tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7265657571053982942024-03-13T20:14:49.227-07:00In AdvanceHarbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-17285102263114030842024-03-13T20:10:00.000-07:002024-03-13T20:14:16.537-07:00The Depression They Didn't tell you about<p>[<b>DISCLAIMER</b>: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present (that I know of), I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts. My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] </p><p>I was taking nice, long strides as I walked to work that morning. I was attempting to clear my head with each step when all of a sudden an emotional tsunami hit & leveled me. I froze in my tracks and found myself openly sobbing while walking down a public street at 8:00 in the morning. In the span of less than a year I'd been diagnosed, lost a woman I loved and my father, along with a good part of my identity and sense of self worth. I could hear low guttural sounds emanating from my own throat that knew I wasn't intentionally making. I could feel the tears falling from my chin and wondered why the God I'd prayed to my entire life had abandoned me. I spent a good minute recomposing myself and then walked on to work where I buried myself in the days tasks.</p><p> I was reminded of a couple with whom I'd gone to church. He was a handsome guy with blue eyes and wavy, dark hair. She was a beautiful, copper colored Filipina with an infectious smile and they always had their two adorable daughters in tow. I can't remember their names, but do remember that one Sunday a month my church would do "coffee & doughnuts" to encourage parishioners to mingle with one another. I would occasionally talk to the handsome couple and their two precocious tots when they told me that his wife had been diagnosed with cancer. I think it may had been uterine cancer but I can't really remember. She was going to begin chemo and she would beat it. I said a prayer for them and wished them well. Over the next few weeks the chemotherapy was taking it's toll on her. She'd lost her hair and resorted to wearing wigs. She'd lost lots of weight. Her dark eyes seemed to slowly sink in their sockets and she appeared more and more frail with each passing week, but Sunday after Sunday she, her husband and children were in the pew in front of me. One Sunday our priest made the sad announcement that she lost her battle. Our section felt empty without he smile and his. Each time I looked at him I saw a man who would have to spend the rest of his life raising two little girls alone whom he'd have to remind how kind and beautiful their mom was. Being a cancer patient sucks, but being the rock for someone with it takes more courage than many people can ever muster. One Sunday he and his daughters simply stopped coming. I never knew why, but theorized that it was because he found himself questioning why a woman in the prime of her life was suddenly taken.</p><p> Funny thing. Oncologists tell you about the varied side effects that will come with your cancer battle and its treatment but they don't (at least mine didn't) mention one of the very worst i.e. depression. It's as if you're moving into a house that someone else has lived in but you're not told about the mold in the walls, cracks in the foundation, raccoons in the attic or termites slowly eating away at it. They let it be a delightful surprise. Since my "journey" began, one of my therapies has been simply getting up, getting dressed and going to work. Trying to find a little zen in the repetition has been at times cathartic, but the waves of depression hit like artillery during a siege. They always occur without warning, and one never knows either their duration or severity until they've passed. They range from small episodes of self doubt to existential crisies where one has to remind one's self that suicide would solve nothing. </p><p> One such existential wave hit once while I was in a classroom full of students. The crisis part of my brain which I've never understood took over. It remembered the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and how drill instructors would intentionally say things to make us laugh, smile or simply gaze in their directions then punish us mercilessly either individually or in masse for "breaking the position of attention." I remembered a guy named Drill Instructor Sergeant Mask. Mask was a tall, thin mahogany colored man with a serious expression tattooed on his face. He had the driest, sardonic wit I've ever experienced in my entire life. Literally everything the man said was hysterical. Sometimes we would burst into laughter the moment the man entered a room because we knew he'd say something funny and whenever we did we simply dropped and started doing pushups before he even gave the order. As I could feel the floodgate of my tear ducts about to open I imagined being an 19 year old idiot at the position of attention with D.I. Sgt. Mask just feet away eyeing my continence for a smirk with which he could annihilate me and I prevailed. Losing it in a room full of teenagers would have obliterated my hard earned reputation of emotionless curmudgeon. </p><p> The V.A. offers limited psychologist visits and on one of those a psychologist suggested a "support group" and I balked at the notion. When asked the reasons for my disdain of the aforementioned I was quick to give my assessment of what I thought a prostate cancer support group would entail. </p><p>1. As most men aren't effected by prostate cancer until later in life, I imagined I would be the youngest one there. I didn't want a group of old men gazing at me and thinking "Oh that poor kid."</p><p>2. More than likely I would be the only SINGLE man there. The literature they give you (what little they give you) says: "the best thing you can have when fighting prostate cancer is a supportive partner." As the woman in my life died early into my battle I didn't want to sit there being reminded of her absence.</p><p>3. I'd be bombarded by evangelism. I have no issues with praying or prayer, but have always believed that a belief in God is a person decision. I've never imposed my beliefs on others and never wanted others to do the same to me. Sometimes a person in pain just wants you to listen to them or to give them a real world solution to their problem rather than a verse of scripture. You give a hungry man food, not a psalm about hunger to sustain him. </p><p>The young academic convinced me to attend one of the group sessions and as predicted:</p><p>a. I was the YOUNGEST man there. The second youngest participant want 65 years old. The majority of the men present were old enough to have been my father and most were Vietnam veterans. Their eyes seemed to regard me as "the kid".</p><p>b. Everyone there to a man said how he wouldn't have been able to make it emotionally without his wife, adult children or grand children and how cancer had gotten them closer to their wives and children. As I had neither I could only sit there and bestow "I told you so" glances at the psychologist. </p><p>c. The phrases "I'm a decon in my church", "If if wasn't for the lord", "Iesvs gave me the strength" and varied verses of biblical scripture began going back and forth to the point where I could only gaze at the psychologist and smile. She stopped a prayer circle from forming after a member asked us to bow our heads and join hands.</p><p> To be fair, while I was "the kid" in that session and the only unmarried man I did feel a little kinship with the men present. We were all fighting the same son of a bitch who had thrown our lives into chaos. One guy in the group admitted that he was more prone to rage than depression. I met a woman once who claimed to be a breast cancer survivor who asserted that she never went through the "why me" phase or had bouts of depression. I told this to a female friend of mine who is a breast cancer survivor who said the woman either: a. was on some serious drugs. b. was a delusional, empty headed Mary Poppins knock off or c. was a lying bitch whose response to someone saying they had cancer was to reply "Oh...I had cancer...I beat it...I'm a survivor" when they know they're not in the club. There is however no "universal" cancer handbook. Some of us bottle up our emotions not wanting to burden those around us. Some express them because we're to scared to do anything else & some of us channel them into other things. </p><p> Three years in and the waves still hit and I never know when they will. They still fill me with self doubt and sometimes make me question the reason for my own existence, but they're no longer as intense as they once were. Maybe the men and women around me are helping me to develop some coping skills. Maybe my subconscious is telling me that while cancer has killed a good part of me and that part of my life is over, that it's entirety has yet to end. Do I still occasionally feel as if a hard wall of emotional water has knocked the wind out of me and that I'm alone on some deserted beachhead having been left to die my my inner demons or what I presumed to be my best self? Yes. Will that feeing ever subside? At this point I can't say but I'll hope it will. </p><p> In the mean time I can try to remember that those waves have their own schedule but that I can swim even if I can't do so with the proficiency of an olympic athlete. I can remember what a "Bad Bytch" named Leah told me about how "there's no way to do cancer wrong" and that "this club sucks, but in it's ranks are some of the finest people you will ever know" and I can try to reach out to men and women new to our ranks and let them know that those waves will hit, that they can swim and that they're not alone and I can also do the same for my brothers and sisters whom I know are still fighting who occasionally need to be reminded of the same as I'm sure they'll keep doing the same for me.</p><p> </p>Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-20510341577139512932024-03-11T19:26:00.000-07:002024-03-11T21:47:59.318-07:00Survival<p>[<b>DISCLAIMER</b>: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present (that I know of), I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts. My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] </p><p><br /></p><p> I've had friends who met the SOB whose name I won't mention whose stories need to be told. Out of respect for their families privacy I won't give their full names.</p><p><b>Arturo</b>: He was a big, gregarious Latino musician & bartender who always seemed to be surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women. I met him through a friend and he and I got to be close after I found out that he and I were born in same week. I was born 20 hours before he was and both too close to Christmas. We'd periodically get together on our birthday and get delightfully hammered. One day he reached out to me and informed me that he discovered he was in "the club" (what I call having the c-word) He had been diagnosed with liver and stomach cancer. Like most men, he didn't like going to doctors. He was having abdominal pains and initially thought them indigestion and ignored it. When it became more severe, he took antacids but when it became too much to bear he finally went to a doctor and learned of his prognosis. A week later he called to tell me that his cancer has spread to his lymph nodes. If they attempted either radiation OR chemo therapy he would have gone into renal failure. Two weeks later he was dead. We were born in the same year, in the same week and nearly on the same day and were diagnosed in the same year. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Courtney</b>: She was a redheaded firecracker from San Diego who always had a cigarette between those pouty lips. She had been a Jaguar saleswoman when there WERE no women selling high performance cars and she made a great living doing it. When I met her she was an adorable hippie living in the Montrose surrounded by crystals who supported her self by teaching Reiki and as one of Dione Warwick's "psychic friends". We drifted apart and I learned of her diagnosis after reading her obituary and reaching out to her daughter.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Bonnie:</b> Bon-Bon was a free spirited blonde who said to hell with it in her 20s and ran off to Puerto Rico where she perfected her Spanish and later went to nursing school there. When I met her she was an avid golfer who lived life with a big L and boasted she had the body of a 30 year old. She was 20. years my senior and occasionally called me on Friday and Saturday nights and simply said: "I feel like going to ____. Meet me there." We went on a few "dates" that weren't dates and she admitted that she liked looking at me, and my presence kept the men her age who would normally be flirting with her at bay. At one point at the House of Blues a gent her age was flirting with her while I was sitting next to her and she crushed him by putting her arm around me, smiling at him and telling him he was "too old" for her. I reminded her she wasn't an actual "cougar" and she told me "Shut up and be pretty." She had survived a bout of cancer but hers came back and she didn't tell me until a week before the bastard took her. There was a celebration for her at the country club to which she belonged. She had conditions for attending, guests couldn't wear black, had to have happy memories of her and couldn't be "sad" that she was gone but rather happy they'd know her. I was dressed and ready to go but couldn't stop crying so I wound up not going. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Al:</b> He was one of the toughest guys and one of the kindest men I've ever met. A native of Detroit and career Army NCO I met him through his lovely daughter who is a friend of mine. I periodically spent Thanksgiving with him and his lovely wife & daughters. He occasionally mockingly called me "princess" (he was an ex drill sergeant) and gave me a hard time about the length of my hair and various other things but, that was his way of saying he cared. He'd fended off the c-word once before but it returned and took him. I attended his funeral and wore the darkest sun glasses I own. I simply couldn't stop crying. He was a great man who had a beautiful family and I always felt welcome in his presence and in his home.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Donita:</b> A tall, silver haired, blue eyed woman from Arizona with whom I bonded because we laughed that she was the ONLY white woman on the planet named "Donita". She lived near the airport and would invite me over to watch animated, Pixar movies and drink wine. She moved back to Arizona and we occasionally talked. One day I called and she sounded weak when she answered the phone. She told me that she had lung cancer and was in the hospital. I could hear how happy she was in her voice. She told me that she was tired and needed some rest but to call her in the morning. I called at 10 the next morning and her daughter answered the phone. She asked: "Is this Jesse?" I said yes and she told me how her mother had died minutes after my call, but that in the time she was caring for her, she'd never seen her so happy. She thanked me for calling and said that I'd made Donita's final moments happy ones. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Amy:</b> Amy stood about six foot one and looked like a big cupie doll. She had a short blonde bob cut, drank like a fish and swore like the 7th fleet on shore leave. I jokingly called her the female Bacchus and she laughed and embraced the moniker. She was a Special Education teacher who became one because she hated practicing law. Once when someone stole my identity and a huge company with whom this person had debts which they were paying with my money refused to simply refund me she simply said: "Oh for F--k's sake." she wrote down one sentence and said "in your next email to them, send this at the end." I did and they asked me if I wanted them to cut me a check OR to wire me my money. She fought three different cancers in her life and the last one took her. Her daughters remember her as both mom AND the life of the party. </p><p><br /></p><p>These are the friends I've lost. I won't mention the family members, but with each of their passings I found myself asking why them? I'm oft told of how high a survival rate my specific cancer has. It's almost as if they're telling me that if cancer is a sport those of us with mine are 2nd string Junior Varsity and shouldn't act like "real" cancer patients, but we read about men like the Martin Luther King Jr.'s son Dexter died of it as have countless black men. With the passing of each of these people especially after my diagnosis (Courtney & Bonnie died before I was diagnosed ) I found myself asking why them and not me? Why did people with so much, charm, talent & charisma die while I'm still here? I've never been married. I don't have any children and think my passing would make little difference, but these men and women loved life and their absences left holes in the lives of many. Moreover, there are small children with types of cancer far more severe than mine who are either gone or not long for this world. Why am I here while they were taken? Do I have some mission of which I haven't been made privy or simply don't understand? Am I wrong for feeling guilty that I'm still here and they aren't? Why am I here when a man with a loving wife, two daughters and three grand daughters has gone on? Why do I get to go on long pointless walks while a gorgeous nurse doesn't get to save people's lives?</p><p> My friend Leah once told me: "there's no way of doing cancer wrong" but there are times since she's told me that when I've felt as if I am doing it wrong. A shrink I talked to called it "survivor's guilt" I don't know how to deal with it and truthfully the fact that I don't bothers me even more. I have friends (and family) who are also fighting this bastard. Sometimes we talk about what we're going through, sometimes we simply talk about other things. But as Leah told me, there's no way of doing this wrong, I'm just going to have to tell my subconscious that at some point and hope it listens. </p>Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-84092640825874956102024-03-11T18:09:00.000-07:002024-03-11T21:33:20.419-07:00Euopean? That makes one of us.<p>[<b>DISCLAIMER</b>: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts. My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] </p><p><br /></p><p>Downtown and I'm a few feet away from a bus stop. There is a tiny corner in the facade of a building near a door and out of the sight of cameras, I stood attempting to relieve myself praying no cops drove by. I had found myself having spent the previous night rising every 30 mins to unsuccessfully do the same. I'm took the bus because I was in too much pain to drive. The second bus on which I waited would bring me directly to the VA's emergency room. It arrived more expediently than I thought it would and I painfully lurched into the ER a mere 60 yards away. The bus stop used to be closer to it, but the hospital administrators complained that the busses stopping there somehow inconvenienced them. </p><p> Upon entry I told a nurse behind a desk my symptoms and she immediately ushered me into a room with a bed and told me that because I'm a urology patient I needed their on-call doctor to consult. I was curled into a near fetal position on the bed atop some odd pad and within minutes a scared 20 something, freckle faced midwestern blonde in scrubs came in. She asked me my name and some other random information then asked me if I'd ever had a catheter. I nodded and she told me that I'd needed one today. She was an intern. Am I uncomfortable with interns? Not really, her inexperience was glaring and she wasn't filling me with confidence. I needed a Foley catheter. For those who don't know it's a long tube inserted into one's urethra and anchored by a small balloon which stops it from sliding out. There a few attachments involved and apparently our young intern didn't pay close enough attention to making sure one was secure so when she inserted the tube into my bladder she was baptized in an unexpected but predicable gusher of my urine. She stumbled to seal off the opening from which my precious bodily fluids came forth but the damage was done. She sent me home with a bag on my leg which I was to drain whenever it got too full. She also screwed up with it's placement so each time I took a step I found myself in serious pain until it was removed days later. </p><p> Flash forward to a recent Saturday. I found myself standing at a urinal trying to empty my bladder and having no luck but instead was hearing men in other stalls joyfully doing what I could not. I envied the sound of streams hitting water and the accompanying sighs of relief they emitted, but simply had to get out of there feeling as if I'd been kicked in the stomach. I braved traffic thinking I was having momentary bladder distress, but by the time I made it home I realized that my enlarged prostate (which would have been large even if I'd never had cancer) was squeezing my urethra shut. It occasionally did it, but not this long or this severely. It was one of the things that happened after the procedure which destroyed my tumors, but had never plagued me before it. </p><p> I painfully drove to the emergency room at one point pounding my dash board with my fist, screaming out in agony and was quickly processed on arrival with spiking blood pressure. The on call urology doctor simply told them to give me a catheter and send me home and they did precisely that. A regular catheter drained 24 ounces from my swollen bladder and I was inexplicably given a 24 ounce IV to replace the "fluids" I lost. I questioned this and mentioned that I wasn't dehydrated, I just couldn't pee. I was dismissed. </p><p> The following day I found myself going every 20 minutes but barely. By Midnight Sunday I'd completely shut down. I couldn't sleep and every 20 minutes I found myself painfully attempting to perform a bodily function many happily take for granted. At 4am I got dressed and drove back to the ER on a Monday morning and was greeted my a small, muscular Filipino nurse who asked "Weren't you just here?" She ushered me back into one of the familiar rooms and I heard a nurse given instructions for my treatment from the shift's head nurse. I couldn't see her but she sounded like every elderly, no nonsense black nurse who knew her stuff so I felt as if I was in good hands. She was the woman you simply didn't question. From the other side of the curtain the voice asked me "Baby ...you know you're leaving here with a catheter today right?" I answered "Fine..fine." Within a minute the other nurse came I and slowly and painfully inserted the rubber tube that drained 30 ounces from my bladder over the next few minutes. I was amazed at both the capacity and resilience of my bladder as I looked at the translucent bag and the contents with which I'd filled it. </p><p> The head nurse came in and to my surprise she was not an elderly black woman but rather a small round, 30ish Asian woman with a wide grin. "Mr. Handy" she said in syrupy Carolina accent "how you feeling' this morning?" I tried not to let my face show my obvious surprise that she didn't look like the character Lavern from the tv show Scrubs or my forth grade teacher. "Much better than when I came in." She smiled and in a reassuring tone continued: "Baby, you're gonna have to keep that in for the next three days while your body adjusts to it. Just come on in on Thursday so urology can take it out okay?" I nodded "Yes ma'am." I know I had to be at least 15 years her senior but her voice was throwing me off and my reply seemed a conditioned response. She handed me a release form and I drove home as many Houstonians started their day. The sun had yet to come up but my mission was to get home and get some much needed sleep. </p><p> The cancer journey continues. There are people I know who assume that if you're a cancer patient and you're not confined to a bed and howling in excruciating pain that you should be smiling broadly and dancing and being that "positive" person telling the world how you're "beating" it. There are good days and bad and unfortunately this one one of the bad few, but in the grand scheme of things my situation could be worse and knowing that sometimes is a heavy burden.</p><p><br /></p>Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-76818976898675057162024-03-08T23:38:00.000-08:002024-03-08T23:38:24.837-08:00A Hard Fall<p><span face="tahoma, "Trebuchet MS", lucida, helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 68); color: #555544; font-size: 13px;">[</span><b style="caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 68); color: #555544; font-family: tahoma, "Trebuchet MS", lucida, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">DISCLAIMER</b><span face="tahoma, "Trebuchet MS", lucida, helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(85, 85, 68); color: #555544; font-size: 13px;">: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts. My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] </span></p><p><br /></p><p>I was staring out the jeep's window watching stalks of sugar cane dance in the wind in fields we passed and I wondered if my ancestors had harvested sugar cane or cotton in those same fields. It was a balmy day in the small central Louisiana town where my father was born and spent the first decades of his life and I was leaving his memorial service. Driving was my friend "Handsome" Bill. A friend and I call him that because he bears a bit of a resemblance to tv/movie actor Jon Hamm who played Don Draper on the show "Mad Men." Our inside joke being "Hey Bill, when are you going to introduce me to Joan from your office?"</p><p> After going public with my diagnosis I learned some hard lessons, among them was that there are certain people who hear the word "cancer" and immediately presume that the person with it is on borrowed time. Cancer in the minds of many is effectively a death sentence. 1/3 of the people whom I thought were friends disappeared. I would later learn that some simply didn't know what to say so they said nothing and others simply left. I reached out to a former lover and told her of my diagnosis and she said: "Well...good luck with that." A few weeks later she called to apologize and said that she'd lost her mother to cancer when she was growing up in Detroit and couldn't handle the thought of losing someone else. She then quietly vanished. </p><p> A gorgeous, foul mouthed, buxom, small town blonde I know from California chewed my ass for NOT telling her before I told everyone else. I apologized to her for my being chickenshit in thinking for a second that she wouldn't have been at my side. A group of my female friends who were in their own battles with breast & pancreatic cancer reached out. and became an online support group whom I lovingly called and still call the "Bad Bytches". A "Bad Bytch" can withstand anything and if they're on your side your odds just went up.</p><p> Then there was "Handsome" Bill. Bill had been the Veterans Counselor at my college. An ex army sergeant who played ball while we were working on the degrees Uncle Sam told us we needed and was an all around decent guy. Upon learning of my health concerns Bill called and said: "Man if you need anything. I'm here." It's been my experience that people oft say that but seldom mean it. </p><p> I can't say that fall of 2021 was the worst year of my life as I haven't lived my entire life yet, but it was miserable. I had a procedure that made going to the bathroom a miserable chore. The woman who had been by my side had died of the Corona virus within days of being admitted to a hospital and a week later my father died. Because of Covid protocols and because I wasn't a blood relative I couldn't be at her side in the hospital when she died. Out of respect for her memory and her family's privacy I won't say the name of the wonderful woman I lost but will say this. She saved my life. A routine physical indicated an elevated PSA. Let me explain for those unfamiliar with the male urinary tract. Men have a gland called a prostate. it's normally slightly larger than a walnut and is directly beneath a man's bladder and the base of his penis. Canals flow through it which regulate the flow of his urine and well, let's call them male "fluids" during sex. When it becomes inflamed or enlarged it starts to produce certain chemicals or antigens specific only to the prostate which are detectable via a blood test. My PSA was high and my doctor encouraged me to get a biopsy. I was reluctant until the now late girlfriend convinced me to get a biopsy and in doing so sent me upon my cancer odyssey. Again, she saved my life. </p><p> One of the things about the cancer journey that doctors (well at least not our compassionate friends in urology) don't tell you is that depression is a good part of what you'll be dealing with. I was already depressed when a faceless nurse told me over the phone that the woman I cared for didn't make it and less than 10 days later my mother informed me that my father who had been suffering from dementia for the last 4 years had finally been released from the prison that his body had become. Dad's last wish was to be cremated and enshrined in a mausoleum in his hometown. Upon being told of this by my older sister who had been his caretaker I actually laughed. Dad always saw himself as larger than life and his wanting a big granite monument to himself seemed in keeping with how he'd lived. "Dad was dad." as I liked to tell my mother. </p><p> On learning that I was going to Louisiana for dad's farewell "Handsome" Bill volunteered to drive from his home in Austin to pick me up and bring me to dad's funeral hundreds of miles away in another state which is how I found myself in the passenger seat of a large jeep staring at a field of sugarcane on our way out of the place I frequently refer to as the "ancestral homeland". Leaving dad's final resting place meant taking a four lane blacktop back to Interstate 10. We were maybe half a mile away from the interstate when Bill broke the silence with "What's your favorite coffee brother?" I give him a confused look and answer "Cafe Du Monde." He smiles not taking his eyes off the road and continued "We're coming up on I-10. Now IF we take a right we can be back in Houston in a couple of hours and this journey will be at an end...OR" he said "we can take a LEFT and in an hour and a half we can be in New Orleans AT the Cafe Du Monde" drinking your favorite coffee and enjoying a beignet." I sat there in disbelief. "The decision is yours. We take a right we're on our way home, we take a left and years from now. you'll be old and grey and in a nursing home telling the story about how you and. your pal Bill went to New Orleans...for a cup of coffee." </p><p> At that moment I realized that despite the miserable things 2021 had heaped upon me, there were still wonderful people in the world including one of whom who had sacrificed an entire Saturday to drive nearly 1000 miles in a day so that his basket case of a college bud could say goodbye to his father. There are points in life when playing it safe is the way to go, when one must ignore Robert Frost's advice to take the road less traveled and to stay on the well worn path, but at that moment my friend had emboldened me to "carpe diem" (seize the day) and before we made it to the traffic light which directed us to the interstate and proclaimed "I guess we're taking a left." </p><p> We made it to New Orleans enjoyed COLD beignets and excellent coffee at Cafe Du Monde while a few charming college girls flirted with us. We were looking pretty good in our suits. Maybe they were just flirting with Bill and I was convincing myself they were flirting with both of us. Who knows. I even bought a can of their famous French Roast (which I still have) and we drove back at dusk and talked about life, the universe and everything. Along with dancing on a J-Rail platform on Christmas Eve in Akihabara in Tokyo with my loving adopted big sister Mami, the detour on the trip home from saying goodbye to dad will forever be one of my favorite memories and I can thank "Handsome" Bill for that and yes ladies he's single.</p><p> The handsome chump was right, I still regale people telling them about the time "[Me] and [my] pal Bill went to New Orleans just to get a cup of coffee."And for that I'm eternally grateful.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqrGo0OkXENX24IMBHyvODiefAXFF9uQQqOtEWA57V60yCSRsRa0WZDMdQwALsNtBmBiWmYkIWgx19MgU9oRfyQOAGh4QY-CHgsbBt4jcjiLgRTHAvAnie6cdDNBTfKgonSOhwuDajAGPCLVkKdezNDebB9njCCfTnVfmi4qbqfcaAZBfOiditO9TC_Ck/s2048/Cafe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1530" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqrGo0OkXENX24IMBHyvODiefAXFF9uQQqOtEWA57V60yCSRsRa0WZDMdQwALsNtBmBiWmYkIWgx19MgU9oRfyQOAGh4QY-CHgsbBt4jcjiLgRTHAvAnie6cdDNBTfKgonSOhwuDajAGPCLVkKdezNDebB9njCCfTnVfmi4qbqfcaAZBfOiditO9TC_Ck/w233-h312/Cafe.jpg" width="233" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-47776995253246184832024-03-07T19:26:00.000-08:002024-03-07T19:26:58.055-08:00Happy Anniversary...<p> </p><p>[<b>DISCLAIMER</b>: I am a cancer patient. While I may not have any active cancer/cancers in my body at present, I'm very cognizant that it could return. I am in no way attempting to say that all cancer experiences are like my own. Each person's cancer journey is like a fingerprint given that each is different. While they may have some commonalities, each persons fight with this affliction differers just as each person differs. Some cancers are more aggressive than others, and not all of us who battle this son of a bitch will prevail. This is a long, and ugly road and I pray for my brothers and sisters who trod this road with me. I remember those who trod it before me like my late grandmother, three of my uncles and five of my aunts. My heart especially goes out to all the children who suffer with it who were diagnosed before they began to live and all who will walk on this road in the future. My purpose in writing this is to give insight to my battle with something which I'll loathe until the day I draw my last breath and hopefully which won't be the cause of my demise. While I can't and won't attempt to speak for all cancer patients I will say to those NOT on this road who would tell those of us on it how to walk, shut the hell up.] </p><p><br /></p><p>Three years ago in March I was wide sitting on a black vinyl chair in a small exam room with walls the color of which I still can't determine. Maybe they're a shade of light green, or perhaps they're grey. I've been to those rooms in the Houston Veterans hospital urology department several times and for the life of me the color of those stupid walls eludes me. Also, whenever I've been there I've been slightly more preoccupied with why I was there. I was staring at a fading chart on the wall of the male urinary & reproductive system and trying to be as positive as I could as I ignored a large silicone model of a penis which sat on a shelf above me.</p><p> I was a bundle of nerves but was told by the handful of people privy to my being there that despite certain risk factors more than likely the result of my biopsy would be negative. I probably just had something called benign prostate hyperplasia or simply put an enlarged prostate. I'd been wide awake for my prostate biopsy a few weeks earlier. Despite the shots and numbing agents employed it still hurt like hell. The procedure involves inserting a probe into a man's rectum then cutting tiny pieces of his prostate to examine them for cancer cells. Given the level of discomfort a local anesthesia is given but I still felt every cut. When you reach a certain age, every doctor you see will be younger than yourself. As a man in his 50s I've reached that age. A fresh faced young doctor comes in with a chart and his face is without expression. Seeing young men and women without expression could mean one of many things, exhaustion, suppressed anger, or an unpleasant task ahead of them. He closed the door behind him and sat at the desk on which my elbow rested and said the five words which utterly changed my life. "I'm sorry. You have cancer."</p><p> I've been asked many times since that day what I was thinking when I heard him say it. Did I go through the five stages of grief in an instant? Did I experience denial, depression anger, bargaining and acceptance before I drew my next breath? The best way to describe it would be sitting in the sun on a warm day then suddenly being doused with gallons of arctic water in an instant. I sat there in disbelief feeling the blood drain from my face. "Are you sure?" I asked in a pleading voice. He nodded his expression still somber. "But" he said "the good news is it's not a fast growing cancer, and the survival rate for it is much higher than it was just a few years ago. It's a very treatable cancer." Each time he uttered the word it felt as if he were stabbing me. I was in shock.</p><p> "So." he said his demeanor seemingly changing instantaneously. "Let's schedule when we can take out that prostate." He was smiling. This kid just told me I had cancer cells growing in my body less than a minute earlier and now he was SMILING. Urologists are a bit different from other specialists. Some see themselves as oncologists, many see themselves as surgeons. The truth lies in between, they are however not known for their bedside manner. Surgeons want to cut people open and the men and women whose domains are the kidneys, bladder and reproductive organs do not pass up opportunities to cut people open. I wish the medical school this young man had attended given acting classes so that he would have been able to better conceal his desire to have me on a gurney as he tried to see how quickly he could remove a part of my body. "Is there NO other option?" I asked still in shock. He seemed a little crestfallen that I wasn't ready to go onto an operating table. "There are" he said trying to hide the disappointment in his voice, "but the prostatectomy is the most effective. You would remove all of the cancer at once. There is also radiation, but I wouldn't recommend radiation for a man your age." I would later research and learn that younger men who get radiation as a prostate treatment are more likely to have issues with incontinence and their colons years later. "The thing is" he said "right now you have options for your treatment, but before we discuss those we need to schedule an MRI so we can see exactly where your cancer is so we can come up with a treatment strategy. How about next month?" I nodded in silence avoiding his gaze. "Okay" he said "Make an appointment with the front desk on the way out." </p><p> "Can...I have a moment? I asked. He nodded and replied "sure, just come out when you're ready." I didn't notice his leaving but heard the door closing behind him. In an instant I was quietly sobbing. I could feel the tears falling from my cheeks as my vision became blurred. I've no idea how long I sat alone in that room feeling as if a death sentence had just been imposed on me despite the young doctors assurances, but eventually I composed myself and walked out of that room feeling numb. The clerks made an appointment for me to be stuck inside a large magnet and I like an automaton I took the elevator to the first floor and found my way across a parking lot to the jeep in which my lady sat waiting.</p><p> She could see I'd been crying. "Oh God." she exclaimed before I could utter a word. She wrapped her arms around me and my face fell unto her shoulder as I silently wept. "I had skin cancer. You can beat and WILL beat this." she assured me with a confidence in her voice that gave me comfort. I sat up as the tears continue to well up in my eyes, Her placid blue eyes gave me a strange peace at that moment. She grabbed my hand and said "Okay, let's get out of here." We drove off as I asked what every cancer patient asks throughout the journey at some point "why me?" I had no idea what lay ahead. I won't lie and pretend that I wasn't afraid. I was, but my fear wasn't of my own demise. Years of reading samurai treatises have made me accept my mortality years earlier, but I was afraid of the fact that I was about to face the unknown. I'd just learned that I was about to start fighting for my life against an enemy which had killed men and women far stronger than I have ever been or would ever be, and it scared the hell out of me.</p>Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-51311171676739486172020-08-02T05:33:00.003-07:002020-08-02T05:33:50.780-07:00Hate "Cancel culture"? Where were you in 1492?King Alfonso I ruled the African Kingdom of Kongo on Africa's west coast in present day Angola in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. He converted Kongo to Catholicism and he and his kingdom were recognized by the Portuguese and the Vatican. He was known for his wealth and piety. He built Catholic churches in his kingdom and sent his children to be educated in Portugal. He built a cathedral in 1491 and after the Portuguese took over his country they let it fall into ruin and claimed it had been used for "primitive rituals." It was as if he never existed. Chances are if you're not either African OR someone who either majored or minored in history you've no idea who he is.<br />
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Mansa Musa of the kingdom of Mali in the 14th century was the wealthiest man in the world. It's said he was the wealthiest man who ever lived. Ancient maps made in Europe in the 1300s show Musa in the center of Africa seated on a throne holding a golden sphere. On a pilgrimage to Mecca it's said that Musa lavishly spent so much gold that he literally collapsed dozens of economies. I'll wager you've never heard of him either.<br />
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Over time The kingdoms of Mali, Congo, Nubia, and Zimbabwe vanished from history and the Ancient Egyptians in North Eastern Africa magically became "Europeans" or "Caucasians". Don't believe me? Go to your local libraries archives and get a history text book from the 1930s, 40s or 50s. Europe started wars in Africa to created a slave trade was to give weapons to both sides of the wars they started and encourage them to bring live, healthy prisoners to exchange for advanced weapons.<br />
Imagine if during the second world war aliens landed in America and offered the Allies futuristic weapons to fight the Axis and all they asked in return were that we give them German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war whom they would dispose of for us and whom we'd never see again. Would we have taken advantage of it? What if they offered Hitler the same deal and didn't tell us about it? We could simply acknowledge the alien with advanced weaponry in this fictional scenario, OR would could merely simplify it and blame war like people of earth as being entirely responsible lest we offend and "blame" an "advanced" alien culture.<br />
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The American conservative movement in 2020 invented the term "cancel culture" as a means of riling up their base. Like most propaganda it's short, sweet, catchy and easy to remember because of the alliteration. Conservatives invented the term to describe the crescendo of those who've spent decades calling for the removal of Confederate Statues from the American landscape who are finally being heard.<br />
The men and women who were offended by statues put into place during the hey-day of the Ku Klux Klan (more fun and easy to remember alliteration) in the 1920s and 30s were simply dismissed. In fact the Confederacy being commemorated with these statues in no way resembles the actual confederacy. The creators of the confederacy stated in their letters of secession from the United States that they wished to protect "the institution of slavery", yet amazingly the inventors of the Confederate myth insist that the Confederacy existed to stand up to "big government" and to protect the rights of the individual and small business man. Slaves were an afterthought in the Confederate myth, much like Alfonso I of Kongo and Mansa Musa millions of American slaves whose lives and fates were the only reason the Confederate States of America came into existence were simply "cancelled."<br />
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American history is RIPE with cancellations. The "Thanks Giving" myth illustrates this. When Europeans arrived on what is the present day eastern United States, Native Americans welcomed them. If someone arrived on your doorstep during a hurricane would you bolt your doors and tell them to leave, or would you welcome them? Natives did the later and were surprised when Europeans let it be known that they had no intention of leaving and would in fact take MORE land.<br />
Save the incidents known as Prince Phillip's war and the French and Indian war it's almost as if the scores of Native Americans who lived along the Atlantic Ocean never existed. They were "cancelled" as it were as they make the narrative of people seeking "religious freedom" somewhat let's say "klunky". People whose religious text says: "Love thy neighbor as thyself", "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", "whatsover you do to the least of my brothers you do unto me" and "thou shall not kill" look like thieves, murderers and hypocrites if you present them in a light OTHER than sitting at a table having a feast of Thanks Giving with the "noble savages" who had cultures and civilizations prior to the European's arrival. Cancel them.<br />
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Those crying the loudest of "cancel culture" want to forget "Irish need not apply" signs. They want to forget a culture which seemed to invent new stereotypes and slurs for Italians every other day. History books in these United States don't mention the thousands of Americans of Mexican descent who were in many cases 3rd generation Americans and beyond who were deported TO Mexico.<br />
We can stick out chest out and boast about the completion of the trans continental rail road in these United States, but conveniently forget that the Chinese who came him to be paid a fraction what white men made to work on the same rail road and faced the same discrimination, lynchings and tailor made racist laws specifically aimed at them.<br />
The people CRYING the loudest about "cancel culture" are the same people who seem to have "cancelled" the Jim Crow laws that existed from the 1870s until the last of them was removed in the 1990s from history books and the American collective conscience. We can acknowledge either a century of laws which prevented men of color from sitting on or testifying before juries, voting, going to school, holding certain professions, marrying certain people, getting bank loans, being protected from blood thirsty mobs intent on murdering them or simply entering a restaurant and having dinner and simply say that people of color never attempted to "assimilate" as groups of immigrants did. Let's cancel a century of Jim Crow as if it never happened and simply paint Martin Luther King as a guy who wanted to use "white" drinking fountains and bathrooms and sit at the front of buses. Let's also "cancel" the death threats he received and the fact that someone attempted to blow up the man's house while his wife and children slept.<br />
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My point? The people complaining about a "cancel culture" only find it objectionable if they're not the ones doing the cancellation. <br />
Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-18915550374921223872020-06-02T14:05:00.000-07:002020-06-02T14:10:11.379-07:00June 2020: The Summer of George <b>On May 25, 2020 transplanted Houstonian George Floyd was in a store in his adopted city of Minneapolis, Minnesota attempting to make a purchase. Store personnel believed the bill with which he attempted to pay to be counterfeit and called police who arrived shortly thereafter.</b><br />
<b> Mr. Floyd was taken into custody by uniformed officers on the scene and security video from multiple angles show him to be complying with the arresting officers. For reasons yet determined officer Derek Chauvin put an already handcuffed Floyd on the ground and placed his knee on his neck until George was begging for mercy and his life but to no avail. It fell on deaf ears and Floyd died from the officer cutting off the flow of blood to his brain and his air supply.</b><br />
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<b> When video footage of the incident in which onlookers were begging Chauvin to remove his foot from the helpless man's neck went public Chauvin and the other officers present were immediately fired. Days later he was indicted for 3rd degree murder. Protests and riots ensued in some cases concurrently. While watching the events unfold some only saw protesters, others only rioters. People saw that which they chose to see. They saw that which made them the most comfortable.</b><br />
<b> I saw the footage and released a heavy sign. I've seen this happen so many times it's as if I'm in the Bill Murray film "Groundhog Day" and I can describe every event forthcoming because it's happened so many times before.</b><br />
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<b>1. Video is released. Many are outraged, but others will imply that we didn't see what happened BEFORE the cameras started rolling.</b><br />
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<b>2. There will be protests in the streets and a few imbeciles will riot leaving some with a political agenda to try to imply that protesters were violent thugs bent on destruction and not civil rights.</b><br />
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<b>3. The officer will face a grand jury and may or may not go to trial.</b><br />
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<b>4. There will be discussions of race and inequality which will fizzle out as soon as there's a huge news story like a mass shooting or a celebrity wedding or baby.</b><br />
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<b>5. The officers trial will result in either an acquittal, mistrial or hung jury, but in the event that there IS a conviction there will be a lengthy appeal, but during that appeal the officer will be out on bond. After years of appeals a sympathetic judge will uphold the officer's conviction, but commute it to however long the appellate process took. By such time either the indignation from the family of the person murdered will have subsided, or the public would have lost interest.</b><br />
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<b>6. Another black man is killed by a cop, security guard, neighborhood watch captain or citizen trying to make a citizens arrest and it starts all over again.</b><br />
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<b>President Trump's response to the protest has been to use tear gas on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park across from the presidential residence that is the Whitehouse and to tell the nation that our cities need to be "dominated" by the military in a sad attempt at martial law. In other words IF police brutality IS real we can deal with it later, in the interim lets get on the streets and be brutal and excessive. Simply put the brutal police treatment will cease when the protests of brutal police treatment ceases. OR as the old naval joke said: "The floggings shall continue until morale improves." </b><br />
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<b>Author James Baldwin once said in his essay "The Fire Next Time": “It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot
is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity
not to teach your child to hate.” </b><br />
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<b>I do not believe that black America HATES white America. I believe that there exists an undercurrent of fear and misgivings between us that has resulted in ongoing tension that threatens to suck us into an undertow that could kill us both.</b><br />
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<b>I can't and don't pretend to speak for black America. Like any group of people we're not a monolith. Our opinions are as varied as the shades of brown in which we come. The civil rights movement was a century long battle to remove Jim Crow laws enacted in the American south by embittered Confederate veterans after they LOST the civil war. The purpose of Jim Crow was to prove to the black man that he didn't have to BE a slave legally in order to be the lowest run in society. Jim Crow laws were entirely economic. Wealthy southern whites allowed them as a means of pacifying their poor brethren. Convince a poor man that another poor man is the source of all of his problems and the odds of both poor men uniting to topple you decreases.</b><br />
<b> For a century Jim Crow laws gave poor southern whites the belief that they were somehow better than blacks by allowing them to deny them access to housing, education and even the right to use a public restroom. While that happened those same dirt poor people never questioned why wealthy whites kept them from country clubs, schools and living in certain areas. Some didn't question it, others simply were satisfied in knowing that they weren't the lowest on America's totem pole.</b><br />
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<b> The problem with civil rights legislation passing in the 60s and 70s is that many non persons of color don't see it as the PAUSE of rights given in 1865 being removed, but rather that a problem was solved. They believe that racism vanished over night with the passage of a few laws. Those same people probably believe that the entire civil rights movement was about being able to sit in the front of a bus.</b><br />
<b> I've never believed in entitlements. When I was eight I asked my dad for an "allowance" and rather than giving me one, he taught me to do paint and dry wall and paid me for working with him.</b><br />
<b>As a black man in America I've never wanted a "check from the government", "stamps" for food and sure as hell didn't want any damned free cheese. All I ever wanted and felt I was entitled to was a chance. I'd like to think that if I apply for a job my qualifications will be viewed as anyone elses.</b><br />
<b> I want a justice system which can look at me and another defendant accused of the SAME crime and which treats us the same way and DOESN'T give me a harsher sentence based on the hue of my skin.</b><br />
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<b> While I love my country I would be remiss if I didn't say that she has racist roots. We are a nation built on land stolen from its indigenous people, who then created an industry of kidnapping the indigenous people of another continent to work on that stolen land. A war was fought over the ability to treat the descendants of those captive people in that state and the right to move them onto NEW lands stolen from the indigenous people. While claiming to be the land of the free, my country has killed Indians, enslaved and killed Africans then allowed the recreational killing of the descendants of Africans, Mexicans and Asians for the amusement of jeering mobs.</b><br />
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<b> Are we a racist country today? I don't think we are, but the problem is America is NOT comfortable with it's racist past. My simply MENTIONING the aforementioned will anger many. I'll be accused of being a Politically Correct Thug who is revising history ignoring the prism that is history. I'll be asked to consider the time in which the creators of our country lived. Invariably I'll ask those same people to join me in the 21st century.</b><br />
<b> Many non persons of color will defensively say of Indian genocide, slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act and deportation of people of Mexican descent BORN in the United States. "I didn't do it! Why do you keep bringing it up!?" Odd that the same people may even proudly wave one of the flags of the Confederacy and call it "history" and a source of pride. Who decides what's "pride" and what's "hurtful?" America has never owned up to her racist past or the inequities embedded in daily life to that end were we to think of it as a football game, the issue of racism has been punted on 4th down after 4th down with the assumption that the next possession will be when it's dealt with. The problem is it's late in the game and we have no points on the board.</b><br />
<b> Entire groups of Americans are marginalized by racism in different forms every day and others either pretend it doesn't exist because they don't face it, allow something in their minds to pretend that they are the true victims OF it, or act as if it lives in a bygone America in which their grandparents lived. Sadly America's denial of rights to persons of color was replaced by a simple denial about racism and unfortunately each time we evade the topic and pretend that there is nothing to discuss we ensure that some future generation will be discussing this same topic generations from now.</b><br />
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<b> In the meanwhile as his summer continues, George Floyd gets to join Travon Martin, Tamir Rice, Emmett Till and scores of black men whose names we'll never know whose only "crime" was being black in America and a victim of someone elses sad, preconceived idea of whom they were. I can only hope that there will be no future martyr whose name shall become synonymous with America's grave sin of differentiating degrees of Americanism, but I know it would be foolish to believe it's even remotely possible. Our history has proven me wrong on too any occasions.</b><br />
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Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-42672222152594975342020-05-13T09:49:00.000-07:002020-05-13T09:49:48.759-07:00The Economics of racism<br />
My friend Mike is from Michigan and once told me that one of the most obnoxious phrases we southerners had was "white trash" because in his opinion it exposed us as having an established racist history. He explained that it implied that a white man who wasn't a success was simply unmotivated and lazy because he didn't capitalize on "advantages" he had over others.<br />
I thought about what he said, then remembered Alexander Stephens. the only vice president the Confederate States of America ever had. Stephens gave a speech in 1861 which he called the "Cornerstone Speech" in which he said the United States was attempting to give blacks equality to whites and that the Confederate States of America would be a government in which the black man would have his rightful place in servitude and that any white man would have the right to succeed on his own merits.<br />
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https://www.csaconstitution.com/p/alexander-h.html<br />
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My friend's assertion gave me pause to thought. I honestly believe that racism was never about "race" It's entirely economic. Consider something: If YOU'RE rich and wish to employ others the thing you fear more than bankruptcy is organized labor. A divided labor force is much easier to control.<br />
The formula for racism is simple. You need two groups of people, one of which to whom you must belong and a second group. The second group can be either larger or smaller in number. The way it works is You must convince members of YOUR group that either they are SUPERIOR to or should be WARY of the other group. Cast the second group as "other" and a threat which must be contained.<br />
In the American South in the 1700 or 1800s an immigrant fresh off a boat from anywhere in Europe had to work hard for very little money just as he had to in Europe. He also had a distinct disadvantage if he arrived without money, friends or well established relatives who preceded him here. The southern economy was controlled by a handful of wealthy men who owned African slaves. Why would a man hire you if he already owned twenty people whose sole purpose was to work for him?<br />
Most of the southern economy revolved around the plantation system. Cotton, tobacco, rice and indigo were big business and those who didn't own plantations were in some way connected to shipping or trading the aforementioned OR providing the creature comforts to those who did. There was even a subculture of unskilled men whose sole source of income was hunting down slaves who had escaped plantations.<br />
The fact about slavery was that it prevented many immigrants from working in fields, but it enabled a planter class to rise to prominence because the cost of feeding slaves and putting a shed over their heads was minimal compared to paying a wage. When the confederacy eventually formed in 1861, it told poor whites not only of their "superiority" over the person of color but also that their aspiration should be becoming one of the southern aristocracy who owned them.<br />
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Wealthy white southerners opinions of poor whites was slightly lower than their opinions of slaves in some cases as evident by the fact that they entrusted slaves to prepare their meals, serve as valets, maids and butlers and to be wet nurses to their children. To insure that most poor whites saw blacks ONLY as slaves, many southern states had rigid laws restricting the rights of free blacks. Other states would simply not allow free blacks to reside within them.<br />
The "masses" while they had no real social or economic power could at least harbor a sense of superiority given to them by the elites because they are lead to believe they are NOT the bottom rung of society.<br />
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This occurred in the American west with the arrival of Chinese in the 1840s. Wealthy men who hired Chinese by the dozen kept wages low for whites because they convinced the poor whites whom they also wished to underpay that the Chinese insisted on working for lower pay. To be fair, this trick can and has been used with nationality. The Irish, Italians and Polish can tell stories of being used as economic scapegoats in the United States and to be honest racism is NOT an American invention. It is the fruit of colonialism and at the end of the day it's premise is simple: divide and concur and exploit each group after creating tension between them.<br />
Us versus them as a business practice while unethical, sadly has proven effective. Were one to examine the third reich of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1944, its perverse racial politics succeeded because a small angry Austrian was able to convince other German speaking people that they were a great people who had suppressed by others, specifically a group of "others" within their midst.<br />
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Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-2132094784900841612020-04-17T08:36:00.002-07:002020-04-17T10:18:25.725-07:00End the Quarantine! I Have but one Life to give for a BillionaireHis emaciated corpse lay amid the uncut sugarcane until two other men who were barely alive removed him. His burial would simply be his being placed into a hole and covered in earth, but he was being removed because his body impeded the important work of clearing the field of the cash crop that was sugar. He, the boy who had bled to death after having his arm crushed by a grind stone and another who had simply died of dehydration and exhaustion would be replaced as soon as a trip could be made to Port Au Prince to purchase five more strapping caliban to work the fields. The preceding narrative is fictional, but scenes similar to it played out on a daily basis on Caribbean plantations where slaves were routinely underfed, tortured and shown so little compassion that King Louis XIV of France put the "Code Noir" (black codes) in place to address the brutal conditions to which they were subjected. <br />
Slaves were expensive, but so was sugar and as The French Colony of Saint Domingue produced 1/3 of the world's sugar and half its coffee slaves were well worth the expense. A little over 30,000 French controlled nearly 800,000 expendable Africans who would more than likely die before they made it to 25. Sugar was the most profitable crop in the new world. So profitable in fact that French Planters in the colony which took up half the island of Hispanola in the early 1700's lived as well if not better than royalty. If you were a slave in this world you had one job and that was to work as hard as you could for your master to add to his wealth until you died. Upon your death two or three new slaves would be brought in to replace you. You were nothing.<br />
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April 17, 2020, the Covid-19 virus has shut down the world's economy. The Global infection rate has resulted in quarantines in every major city in the world as the United States sees 5% of those contracting the virus dying. Doctors and nurses work feverishly to find a vaccine or means of treatment as politicians point fingers at one another. The citizens of the world are in a state of fear and uncertainty wondering when all of it will come to an end or perhaps when semblance of normalcy will return. President Donald Trump from his office in Washington DC speaks NOT of Americans dying or scientists working but rather of "reopening the economy".<br />
It seems as he he's saying to us that the men and women who are connected to ventilators are of no consequence and that those who have died should be the furthest thing from our minds. Men like him whose net worth is a billion or more are losing money so those of us sitting at home fearing our lungs shutting down need to get off our lazy asses and get back to work so that they can become richer.<br />
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The flow of money into their accounts has been interrupted. HOW DARE we put our health above their ledger sheets! The people who pay pittances and cry like babies whenever someone suggest paying their workers more or putting regulations in place to make their work places safer want the quarantines to end not for the greater good, but for the sake of their bank accounts. Slightly more disturbing than that is the fact that there are people living from paycheck to paycheck who DEFEND the right of those to whom they mean nothing who honestly believe the pandemic to be a "hoax" perpetuated by an insidious media who simply want to disparage the billionaires they themselves will never be.<br />
Those living in opulence and the sycophantic politicians groveling at their feet aren't speaking of vaccines and cures. They want their money and much like the nameless slaves in Saint Domingue's sugar fields we are expected to lay down our lives for them. We are to rise with the sun and wield our machetes until sundown to make our quotas. Us going back to work risking our lungs shutting down is for the greater good. Jeff Bezos needs a yacht with room for a helipad. Trump needs another building with his name emblazoned across it. Sheldon Aidelson wants to see if he can literally ski down the mountain of money he possesses and if we have to die so that he may do so, then so be it. Why must people insist on being "unpatriotic" and standing in the way of his dream?<br />
Much like the slaves living in huts on Saint Domingue, we should be honored to die for such great and noble people. The money saved by NOT paying you a decent salary or making either healthcare or medication accessible to you can be used to buy a sports franchise, pay for a country club membership and maybe just maybe to pay hush money to an adult film star not to speak of a 4 minute sexual liason. People of the world, let us for once stop thinking of ourselves and sacrifice our beings for men and women to whom our names will never be of importance much less known. Yachts must be raced! Bigger fortunes need be amassed! The haves MUST HAVE MORE! Damn it! All they ask is that we realize how insignificant we are and to lay down our lives that they may have more! Let us end this quarantine cure be damned and die for our masters! <br />
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Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-59385229354744794962019-11-28T08:40:00.001-08:002019-11-28T19:59:14.302-08:00Thanks Giving. A great "story"<br />
In 1620, Pilgrims seeking religious freedom with the blessing of King James VI (of bible translating renown) had endured a harsh winter many had succumb to hypothermia or died of malnutrition. When the spring came they co-operated with the native American people and learned how to fish, hunt and farm and the following year had such an abundant harvest that they invited the natives who taught them how to survive to an autumn feast to celebrate. I've been hearing that since I was in kindergarten and it's a great story, but unfortunately that's all it is, a STORY.<br />
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The MYTH that the United States was started as a "religious" colony is a myth. Since the 1490s when Spanish ships were returning from across the Atlantic laden with gold and silver the rest of Europe (especially England) took notice). There were 102 people aboard the Mayflower, 49 of those were Pilgrims and that 49 included women and children.<br />
For more than a century Spain had been bringing back untold wealth from the "new world" and England wanted its share. They figured the best way to do that was "giving" land to English citizens who would be willing to simply occupy it. There were those aboard the Mayflower who dreamed of finding gold, but unless they traveled south to Mexico, it's unlikely they ever saw any.<br />
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Let's examine the pilgrims. They were members of the "Puritan" sect of the Anglican church OR Church of England. They were vehemently opposed to Roman Catholicism and felt the "mainstream" Church of England was too tolerant to immoral types. They felt the church should have been more active in the lives of the average citizen. In other words they wanted a theocracy as evident by the fact that throughout the 1600s they tried and executed persons for witchcraft. Supposedly the "pilgrims" got help from the Natives.<br />
That IS true, it has however been subsequently shown. that the indigenous people had NO IDEA that the Europeans had planned to stay. They presumed the Europeans were merely visiting and the Natives were doing the DECENT thing and not letting a group of incompetent people starve to death. The would later learn at gun point as the people of Africa and India would later discover that the British had no intention of leaving. The fact that some of the land was given to religious fanatics DOES NOT mean that America is or was ever intended to BE a religious colony.<br />
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European indentured Servitude was a harsh existence. It was essentially becoming someone's slave for a period of up to seven years at the end of which you'd be granted freedom and land; however, there were many unscrupulous businessmen who had indentured servants. Servants were often beaten, given just enough food to survive and there were laws which could add time to one's contract of indenture. In other words if a servant offended his contract holder, months or even years could be added to his contract. Some indentured servants assaulted or even killed those holding their contracts. More often than not they ran away and hid in other towns.<br />
The colonial solution to this was the enslavement of the African. The African did not have to be freed. You owned the African for the entirety of his life. In fact, colonies like Virginia made freeing an African slave so prohibitively expensive, that it was cheaper to keep him/her.<br />
American slavery was simple. More slaves equaled more wealth. You could get a breeding pair and work the man to death knowing that his children will be your property. You could take liberties with his wife and any children she had would also be your property (thanks to colonial laws). Odd that those who believe that America was founded as a religious colony never express how the book of Exodus (NEAR THE FRONT) so vehemently opposed it.<br />
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The goal of this piece is NOT to bash the United States. I love this country, but I'm NOT a fan of fairy tales. Am I opposed to "giving thanks"? No, I do so every day and I think we should all be grateful for what we have. I'm glad that I don't wake up each morning hiding from secret police and death squads dispatched by some dictator, but I'm also aware of the fact that MOST of the countries which HAVE dictators, secret police and death squads were once colonies of European nations who entered to take gold, silver, tin, tungsten, ivory, rubber, oil and in some cases even people.<br />
There is a popular racist theory that states that black Americans like myself should be especially grateful that we were spared the gut wrenching poverty and warfare of Africa by having our ancestors kidnapped and sold as livestock. That ignorant theory ignores the fact that Africa in the early 1500s was wealthy and had several strong governments and societies like the Songhai, Mali and Mandingo, not to mention the Great Zimbabwe. The "grateful negro" theory also ignores that the Dutch & French incited inter African warfare to promote political instability and get gold and slaves cheaply amid that instability.<br />
In other words, to make themselves rich from 1500 to 1900 Europe and later the United States would take the wealth of Mexico and all countries south, Africa, Asia and Australia. We don't have to hark on that, but we'd be fools to forget it or to simply pretend that it never happened.<br />
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President Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving in November of 1863, but it didn't become a national holiday until President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it one in 1941. I'm of the opinion that if you're going to give thanks do it every day because as most combat veterans will tell you every day above ground is one for which you should be thankful. If you're going to conjure up a story in which religious fanatics who stole land and eventually INTENTIONALLY spread small pox to those from whom they stole it are cast as "noble pilgrims" seeking "religious freedom", then don't expect the descendants of those from whom they stole it or the descendants of the slaves bound to that land for the entirety of their lives to enjoy it as much as you do. Save me a slice of white meat and some dressing. "Happy" Thanksgiving.<br />
<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-42853623181046212632019-11-10T21:51:00.003-08:002019-11-11T06:40:17.564-08:00How to "Thank" a Veteran for Their Service.<br />
<b>"Thank you for your service."</b> I want to say this expression came into existence in the early 2000s during the George W. Bush Administration shortly after the "War on Terror" started. These United States treated service members returning from Vietnam like pariahs near the tail end of the war and until the first part half of the 1980s. It was a losing effort and George W. Bush didn't want to see American veterans mistreated as they returned from the war to which he was sending them.<br />
Then president Bush said to "Thank" a veteran for his or her service and people began doing so. I've heard it so many times that it almost sounds like "gesundheit" when someone sneezes. People SAY it, but does it actually MEAN anything?<br />
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The United States has ALWAYS treated our veterans with dignity and civility...right? Hardly. During our revolutionary war John Latrens the son of a wealthy South Carolina planter who raised a regiment of slaves to fight for the Continental Army. The Congress promised Laurens' men their "freedom" in exchange for fighting for their new country. Laurens died in the last weeks of the war and all the slaves who'd fought in his command were unceremoniously returned to their masters. They were given what the U.S. Marine Corps would affectionately call "the green weenie" a nice Corpism for "you've been screwed." Laurens' regiment were NOT alone, men who fought with Washington had been promised pensions but the congress reneged.<br />
At the end of the American Civil war pensions were paid to disabled vets, homes for veterans were established, but after 1900 the pro veteran sentiment wore thin as many questioned WHY we were still paying pensions to men who'd lost arms, legs and their sight or why it was necessary to have homes for them some 50 years after their war had been fought. Men returning from World War 1 were denied pensions promised to them and staged demonstrations in Washington DC which turned into riots. The federal government after the riots gave the veterans what had been promised them.<br />
Before world war two ended congress decided that the returning veterans would get a better deal than their predecessors who'd fought in the first "war to end all wars". They were given a "GI Bill of Rights." G.I. stood for Government Issue and was also a term American Servicemen called themselves to imply that much like the clothes they wore, beds on which they slept and boots they were they were interchangeable parts of a huge machine run by Uncle Sam.<br />
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While World War II era vets did get educational benefits and could get low interest home loans, their issues with post traumatic stress were essentially ignored and trivialized. The same applied to veterans who served in the Korean conflict. Because of intense media scrutiny, American politicians in the post Vietnam era decided that the mistakes made during the war in Southeast Asia would not be repeated. Veterans who suffered from post traumatic stress had access to mental health services. Those who had been in contact with harmful chemicals like Dupont's "Agent Orange" could receive medical care and pensions.<br />
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Present day, on Veterans day, American Vets are thanked for their service. Big corporate restaurant chains will give vets a free cup of coffee or a meal on the day in question and veterans will be bombarded with "thank you for your service." I would like to say to corporate America, rather than giving vets a cup of coffee, a stack of pancakes or an order of hot wings, hire us.<br />
Give a man or woman who has a sense of discipline a JOB. HIRE someone who can work with people with whom they might not agree, but will put their personal issues aside and put the job and the team FIRST. Employ a man or woman who knows how to meet a deadline and knows the meaning of the words respect, loyalty, duty and honor.<br />
If someone were to ask the average Veteran if they had a choice between a JOB and a cup of coffee, I'll wager the veteran would probably go with the former. Personally I'd say "both", but what do I know. You want to honor a vet or "thank" them for their service? Give them a job. You'll both be glad you did. <br />
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<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-63221368817623900972019-06-26T11:44:00.001-07:002019-06-26T12:02:25.387-07:00Western Civilization and Sliced BreadA few years ago I was watching election coverage on a cable channel and a panel were discussing election results. One of the panelist was a member of Congress named Steve King whom I believe is from Nebraska. Someone asked King a question about minorities and he pointed out that the greatest thing to happen to native Americans & Africans and even the rest of the world was being introduced to western civilization.<br />
He went on to say that the persons of color who occupy 75% of the planet would effectively be backward savages had they not been enlightened by benevolent Europeans who brought them culture and technology. The rest of the panel sat stunned as if he'd just publicly relieved himself on the desk at which they sat. One of the fellow panelists asked "You don't honestly believe that do you?" He said that every major invention had come from Europe of people of European dissent and he could think of no BETTER civilization. There was an awkward silence and in that brief silence part of me wished that someone would have walked up to him and caved in the back of his skull with a mace.<br />
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it's been said that "winners write the history books" and given that I live in a country founded BY western Europeans it stands to reason that every history I read prior to attending college was told from the point of view of the western European who felt it was his DESTINY to rule a country that covered a continent. It spoke of the indigenous people who lived on the land as "hostile" and treated them as "obstacles" to progress. In passing it mentioned small pox depleting their numbers and Americans killing buffalo for sport until their numbers dwindled. It mentions slavery ONLY in the context of a civil war but barely mentions the people of color who were slaves on tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar plantations from the days of British colonialism until the end of a civil war fought by those who wanted to ensure the right to own them extended for all eternity.<br />
My history books barely MENTIONED the Jim Crow laws written in the 1870s which remained on the books until I was a high school senior in 1988.<br />
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When I studied the WORLD'S history in college I learned that Africa had NOT been a bunch of cannibals with plates in their lips who ate white explorers in pith helmets, but vibrant civilizations like Zimbabwe, the Egyptians, Cush, Sheba, Ethiopia & Mali. I learned about 14th century King Mansa Musa who was said to have been the wealthiest man who ever lived. A legend says that when he made a haj to Mecca his caravan gave away and spent so much gold in tribute that he collapsed several small economies. I learned about Africans trading in gold and diamonds and metal foundries in Zimbabwe which predate anything in Europe but that never made most of the history books I'd read before.<br />
I learned of people in central and western Africa who invented farming techniques that were exploited in the United States when their descendants were sold into slavery and brought to the Carolinas. In high school I'd never heard Mansa Musa's name and the only African kingdom I'd heard of was the Egyptians, but the history I learned said that they were Europeans. Truthfully Alexander the Great took over Egypt and the Ptolemaic Greeks DID eventually rule Egypt, but the original Egyptians did NOT have fair skin. I read about the European "dark ages" after the collapse of the Roman Empire" and the renaissance which came about to rise from it, but don't remember ever reading about a "dark age" anywhere in Africa or Asia.<br />
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I learned about the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, India, China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan and how when the Chinese invented gun powder they initially refused to use if for military applications as they considered it too inhumane. I learned about Indians inventing the concept of "zero" and Islamic scholars devising Algebra. I learned about how mechanical clocks and paper were invented in China, (papyrus had existed in Egypt centuries earlier) and at the time Europeans still used sun dials.<br />
I learned of the civilizations of the Americas which had languages written in glyphs. I read about some native cultures who had systems of government not unlike direct democracies which had councils. <br />
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The purpose of this piece is NOT to speak ill of western civilization, to paint it as one of conquest or anything of the sort, but merely to point out that HAD Europe simply traded with Africa, Asia & America the way they traded with one another, that the world in which we live would be a much different place. We wouldn't have random "Supremacists" who were brainwashed to believe the patronizing, racist justification some had for Europeans plundering the world for her riches and that Kipling's "White Man's Burden"is just a poem written by a man who was born into a charmed existence in an "India" created by a British East India company for its executives who ruled with brutality as they took, tea, spices cotton and all they could from the conquered people whose culture they denied had defeated the armies of Alexander the Great centuries earlier.Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-33532839695417011062019-06-05T15:43:00.001-07:002019-06-05T15:43:58.021-07:00The Apprenticeship...When I was growing up my dad didn't believe in the concept of an "allowance". He told me at a very early age that in the real world people only gave you money if you did something to earn it. My dad was a paint contractor so he figured I could learn HIS trade.<br />
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From the age of nine whenever I needed money I put on my painters whites and earned money as I learned the construction arts of dry wall installation, painting and applying wall paper. Dad's deal was pretty straight forward, initially he paid me minimum wage, but eventually my salary went up as time went on. I spent part of every summer, many weekends and sometimes some evenings doing jobs with my father. The summer of 1985 he came to me with a deal I couldn't pass up as he wouldn't give me a choice. There was a HUGE job at a hotel that was coming up and it paid more than he did. Dad's jobs were small commercial properties like strip malls and office parks but mostly residential. Residential was dad's bread and butter. This was different, he wasn't the contractor on this one, he was just another guy applying wall paper and he'd gotten me a job as an "assistant".<br />
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There were only two painters assistants on this job and our job was to sandpaper dry wall and later to clean up excess plastic tarps and wasted wall paper. The other "assistant" was the supervisors son. Unlike myself he showed no enthusiasm for the job. He was a quiet blond kid who had a permanent look of disinterest on his face. It was a large building and there were several crews operating at once on different floors. I mentioned to the boss' son that if we separated we could get more done, that is I'd take the odd floors and he the even. He dismissed that idea and said that the day would go by faster if we worked together.<br />
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Initially I thought I'd made a new friend, but then I realized that aside from being the same age and on the same job, we had absolutely NOTHING in common. We had no conversations of substance. He didn't want to talk about music, girls, politics, school or anything other than the car he wanted to buy how drunk he liked to get, how much weed he could smoke without his dad finding out and when we were either going to lunch OR getting off work. I soon realized WHY he didn't want to work apart from me. When we were "working" I was doing the lion's share of it. He did as little as possible and only seemed to want to work as hard as I was when he saw his father on the periphery. He did that act once when I stopped to go to the bathroom and his father showed up, he pretended that he had done all the work on our floor and of course who do you think his father believed. Other painters would later come to my defense but it was still a pain.<br />
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I was on this job for a month before they told us that most of the hard work was done and they didn't need two assistants anymore. Guess which one of us was let go? Here's a hint, it wasn't the blond kid with the casual work ethic. I took the money I made and saved it for school clothes and didn't give the job a second thought until two weeks later when my dad told me that the supervisors son had quit. Supposedly he told his father that he'd gotten tired of being on the site and that it bored him. I laughed because I knew that he finally had to do some work for a sustained period of time and didn't have someone else for whose efforts he could take credit. He had to sink or swim and sank.<br />
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I worked harder than he did and we made the same money, but when he had to do exactly what I'd been doing for a month he folded like a card table. Maybe he was smarter than I am. He figured out that all he had to do was show up and do the bare minimum and he'd still get paid. He even took three "sick days" which he informed me were days when he was "sick of working." Whether he was a con artist or a malingerer I'll never know but he taught me three valuable lessons that summer: 1. Hard work is good for one's self esteem as you're either going to take pride in what you do or quit. 2. It's not WHAT you know, but WHOM and 3 and this was the most important lesson, every lie ever told eventually is exposed. You can only maintain subterfuge for so long before it's ultimately discovered and you're revealed as a fraud.<br />
Regardless of my opinion of my former "co-worker" (I use that term ironically) he did at least show up on a job. Little has changed as there are still young people working on summer jobs, but many more who simply wait for mom and dad to hand them what they want. I can't help but wonder, when did an entire generation stop equating work with rewards?<br />
<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-25274232352119265502019-03-17T20:30:00.001-07:002020-04-17T08:36:51.854-07:00There was a Green Book?<br />
I know a little about history. I won't say I "KNOW" history because neither I nor any other person who didn't live in a given time has encyclopedic knowledge of any time period though some come close. My parents told me about certain things which were realities of the segregated south of their youth and early adulthood. I was told about "sundown towns" which garnered that name because blacks could not be there after sundown for fear of their own safety. I was told about restrooms, restaurants, hotels and motels where black business was NOT accepted and about clothing stores where black clients couldn't even try on articles of clothing they wanted to buy.<br />
My parents and some of my teachers who had survived the same thing told me about their experiences, but NONE of them ever mentioned The Green Book. The Green book was written by a former Pullman porter (rail road worker) who compiled a list of every black friendly hotel and restaurant in the south and published it in the north and midwest and made a nice chunk of change doing so.<br />
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In 2018 a film by the same title examines race relations in America circa 1962. Our protagonist ISN'T a black motorist going across the south, but rather a Bronx tough guy who occasionally works as muscle for the mob who lands a temporary assignment as a chauffeur a black concert pianist who is embarking on a tour of the deep south. For simplicity's sake, let's call him by his Bronx moniker "Tony Lip". Tony earns this name because of his ability to seeming charm and BS virtually anyone. Tony's character is supposed to represent the average working class white guy. He doesn't HATE black people per say, but his only knowledge of them is based on superficial contact & stereotypes. He embraces black music and what he perceives to be black "culture" without knowing any actual black people.<br />
Enter Doctor Sally a black piano prodigy who has been playing piano since the age of 3. Tony travels throughout the midwest and later the south with Dr. Sally and discovers quite a bit about himself and his attitudes about his fellow man. Over the eight week odyssey Tony learns about elements of the black experience that he never knew existed that chances are most white people didn't know existed in the south for blacks at the time.<br />
I've always enjoyed the films of Spike Lee and Spike both HATED and dismissed this film as a white knight saving a helpless black man. I saw this film and disagree with Spike. I saw a guy realizing that he didn't get it and neither did most of the people he knew. Dr. Sally didn't need "rescue" he was in fact the person signing Tony's paycheck, the guy living in (as Tony put it) in a castle. Dr. Sally's talent segregated him from most blacks and the color of his skin segregated him from everyone else. In the course of the 8 weeks that Tony and Dr. Sally do their own version of "Driving Miss Daisy" in reverse, Tony and Dr. Sally grow and form a friendship and both are richer for it. I'd recommend this film as a fun piece of history as it's based on two people who actually existed and no one dies in the course of the film. I recommend it as a nice buddy pic for anyone who knows what it's like to learn about someone else on an interpersonal level and make an honest to goodness friend.<br />
<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-30593579537593458292019-02-25T16:29:00.000-08:002019-02-25T20:21:06.219-08:00Movin' on Up...<span data-offset-key="dejc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">I'll help fools move, but you EITHER need to feed me ...WELL or get me disturbingly drunk off GOOD alcohol. There are people whom you'd drive to the airport, give a kidney and for whom you'd take a bullet, BUT whom you wouldn't help move. Seriously, you'd take a slug for a guy but you won't help him move his late grandmother's piano. </span></span><br />
<span data-offset-key="dejc1-0-0"><span data-text="true"> Hey, wounds heal and chicks dig scars, but movin' a piano is a pain in the butt. Okay calm down if you REALLY don't want people asking you to move, you have to make them think that they REALLY don't want you to know where they live. Make 'em think you're nuts or at least bizarre or slightly odd. Here are a few helpful hints to help you get out of the "moving" draft.</span></span><br />
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<span data-offset-key="dejc1-0-0"><span data-text="true"><b>1. Have an unusual "emotional support" animal.</b> I'm not talking dogs, cats, exotic birds or ferrets. Get a llama and have him clad in silk pajamas and one of those pimp hats with a feather. Get an aardvark and put a Parliament Funkadelic shirt on him. Michael Jackson had a llama. How many times did you see that muff-hugga carrying the end of a couch?</span></span><br />
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<b>2, Three words: "Giant...Carnival...Cigar"</b>. Carnivals and fairs occasionally give out foot long, thick novelty cigars as prizes. Go online and buy a GROSS of them and smoke the dang things AROUND that friend who juuuust can't seem to find the right apartment who seems to move every six months. If every time he sees you you're blowing smoke in his face from this funky, cheap cigar...you're as out as Sean Hayes.<br />
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<b>3. Randomly bolt! </b>When around someone whom you suspect will be moving soon, travel with him/ her by cab or Uber. When at a stop light, get out and run the hell off. If they later ask where you were or what you did, be amazingly vague and elusive.<br />
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<b>4. "Sister Christian" them!</b> Everyone who's seen the film "Boogie Nights" remembers the "Sister Christian" scene. REENACT IT! When the "friend" is over for a dinner or social gathering, LITERALLY hire a prepubescent Asian kid to light and randomly toss firecrackers as you're talking to them...and pretend he isn't there...or that you can't hear anything.<br />
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<b>5. Refer to yourself in 3rd person.</b> "Rodney feels that we should go to Ricos for lasagne. Rodney thinks they're better than Demiglios." Not only will they NOT want you to help them move, you'll be lucky if one of them doesn't lunge at you with a steak knife.<br />
<br />
<b>6. Get a "title".</b> Insist on your friends referring to you as "your grace", "Your eminence", "Lord Balvaird" or "Grand Ayatolla." It's annoying as (rhymes with duck). If it doesn't kill your invite to the big move then my name isn't "His Highness Prince Regent Jesse Handy"<br />
<br />
<b>7. Charlie Daniels. </b> Charlie Daniels is a talented country artist from the 70s and 80s His greatest hit which was a crossover on the pop charts was entitled "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Play that song CONSTANTLY when around the friend whom you're trying to avoid. No OTHER music from Charlie or anyone else...JUST play "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" over...and over...and OVER again. If you're lucky they won't try to have you killed.<br />
<br />
<b>8. Bubba Gump them.</b> If you've seen the film "Forest Gump" you remember Forest fellow developmentally challenged Army buddy "Bubba" whose knowledge of shrimp and how to prepare it was encyclopedic. Learn EVERYTHING there is to know about a particular food...then ramble incessantly about it. IT WORKS!<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>9. Get a CATCH PHRASE!</b> I can promise you that if you punctuate every other sentence with "Well don't that butter your biscuit?" , "Aint that a soccer kick in the ballz?" or "Shave my butt and call me fluffy!" People will lift their OWN piano to see if they can throw it at you.<br />
<br />
and FINALLY and this one is THERMONUCLEAR<br />
<br />
<b>10. The Hank Hill</b>. Go to somewhere where either the person who you know will ask (or someone you both know) is getting their freak on and just burst in and say (in your best Hank Hill voice) "OH MY GOD IT'S SO JUICY!" from one of the Thanksgiving episodes. Not only will they NOT want you to help them move, they might NEVER speak to you again. Of course the downside is...they might ask you to join. Either way...good luck.Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-36552623316058315912018-10-25T16:26:00.003-07:002018-10-25T16:26:56.217-07:00The "African American" Experience?Several years ago I worked with a young, black teacher from a small town in northern state. As we have mutual acquaintences I won't say her name or where she's from. We never had an in depth conversation and truthfully I never found her an interesting enough person to engage on more than a superficial level.<br />
After working with her for the better part of a year however I thought her to be a tad condescending. She seemed to patronize when she spoke to me. In all fairness, there are some teachers who feel the need to simplify things when they speak to their students and it carries over to everyday conversations. It sounds as if they're being patronizing, but it's not their intent, they just want to be comprehended and tend to speak slowly and in warm tones. As I had to work with this person and from time to time I had to attend the occasional meeting with her, I couldn't help but notice that whenever I spoke she had a snide comment. There were LITERALLY times when I wished I'd been born a woman so I could have slapped the hell out of her. I loathed her, but as time went on I couldn't help but notice that whenever the other southern black people spoke she would seem to talk down to us in her replies as well.<br />
Black southerners tend to look down on blacks from Alabama. I think it has something to do with the fact that during the Jim Crow era blacks in Alabama took more grief than anyone else and seemed to be okay with it. In fact black people calling you a "Bama" is just a polite way of calling you a backward, rustic idiot. It never dawned on me that blacks from the North and Midwest could see ALL black southerners that way, which leaves me to ask What IS the "black/African-American experience?"<br />
<br />
My grandfather in Louisiana couldn't vote until he was a middle aged man. In contrast black men in Chicago, New York and Boston COULD vote, but often felt as if they had nothing for which to vote. Did they consider my grandfather and men like him, shucking and jiving Uncle Toms and Bamas who allowed themselves to be pushed around, or did they see them as men who stared down metaphorical (and in some cases literal) gun barrels when they left their homes? Growing up black in these United States BEFORE I was born was NOT a pleasant experience, but can we compare being black in Chicago to being black in Mississippi? Was being black in Texas the same as being black in Los Angeles or was the black Georgian experience the SAME as the black New Yorker's experience? Racism existed (and to an extent still exists) in all those places, but is being told "we don't serve your kind" in Manhattan after not being able to hail a cab the same as having a mob in Tennessee threaten to lynch you because someone thinks you looked a white woman in the eye or perhaps forgot to tip your hat?<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong, there are elements of the black experience that are/were universal.<br />
<br />
<b>- The sense of isolation</b> one feels when one is the ONLY person of color in some places. There are friendly people of every race color and creed and some will speak to you, but there are times when you become invisible. Waiters and waitresses and other patrons of some restaurants seem to gaze right through you. Some don't want to antagonize us, some simply don't want to engage us, others simply figure if they ignore us long enough we'll go away. Ralph Waldo Emmerson captured that sense of isolation best in his novel "Invisible Man". There are some who don't consider us "American" as evident by those who clamored to believe the theory that a black man born in Hawaii HAD to have been born in a foreign country as they simply couldn't accept that a black American could possibly be the leader of their country.<br />
<br />
<b>- Not being admitted into certain places</b>, be it a club, hotel, restaurant, college or neighborhood which gentlemen's agreements, policies and in some cases state laws and city ordinances excluded us. This isn't an entirely black experience. The Irish, Italians, Jews and every other minority has experienced this at some point and it leaves a mental scar even if you can walk away with a smile and pretend it doesn't bother you.<br />
<br />
<b>-The random criminal and other stereotypes</b>. At the end of the civil war many who considered blacks the lowest rung on the societal ladder feared newly empowered blacks. The newly freed men and women would want the education denied them, ACTUAL jobs, equality in every way and MAYBE even some kind of retrobution for generations of mal treatment. To that end laws were put into place to deny all of these things to blacks as a group. In some states there were literally laws to insure that unemployed black men would be in jail to provide a ready made labor supply for chain gangs. Generations of selective prosecution have lead to many believing that blacks are more likely to simply BE criminals. Black schools are constantly under funded and some resent their tax dollars going to fund "failing inner city schools". "Inner city" has become the buzz phrase for "black" and anyone who attended an "inner city" school clearly must have received a sub par education.<br />
<br />
<br />
In all fairness however we can't say that all aspects of the black experience are "negative". If you're a black American in a foreign country you MIGHT be treated as the random stereotype that has been exported via mass media, OR you may be treated simply as an American. There are many who LOVE Americans. <br />
As I sit and write this piece in 2018 I'm three days removed from having cast an early ballot in an election, a privilege that many of all races would envy. I live in a country where even the poor have running water and electricity and in some cases cable television and three meals a day. <br />
I have access to higher education and I know that my grandfather would be proud of me, my sibling and my cousins and nephews who were able to attain it. <br />
<br />
What DOES being black in America mean? I'd say the black experience in America is like a finger print. No two are exactly alike. I can't judge a black man who grew up in south Florida anymore than a black woman from up Delaware can judge me. The "experience" in my opinion has as many similarities as it has differences, and as time wears on those will change as all things should. What's the "black/African American experience?" How should I know? Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-58176415444269150592018-10-05T23:22:00.001-07:002018-10-05T23:22:21.228-07:00Sweet Caroline"CLEAR!" the attending physician said sternly notifying the nurses to back away from the patient before fibrillating her. The paddles sent a surge of electricity through her body, restarting her heart. She'd just given birth to a healthy, five pound baby boy and was about to go home when she suffered a heart attack. A cardiologist would tell her before discharging her that being in her mid 30s and being overweight had made her pregnancy risky and informed her that the history of heart disease in her family had caught up with her. She was told that the baby boy she was leaving the hospital with would be the LAST child she'd ever had. Her heart wouldn't be strong enough for her to carry another child to term. She went home devastated.<br />
<br />
Our mother, let's call her Caroline would have to learn to live with the heart condition she just become aware of, but before she truly could a family friend, drugged and raped her and she would learn weeks later that she was pregnant. Her cardiologist informed her that her pregnancy was essentially a death sentence. Her options were: a. have a rapist's baby and die in the process or b. medically terminate the child that grew inside her so that she could be a mother to her two existing children. She knew a kind of pain that hopefully most of us will NEVER know. Like Meryl Streep in "Sophie's Choice" she would suffer and regret whatever decision she made for the rest of her days.<br />
<br />
Before we look any further into Caroline's situation and how it was resolved, a few other facts need to be presented. Caroline was at the time unemployed and poor. She was receiving food stamps and was on Medicaid. She needed an abortion and it was life or death. When the word "abortion" is mentioned a great American debate rises like a tsunami. The image of irresponsible, impoverished minority teens comes to mind and the religious argument of a person becoming a person the moment a spermatozoa meets an egg and cell division begins. One side of the political fence paints all who would get an abortion as either amoral, irresponsible or both and wanting to get a free, surgical "do over" from the government and their tax dollars by "killing a baby." What's rarely mentioned in that argument are women like Caroline who are victims of rape, or worse women who are victims of incestuous rape who find themselves pregnant. High risk pregnancies are also never mentioned.<br />
Many anti-abortion activists would simply tell a rape victim that the child she would have would be a "blessing from God" or to simply give him or her up for adoption. What about cases like Caroline's They're never mentioned<br />
<br />
Getting back to Caroline, she's not only unfortunate enough to be a rape victim who has learned she's pregnant with her rapist's child and that she has a heart condition that would kill her should she have the child, she is also a poor woman in Texas where the laws governing abortion are strict and "moral". Because politicians who feel all abortion is murder dominate Texas politics, there is NO public funding for any form of abortion. Caroline must go to friends, family & special charities set up for women like her and literally BEG for her life. Texas state law REQUIRES that she get an expensive ultrasound, despite the fact that she already KNOWS that she is with child and also that she look at it.<br />
Caroline managed to get the money and the procedure that saved her life, and spent a week in bed recuperating physically and emotionally, though whether or not she'll ever do the latter is debatable. Is she a bad person? Should we have laws on the books that tell Caroline to sacrifice herself for her unborn child? Can a childless man like myself ever truly understand the ordeal through which she suffered and should I or any man have the right to put on our religious blinders which permit no shades of grey so that we can judge people like Caroline? If ALL abortion was illegal as some in this country want, Caroline would be dead now. Her two children would be motherless and what moral truth would we have preserved in her demise?<br />
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Caroline is a real person whose name I changed to protect her dignity and anonymity. She is not the face of abortion many see when they pontificate about how immoral it is, but maybe she should be one of the people whom both sides of the debate should consider.<br />
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<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-80974410975683386812018-09-28T17:38:00.000-07:002018-09-28T17:47:20.500-07:00I Figure...(an updated "Modest Proposal")<br />
(OBVIOUS SATIRE)<br />
<br />
<br />
Why is my hard earned money being dumped into schools that don't work? Secretary Devos says she'd get rid of public schools and I say she and president Trump are right! Let companies who want to open schools open 'em. As a country we're all about competition and that competition will make America even greater!<br />
The government running schools or anything else has a name, and that name is COMMUNISM! President Reagan proved that communism don't work when he won the cold war and defeated the Soviet Union all by himself.<br />
<br />
The "tax & spend" liberals like Nancy Pelosi want to waste more of my money on failing<br />
schools. Hell, they even want all the schools to teach the same subjects so they can do some kind of mind control. I don't want nobody in Washington D.C. tellin' me what MY kids ought to learn.<br />
Everybody knows that D.C. is controlled by Hollywood types who hate America, freedom and Jesus. They're gonna want to teach that Muslims don't hate us, that men in dresses are "women", homos should get married and that the government should be able to take my guns away. You know the whole damn liberal agenda.<br />
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I aint go to nobody's college and I turned out alright. Hell, they don't do nothin' in college but read books anyway. Books are boring. If you aint talking about the Bible, aint nothing in books I need. People who read books think they're better than everybody else anyway and all they know is what the liberal media and professors want them to know. If they got rid of the liberal public school system I could teach my kids myself. Reading, writing and basic math are all they need to know. If they want to know history I'll tell 'em about the revolutionary war and how the whole country was behind George Washington fighting for freedom.<br />
I'll tell my kids how big government tried to over regulate small businessmen and brought us into a civil war that heroes like Robert E. Lee could have won if they had half the men the Union Army did. The money<br />
<br />
I'm being forced to pay is being WASTED by people who took the bible out of school so they could tell my kids that sins against God are "normal" and we should "accept" and "tolerate" 'em. That money would do more good in my pocket. I could teach my kids useful stuff like fishing and things they can use in real life. You know, useful stuff like gapping your spark plugs or rebuilding a carburetor. This country got to be great by kicking ass in wars not because a bunch of people read books and go to school. Aint nobody trying to keep everybody in school except them weak, socialist countries in Europe that need us to protect 'em and the Chinese.<br />
Hell if the Chinese were so great, they wouldn't be making all our shoes and phones and stuff. #MAGAHarbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-1106895783675384262018-08-06T23:03:00.000-07:002018-08-06T23:25:00.617-07:00Ink out...A friend of mine aspires to run his own small publishing company. Personally I aspire to be a published author of fiction. Just imagine sitting across from Amy Tan, Stephen King, Arthur Golden & Khaled Hosseni and discussing plot twists and character development. Seriously , How cool would that be? My pragmatic and bluntly honest friend (who shall remain nameless) told me that he thinks I'm a damn good writer. Let me preface this by saying that this guy does not hand out compliments. He says what he thinks and I've seen him make people cry. The fact that I'm MUCH bigger than him wouldn't factor in as knowing this guy if he thought my work was garbage he'd most certainly tell me.<br />
He told me that while I might get published by someone other than a glorified vanity press in my lifetime several factors assure that it most certainly won't be the easiest thing. Here's his list and the explanations as to WHY:<br />
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<b>RACISM:</b> The publishing industry is NOT very kind to authors of color. I'm sure someone just saw the word racism and immediately stood up and said "How DARE you" in that exaggerated way that people only seem to do in movies, but here's what I mean.<br />
Feel free to substitute the words "Latino", "Asian" or "Native American" and I'm sure they may fit just as well. I will NOT dispute that there ARE black authors and have been for centuries, but think about the kinds of things they're allowed to publish. While film maker Oscar Micheaux did self publish a few novels. On the whole publishers back in the old days, just as today didn't have the highest opinions of black readers or authors. Publishers want black stories from black authors, meaning our protagonist must be black and the story has to be in some way about the black experience or some struggle we must overcome as black people. If it isn't a "black struggle" it has to be seen as a way of "humanizing" blacks to a liberal white readership who wish to know of our journey pushing cars up hill with ropes because society has decided that we are destined to endure hardships.<br />
What if you're an author of color and your protagonist isn't? Then chances are publishers aren't the least bit interested in you. Apparently The only people who CAN write believable characters of a given ethnic group must BELONG to the aforementioned group unless of course the author is white in WHICH case he's a sensitive artist who understands the struggle of society's outcasts. Someone not familiar with me reading this will more than likely say that I'm probably either a racist, a bad writer or just someone incapable of accepting that the things he writes might not POSSIBLY be WORTH either publishing or reading. Fair enough. Those same people will then point out that Richard Wright and James Baldwin succeeded in being published. I'd then recommend "Black Boy", "Native Son", "The Fire Next Time" and "Go Tell it on the Mountain" to illustrate my point about black writers ONLY being allowed to tell "black" stories.<br />
My indignant critic would then bring up masterful writers like Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, & Toni Morrison among others to prove my ignorance and those amazing crafters of fiction bring me to my next point.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>SEXISM:</b> Publishing fiction in the late 20th century if you're a person of color seems a tad easier if you were born with a uterus. Angry, black feminists are preparing to attack me on this one but my defense is as follows: Women are far smarter and rational than men are. Society (of which the publishing industry is part) would rather deal with women than men. A male dominated society at some point decided that certain work places needed to be more female than male due to the misconception that women are far less to be disagreeable. Look at the workplace at the end of the civil rights movement and with the rise of Affirmative action programs. MANY work places when told to diversify i.e. hire more women AND minorities simply hired female minorities leaving men of color in the dust.<br />
E.g. The AMC Series "Mad Men" took place in a New York ad agency during the sixties. Some rival firm posted an ad saying that the firm around which the show centered was hiring people of color. In the next scene a very timid English man walks into an office filled with professionally dressed black men and women eager to enter the monochromatic setting and the first thing he did was tell the men to go home and simply interviewed women. Black women are some of the most intelligent people on the planet and the publishing industry seemed to buy into the narrative that the black community is run entirely by matriarchs as all black men either abandon our children, get shot & killed committing crimes or simply are incarcerated and can't be there for our children; hence, the women must tell our stories. As a black man raised by his married mother and father I can't begin to tell you how offensive that stereotype is.<br />
I hear a mounting chorus of "There have been and still are black male authors! You have no idea what you're talking about!" I'll go on a limb here and say that if you've read a work by a black male author he's EITHER a politician about to run for president, an athlete, an entertainer or a convicted felon. Books by rappers, athletes and ex cons will get printed because apparently publishers think the only thing in the black male wheelhouse are those skills. The last barrier to a man of color being published?<br />
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<b>Homophobia: </b>This one MAY surprise you a tad, as in this case the presumptions about gay men will GET a gay black man published before his heterosexual counterpart. I could see the blood pressure of readers rise as they read that and before I get accused of generalizing, the stereotype has long been that gay men are more creative than heterosexual men. Some are, but there are heterosexual men like Ralph Lauren who would respectfully disagree.<br />
Let me go on record in saying I have respect for the gay community ESPECIALLY the black gay community. The black community as a whole is pretty conservative religiously and amazingly homophobic. Black gay men have to deal with issues within their own families, churches and peer groups before dealing with the racism that many try to pretend doesn't exist in the gay community. As a heterosexual man I can't pretend I know what that's like and can only go from what friends have told me, but from what I've seen if you're a black gay man with a story to tell in fiction, you'll have a better chance at it than I will. Publishers have just started to see the struggle that gays have endured for thousands of years and want to give gays a voice. I have no issue with this as their stories warrant being told, but are publishers and the literary community treating gay men the same way they treated black intellectuals like Langston Hughes & James Baldwin (both of whom were gay) as brilliant novelties? I'd hate to imagine them suffering that indignation.<br />
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In closing, my friend the aspiring publisher told me not to lose hope in spite of these obstacles as he pointed out that Herman Melville wrote one of the greatest novels ever written, it was barely published and wasn't appreciated until nearly before he died. One never knows which book will be a hit and which won't. Who knows, I might wind up like Stieg Larsson and have someone publish my work to have it become an international best seller AFTER I die! One never knows. Do I write for fortune and fame? Hardly, if I did I would have given up long ago as I have neither of these things. Someone once told me that Stephen King said that if he didn't write, he'd be in a clock tower somewhere with a rifle. Writers simply have to put words on a page, it's the essence of their being. On the off chance that this blog goes viral, and people at big publishing houses read it some would say I've shot my hopes of ever being in black and white in the foot. Well, as I'm not being currently offered any NEA grants, writing fellowships or book deals and literary agents aren't currently knocking on my door I can hardly cry over losing the notoriety which I don't have and can only hope that if any of the big publishing houses DO read this that they take that which I've said here with a grain of salt unless they're perfectly happy printing celebrity cook books and books containing celebrity selfies, purses and pets.<br />
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<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-35806368541637315202018-07-20T16:36:00.001-07:002018-07-21T01:27:36.165-07:00The Trip When I was younger and believe it or not less jaded I had a great deal of trust for people. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't that naive person who accepted EVERYTHING people had ever told him as gospel, but I was FAR more inclined to take someone who seemed "nice" at their word.<br />
When I was young and stupid and in California, I found myself in a shop where I encountered a gorgeous Filipino woman whom I thought had to have been the most beautiful human being I'd EVER seen. We talked for a few minutes and simply clicked. She gave me her phone number and when I got back to Texas, we kept in touch and talked at least once a month.<br />
She kept asking me when I'd make it back to the west coast so she could show me HER city. I was reluctant, but she eventually convinced me to make the trip. The plan was I'd fly in, she'd pick me up at the airport and I'd spend a week with her and her family. What could possibly go wrong? I got off a plane at the airport excited to see my friend again. I immediately called her at work and she told me to wait in the pick up area. I was on a cloud. A group of REALLY flirty, underage Australian girls kept me company as I waited for my ride and asked me to find them at their hotel to party with them. As I've never aspired to BE a statutory rapist or even be accused of being one I politely declined. I waited for my friend. After four hours I realized my friend wasn't coming, I called her house and no one answered. I took a cab to the address she'd given me and apparently surprised her family who had NO IDEA that I was coming. She wasn't there and according to her family she'd left earlier and was "staying with friends."<br />
Needless to say I couldn't stay with her family. I had a friend who lived in her city and called him. I told him what had happened and within' 15 minutes he was there and picked me up. PROBLEM. He was NOT at his home. He and his wife were separated and going through a divorce and he was at his parents home and told me I was more than welcome to stay there. I'd met his parents once before. His father was a likable sort, his mother on the other hand was, let's just say unpleasant. He woke me up the next morning to join him for breakfast and his mother seemed to have a million questions for me, none of them were either friendly or what one would consider a normal inquiry. It felt like a police interrogation. I was waiting for his dad to come in and say "Okay...we know you did it, just tell us who was in on it with ya and where you buried the body. You don't want my partner angry."<br />
My friend and his wife had been separated for maybe two weeks and we were talking about his ending marriage. I figured all I could do was listen so I did. As I did I held my tongue because I remembered what his wife had told me about her then mother in law. "You don't know Stella." (not her real name) she said. : "She's being nice now, but she's a controlling, obnoxious old bitch who can't mind her own business. She's truly a horrible person. If you ever get to know her You'll truly see what I mean." At the time I dismissed it as a wife who disliked her mother in law. Wife dislikes mother in law? Shocker right? My second day at their home some guest came over, one of whom was a charming young woman who was roughly a couple of years older than I was. I flirted with her. It wasn't some crude come on peppered with innuendo. I merely flirted with her, she politely declined and I figured you lose some...you lose some. What I didn't KNOW was that my friend's mom wanted to hook him up with the young lady in question. He seemed disinterested but that didn't matter. I would later learn from the friend's ex wife that his mom was more than just a tad racist so the idea of a black guy she didn't know staying in her home...AND getting familiar with the daughter of a friend of hers was more than she could take. She wanted me out of their home. She'd gotten contact info out of me during her earlier interrogation and called ...MY MOM and gave her some bullshit story about them remodeling and things being hectic around the house and it "not being a good time."<br />
Luckily I had relatives who lived not far away and one of my cousins came to get me and I spent the rest of my week with them. My friend's (now my former friend) mother told him something (to this day I still don't know what) and the last time we spoke he acted as if I had pissed in his breakfast cereal. Everything his wife had ever told me about his mother came flooding back. I believed that she was a good person, because I WANTED to believe it, just as I WANTED to believe that the beautiful girl who had invited me to spend a week with her and her family was a good person. I'd wasted a week of my life to learn that I was FAR too trusting and that someone whom I THOUGHT was a friend was a mama's boy who probably still has his mother micromanaging his life. His mother Stella? I came to realize that her former daughter in law was right. She was a control freak who despised anyone or anything she couldn't control. While I would respect her, I didn't strike her as someone she could either manipulate or control. The ex wife also said something 10 minutes after I met his mother for the first time that tattooed itself unto my brain. She said: "Stella's an asshole." I'd never heard this woman swear and she didn't have a negative thing to say about anyone else she'd ever met, but called her mother in law an "asshole."<br />
As I was boarding a plane back to Hobby airport in Houston, I realized that Stella was not only an asshole, but she was the kind of asshole whom proctologists discuss at at their conventions as they compare notes on anuses. I spoke to the girl who invited me one last time after I returned home. She gave me a weak apology and I can only hope that karma repaid her in spades for lying to me. My "friend" and I lost touch and I figure if two men who are supposed to be friends have an issue and one won't listen to the other, then he's not worth the energy that either man invested in the friendship in the first place. I wish him no ill will and only hope all these years later that he FINALLY stopped being his mother's marionette. As for Stella? She was either in her late 60s or early 70s when this happened. If she's still alive, I'll wager she's still being the world's most MASSIVE asshole to the poor nurses and home healthcare workers whom god is punishing by subjecting them to her. Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-59752064465874457662018-06-29T05:59:00.000-07:002018-06-29T05:59:07.054-07:00Board of Education(Names in this piece have been changed not to "protect the innocent" but rather so petty people don't attempt to sue me for libel)<br />
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<br />
Ever sing the alphabet song as a kid as a way of learning your letters? For those whose first language isn't English, we Americans as children learned the alphabet by setting it to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" since we knew it already. At five I LOVED the alphabet song and found it fascinating that you could put letters together and make words. I loved reading in first and second grade. My father told me I was wasting money on school book fairs and mom would defend me and tell him to leave me alone. If I wanted a book mom would make sure I'd get it. Love ya mom.<br />
Sadly 3rd grade would be the point where the alphabet betrayed me. The easiest way to make a seating chart for a room full of kids is guess what...the alphabet and unfortunately the alphabet seated me directly behind a kid named Phil (not his real name). I LIKED school, but this would be the one year I can honestly say I wouldn't relive. Phil sat directly in front of me and one day he stood up in class and punched me in the face. I mentioned it to our teacher who might have been oblivious to the whole thing and her response wasn't "Phil go to the office!" or "Phil...hallway...NOW!" but rather "Jesse...no one likes a tattle tale." Sometimes when we were working on assignments, Phil would turn around in his desk and simply glare at me.<br />
This would be the part in this story where i tell you that Phil and I had some kind of history, like we had been friends and I broke his favorite toy or said something about his grandmother or something and he hated me from that point on. This WOULD be where that happened if it were in fact the case, but sadly it wouldn't be true. I had been indifferent towards Phil and simply regarded him as a kid in my class. I neither liked nor disliked him. I hadn't said ANYTHING to the guy and did nothing to antagonize him in any way. For reasons I still don't know to this day he simply enjoyed hitting me. One rainy fall day, Phil simply stood up in front of my desk with his fist balled up. I ignored him as I always did, when without warning he flipped my desk sideways, straddled me as I was trapped in it then started punching me in the face without mercy. Our teacher who'd ignored Phil's treachery to that point finally moved in and yanked him off me. She told me to get up and then dragged us BOTH to the office.<br />
I protested and asked why I was being dragged into the office and was told "WE DON'T FIGHT IN MY CLASS." I tried to tell her that it wasn't a fight but rather Phil attacking me and she simply ignored me. The nurse gave me a huge icepack and and a Popsicle for some strange reason. Phil looked at her angrily and asked: "How come I don't get one?" He wanted to be rewarded for attacking me and surprisingly he was. Moments later we found ourselves sitting in the Vice Principal's office and she paddled both me AND Phil. I asked her why me and was given the simple one word answer "Fighting." I continued to assert my innocence. "Ma'am. I wasn't fighting him. I was sitting in my desk, when he flipped it over and started hitting me." My daring to speak offended her. "Mr. Handy, you expect me to believe that he just started hitting you for NOTHING?"<br />
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"That's what happened." Phil just sat there brooding. When the Assistant Principal asked Phil why he hit me he growled "I just don't like him." The Assistant Principal told him he didn't have to like me, but was going to leave me alone. She then told both of us to say we're sorry, shake hands and go back to class. I looked at her and wondered how stupid she must have been and asked: "He hit me for NOTHING. Why do I have to say I'm sorry to HIM?" and was told<br />
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"Because I said so." To my credit I didn't apologize but rather extended my hand in defeat to give Phil the handshake I was being ordered to give when he reached back and punched me in the face again. The Assistant Principal immediately sent me and my ice pack back to class, paddled Phil again then sent him moment's later. When I returned to class we were working on something new called multiplication which the teacher REFUSED to explain to me and simply gave me a zero for being unable to do. For the rest of the school year, Phil would bully me and even had a couple of friends JOIN him in bullying me. Our ever supportive teacher simply told me that "no one likes a tattle tale" whenever I mentioned any of this to her.<br />
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In the fall when we made the transition from 3rd to 4th grade I learned two things I didn't want to know. The first was that alphabetically groups were to remain in tact and that Phil and I would be in the same 4th grade class and secondly, that we were going to be assigned to Mrs Blackmon's class. Mrs Blackmon, was short, loud and mean. All the kids were terrified of her. The way it worked back in those days you showed up at your 3rd grade class on the first day of 4th grade and your new teacher came to get you. When Mrs Blackmon came to get us the entire group's response was "oh no". She let it be known that the only person who got a vote in her class...was her and that we would respect it and as we were already afraid of her we responded with a resounding "yes ma'am." One day 3 weeks into the school year, Phil stood up and walked over to my desk and stood before me with his fist at the ready. He started at me the way someone does when you owe them money when Mrs Blackmon said: "Sit down Phil." He ignored her. "Phil I said sit down." he continued to ignore her. what happened next would improve my school year and solve my Phil problem. Mrs Blackmon reached into her desk and pulled out an old worn, wooden paddle and said: "Let's go Phil." She got another teacher as a witness and we could hear Phil being paddled in a nearby restroom. They re-entered class and Phil resumed standing in front of my desk even MORE angry. Mrs Blackmon told him to sit down again and he continued to ignore her. "This is the last time I'm going to tell you boy." she warned Phil. He ignored her again and was escorted back to the bathroom and was paddled again. She sat Phil back painfully in his desk and told him that if he as much as looked at me for the rest of the school year that he would get more of the same. He never bothered me again.<br />
I can't help but notice that many of the discipline problems that exist now DIDN'T exist when corporal punishment was still in schools. Do I advocate physical abuse? No, but I witnessed two approaches being taken on Phil. Sitting and talking with him which had no effect whatsoever, the threat of physical consequences which proved to be effective. That's not to say that one practice is superior to the other. Some kids CAN be given a "time out" or be "spoken to", others might benefit from someone attempting to give them a whack on the backside. For what it's worth, Phil never bothered anyone after that.Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-75817155099568395522018-06-19T09:46:00.003-07:002018-06-19T09:46:41.706-07:00Conservative or Liberal? Pass the Remote<br />
While you'll never see me marching in a "pride" parade, I think gay men and lesbians should NOT be legally mistreated simply because of their sexuality and believe that they should be able to walk down city streets without fear of violent, ignorant people attacking them. I believe they deserve the same rights as everyone else.<br />
Some would call me a liberal because of that, but given that I'm not exactly in a warm and fuzzy place with the transgendered community my "liberal" friends think I need to move into the 21st century. Will I ever be in that "warm fuzzy" place with "women" who identify as men and "men" who identify as women? I don't know. I won't say "no" but can't say yes...yet.<br />
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I DO NOT believe that The United States of America was founded on the principal of religious freedom. I believe that the British heard about how much gold the Spanish had found in Mexico and South America and came HERE in hopes of finding it. I believe they gave land to a bunch of fundamentalist Christians partially to get rid of them and in part to have a presence in North America just incase gold was found, they could claim they had "settlers" here. This country was NOT founded as some religious haven and I do NOT believe that religion and government should EVER intermingle.<br />
Some would say based on those statements that I'm an atheist and CLEARLY the "Godless liberal" that "Patriots" love to hate, but the fact that I pray every day and attend services every Sunday and even say prayers for those whom consider themselves my enemies should deflate that argument. I honestly believe that anyone who chooses to practice a religion or wishes to practice none at all should be able to do so. Thomas Jefferson felt we as nation should NOT have a religious litmus test and in that I agree with him.<br />
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I believe anyone who isn't a criminal, is of sound mind and has no intention of harming others should be able to buy a weapon. Some would say that makes me a conservative, but because I have no issue with registering my weapon, getting a license for it or even going through extensive background checks for it, many of my very conservative friends would give the "You're either with us or again us." argument and would treat me as a pariah. Should I have the right to defend myself and my home or to go hunting if I choose? Yes. Should I be able to own more powerful weapons than law enforcement officials? Meh?<br />
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I love my flag and respect my nation's armed forces (thanks GI bill) and rise when my anthem is played or pledge is spoken some would say that's a pretty "conservative" point of view, BUT given that I'm not under the delusion that these United States have EVER been fair to indigenous people, Africans, Catholics, Jews, Asians or Muslims. At various points in this country's history, roughly until 1964 one could kill a person of color without fear of being prosecuted. I was born five years AFTER this country decided to stop people from lynching black men to "teach them a lesson", "keep the others in line" or just for Sunday entertainment.<br />
I love my country, but I'm aware that the last of the Jim Crow laws that wouldn't allow my father to go to certain schools, hold certain jobs, live in certain places or even have a cup of coffee in others were on the books in many states until the year I graduated from highschool in the late 1980s. I and a white guy, whose background is identical to mine can commit the same crime, go through the SAME court system and even face the SAME judge and I would more than likely get a FAR harsher punishment.<br />
I get pissed when I see people stomping on, burning or disrespecting my flag, but I respect their right to do so. Much like my religious views, my views on the flag and our nation as a whole are my own. I don't have the right to force these views on anyone, as respect their right to not only disagree with me but to essentially piss me off.<br />
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I won't say that we Americans as a nation have gotten "combative". This nation was BUILT on combat. Americans are ALWAYS fighting among ourselves and will always be, but sadly we've gotten to a point where everyone wants to say "you're either with us or against us" and at the end of the day we can't afford to do that if we want to remain the "great" nation we perceived ourselves as being for most of our existence. So when asked if I'm "liberal" or "conservative" my response will remain "Pass the remote."<br />
<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-28764842664488014872018-03-12T14:23:00.001-07:002018-03-12T14:23:37.748-07:00Western Civilization...who needs it?<br />
The other day I heard some guy going on about how great western civilization was and I kept quiet as I'd been relatively indifferent but gave it a little reflection and realized my ambivalence towards it. <br />
We have to study it in school no matter what continent we live on and acknowledge it's greatness if not it's superiority, but lets think about it for a moment. If we examine the nature of Western Civilization it is one of victors and victims of the weak and strong. Strength is determined in the western world by NUMBERS. Either you PHYSICALLY outnumber someone with other people or you have more of something else than he has e.g. gold, diamonds, weapons resistance to a particular disease.<br />
European history and the governments founded by those of European ancestry are about the survival of the fittest and the amassing of power by any means. This is hardly a secret, but I find it peculiar that whenever someone mentions these concepts they are immediately treated as pariahs. Niccolo Machiavelli outlined it in his work "The Prince" when he obsequiously attempted to curry favor with the Florentine power brokers that were the De Medici family. They found him a bit too ruthless for their liking and deemed him untrustworthy. By contrast Charles Darwin mention the concept of "Natural Selection" i.e. "survival of the fittest" and was criticized openly. To this day there exist organizations whose sole purpose seems to be a dedication to Darwin's work. Why? My theory is that the true nature of western civilization is the amassing of power and maintaining it by any means at ones disposal.<br />
Feudalism existed in Europe as well as Asia and in both those in charge used fear to govern those they considered beneath them. They kept them ignorant of the world around them and illiterate. The logic? The less people know the easier they are to control. Look at any feudal society or modern dictatorship and you'll see a handful of landed literati lording over superstitious masses.<br />
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In the United Kingdom a class system was created that was so strong that one of the questions one might possibly be asked (and judged by) remains "What does/did your father do?" Translation? Your self worth should be determined by how useful your family has been to those with money. In the United States we claim to be a nation of laws where all are created equal, but ARE we? The United States like MOST western nations was founded by very wealthy men who convinced the very poor to venture west to take land from the Indians then when that had been accomplished ventured forward, bought as much land as they could from them and took their places of power.<br />
Western civilization didn't CREATE genocide and slavery but certainly had no difficulty exploiting them as "the ends justified the means" as Machiavelli once stated.<br />
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Is western civilization xenophobic, genocidal and racist? I would argue no, because exploiting racism does not make one racist, it's a mere strategy to attain an advantage. What's racism? A system by which one group (usually a majority) asserts its superiority over a minority which is more than likely of a different race. If they're the SAME race but of different nationalities ethnically then it's nationalism, same horse...but of a different name. Racism and nationalism were created by the powerful not because they hated anyone, but because they loved power. Consider something if you are the person in charge and paying pittances to your employees your fear is them uniting to demand fair wages. You need wedges between them to maintain power. If you get one group to resent another for something as stupid as the color of their skin or which arrived in the country first there will be no unity and you remain in power.<br />
If you're in a homogeneous society they you use religious beliefs or occupations and class differences but there must ALWAYS be a wedge. If you were to meet the richest people in the world you'll note that they would happily associate with rich people from any other culture before they embraced someone of their race and nationality who was impoverished.<br />
The rich harbor only one prejudice and it is against poverty and the poor which is very ironic. The rich detest the poor but NEED them. If one considers the comparative and superlative world in which we live, if there were no poor people, there would be no rich. If everyone had the exact same amount of EVERYTHING...there would be no classes. I'm not speaking out on behalf of "communism" as it doesn't work, but consider something, in order for what you have to be worth something you must control the supply thereof. If you don't have all of something or at least most of it you're just like everyone else whether that commodity is land, cattle, goats, gold, diamonds or pieces of paper with images on them.<br />
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"What about political systems and elections"? Those with the money and power create political systems to give the masses who now have some degree of literacy the illusion of running society as a whole. It's like adults giving a noisy child a toy to silence them. When the Chinese Exclusion act was passed in 1882 it wasn't because wealthy Americans had issues with the Chinese any more than the late 19th century Jim Crow laws had anything with the wealthy and influential hating blacks. Both laws were examples of the power brokers allowing the poor to sow divisions among themselves to their benefit both Jim Crow and the exclusion of the Chinese remained until both like slavery before them became economically unsustainable. There was a point in Australian history when there were literally bounties on the skulls of it's indigenous aboriginal people, but much as with America's natives there came a point when those pointing the guns when told by those signing paychecks that they had to realize that they had "won" and killing no longer served a purpose.<br />
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In conclusion, I would tell those who wish to call western civilization "racist" to consider that racism and every other "ism" is a device used to maintain power. Prejudice and hated are easy tools to use on the simple minded because thinking for one's self requires effort.<br />
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<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-38448809125006790032018-02-22T17:38:00.000-08:002018-02-24T12:02:30.134-08:00Where's Ralph?When I was eight years old my brother and sisters and I were going to Lake Charles to spend time with our cousins. My cousin had a buddy named Ralph who lived next door with his brother whose name I can NEVER remember. Going to visit our cousin was always fun because Ralph's brother was around my age and all of us enjoyed playing together. We'd even chase fire flies to see which of us would be lucky enough to get one in a jar to use as a night light.<br />
A trip to Lake Charles is maybe a two hour drive unless my dad was behind the wheel. Dad loved to stop EVERYWHERE along the way so the two hour trip usually took AT LEAST FOUR. All the way I ignored my older sisters fighting and just thought of playing with my cousin, Ralph and his brother. When we arrived at 10 pm however, something just wasn't right. My cousin wasn't home and his mother (my aunt) pulled my mom aside and made sure we kids stayed in the car. Ralph's house next door was dark and mom got us all into the house quickly. My cousin showed up but wasn't his cheerful self. He looked distressed and as if he'd been crying. I asked "where's Ralph?" He was trying to speak to us, but couldn't, he simply couldn't talk. We turned on the television and the first thing we saw was our cousin's house and 10 seconds into a reporter going into a script she'd written my cousin started crying and said: "That's not what happened! That's not how it happened!" before running into his room and sobbing.<br />
What we didn't know was that prior to our arrival that our cousin and Ralph had been snooping around the house and found my uncle's shot gun and my cousin accidentally shot Ralph, killing him. I didn't know how to react I was saddened and shocked. I would never see my friend again. My cousin eventually regained the spring in his step years later, but I think on some level he never forgave himself. He hung with a rough crowd when he grew up, but never carried a gun that I knew of. He was with one of our cousins when he was gunned down and someone murdered him with a knife a few years later.<br />
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Guns were omnipresent in my childhood. My mother carried a derringer in her purse, my father carried a snub-nosed 38 in his truck and had a shotgun in the house and I would see guns everywhere. The neighborhood where I grew up wasn't the worst in Houston, but it wasn't the best. By the time I was in High school there were more guns and some crime. I would see people on Fridays and not see them on Monday and when I asked about them I was told "Oh man. You didn't hear? Oh, he got SHOT Saturday!" I was once sitting on a city bus when some disturbed man took out a 44 magnum which he fired into the air as we drove off. I attended more than one house party where someone pulled a gun and started shooting and I WISH I could say I never had a gun pointed AT me or had to hit the deck because some imbecile insisted on shooting in the general direction of a crowd in which I'd been standing at someones home or some club.<br />
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As a stupid young Marine I had to carry a rifle while in combat training. We LITERALLY had to take it EVERYWHERE with us. If you went to the head (rest room) your weapon was with you. if you had to take a shower, your weapon was with you. If you went from point A to point B you had your weapon WITH you. You ate with it, it was in your sleeping bag and if you misplaced it, corporals and sergeants humiliate you by dressing you down in front of anyone within ear shot, then would make you scale a huge, steep hill the following morning while everyone else was eating chow. Their logic? It was important and knowing where it was would mean life or death. They made me realize that a weapon wasn't a toy, it was a responsibility and not one to be taken lightly.<br />
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A couple of years ago I was at work when I learned that one of our honor students, an eleventh grader had been shot and his body had been left in a ditch. He had attended a party and the rumor was that some imbecile was angered by the fact that his girlfriend was looking at our friend so he shot him to get back at his girlfriend for daring to cast her eyes on another guy. He was never apprehended.<br />
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I'm often asked my views on the 2nd amendment and my views are complicated. I own a weapon but don't hunt, however I do go to the range a couple of times a year, but wouldn't feel lost if I didn't. I think if someone WANTS a gun he/she should have the right to own one; however, I'm of the opinion that there are certain members of society as a whole who shouldn't be trusted with with forks and spoons much less a firearm.<br />
Owning a gun IS a right for Americans but it's also one hell of a responsibility. Should people have to pass some kind of psychiatric screening before getting a gun? No, but if a guy has been in and out of prison or mental institutions, we should PROBABLY try to come between him/her and a gun. Someone points out America's founding fathers and their "wisdom." I respect the founders but take them with a grain of salt. After ratifying their constitution James Madison had to add a Bill of Rights to it comprised of ten amendments including the much debated Second Amendment giving all Americans access to a weapon. The founders for all their good points DID NOT see free men of color OR Indians as "people" as evident that they were NOT to be counted as part of the country's population. Black men weren't recognized as citizens until 1865 and native Americans weren't until 1924. There are many who scarcely acknowledge the citizenship OF men/women of color much less think they should have guns. In fact many of the earliest restrictive gun laws were put into place SPECIFICALLY to prevent men of color from getting a gun.<br />
Do I have a concealed handgun permit? I do NOT. Why? In California until 1967 frontier gun laws were on the books which allowed ANY citizen to openly carry a weapon, The Black Panther Party For Self Defense did precisely that and conservative lawmakers drafted the Mulford act and Governor Ronald Reagan happily signed it saying: "There is no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons." At the time of the law's passage the National Rifle Association SUPPORTED the law.<br />
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http://time.com/4431356/nra-gun-control-history/<br />
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Mass media has long painted heroes as being white knights on white horses with guns. I'm not trying to sound like a racist and apologize if someone sees the following as such, but all to often, it looks like in these United States a white guy openly carrying a weapon is simply exercising his 2nd amendment right; whereas a man of color is suspect. IN 2016 a deranged former soldier from the upper levels of a parking garage opened fire on police at what had been a peaceful protest. There had been a man of color on the ground with an AR-15 on his shoulder at the protest and lots of film and video of him had been shot. He was shown on news channels, but a conservative news outlet called him a "person of interest" and one commentator even called him a suspect until he saw himself on television and contacted police to assure them that he was in NO WAY involved. A Minnesota cafeteria manager named Fernando Castile who had a concealed handgun permit was shot by a traffic cop and died at the scene. Castile had no criminal record, but conservative media outlets began to say that he was a suspect in a robbery.<br />
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https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/08/confirmed-philando-castile-was-an-armed-robbery-suspect-false-media-narrative-now-driving-cop-killings/<br />
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It was later revealed that he WASN'T and that the officer involved simply pulled him over because the ACTUAL robber (like Castile) was a black man with dreadlocks. By that logic I'm a suspect in that robbery as that's a very generic description of me. I've never been to Minnesota, but it's nice to know that if I go there and get shot my face will be flashed across tv screens and I'll be called a "robbery suspect" so that my killing will be justified. Actual media outlets later revealed this deadly mistake.<br />
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officer-thought-philando-castile-was-robbery-suspect-tapes-show-n607856<br />
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I don't carry a concealed handgun because it's yet ANOTHER thing I'd have to explain and honestly I just don't want a REASON to get shot because someone thinks I MAY be someone else and happen to be armed, which I know could happen regardless of my race.<br />
I KNOW the counter argument to everything I've said. The shootings that were part of my life as a young man were committed by criminals who more than likely had illegal weapons. Okay I'll give my critics that. MOST gun owners are law abiding citizens, YES MOST gun owners ARE law abiding citizens and SHOULD NOT be punished every time some crazy a-hole goes on a shooting spree. I like guns but wouldn't wither and die if I never fired another one. Does that mean I want to take others guns away? No.<br />
The Swiss made military service compulsory. Two years in the military and soldiers are sent home with their rifles and made part of the militia in the event of an attack. Most adults in Switzerland own a weapon but when was the last time there was a shooting in a theatre there or a school? They are an educated people and educated people are less likely to commit crimes. I don't advocate banning guns and think we as a nation simply need to be more EDUCATED, not just about GUNS but in general. As an industrialized nation we don't have a great literacy rate. <br />
The number of Americans who are functionally literate is NOWHERE near as high as it SHOULD be for the world's LEADING economy. American drop out rates are high and unlike our counterparts in Europe and Asia we're taking money FROM education. Does that mean there are no crimes in these countries? No, every country has prisons, but the rest of the industrialized world doesn't balk about educating its citizens.<br />
More over, American school systems spend more on football stadiums, and coaching staffs for baseball, basketball, football and hockey than they do on LIBRARIES and books. Here in Texas when there was a budget shortage education suffered and the first people fired were school librarians. One would swear that schools were supposed to be places of LEARNING or something rather than training grounds for men who want to play a sport for a living.<br />
Our mass media tells us the man with the gun is strong, the man with the book is weak and little is done to dissuade that belief. Shoot first, and ask questions later seems to be a popular American belief, but when everyone has access to a gun, but education has little if any value you've a recipe for disaster. For what it's worth, we may examine a warrior culture which believed a man's weapon to be so inseparable from who he was, that it was LITERALLY considered part of his SOUL. The culture which held that belief was the samurai. The warriors in question also took pride in their knowledge of Chinese culture, their ability to appreciate and write poetry, their ability to paint/draw, the ability to play an instrument, knowledge of dance, their appreciation of the theatre and the number of written materials they owned. Their abilities exceeded the ability to use bladed weapons and archer's bows. The samurai took pride in being warriors who appreciated scholarship and the arts, why can't we?Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-726565757105398294.post-58085281459623316602018-02-14T22:36:00.001-08:002018-02-15T17:03:23.661-08:00Great American "Dead Pool" (Satire)I write this blog on Wednesday February 14th, 2018. It's Valentine's day and the VERY first news story I heard upon turning on my television when I walked into the house wasn't about someone buying a ridiculously expensive gift for their significant other, or of some elderly couple who've spent the past 70 years together and never let the romance leave their union.<br />
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Rather than hearing about the candy, floral and greeting card industry holiday that IS St. Valentines day, I heard about some kid in Florida who showed up at his old high school with an AR-15 and decided to shoot up the place. Over the past few years I've turned on my TV immediately after work and heard about guys with handguns and AR-15s and AK-47s shooting up shopping malls, movie theatres, colleges campuses concerts and work places and my law makers always have the same reaction. They all come out and offer their prayers and condolences. They all show up at memorials and candle light vigils, then they go back to their legislative bodies and argue over what should be done. The arguing turns ugly then is forgotten until a month later when it happens again and they repeat the process.<br />
Let me give my reader a little more perspective here. Men (the shooters are RARELY EVER women) have shot up hospitals and clinics, ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS and even a public park where the members of the United States Congress were playing baseball. Those SAME Congressmen then went on to argue about existing and possible gun laws and ultimately changed the subject two weeks later.<br />
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There are those who try to politicize the shootings. I will NOT attempt to do so in this essay. I will NOT blame a religion, ideology, nationality or ethnic group for all these shootings. I will simply say they are a symptom of an apathetic society which would rather watch our citizenry die than even contemplate enforcing existing gun laws OR attempting to put safeguards in place to make sure that the handful of people who SHOULD NOT have access to spoons to consume pudding (for fear that they could kill some with one) don't ever get to possess a fire arm.<br />
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I imagine the cynics among you will ask me for MY solution. Well I have one. All of us can bitch and say that something should be done, but who can come up with an actual solution. Well to silence my critics I DO have a solution. My solution is THIS, a nation wide DEAD POOL!<br />
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We will pass NO laws infringing upon ANY citizen's right to own ANY fire arm, pyrotechnic, ordnance or other deadly device. In fact we should allow citizens to own FULLY automatic weapons, hand grenades, land mines, artillery pieces, anti tank guns, anti aircraft guns, mortars, flame throwers and even the elusive exploding and rarely seen exploding herring of Ecuador.<br />
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Our dead pool? Well, It will operate like a lottery, and be headed by British bookmakers who have NO STAKE in American gun policy or violence as our OWN Las Vegas odds makers MAY be a tad biased.<br />
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Participants have to fill out forms and answer the following questions about the shooting.<br />
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A Weapon: What was used? Gun? Knife? Sherman tank? Banana?<br />
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B. Sex of the shooter: Man? Woman? Tran-sexual? Maybe the shooter's a hermaphrodite!<br />
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C. Location/Geography: Is it in the north, south, Midwest. southwest, Hawaii? Guam? Puerto Rico? come on pick a place!<br />
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D. Location: School, house of worship, work place, concert, restaurant? Maybe you'll pic a ball pit at a pizza place and luck up!<br />
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E. Religion/ Nationality/ Ideology: Why did the shooter do it? Was he a Muslim? A Mexican? A Mexican Muslim with a bad haircut who got tired of being called "Dukakis"? Was the shooter a racist? A member of a group that wishes to popularize ball room dancing or just some guy with a bad overbite who felt he wasn't being fairly portrayed in national media?<br />
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F, Reason: Did the shooter claim some deity made him/her do it? Did he blame society as a whole? Was some institutional 'ism" to blame? Did he/she simply want to be on TV for shooting someone?<br />
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If you get all six correct you get a HUGE pile of cash to be paid out by the state in which the incident occurs, the individuals serving as their District attorneys and ALL of their elected officials on the local, county, state and FEDERAL level!<br />
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Since we can't STOP our countrymen from slaughtering one another with high powered weapons, let's AT LEAST allow citizens who are law abiding win fabulous prizes guessing when a group of their fellow Americans will be used as target practice! No one gets their gun taken away! No one with a six foot, psychotic, imaginary rabbit as a best friend has "big government" tell him/her they CAN'T have a gun or any OTHER deadly device and we all get a new game of chance, and the best part is our government gets tax revenue from every "winning entry!" It's a HUGE win win!<br />
<br />Harbinger of Truthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00856043707614227685noreply@blogger.com0