouds form and disperse, mankind also has its divine ranges of movement. Such leeway is in the character of its model, as in trees' , rocks', water; yet divine law holds. Elsewhere, in THE GEOMETRY OF ART AND LIFE by Matila Ghyka (1977), botanical and human applications of this intuited "divine law," are mathematically termed: PHI, (1.618...) when coupled with Fibonacci series (1,1,2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...), demonstrating: "gnomonic growth." These principles are succinctly discussed, beautifully illustrated by equations, and are repeatedly re-exemplified in his chapter "The Golden Section."