#people are going to look at enslaved africans walking into the sea

[spider-xan]

Like, obviously, there are a lot of uncomfortable patriarchal overtones of, 'us weak women need strong men to kill us in wartime to keep us out of enemy hands' that I don't blame people for being upset about, and ofc it's not feminist (no one has claimed it's feminism!), and I like it or agree with it, but there is a LONG history of people - including men! - choosing death by suicide or assisted suicide via their own terms over enslavement, torture, and a far more brutal, humiliating murder at the hands of the enemy, when those are the only two choices, and for the most part, it's neither feminist nor anti-feminist, but done out of pragmatism or even rebellion? Even today, I regularly see people say that given the choice, they would choose death over barely surviving in a nuclear wasteland and likely dying horrifically in some other way.

[my-awesome-roadtrip]

Day 21 : 14th July 2022 - Montgomery AL

Our awesome road trip is nearly over and I’m looking forward to a good ole Sunday Roast !  So today we are in Montgomery Alabama, the home town of Martin Luther King Jr, for our last two nights.

We were a little late leaving this morning, however after a very nice breakfast we were on our way and headed straight into another rain storm. Oh my, can the rain come down hard around here.

Our destination today was The Legacy Museum.

The last time we were here, around 5 years ago, there was a rumour that the Equal Justice Initiative was going to build  something to commemorate the millions of black people that were illegally forced to the USA from their home country of Africa.

The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is situated on a site in Montgomery where Black people were forced to labor in bondage and is blocks away from one of the most prominent slave auction spaces in America, It is also steps away from the rail station where tens of thousands of Black people were trafficked during the 19th century.    In fact if I looked out of my hotel room right now and I was transported back 200 years I would see a long line of shackled  men and women walking towards the slave pens.

There was no photography allowed which I feel is appropriate and the Museum was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, no one spoke, only the occasional whisper as things were pointed out.

On entering the Museum you are faced with a gigantic screen with wave upon wave of water crashing towards you, the sound was incredible , I felt I was immersed within this turbulent sea, imagine being on a ship on this ferocious ocean.

During the international slave trade 35000 ships transported 12.5 million Africans to America on a journey known as the “middle passage “. They were crammed into holds no more than 5 feet high and there they stayed festering in their own juices. They voyage lasted anything from 80 days to 3 months and more than half these captives died of disease and malnutrition.

Imagine the state of the hold, dark, stinking and filthy with hardly room to turn, your arms and legs shacked and to each other.

Out of the 12.5 million transported 1.5 million died

We walked from gallery to gallery, watched film after film and heard story after story of the brutality men, women and children endured in these unsanitary conditions.

I had no idea that central New York, Broadway and  Wall Street was built on the backs of slaves,I also had no idea that almost the whole of eastern America was built by slave labour.

The information was shocking to learn, and even when Slavery was abolished in the North,  the so called slave free states and also many countries across the world, still continued to profit from the blood of the African people.

Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding, rape, and imprisonment.

We stayed in this Museum for over 4 hours and still we could’ve have stayed longer but a combination of air conditioning and being soaked  during  our walk from the car park forced us to leave…. Into glorious sunshine and 80 degrees.

Our next stop was The National Memorial for Peace and Justice about a 5 minute drive away.

This Memorial commemorates the black lynchings in America and is absolutely stunning in its simplicity and power

There are 805 hanging steel rectangles representing each of the U.S. counties where a documented lynching took place with the names of the lynched men, women and children etched on it together with the date they were so brutally murdered for the slightest infraction. It also includes several sculptures depicting themes related to racial violence.

The further you walk into the Memorial, the higher the rectangles get and as you walk underneath them you suddenly realise they represent  hanging bodies swinging in the breeze.

[padawan-historian]

Maafa comes from the Kiswahili word meaning "tragedy" or "catastrophe." Maafa is used to reference the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade devastated African populations --- an estimated 11 to 12 million people, including were kidnapped (or burglarized) from the African continent. Enslaved Africans came from all walks of life, ranging from nomadic herders and village craftspeople to political prisoners and captured royalty. Women, men, pregnant women, elders, and children like Olaudah Equiano were kidnapped and dragged from their homes.

"The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the  coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor,  and waiting for its cargo.These filled me with astonishment, which was  soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, nor  the feelings of my mind. When I was carried on board I was immediately  handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew, and  I was now persuaded that I had got into a world of bad spirits, and  that they were going to kill me…When I looked round the ship too, and  saw a … a multitude of black people of every description chained  together, everyone of their countenances expressing dejection and  sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate, and, quite overpowered with  horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted."

Different scholars have debated about the full extent of the Maafa. While Western historians tentatively to put the death toll on the Middle Passage at two million souls, both emerging and established research from African, Pan-African, and antiracist scholars (who combine slave ship logs and captains' journals with physical evidence from death marches and shipwrecks) breaks the death toll into two major categories:

Africans who died on the death marches from the interior of the continent: Roughly seven million souls.

Africans who died onboard the slave ships: Roughly eleven million women, children, men, and elders.

To explore the database of slave ships, where they docked, and how many kidnapped Africans made it to the Americas and Caribbean, check out this list

Now, slavery and serfdom existed across Europe already, and indentured servitude was well established in the American, French, and Spanish occupied parts of the Americas. So why Africa? The answer is accessibility. Both Asia and the Middle East were both landlocked and difficult for Europeans unfamiliar with the terrain to traverse --- not to mention the centralized powers that monopolized those areas. Attempts to enslave indigenous people in the Americas proved difficult as well ---- many indigenous people who were kidnapped and forcibly enslaved either succumbed to European diseases or were familiar enough with the area surrounding the colonies to escape and evade capture.

Trade with Africa was already well established with Arab and Asian powers, and the Arab slave trade had already taken root in Central and East Africa. European powers looking to extract wealth and resources from the New World (early stages of capitalism) realized that they needed a large workforce to harvest, mine, and clear land in the Atlantic world (the Americas & Caribbean). Since many established African societies were agrarian in nature and trade with Europe and Asia exposed them to common diseases that devastated indigenous populations across the Atlantic.

These European powers zeroed in on Africa . . .

Sources: Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (2016) & Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962 (1962)

[frangelic999]

Villains of All Nations

     I'm reading a really interesting book about pirates, Villains of All Nations, by Marcus Rediker, and I just want to share some excerpts because it's extremely good. It explains that the terror of piracy was born from a different kind of terror, "practiced by … ministers, royal officials, wealthy men; in short, rulers – as they sought to eliminate piracy as a crime against mercantile property … in truth, the keepers of the state in this era were themselves terrorists of a sort, decades before the word terrorist would acquire its modern meaning … they have become, over the years, cultural heroes, even founding fathers of a sort. Theirs was a terror of the strong against the weak." Pirates, in response, "consciously used terror to accomplish their aims … This they did in the name of a different social order … In truth, pirates were terrorists of a sort. And yet we do not think of them in this way. They have become, over the years, cultural heroes, perhaps antiheroes, and at the very least romantic and powerful figures in an American and increasingly global popular culture. Theirs was a terror of the weak against the strong. It formed one essential part of a dialectic of terror, which was summarized in the decision of the authorities to raise the Jolly Roger above the gallows when hanging pirates: one terror trumped the other." Long post about pirates ahead. Henceforth all bolded text is mine, the rest is from the book:

On the hanging of the pirate William Fly in 1726: Fly, however, did not ask for forgiveness, did not praise the authorities, and did not affirm the values of Christianity, as he was supposed to do, but he did issue a warning … he proclaimed his final, fondest wish: that "all Masters of Vessels might take Warning by the Fate of the Captain (meaning Captain Green) the he had murder'd, and to pay Sailors their Wages when due, and to treat them better; saying, that their Barbarity to them made so many turn Pyrates." Fly thus used his last breath to protest the conditions of work at sea, what he called "Bad Usage." He would be launched into eternity with the brash threat of mutiny on his lips.

 As we will see, poor seamen who turned pirate dramatized concerns of class. Formerly enslaved Africans or African Americans who turned pirate posed questions of race. Women who turned pirate called attention to the conventions of gender. And all people who turned pirate and sailed under "their own dark flag," the Jolly Roger, enacted a highly political play about the nation … When pirates stitched together the black flag, the antinational symbol of a gang of proletarian outlaws, they "declared war against the world."

 The multiethnic freebooters of 1716-26 numbered around four thousand over the decade. They wreaked havoc in the Atlantic system by capturing hundreds of merchant ships, many of which they burned or sank, and all  of which they plundered of valuable cargo. They disrupted trade in strategic zones of capital accumulation – the West Indies, North America, and West Africa – at a time when the recently stabilized and expanding Atlantic economy was the source of enormous profits and renewed imperial power. Usually sailors joined pirate ships after working on merchant and naval ships, where they suffered cramped quarters, poor victuals, brutal discipline, low wages, devastating diseases, disabling accidents, and premature death. Piracy, as we will see, offered the prospect of plunder and "ready money," abundant food and drink, the election of officers, the equal distribution of resources, care for the injured, and joyous camaraderie, all as expressions of an ethic of justice … Piracy may have held out hope for a good life, but it was not to be a long one.

 Many pirates, like Fly ... used the occasion for one last act of subversion. An endless train of pirates walked defiantly to the gallows and taunted the higher powers when they got there. Facing the steps and the rope in the Bahamas in 1718, pirate Thomas Morris expressed a simple wish: to have been "a greater plague to these islands." John Gow, who was a very strong man, broke the gallows rope at his hanging in 1726. He went to "ascend the ladder a second time, which he did with very little concern, dying with the same brutal ferocity which animated all his actions while alive."

 In 1720, when eight members of the crew of Bartholomew Roberts were captured and tried in Virginia, they were rowdy and outrageous ...They went to their deaths bidding defiance to mercy … "When they came to the Place of Execution one of them called for a bottle of wine, and taking a glass of it, he drank Damnation to the Governour and Confusion to the Colony, which the rest pledged."

 The drama played out again and again. When the fifty-two members of Roberts's crew were hanged at Cape Coast Castle in 1722 before a concourse of Europeans and Africans, a group of pirates explained: "They were poor rogues, and so must be hanged while others, no less guilty in another way, escaped." They referred to the wealthy rogues who bilked sailors of their rightful wages and proper food and thereby turned many of them toward piracy.

 When Bartholomew Roberts and his men learned that the governor and council of Nevis had executed some pirates in 1720, they were so outraged that they sailed into Basseterre's harbor, set several vessels on fire, and offered a big bounty to anyone who would deliver the responsible officials to their clutches so that justice could be served … They made good on such bluster when they happened to take a French vessel carrying the governor of Martinique, who had also hanged some members of "the brotherhood." Roberts took revenge by hanging the poor governor from his own yardarm. Thus did the pirates practice terror against the state terrorists. It was a war of nerves – one hanging for another – and constituted a cycle of violence.

On the use of terror by pirates:

Pirates used terror for several reasons: to avoid fighting; to force disclosure of information about where booty was hidden; and to punish ship captains. The first point to be emphasized is that pirates did not want to fight, no matter how bloodthirsty their image was in their own day and in ours. As Stanley Richards has written, "It was their ambition to acquire plunder and live to enjoy the pleasures that it brought them. A battle might deprive them of that ease of life. Hence on the chance occasion when they had to go into action against another ship, it was looked upon by them as almost a repulsive necessity. They were after booty, not blood." … Harsh treatment of those who resist, announced the Boston News-Letter in June 1718, "so intimidates the sailors that they refuse to fight when the pirates attack them." After all, the pirates would ask: why are you risking your life to protect the property of merchants and ship captains who treat you so poorly? … In this practice of violence, pirates were no different from naval or privateering ships, who practiced the same methods. Indeed, a portion of pirate terror was the standard issue of war making, which pirates undertook without the approval of any nation-state … Pirates also practiced violence against the prize ship's cargo, destroying massive amounts of property in the most furious and wanton ways … They descended into the holds of ships like "a Parcel of Furies," slashing boxes and bales of goods with their cutlasses, throwing valuable goods overboard, and laughing uproariously as they did so. They also destroyed a large number of ships … They practiced indirect terror against the owners of mercantile property.

On the pirate social order:

We will see that the early-eighteenth-century pirate ship was a world turned upside down, made so by the articles of agreement that established the rules and customs of the pirates' alternative social order. Pirates "distributed justice," elected their officers, divided their loot equally, and established a different discipline. They limited the authority of the captain, resisted many of the practices of capitalist merchant shipping industry, and maintained a multicultural, multiracial, and multinational social order. They demonstrated quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy.

 For, as it happened, there were not merely two kinds of terror, the terror of the gallows and the terror of the Jolly Roger, but three. To understand William Fly and his dispute with the ministers of Boston, to understand the gallows drama repeated in one Atlantic port after another, and, most important, to understand the very explosion of piracy in the eighteenth century, we must attend to what Fly said of “Bad Usage,” of how his captain and mate used and abused him and his brother tars, treating them “barbarously,” as if they were “dogs.” He was talking about the violent disciplinary regime of the eighteenth-century deep-sea sailing ship, the ordinary and pervasive violence of labor discipline as practiced by the ship captain as he moved the commodities that were the lifeblood of the capitalist world economy. Even though there is no surviving evidence to show exactly what Captain Green did to Fly and the other sailors aboard the Elizabeth to produce the rage, the mutiny, the murder, and the decision to turn pirate, it is not hard to imagine. The High Court of Admiralty records for this period are replete with bloody accounts of lashings, tortures, and killings. Fly was talking about the ship captain as terrorist.

 On the necessity of labor for imperial designs:

The sailor knew that thousands of people were moving and laboring around the Atlantic, some willingly, some unwillingly, with many of them, like himself, subjected to violence. By 1716 a worldwide process of expropriation, called primitive accumulation, had already torn millions of people from their ancestral lands in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. … The enclosure movement and other mechanisms of dispossession had set thousands in motion on the roads and ways of England in particular and Europe in general. Masses of people flocked to the cities, where they found work, frequently as waged laborers, in manufacturing and especially in armies and navies, as war required vast amounts of labor. Hundreds of thousands more would embark for colonial plantations as laborers, whether free or unfree. Expropriation had “freed” millions of workers for redeployment to the far-flung edges of empire, often as indentured servants or slaves, on plantations that would produce what may have been the largest planned accumulation of wealth the world had yet seen. It was said that sugar, the leading and most lucrative Atlantic commodity of the eighteenth century, was made with blood. By 1716 big planters drove armies of servants and slaves as they expanded their power from their own lands to colonial and finally national legislatures. Atlantic empires mobilized labor power on a new and unprecedented scale, largely through the strategic use of violence—the violence of land seizure, of expropriating agrarian workers, of the Middle Passage, of exploitation through labor discipline, and of punishment (often in the form of death) against those who dared to resist the colonial order of things. By all accounts, by 1713 the Atlantic economy had reached a new stage of maturity, stability, and profitability. The growing riches of the few depended on the growing misery of the many.

On the shift in attitude toward pirates:

The sailor knew that the rulers of the Atlantic empires had taken a harsh new view of pirates as the enemies of imperial designs rather than as allies who might help to accomplish them. For much of the seventeenth century, pirates had been indirectly employed by the Netherlands, France, and England to harass Portugal and especially Spain in the New World, as well as to capture a portion of their glittering wealth. Operating largely from Caribbean islands, especially Jamaica, the sea rovers sacked Spanish American ports such as Veracruz and Panama City, repeatedly trashing Catholic churches and in many instances toting back to their ships as much silver plate as they could carry. But by the 1680s ruling-class attitudes had changed. Jamaica’s bigwigs could make more money, more predictable money, by cultivating sugar, and members of Parliament in England sought a more stable and reliable system of international trade. Pirates, who disrupted both projects, began to be hanged in significant numbers in the 1690s. According to historian Max Savelle, the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 “was thought of, both in Europe and in America, as a settlement that would establish a lasting peace in America, based on the principle of the balance of colonial power.” Britain in particular hoped so because its traders, at home and in the colonies (especially Jamaica), had won the Asiento, an agreement with the Spanish government that allowed them officially to import 4,800 slaves per year and to smuggle a huge number more. The “Returns of the Assiento and private Slave-Trade” proved a more dependable way to exploit Spanish wealth. Pirates now stood squarely in the way of the hoped-for stability and profits.

 On sailors' methods of resistance:

The sailor who embraced the Jolly Roger after 1716 came from a potent experience of life and labor in a wooden world. The sailor’s workplace, the deep-sea sailing ship, was something of a factory in those days, a place where “hands”—those who owned no property and who therefore sold their labor for a money wage—cooperated to make the machine go. Sailing these small, brittle wooden vessels over the forbidding oceans of the globe, the seaman took part in a profoundly collective work experience, one that required carefully synchronized cooperation with other maritime workers for the sake of survival. Facing a ship captain of almost unlimited disciplinary power and an ever readiness to use the cat-o’-nine-tails, the sailor developed an array of resistances against such concentrated authority that featured desertion, work stoppages, mutinies, and strikes. Indeed, the sailor would invent the strike during a wage dispute in London in 1768 when he and his mates went from ship to ship, striking—lowering—the sails in an effort to make merchants grant their demands. Facing such natural and man-made dangers, which included a chronic scarcity of food and drink and a galling system of hierarchy and privilege, the sailor learned the importance of equality: his painfully acquired experience told him that a fair distribution of risks would improve everyone’s chances for survival. Separated from loved ones and the rest of society for extended periods, the sailor developed a distinctive work culture with its own language, songs, rituals, and sense of brotherhood. Its core values were collectivism, anti-authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, all of which were summarized in the sentence frequently uttered by rebellious sailors: “they were one & all resolved to stand by one another.” All of these cultural traits flowed from the work experience, and all would influence both the decision to turn pirate and how pirates would conduct themselves thereafter, as we will see in subsequent chapters.

[thebrokenblackman]

POEM* Black Rap (An Ode To Amiri) By Hakeem Bilal Ture

Fuck Raps, Rap is bullshit unless it’s warmth coming from a community campfire that has 25 oil colored queens performing fertility dances

Or salt and meat in between the nails of these same queens preserving trout my brothers and I netted out of a raging sea

Or ancestors living through me, living through you, living through Us, Living through drums played not synthetically made

Boom bap returns and Aesop Rock Fables hide EDutainment for our youth to discover

Fuck Raps, and they’re more relevant than ever before.

Why did they hand you over to the Grand Wizards with a noose made of thongs and bandanas around your neck?

Make your hips slide, feet move, dick erect, and naturally decorated pussy wet.

Speak to you and make you feel consoled, powerless within power’s reach.

Gave you an apple to eat and fucked you in yo georgia peach

We want abrupt rhymes originated from the blackest minds, coarse hair, skin, and tongues doing the milly the rock in the crescent moon light

Dread locked, nappy, natty soul,harsh, face numbing wind creating.

We want raps like wrecking balls knocking down the condos of hipster jews constructed where ghetto girls used to play “Mother May I”

or scissors cutting the leggings of black faggots walking down Stoney Island luring down-low niggas to roach infested motels.

African raps to taint the martinis of eurocentric, make-up mounding mulatto bitches whose brains are botox in Kris Jenner’s Face and the fat sucked right above her daughters’ waist. Cum Sucking Slut Buckets!

We want raps that Kill!  Guerilla Raps! Raps equipped with AK-47s and mile long machetes.

Rap that put American soldiers in jujitsu limb locks and take their nukes leaving them dead with their body parts yards away from each other covered in soil that is the same color of the people they’ve enslaved.

Detox raps! - for aunties and uncles sick off dope white man flooded in their communities of youth whose phone are glued to their hand.

Nuclear Raps! Pheeeeeeeeew Boom! phewwwww phewwwwww BOOM! BOOM! Pheeeew Pheeeew Boom! setting fire, judgement, and justice to Uncle Sam’s ass.

Gaze at the lesbian liberal news anchor call to the God she hasn’t believed in since childhood with the last breath the toxic air allows.

Pheeeeew Boom! There, is as Black Rapper drowning in a pool of ciroc vodka reaching for the people hoping we will pull him out. Go get em RAP!

Wait! Look yonder! there goes the so called black president on his knees bobbing his neck in front of George Washington unashamed of the fluid dripping from his chin because he is negotiating the rights of his people.

Aggh! Run to him RAP! Take him out RAP!

introduce him to the sword of islam RAP! Bring him to Allah RAP!

Another bad rap putting dick on the record label and music blog owning jew lady’s lip

Rap scream genocide in front of the United Nations and spit green poison mist in the eyes of the colonizers

Clean out the world for progress and peace

Let there be no dance raps written until the people can and are willing to dance freely through the streets of Chicago in remembrance of our ancestors

Let black people understand they are love and the children of love

and that they are slaves to no one but ALLAH and children of slaves to no one but ALLAH

Are worshipped and are worshippers

and are the beginneing and end of men

We want BLACK RAP. We want a BLACK WORLD. Let the world be a BLACK RAP and let all Black people sing this Black Rap

silently or LOUD!

[fortnegrita]

28 times black people were effortlessly environmentalists

i got inspired by all the posts wishing me a happy black history month, that i had to jump in and big up the numerous ways that black folks stunt in the world of sustainability. and no, this isn’t a list filled with facts about 28 eco-leaders in the black community, that’s a whole other post that needs to be published.

this is 28 things commonly known in the black community that we take for granted, but are very much so actions of environmentalism. and it’s more than 28 ways, i could go on for millions of years, like my ancestors, but we’re sticking to 28 because, well, you know why. 

1. black people reuse old containers. whether is that tin can that had shortbread cookies in it one christmas, or butter tubs, or that crisco can full of grease. instead of purchasing tupperware made from virgin materials, we cut back on manufacturing and go the ‘feed two birds with one hand’ route. if i buy this butter tub, i will have butter now, and a food container later. genius!

2. emancipated ourselves through slave revolts and the underground railroad. yup, our most warrior moves in our modern history, was also an anti capitalist move. this is huge! capitalism, and the consumerism by product, is the biggest contributors to climate change; it exploits natural resources like metals found in your phone and coal used to light factories. our demand for things whether it’s cotton to make a pair of trousers in the 1700s or a new cellphone in 2018;  it’s all increasing unused carbon in the air.by resisting, we slowed down demand. also, since agriculture is a leading contributor to climate change because of pesticides by abandoning the agriculture fields, where sugar and cotton both strip the soil of it’s nutrients, we gave the land a major rest.

3. our mommas told us to ‘turn off the damn lights.’ yes, she was trying to save her coins, and why not?! the energy system is monopolized anyways, why spend money with a company you are forced to be in a relationship with. two, cutting down on electricity is cutting doing on fossil fuels (coal or gas) extracted from the earth. this is important because carbon is energy, and energy is never gained or loss, it simply goes some where else. so keeping your momma’s kitchen light on when you not in there, means more coal with be extracted from earth, burnt to put energy into a grid and then sent to your momma’s house via a power line. once the energy it burnt it is exhausted into the air. so instead of that energy being in in the ground it’s now in the atmosphere, making the air warmer, making places that aren’t typically hot like the Arctic, melting archaic ice, rising sea levels, and in the future possibly pushing you and your momma out of your house because of horrible flood damage, and now your property is considered a floodplain.

4. multiple families living in a single home. my family like many black families and even families of color have lived with multiple people outside of their nuclear family in the house. most of my childhood, some extended family lived in my parents’ house. my aunt and her kids, my uncle, godmother, granddad. how is a crowded house an environmental plus? homes take up lots of energy, imagine all those people forgetting to turn off your mommas lights. :-D trying to keep homes warm or cold require an insurmountable amount of energy, the more people in one house means less energy usage, also more body heat. and don’t front like your favorite memories weren’t created in a house full of people.

5. our elders tell us ‘no ins and outs.’ again, an issue of energy usage, when children run in and out of the house they ar eletting air (or heat) out of the house making our controlled climate sysmtem to work harder to keep our home at a certain temperature.

6. when yall packed snacks for outings. moms probably made an amazing tuna salad for the beach. you may have missed out on boardwalk fries and pizza slices, but look at the upside, oyu avoided so much packaging all those years.

7. when the matrons kept a few good plants. whether it’s hanging from a macrame-styled planter or in her garden, greenery is always good for the air. also photosynthesis is a sink in the carbon cycle, meaning is absorbs carbon helping to decrease carbon in the atmosphere.

8. when families sit on the porch. a seemingly idle activity, but it is a huge element of community activism. how else are neighbors suppose to talk about their kids asthma, the rotting smells of landfills, or getting more fresh foods into their neighborhood? on the porch is where conversations are sparked that could lead to policy change, closing landfills, or even, the drafting of something as powerful as the ‘principles of environmental justice”. also, healthy communities = healthy planet.

9. when that plastic grocery bag has 237 lives. conditioner cap, fried chicken batter bag, lunch box, bathroom trashcan liner. it’s in our DNA to be resourceful, why buy cheap single use showers caps when you can use a plastic bag before you turn it into a trash bag?

10. seeing the potential in a 98% empty toothpaste tube. there’s no such things as waste, and there’s still toothpaste in that tube. my trick? pinch the head of your tooth brush directly into the tube cap.

11. our enslaved ancestors made a meal out of pig intestines. being from a 5% household, i’ve never been into pork, but i find beauty in my ancestors’ ingenuity to turn literal shit into sugar. this is zero waste at best. globally family of the diaspora have used every part of their preferred animal. the ancient tribes of the americas who use every part of the buffalo, my carribean yardies who can cook a mean goat and save the leftover for mannish water. zero waste takes a lot of creativity, to avoid the trash can, the most convenient, yet unfortunate option.  

12. when you sick, take a nap. medical care, one of the largest expenditures for the american budget. lot’s of infrastructure, products and people banking on your sickness so they can ‘cure’ you. chances are high that you can sleep off whatever is wrong with you, before you need to go to see a physician.

13. the montgomery bus boycotts. for 381 days, black commuters in montgomery, opted-out of the bus system. Considering the amount of fuel it takes to get a city to work for 381 days, black commuters help to cut fossil fuel usage and decrease particulates and carbon released into the air from the bus’ tail pipes.

14. when we take public transit. yes, contrary to #13, but public transit i still an alternative transportation option to cars. the us has the third largest vehicle per capita at 795 people out of every 1,000 people. cars reliance contributes to climate change with exhaust of particulates making the atmosphere warmer, water runoff (subsequent flooding) from asphalt (impervious) roads, maintenance and upgrades, all demanding more manufacturing, more carbon usage.  

15.  since we still don’t have complete road infrastructure in our countries. this is tricky, because people praise roads for their ability to offer accessibility to jobs, but it also means an increase of development, gentrification, removal of indigenous folks from land they’ve stewarded for centuries, more trash flying in to sacred places, etc…. the best way i can say this is there’s no jobs on a dead planet.

16. crafted the principles of environmental justice. in 1991 we, with our brown and yellow brothers, crafted the principles of environmental justice, during the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, shout out to Ms. Dana Alston. the list of principles is the coldest thing i’ve ever seen written on behalf of the planet. my favorite principles?  

#4 Environmental Justice calls for universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons and nuclear testing that threaten the fundamental right to clean air, land, water, and food.

#9 Environmental Justice protects the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations for damages as well as quality health care.

#8 Environmental Justice affirms the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment. It also affirms the right of those who work at home to be free from environmental hazards.

17. black americans stayed in the south. post reconstruction era, for those of us that took the road less traveled. we stayed in the south and maintained a connection to the land. we stewarded the land, keeping rural farms in black ownership for over 100 years while also expanded their resourcefulness (see #21 remedies) as black southerners were intentionally isolated from resources (racism). shout out to fannie lou hamer.

18. moved up north. contrary to staying in the south, folks moved up north during the great migration for ‘opportunities.’ sure, there was a lot of industrial jobs, but what’s bigger than that is the minimized lifestyle. thanks to red lining, black people were racially discriminated against and only able to live in ghettos, confined to centralized areas in the uban core, making walking to work or public transit more accessible (see #14), living quarters were smaller so know need to heat an empty house ( see #4), condensed purchasing because a lack of homes square footage and funds (see #)

19. hand me downs. yall got a shirt that made it through a whole line of cousins? yea, me too. we are in a time where american hands me downs are stifling clothing markets in african countries, so getting your big cousins bedazzled jeans aint so bad. and my soap box, never buy brand new baby clothes, like fah what!?!!

20. you got mcdonald’s money. easily one of the corporations that hate black people and the planet the most. and even though that corporation hates both black people and the earth, it exploits both. micky d’s takes our money, bombards our neighborhoods, feeds us crap and makes us look like clowns in marketing campaigns. all while contributing to obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes cases, so no, we ain’t got no mcdonald’s money.

21. home remedies and traditional african medicine. before capitalism saw an enterprise in the health of people, our ancestors were developing cures and ailments with plants found in nature;; tonics, elixirs, poultices, YOU NAME IT!  some modern day remedies include; red clay and vinegar for bee stings, chickweed tea if you’re sick, mint for digestion, rubbing your skin with eucalyptus to keep mosquitoes away. onions on the bottom of your feverous feet and #12 above. a few of my favorites.

22. marooning. from north african moors to the somalian gypsies on caravans through the dessert, to the isrealites in exile from egypt to nanny in the jamaican mountains to the escaped slaves on the coasts of ecuador and columbia to the geechee folks on the gullah islands to MOVE in Philly; we are the the original off-the-griders. going into maroon communities (like many communities built after revolts and ‘making it’ north) we relied heavily on the earth for livelyhood including food and shelter, it reconnected us with the land in a very intentional way. we ain’t new to this we true to this. we’ve always been nomads, when a place doesn’t provide us with our most basic needs, we dip. this is eco-friendly for several reasons. 1. we understand the importance of living of the land, and because of that we are better stewards of the earth. 2. in maroon cases we didn’t have the infrastructure like running water, so we may have depended on natural catchment systems, 3. we likely composted food and human waste to create our own safe and sanitary waste systems.

23. black farmers. as much as we predominately run from the idea of farming, there are many black families that continue our legacy of farming. our legacy of farming didn’t start in the slave trade. matter of fact, some of us were kidnapped to american because we could grow a particular crop, like rice (which the us affectionately calls ‘carolina gold’). farmers are the most concerned citizens about the state of the planet. climate change and the human impact on agriculture could mean a food scarcity and lost of jobs. there is a growing number of young farmers filling in the intergenerational gaps between them and the elder farmers, so that we don’t loose these skills. we are grateful.

24. being financially poor. there is a positive feedback between the increase in climate change and the increase in global affluence. and that is because as more people have more disposable income, they buy more dispensable things. for instance, shoes in every color instead of one pair of functional shoes for work. with countries like India and Chile’s growing middle class, we are over-consuming for what the planet can handle. not that it’s glamorous but being poor means that you are contributing less to climate change. in fact, the countries most vulnerable to climate change make up 70% of the world’s population, but only 3.2% of the global greenhouse gas emissions.

25. historically being sea explorers, alchemist, astrologists, engineers, masons. our skill sets run deep, and many ofthem are reliant on the earth. mansa musa, the world’s richest man, used a certain sea current to carry him and his 2,000 boats to the americas. also, you remember how we built those massive three triangular monuments, that were built without any construction equipment. that are aligned with the stars and the summer solstice, when the sun reaches it’s highest point in the sky.

26. literally the entire being. essence. and inspiration. that is george washington carver. carver the great, developed techniques to prevent soil depletion caused by cotton farming. one of his most notable techniques was crop rotation a practice used by many farmers (see #23) today. he also created 200 products from the peanut plant and another 100 from the sweet potato. he wrote literature on how to start self-sufficient gardens, uses for wild plants and how to compost. he is the GOAT!

27. reusing grease for frying. every black family got a old pot of grease. if not, check your pockets for your black card. the notorious pot of grease is symbolic to so many things; 1. your family understands that nothing should be single-use, you need a handful of uses out of everything, even cooking grease. 2. your mother knows how to save a good coin. 3. there’s been several crispy dinners cooked at your house. 4. the next fried meal gonna be fiy, because the flavors from the last four fryings have marinated at the bottom of the pan.

28. midwifery. a practice we never lost through time. even, when hospital services became available to black families, some women have always preferred a midwife to deliver their babies. in this way, black midwives are helping to usher more life onto the planet; creation being the number one late of nature. their practices tend to be holistic, and  that cutbacks on epidurals and disposable hospital garbs.

that’s all folks! black people are certified everywhere, you ain’t gotta check our resumes

[bienready2122]

My First Trip to Africa: Sierra Leone, Freetown - Kono

AFRICA

I usually desired to go to Africa. Like maximum Afro-Americans, I grew up in an surroundings idolizing the whole lot, Africa. Once I were given there, I recognise I Knew not anything about Africa. My maternal grandmother made it clear that everything Africa is high-quality. Granny did not, but, spend time disparaging the accomplishments of other cultures  Loose Diamonds Growing up in Nicaragua's Latino and black cultures. And for me, there may be no differentiating between these two ethnicities. Latinos are blacks, and black are Latinos. But this is not so for every body who reveals favor with one organization.

In Africa, these differences will amplify. Creating a surreal global in which an elite minority will deal with other with indifferent. Sometimes stereotype can give an explanation for things If it became smooth as black and white. However, things are seldom black or white.

STEREOTYPES

The ordinary stereotype cannot give an explanation for Africa's ethnic differences; maximum folk's look darkish to me, however they are differences; differences that move lower back for centuries. The Sierra Leoneans asked me regularly, "are you Nigerian," "American" or "Hausa," those generally got here up. Chief Morsay defined Biko and me as "white." He advised us that we're foreigners much like humans with white pores and skin. His index finger became rubbing the top of his hand for emphasis. When Afro-Americans do that in a verbal exchange, we realize that it is an obstacle corresponding to "Whites Only." "You're not Africans," he said. In Africa, it matters in which you return from, or from what side of the river; in the case of the Congo's Bushong and the Lele ethnic group; what facet of the river makes a distinction socially politically and financially.

But none of that changed into on my thoughts. I become excited to visit Africa. Relating to my grandmother's Afrocentric beliefs; I wanted to see for myself the grandeur of the continent that released civilization and the whole thing that makes us lovely: The melanin, the curves, rhythm, the food. A list of defense mechanism, my vanity used to combat the consistent inflow of American racist propaganda, wherein everything is ready shade, and black is the colour that faints all colors.

RACISM

Consequently, racism is the lens via which maximum Afro-Americans view the sector. It's now not a distorting lens; for the most element, the lens is accurate; although restricting. Focusing best on the one view. In a world wherein people find myriad of methods to segregate each other, racism makes this division feasible.

It is clear that the Belgians of King Leopold II acted inside the most racist, inhuman manner toward the human beings of the Congo. But in the end Mobutu Sese Seko of the Ngbandi ethnic group arrested Patrice Lumumba of the Tetela ethnic organization. I don't assume that ethnicity become the motive for Mobutu Sese Seko transgression in the direction of Lumumba. Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaoré, both are from the Mossi ethnic organization of Burkina Faso. But similar to King Leopold II, greed become the motive for Mobutu's treachery closer to Patrice Lumumba and the destruction of endless Congolese lives. Compaoré did the same in Burkina Faso securing privileges for a ruling minority; keeping power at the expense of Thomas Sankara and the human beings of Burkina Faso. Using corruption, expropriation even foreign help to maintain energy. With no nation to answer to, those guys were no exclusive than King Leopold II within the inhumane remedy in their countrymen.

In Sierra Leone, the (RUF) will enforce the equal, reducing off limbs and advert systematic rape and murder; dispersing lots and enslaving the population to extract diamonds for their private wealth.

POVERTY

But poverty is a relative aspect. Having grown up inside the Caribbean and Latin America. I changed into familiar with 0.33 world truth. But none of this organized me for Africa.

THE TRIP

The quantity on conversations is going up the nearer you get to the African departure lounge. Things are direct. Laughter reinforced; the sucking of the tooth is loud, the smiles massive.

The aircraft landed in Lungi International airport to a amazing chorus of cheers and applauses. Like a Hollywood emancipation scene, Africans are glad and grateful to be domestic. You can sense their excitement. I too become excited, to greet the African air. Stepping out of the plane, I observed the humidity acquainted. What was one of a kind, changed into to investigate a crowd and seeing one colour of black humans. I attempted no longer to look surprised; I fake I've been here before. The Africans looked at me like if I've been right here before too.

The tarmac and runway are large, like any airports. But at Lungi you do not see the buses, vehicles or the walking tunnel shielding you from inclement weather. Everything is open and huge as the sky. I didn't see industrial airplanes or business aircraft; just empty tarmac with a much some distance away blue-green woodland horizon with out a homes in sight.

Walking into the slight immigration building became a surprise, no crowds! I thought this abnormal for an global airport. Somehow, I notion they is probably connecting flights to the opposite part of Africa. Only the individuals who may be boarding at the equal plane in course to Liberia. Right away as you enter the constructing, you see a few vintage fashion cubicles with modern-day fingerprint popularity machines. Immigration officers were clean and short. They ask for passport and yellow vaccination card. Welcome to Sierra Leone!

The people of Sierra Leone are friendly; they may be generous with their comfort zone. They greet you, touch you gently with a not unusual custom.

Waiting for our luggage, I was attracted to 2 large, very awesome, status wooden sculptures. Two motion figures carved from a unmarried tree trunk. No one paid these any mind. They stroll through them like nuisance African souvenir. I constantly appreciated the eye to detail of African artwork; there is a attention for the viewer, the wearer, and handling of artifacts. This association of welcoming artistically with dance, texture, food and colours was for me African arts functionality.

Although very incredible, I did no longer understand on the time; the ones  timber sculptures will represent the culmination of my African artistic influence.

Leaving the airport, we see a sign with our names. Our host Chernor, we call him Cherry, set up to have Lamin greet us and set up the bus tickets to be able to take us to the seaside and the ferry to Freetown. Lamin works for a agency that assists vacationers to Sierra Leonne. Having someone at the floor that speaks, Krio became calming. Krio is a higher bargaining language; changing money is competitive, some notes have choices. So there may be room for saving if you can bargain in Krio.

Outside, they are younger guys selling bus tickets along side Sim Cards. They're aggressive, but now not pushy. There's plenty of cash in sight constantly replacing fingers. We watch for the air circumstance mini buses to fill with passengers. The ferry is not some distance away, about a mile. But it takes approximately ten mins drive to get there. The street is wrong; I notion that this being the manner to the airport it might be in higher care, but no. It became simply the begging of the many examples of neglect and corruption that the people of Sierra Leone live with everyday.

The beach is massive and clean; I observe this due to the fact anywhere else seems to be litter with particles. I see some modest rapidly built shanties. I turned into searching out colorful fishing boats but did no longer see any. They're small kids, playing with torn and grimy western garments. They paid us no mind. At this time the little wharf turned into full of the passenger from the plane, awaiting the ferry; bags and those below a wooden hut, with an armed guard. We waited for several hours. It could be sundown earlier than they called our numbered tickets, the small ferry made numerous journeys transporting us appropriately to Freetown.

The boat experience takes less than an hour to cross the sea estuary arriving in Freetown at night time. The view changed into darkish with no figuring out capabilities to look. Inside, our host Cherry and his driving force Mohamed are there waiting. They picked us out of the crowd immediately earlier than all and sundry offers to assist. Lamin had despatched images. Cherry made positive that Mohamed gets our bags. Cherry greeted us with a big smile, sparkling eyes, on a shiny round friendly face. He immediately requested us approximately the flight and are we hungry. He said he has cook meals home, "it is probably too spicy for us," he said. So if we adore, we are able to exit to get a few food. We opt for the spicy food; it changed into very overdue for our jetlag bodies to exit. The streets in Freetown, in the dark, are jammed packed with companies promoting the entirety. None of it appears attractive to me. Freetown just does not appearance smooth. And that is a marvel. A Big surprise!

We left the wharf on a two-lane paved avenue lit with occasional road lamps. Mohamed is targeted on his task at the same time as Cherry does the talking. I'm satisfied he's. The street continues getting crowded the closer you get to metropolis. They're plenty of small children out promoting stuff, anything. I see lots of bake correct and fruits. Everything looks lease. Things experience abnormal, anachronistic, a chunk out of area, like if I've traveled again in time. The humans do not appear involved approximately the traffic. The street is abuzz with African tune. And the human beings are just shifting with reason in what looks like a chaotic order.

GODRICH

We travel on paved roads all the way as much as College Road in Godrich. Then we turn right. And Mohamed slows to a move slowly; the road now unpaved becomes a sequence of hills and gullies slowly leading as much as the next turns, like the bus trip from Lungi to the seaside. There may be extra moments like this. Mohamed is making an attempt now not to have the lowest of the automobile drag on a hill, patiently he turns. Like if he has accomplished this lots of time.

CHERNOR'S HOME

The vehicle got here to a forestall at a huge metal door, approximately 10 toes excessive. Surrounded by fencing simply as excessive with damaged bottles cemented at the top. We're three turns off the principle street, a number of the homes have this barrier. A lot do not; a few houses are just boxes of corrugated scraps metal wood and cardboard prepare. There is a sense that Freetown turned into now not continually like this. These dwellings bare the scars and the stays of political corruption and a vicious, inhumane civil war.

At Cherries domestic, he introduces us to his uncle Mohamed, his sister Mimona and his "House Boys." Cherry has  "House Boys" and a "House Girl." At first, I thought he was speaking about his children, however no, that's what they call the servants or assist. Although they're more than servants, they should be encouraged via a member of the family. They call you "Sa" like yessa. Like I said, It looks like you are lower back in time.

Mimona positioned a huge bowl of "krain krain," on the desk. Cassava leaf pounded and shredded with hot peppers introduced to the pot of fish and boiled Jazmine rice at the aspect. It become hot; they'd an awesome chortle looking our faces get bright. Although very highly spiced, it was delicious. The rice become useful calming the krain krain's warmness. We wanted something to drink. Small luggage clutter Sierra Leone. This night time whilst consuming warm Krain Krain we have introduced these ubiquitous waterbags. According to the water venture "Infections and parasites, most discovered in contaminated water, cause the biggest purpose of demise in Sierra Leone."

After a very lengthy journey, the mellow dance of Mosquito Smoke Coils, I turned into feeling worn-out. I wished a bath. Reacquainting myself with those norms of the Caribbean and Latin America: The open bathe and bloodless water. Making positive not to drink the water from the pipes during my bathe. I went to sleep in Africa.

The next day I noticed plenty of youngsters a few in uniform. The schools are out early for the babies. Education in Sierra Leone is legally required. But a shortage of colleges and teachers has made implementation impossible the spinoff of corrupt institutions plaguing this kingdom. I saw a collection of three taking walks on the street with a basket on their heads. They appearance 5 or six, too small to be walking in a busy city through themselves.

BIKE TAXI

I noticed a person on the again of a motorbike balancing a door. They're, constantly guys, riding a bit reckless swishing in and out of visitors on bikes with unstrapped helmets. Some bring greater than two passengers; I've seen 4 and five inclusive of infants. They're plenty of motorcycles; people use them as taxis. Taxis have routes like buses. The DDR had a extraordinary concept for the young combatants to grew to become of their AK forty seven for Honda trail motorcycle taxi. Although a lot of their raped victims, and amputees, might not think so. Freetown is a brave region dealing with a tough peace.

HARMATTAN WINDS

That Night the darkish room commenced to transport. The curtains flow like a ghost coming into the room with a moaning sound that got louder. The wind began to heighten, roaring and moving the curtains vigorously. It turned into the yearly dry Harmattan winds of the Sahara, making their seasonal trips over West Africa. I changed into looking forward to them due to the fact that I examine approximately it in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's ebook "Half of a Yellow Sun." I puzzled how all those corrugated shanties have been bearing. The winds had been as excessive as a category one typhoon; I become settling for a protracted night time of wind and noise. But it completed as quick as it began. The next morning, I got as much as what will be the familiar electricity outage. Outside, on the porch, the view reminded me of my childhood in Bluefields, Nicaragua' Caribbean coast, with huge lush, blue-inexperienced mango timber. That shades the blue sky enjoyable the solar's warmth just like the sunset after a protracted day. I was amazed. Nothing regarded out of area from the Harmattan winds. Trees have been status, and branches did now not litter the floor.

ELECTRICITY WATER and POLITICS

With the power and water constantly going out. We use rainwater from tanks. Everyone drinks water from the plastic sachet, on the market everywhere. Gas generators serenade the neighborhood along with the odor of cooking smoke.

Our conversations with Cherry and uncle Mohamed targeted at the politics of Sierra Leone and the devastating civil struggle. They say that the majority from the united states of america are within the city seeking out work. Many women now in Freetown saw a different, extra emancipated life-style, where unwilling to move returned to the united states of america. "Country existence is hard," say Cherry.

Corruption, the decade-lengthy warfare are a number of the motives for the crumble. The financial rules that make the importation of foodstuffs less expensive devastated the local farming and younger guys who could be farming are seeking out diamonds and trapped in a vicious circle, making import products essential and poverty inevitable.

SYRIANS

Most the huge grocery shops in Freetown seems to be very own by Syrians or Lebanese searching people (my stereotyping). In one of the grocery shop. In every Isle, a Syrian man or woman became searching watchful down the Isle. And some other Syrian character sitting vigilantly behind the cashier, a young black lady. During the struggle, the Syrians were a goal of elimination.

[pcurrytravels]

Why I Wanna Go: New Orleans

Hello all! Welcome to the first post of my “Why I Wanna Go Series.” Today, we’ll be talking about my long unfulfilled desire of visiting New Orleans.

Okay, about that long unfulfilled part: New Orleans is a place with which I’ve had a longstanding, obsessive interest that dates all the way back to when I was a child. I used to watch any and every show about it, both fictional and non-fictional. I would check out travel guidebooks and history books about the place from the library for fun.  I’d stay up all night reading the innumerable ghost stories only to lose sleep anyway. I’ve attempted to make various creole and cajun dishes such as gumbo and red beans and rice only to fail miserably (though I have made some very good jambalaya before). I even celebrate Mardi Gras in my own special way, despite living in a place where it traditionally isn’t. 

As you can see, yes, I am obsessed with New Orleans. 

New Orleans is quite the oddball of a town. There’s not really anywhere else within the United States that’s quite like it. It’s unique culture, cuisine and architecture come as a result of it’s historical background, which has led to an end result akin to a, well, gumbo if you will (pun intended, of course): 

Start with a base of French colonist roux and enslaved West African stock, strongly flavored with the essence of indigenous tribes of the Southeast Woodlands (such as Chitimacha, Choctaw and Houma Indians). Bring this mixture to a boil before adding Spanish sausage, some chicken from the farms of exiled French Canadians (i.e. Cajuns) and shrimp from the Canary Islands. Next, stir in some American file powder for thickening purposes. Toss in some Sicilian bell peppers, Irish onions and German celery. Lastly, top it all off with some Haitian okra, and just a dash of Vietnamese, Filipino, Cuban and Honduran spices and wallah! You have just successfully crafted the cultural melting pot for New Orleans. 

Now, New Orleans most certainly isn’t the only American city with a culture strongly influenced by a number of different groups. There’s NYC with the Italian, Ashkenazi Jewish, Puerto Rican and West Indian flavors. The cultures of Californian cities and/or regions are profoundly inspired by longstanding communities of Mexicans, Black Americans and various Asian, Pacific Islander and Middle Eastern groups. And then you have Miami/South Florida which is essentially the U.S.A.’s mecca of any and everything Latino and Caribbean. 

However, it usually comes with a limit. Regardless of the influence, at the end of the day, everyone more or less goes back to doing their own thing. It’s rare for things to meld and merge together as seamlessly as they have in New Orleans. That factor alone makes it more akin to cities in the Caribbean. In addition to it’s architecture, it’s climate, oh, and the fact that it play hosts to Carnival; which, in this context is known as Mardi Gras. 

Ah yes, Fat Tuesday. Originally a Catholic celebration in which people gorged on as much rich and fatty food as possible (well, the name of it came from somewhere) before Lent; in the case of New Orleans, it has since morphed into a gathering of vice and debauchery that attracts visitors from all over the world. As everyone dons a mask, watching the elaborately wacky floats pass by as numerous women flash their, ahem, assets to get beads from the krewe, this also leads to uncontrollable crowds, quite a few fights and jacked up prices for EVERYTHING.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see Mardi Gras for myself one day....just not on the first trip. Nor would I want my first trip to be during the Essence Music Festival. Or the Jazz Fest. Or the Voodoo Experience. I guess I feel like if I have to spend my entire time dealing with excessive crowds and the collateral damage that comes with that (see: more traffic, higher airfare, hotel rooms being priced through the roof, etc....) it would compromise my experience. Might be a Vegas thing. 

Okay, okay, enough tangents. Are we here to talk about why I wanna go to New Orleans or not?

Reason number one: All of that delicious FOOD. 

You got gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, beignets, etouffee, po’ boys, crawfish and just SO much more. A cultural background influenced by various sources, a zeal for spice, an abundant array of plants, seafood and wild game in the area and a populace that takes it VERY seriously can lead to quite the engaging culinary experience I would imagine. 

Reason number two: The nightlife. 

Ah, where to begin. I mean, there does appear to be a little bit of something for everyone there. Touristy bars on and around Bourbon Street serving up Hurricanes and Hand Grenades in souvenir cups, many of which with an interesting history all their own (see: Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, an alleged business cover-up for the pirate Jean Lafitte, said to be haunted by his spirit to this day). Classy cocktail lounges in the Garden District where you can sip on a $14 dollar Sazerac while listening to smooth jazz. More eclectic nightspots on the fringes of the French Quarter with a mix of tourists and locals. Energetic venues playing a wide variety of music in Marigny. Oh, and the strip club circuit doesn’t look like anything to sneeze at either. The options are truly endless.

Reason number three: The history.

As already stated above, New Orleans wouldn’t be what it is today without it’s history. Between the numerous cultures and ethnic groups that have added to it’s modern-day melting pot (to the point that the city has several different accents going on, most of which sound closer to NYC/Jersey and/or Caribbean accents than they do Southern or Cajun), the French and Spanish Colonial architecture only to be accented by numerous other styles of architecture over the years, lingering signs of the Antebellum era, an uncanny connection to the afterlife involving above-ground tombs and hauntings all over the place, an unusual religious history as far as American cities go (I mean, it’s a predominantly Catholic city in a sea Southern Baptists with strong followings for Voodoo, Hoodoo and other syncretic, magical and/or pagan belief systems as well) and, lastly.........the beast known as Katrina and the city’s unwavering resilience to press on afterward. New Orleans tells a story unlike any other, and I for one am quite excited to explore the pages. 

Reason number four: The music.

American popular music as we know it today would not exist without New Orleans. Period. Pop? Rock? R&B? Hip Hop? EDM? All of this can be traced back to Jazz. New Orleans is both the birthplace, and still remains as a vital source of Jazz music today. It’s also the arguable birthplace of R&B as well, which gave way to Rock and Roll. Now, while New Orleans may not have been involved in the creation of hip hop, it does have a distinct hip hop sound of its own (see: Juvenile, early Lil’ Wayne, Master P), in addition to Bounce music, a sort of hip hop/electronic hybrid genre (see: Big Freedia, or “Formation” by Beyonce). Because of this, just like with nightlife, New Orleans offers a little bit of something for everyone in regards to music. Be it Jazz, Blues, Rock, R&B, Hip Hop, the aforementioned Bounce, Latin (I mean, a lot of early Jazz and R&B did borrow from Cuban music conventions so), Funk, or even Zydeco, if you want it, New Orleans has it. They probably just put their own little spin on it, is all. 

Reason number five: The surroundings. 

New Orleans has a location that’s perfect for side trips. You can take a bus to historical plantations like Myrtles and Oak Alley. Explore the gator-infested bayous. Check out Cajun Country. Ride a steamboat down the Mississippi. Towns like Lafayette, New Iberia and Baton Rouge with interesting stories of their own. And several other options for those who feel adventurous and wish to venture out of the city. 

My Dream Itinerary:

Sights: The French Quarter, Bourbon Street, Jackson Square, The Garden District, Congo Square, Treme, St. Louis Cemetery #1, St. Louis Cathedral and City Park. 

Attractions: The Cabildo, The Presbytere, Beauregard-Keyes House, 1850 House, Backstreet Museum, Pharmacy Museum, Old Ursuline Convent, Histroic New Orleans Collection, Old U.S. Mint, Mardi Gras World, Lower Ninth Ward Museum, Civil War Museum and The Voodoo Museum

Dining: Cafe du Monde for Beignets and Cafe au Lait, ACME Oyster House for Seafood dishes, Muriel’s, Pierre Masperos, Praline Connection or the Gumbo Shop for the iconic Creole dishes, Central Grocery for the Muffuletta, Johnny’s Po’Boys for Po’Boy sandwiches and Hansen’s or Piety for Snowballs. 

Nightlife: Mostly Bourbon Street and the rest of the French Quarter, although Frenchmen St. in Faubourg Marigny and the Warehouse District also catch my interest.

Shopping: The French Market, Riverwalk Marketplace and Magazine Street in Uptown/The Garden District.

Experiences: Ghost Tours, Cemetery Tours, Voodoo shops, Psychic shops and riding the streetcars and ferries.

Exploration: The French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, Treme, The CBD, Warehouse District, Uptown and The Garden District.

Sidetrips: A bus trip to either Oak Alley, San Francisco or Myrtles plantation(s), Avery Island and Lafayette/Cajun Country. Maybe the bayou tour too if I can suck up the phobias I have of insects, gators and potentially encountering the types of people you see in movies like Deliverance. 

Oh New Orleans. How I long for the day where I can walk your streets. 

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Final Tour, Foursquare Rum, and Freaky Phenomena: Day 12 - 01/13/2020

Today reperesented the final full day for the trip, and by god, did we carpe the diem.

We were up and at 'em this morning by 9:15, and we started the day by driving up to UWI Cave Hill Campus proper to start our final tour with Tony as interpreter.

The first stop this morning was a monument on campus called Quaw's Quest. A simple, black-painted, carved-wood bust of a man with stereotypically African features, Quaw's Quest doesn't attract much attention. In fact the overview of the Caribbean side of the island behind the statue probably attracts more attention from students and visitors.

In actuality, the bust is an important memorial marker for the entire campus area, as Cave Hill sits atop what was once the property of several different plantation estates, and that were once home to 295 enslaved people, some of whom were born in Barbados, and some of whom, like Quaw, were shipped in from African through the middle passage in droves.

The monument, besides providing information on Quaw William's life, also showcases 4 panels on the overlook that depict model ledgers, containing the names of Quaw, and the other 294 slaves that once lived where the college now stands.

Much like every other part of the island, finding out about land use history was incredibly sobering, and knowing that 295 people worked away their lives in squalor and under abusive conditions where an institution of higher learning now sits is somehow simultaneously frightening and uplifting, as a large percentage of the Cave Hill campus (80% if I remember correctly from Dr. Carrington's speech) of the student body is Bajan. These students are going to university atop the ruins of a society where many of them would not have even been allowed a higher education could they buy their way out of slavery, and I don't think there's a better analogy of determination and will that exists.

After Quaw's Quest, we went to Queen's Park in Bridgetown to see one of the most awe-inspiring sights if this trip. Maybe it's not as beautiful as the Caribbean sea or some of the outstanding wildlife we've witnessed on the island, but seeing a 300-year-old more-than-30-feet-around generally-regarded-as-African Baobab in the middle of a city park was insane, and I never thought I would get to see one, haha.

After we were done staring in wonder

(and getting a bunch of pictures)

Tony began to interpret for us, and talked about how it was most likely planted in the mid-1700s because it's roughly the same size as another baobab on the island that was planted at that time, and how it was a source of food, water, and a site of spiritual importance in many West African traditions, and how some of these were also probably the case in local communities in Barbados, even up to the modern day.

After a speech on the phallic nature of Christmas trees and it's adoption as a western symbol of fertility and rebirth, we said our goodbyes to Tony and navigated halfway across the island for lunch at Cutters Deli, home of Barbados' "Number 1 Rum Punch."

As Dr. Muth would put it, the "self-proclaimed, Number 1 Rum Punch."

I will admit that the Rum Punch ranks as one of my favorite on the island so far, thanks in part to a healthy shaving of fresh nutmeg, and a good balance of sweet, sour, and strong. However, it was overshadowed by the restaurant's far-overpriced food (I paid $59BDS for a half-cup of soup, salad, coffee, and the rum punch) and that prevents it from being my personal Number 1 Rum Punch, and that high status instead goes to...

Me, because I learned how to make it over the course of this trip and I'm just that full of myself.

After Cutters, it was time for the afternoon's main attraction, a factory-floor and grounds tour of Foursquare Distillery, followed by the most in-depth rum tasting so far.

The distillery tour was really interesting, as we got a much more in-depth look at the rum production process than we did at Mount Gay's Rum Experience (althought it doesn't overshadow the Mount Gay Plantation Experience), and because we were being given a tour by the acting director of the entire distillery, Mr. Richard Seale.

Thanks to Mr. Seale, we were able to see the parts of the rum-making process not typically open to the regular tour group, including the room containing the actual stills, and the section of the aging room reserved for special stock and production of molasses wine before the distillation process.

After the factory tour, we got a brief peek at the bottling plant (which wasn't actually bottling anything at that exact moment) and so we hurried along to everyone's favorite part: the tasting!

While I would usually say that the Mount Gay experience had my favorite rum, the set up for the Foursquare tasting... crushed it.

We were walked into the room, which had about 15 bottles of rum on the table, and Mr. Seale said let me grab some glasses, and walked into a back room. He came back out, passed out glasses, gave a brief introduction, and told us we could taste anything we wanted, only warning us that some of the cask-concentration ones were a doozy and we should only pour ourselves a little bit. (Since "a doozy" translates to 120 proof or higher in most cases here, we all followed his advice.)

After we had drunk to our hearts' desire (I'm a big fan of the Hereditas, which, as a specialty rum designed exclusively for the Whisky Exchange, has only 2500 bottles in existence and costs roughly $200 a bottle), Mr. Seale then addressed the large boxes that two of the men from the bottling plant had just brought in, which each contained bottles of 12-Year Aged Doorly's Rum that he handed out to us like some sort of strange Willy Wonka-esque scene of shock and awe.

We were all extremely caught off guard, after all, one person already gave us a bottle of free rum this trip, but he gave one bottle to a class of 16 students and 2 professors.

This was an individual bottle for each of the 16 students, professors, and one for Andre too. This was on another level of generosity.

After our rum excursion, it was time to head back to the dorm, and at that point, Rhiannon, Meghan, and I went down to the beach for one last Caribbean experience and to enjoy a nice cigar at sunset. And that experience topped off an awe-inspiring day.

At sunset we noticed some strange light in the water, something from a diver or a boat? The only boat was pretty far out and it didn't seem like we'd be able to see that from the shore. Something bioluminescent? That would be wild but it didn't seem like it.

After finally seeing it repeat for a couple of seconds, I realized it was something I'd only previously read about and seen in thinks like Pirates of the Caribbean.

What we were witnessing was the mythological "green flash," a phenomenon caused by refracting sunlight through the atmosphere and waves on the horizon that appears to flash green for a couple seconds repeatedly for as long as the sun is setting. In my mind, there's nothing else it could have been, but from our perspective, since it was cloudy, it wasn't the kind that appears over the setting sun, this looked like it was appearing from the horizon underwater. Maybe this sort of flash is just residual sunlight filtering through the crystal blue Caribbean water, but it was spectacular to see and just incredible to be able to witness.

We went back to the dorms after sunset and met up with another group of people waiting to shuttle with Tuten to the Roti Den for dinner, and after cramming 6 people into a car meant to comfortable sit 4, we migrated and had a wonderful Indian dinner (I had a lamb and veggie roti), sat around talking for about an hour, and got some ice cream before heading back to the dorms to hang out for our last night, finish up journal, and try to finish up some of the copious amounts of rum we purchased throughout the trip.

That's all for tonight, and so I guess I'll update after I'm home tomorrow? Woof. It's been a wild ride.

Thanks for the fun times Barbados, Muth, Tuten, and all the classmates that made everything such an interesting experience.

Let's give an edge to everyone who needs it in the coming semester!

(Oh and one last note! I made the Top 5 observers for Barbados on iNaturalist!!!)

[charles-bee-blog]

Hate

I never felt so much hate; I never felt so much concern. As an African American we are already living in a land that is not our own. Fighting in a war with our own people; Trapped in gang violence, Trapped in addiction. Drugs ran through our streets like a stream, poisoning every individual who dared to take a drink. With drugs came gang violence, a need of belonging, a need to feel apart of a tribe. Before I never realized the hate we had for one another; The separation we embodied through our own race, it sicken me. It made me want to change; but how could I make a change; I was one of them. I am not a “gang banger” per se but I am hood influenced. I know what it’s like to have nothing; I know what it’s like when you are at war, when you have to conform into a soldier to protect yourself. But I escaped; I freed myself from that mindless prison, I fled across the ocean, I soared across the sky; just to change the way I view things. 

Traveling is a means of escape; something that I need, something that I crave. As I began to travel and to see new things, eat food you never had, speak a language you never learned. Traveling made me realize how big the world was; I mean of course the world is big. But you have to understand, some people never leave the place they grew up in. I have friends that won’t leave the hood because that’s all they know. Traveling broadens ones understanding; it fills you with new knowledge. The more and more I traveled, the more i began to understand how separated we were as a people. How we were brained washed, and stripped of our heritage; how hate has established itself on our race like it was a mask hiding who we truly were. 

As I made my way out the airport, I was surrounded by dozens of Jamaicans. Each of them herding around the tourists trying to make as much money as possible. For some reason the Caribbean touched me differently. The heat hit me right in the face as I followed my taxi driver to the ATM. The weather here was lovely, the humidity bounced off my skin; I began to sweat. US currency is worth more here, a hundred dollar bill in Jamaica is one dollar in the US. I pulled out at least 10,000 Jamaican, and headed towards my hotel. The jungle surrounded the island, which reminded me of Puerto Rico. Jamaica had its own unique look, it was strange as we drove along side the ocean; and the sun sat above the waters just right. Even though we were in the same ocean. It seemed as if we were in another. No matter where the beach is, it will never give the same impression as the next beach.

As I made my way to my room, being followed by one of the staff who carried my bags I began to realized i would probably be the only African American on the property. It was not an issue, it’s not like I haven’t experienced it before, you just feel out of place. And as the staff hustled around and scampered across the property they began to remind me of slaves. As the sun began to collide with the ocean , it painted the sky violet sending a dark shadow over the resort. I laid under a cabana watching as the waves crashed against the shore right below my feet. The way the staff seemed bothered me; It was 2019, i understand poverty, i understand what its like to have nothing, to have no one. But i’ll never surrender my pride, i’ll never surrender my honor.

The smoke left my finger tips as a cloud blew out towards the sea, I began to think why it was like this? Why our people decided to kneel instead of stand, The way the staff looked at me; as if I were there enemy. It was understandable in the US, because the biggest threat would come from a person of our own race; we were at war with ourselves and it is shameful. So to cheer myself up, I told the staff it was my birthday. It was March 17th; my birthday was in January. I felt like they owed me something so i took the champagne bottle after i ordered as many free mimosas as i could. I wobbled to my room, falling face first into my bed; Was poverty the issue? Of course it was, but was it a viable issue? Poverty is not an excuse, it is a viable issue but it isn’t a reason to make yourself less of a person because you grew up differently. 

Poverty is what makes us stronger; not having access to certain things, not being able to do whatever we want gives us strength. It gives us this type of grit that allows us to get through these hard times . These times where we don’t have anyone, the times where we struggle is what makes a person great, when they become successful. I think that is the key, our oppressors keep us isolated. They keep us in check with the drugs, they keep us controlled with the jails and prisons. They seperate us with the hate, they distance us with slavery. As walked through the property, seeing the huge pirate ships they had in the pool, the chidden swimming around the bottom of the ship like fish in the ocean, watching the kids slide down the unique slides that went in and out of the pirate ship.

I realized the hate as the employees glared at me in disgust while they tended to every need the white man demanded. It was confusing to me; how could you treat them better? how could you dislike your own race? And that’s when it hit me; the invention of gangs is what brain washed us. It made us overlook the fact that we are killing our own people, that we in fact hate ourselves. Because of gangs, we are in war with ourselves. The fact that I only feel threatened when its coming frpm a male of the same race. The empowerment that comes with this invention is universal, its indestructible. There are so many people that i know, that are in this life to the death. There are people i know that are so far brainwashed; there’s no coming back. Maybe with time, maybe with age. But by the time we figured out what’s going on as a people, we will be extinct. 

The separation we face, is crippling. The separation I’ve witnessed is heartbreaking. Ive put my toes in the oppressors empowerment, I’m tested the waters; i know what that life is like, I’ve been temporarily brain washed. But I was able to see the light through all the darkness, they used these things to separate us, they use these things to break us, to enslave us. The Caribbean taught me a lot of things, it taught me what hate really means. Don’t get me wrong, not all of the Jamaicans i came across were unpleasant. Once i ventured out, and walked the streets, seen the people who struggled like i have it seemed as if we knew each other forever.

That is my whole point of this essay, our race has been brainwashed, not only in the US but worldwide. The hate that exists in our race is how they control us; we see it as a way of survival because it is our only option. But that is not the case, we are stronger together; that is why we were separated; that is the key of the separation, we cannot be strong as people if we aren’t people at all. They have turned us into individuals; they made it to where we aren’t people at all. 

In conclusion I’ve witnessed a lot visiting these islands so far away from Sacramento, Ca Jamaican, African, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban; each culture are variations of African descent. We are all the same people; and yet we are separated by a hate that is not our own, but something that was bestowed upon us. We are separated mentally, spirtually, and physically; and through the hate that they placed on us we are crippled, we are blinded, we are brain washed. A culture that is broken; a culture that consist of hate.

[africanuniverse]

Voice of Melanin in all shades

I've discovered history within my heritage while reading interesting books along the way.                       We've been called darky and every other word familiar to everyone using the word Negroes. Never the less we became prey with the white supremacy and yes, sometimes it's fair to a lot of people. I can speak on that which is the reason for a lot of signs and a lot of marching. Not just with the legendary Martin Luther King Jr.  We’ve been marching after those years, so it's like we're not able to have equality with the white, simply because we were of color. We all must shine brightly. Does anyone tell you that your melanin is not broad enough or it's not dark enough? Just because someone made a bad outlook on the color of your skin, no matter how dark, light, pale, bruised, or cut it is, you're still in African-born a queen, born a king, with as many flaws as you can count. That's only one crown and the crown speaks. Your crown can be your voice, your crown can be your ears to listening, to speak, and all other senses within the human body that requires you to be active and inactive. Lose yourself and you can lose your mind, your spirit, and your heart can stop beating. 

Which comes to another conclusion that you have to be able to know yourself before you can take any kind of self-motivational self-inspiration. Yes, you can grasp motivational speeches if you can give inspirational speeches. This is quite similar to other people, but taking it in won't be 1% useful into your life not knowing yourself or how to grow from your past. Having a plan, a destiny, over that steep hill that you're trying to come over. Everythings the same hill that your ancestors came over. The same hill the whites the Latinos came over. The same hill the aliens from out of country overseas came over. Just to get to where you are today, you'll think that you are in an economy where you can't be yourself or in a society where you can be yourself. 

Thinking that you're too poor, just because I have $5 in my pocket that I can't make it in this world. Spending your last $20 on food because you can't afford it or was denied from the government help systems that are already in debt. The number one moment in your life is possible if they can use the weak-minded to betray this image. Sad and true, but never limited. The biggest,  and saying biggest I mean you have to be this pure person all the time, all the time you can't have any feelings, you have to agree, you have to worry, you have to have shine off of your clothes that you just paid with your rent money. 

Could you have gone and paid down on your next bill?  

If you knew that you paid this whole outfit with your rent money to pay for this whole outfit, you really wanted to mess your income stream up. 

Do you really want to spend? Do you really want to go to the club? Do you really want to go out with your friends instead of going with the inside of yourself (your gut feelings) that is telling you to do like I said before? 

In your pockets, there is a savings account, give it to your son or daughter. Have your lights off so you wont to be in a world where you can go pay a bill so you and your family wouldn't have your lights bill. 

Be in a world where you look at others strange simply because you don't have what they HAVE. No sir/ma'am. What NEEDS to be done is that you NEED to get what you can get or what you already have GOTTEN. If you decide that you don't have everything that you want out of life in general or everything that you NEED simply because I WANT is deprived from temptation, and wants to get very expensive, cause debt, so getting the things that you NEED helps people because they NEED food, they NEED shelter, they NEED clothes, they NEED help. I WANT diamonds, I WANT a sports car, I WANT the name brand clothes, gimme gimme gimme! That is probably the most YES you can do toyourself like the people around you who probably influenced you in the first place. Talk about under pressure. Create I WANT this so you'll get that.... yeah... You got that but what's after that? Your friends now? They WANTED it but now that you've GOT that you start to see betrayal, envy, greed, the truth fading from conversations. Now you're betrayed from that relationship with broken families torn. If everything goes smoothly still, what's happening in depth? See how everything goes in circles? Review everything that goes in a circle and where you think you're going. 

Are we moving forward? 

Is this path of getting everything you WANT and not what you NEED? He/She WANTS to be like everyone else instead of finding that 100% niche. 

Find yourself before you think you know someone else! Knowing someone else before you know yourself or you thinking you know him or you think you know her at the end of the day, she doesn't know you as well as you know yourself because you don't know yourself so therefore you can't possibly know her, because if she doesn't know herself and how in the world are you going to know everyone else!

 I don't think that that is a forthcoming from a world where we were enslaved.

 Do you think? 

We were definitely packed like sardines on the ship, and those sardines were naked, very sweaty, bruised, itchy, tears on our clothes, tears on our skin, cuts on our skin, feces everywhere, boils on our feet around the ankles so that we wouldn't go anywhere, or should I say move to the side like horses in a stable. Don't forget the tears that no one saw since the salty tides were washing them away. Who cared about what we WANTED or NEEDED. Now just look at what we're doing. We all want the biggest sea in the stores as long as the gold. 

As long as it's silver right? As long as it shines. What do you think we would do if the sun was gone right now? In complete darkness will I still be able to shine? 

Shining is not a visual only spectrum, you can shine with your eyes closed, shining come from inside. Nothing has to be in order and under specific control for it to shine. One can shine regardless whether you wanted to or not, it's going to shine. 

But what do I mean by shine? 

Put it like this, the more you learn from yourself, with every Good Morning and Good Night, the longer you have peace with yourself. These daily methods are nothing like yanking him, being torchered, enforced upon the white supremacist, far beyond that this is me speaking on knowing you for who you are virtually. I can say I am a very intelligent African male. That should be an example of compliment you can give to yourself. Start treating yourself with words not just valuable things.  People were seasick from the shores, slaves, like that very inch of freedom was in their faces but cuffed to the touch. The bodily juices, nasty, salty water, splashes of feces mixed in with all of the natural condensations. Stripped us and bought us. Believe it now, we're trying to buy into their company after we were bought. The human body now reacts to the white 500 Fortune companies. They are saying, “I'll buy you again” and we don't even realize it because we sit here paying everything off, you could watch things unfold for you but then turn around in need something after that. 

Why? Is it because you put one mindset first didn't you? Giving them what they wanted, didn't you? Didn't give them what they needed or give them what they wanted?

The thing is they can get what they need just like you can. There's no reason for you to go out of your way, out of your pocket, out of your home, out of your car, just to get the things that you want especially watching from somebody else point of view which on hand can determine or alter your road in life. Everything you need right now, where are you staying, where you sit, where you lay, Where you walk, where you speak right now you have everything within this present moment right now. You have the right to do so. Everything might not always seem right. But doing right can be righteous. Write it down if you have to, take notes and make scratch-offs.  Materialistic things are giving off about her kind of shine that can wear off light a light bulb that needs changing. She buys you a gift, this time the first thing you should say is thank-you. Appreciate this week. What's going on behind your back is useless. 

Here’s an example of how life cycles in society works.

Saying things like I don't want anything green to eat, or I don't want any fruits, everything else gets into the food in restaurants that you don't see. Getting food processed, nothing you can do about getting chemicals into the food, unless you just have chemical remover for the fruits when fruits are from store-bought items that have chemicals in it, which it's not really good for you, but you wanted it since you can't see where it came from, or how much it costs the farmer, or how well it was grown on the trees, or how stressed the shippers were when handling the boxes because his aunt passed away from food poisoning, or her little cousin had his first food fight at school. Is all of that stopping you from sitting down and taking a plate in the comfort of your home? Something home-cooked may be simple by someone who you know that is a family member. Turn it down because going across seas and giving a helping hand with the same dish, in the same plate, with the same bowl crafted by a homo-sexual being teased at college, the same fork used to feed a sick child in the hostpital, the same knife that if turned down by you not wanting to help dad cut the steaks, out of stinginess and laziness, could lead to a robber picking up the same knife to stab someone that just left the grocery store trying to put food in the fridge for his 9 children so they won't starve to death, since mommy is out of town trying to make ends meat planted in a garden before her grandad passes away just so she could have lunch for work when she gets home to see her children stealing lunch from other kids in class because dad got stabbed and couldn't be there to feed them, so they turn into the same man who stabbed him in the first place. All it costs at first want the same thing it cost for the medical bill simply because of WANT.

So... Say your grace, before you eat their food, if they could prepare it with their hands, they'll go out and buy whats NEEDED because they needed it. You sat there and said you didn't want it, you could have wanted what I want but since I don't want it I won't get so you turn it down because following and not taking the lead for yourself made you the hungry guy in the bed. They have a full stomach snoring loudly. You have an empty stomach that is growling loudly. It's okay though, go get that Happy Meal. 

Is this what you want? 

The green money you needed, the spinach you needed, the vegetables I have from you Fortune 500 company.  This your money and you were confident you worked hard for it. 

The processed food? SMART

Is eating natural grown home cooked meals effecting the way my body reacts to good decision making and spiritual connections to be inspried while living life without any junk or bad vibes? DUMB

(Would have had that money still on the shelf getting those good vegetables boiling in that pot your grandma gave you for Christmas.) This person cooks for you every day so you won't go hungry. 

The restaurant chains still on your feet?

I'm also talking to the people who can afford it all. We have bill's now, yes we have to do this now, we have holes in our belts keep our clothes on. 

Why do most people, white, blue, or any other race in rappers do what they do?  

They are already where they NEED to be. If it was a WANT they might be somewhere they have no business being. They felt the NEED for their passion so they succeeded. Tell you the truth the clothes and jewelry still doesn't fall too far from the tree branch. We're always held up with our hands whether its police violence, robbery, or swinging fists at one another, now we're holding pants up with our hands. 

To this day you have belts, now you want to go back in time to slavery? 

They didn't have belts back then to give to the slaves. Their clothes fell off loose like a nail about to fall out of a wall. I can't imagine being in a world where my sister and brothers society is crumbling like the crumbs from cornbread on my dinner plate.  

Moving forward, all of this equals not knowing yourself. First, before you go out and think you know others, not just people, places, lifestyles, best believe that considered to be is considered to be everything under the sun. the word for that or everything I just discussed, something that you need to take into consideration every day. Forgive your people. Say I forgive him/her even though it took me a year to fully understand everything else. Call first this time. Study yourself, then everything else which is why I know what I know now will rise into place. By knowing something you haven't studied, if you haven't studied it you don't know it, you don't really know studying requires knowing, knowing required everything else that is studied. Say again to yourself, “I know my skin has medicine, I know that I have to study, I know my heritage, I know where I stay, I know this area like the back of my hand.” I grew up here because you really grow up here. Embracing the area you are now and completely cleaning your living environment to stay sustainable. 

Who is everyone else? 

Staying within a week of no inspiration, no motivation, not believing in your dreams, Saying the wrong things about life because at this moment you feel stress is in the way of your feet! Stand up and walk, walk around to learn, get a piece but a whole piece of mind to know. Once you make a plan you wont feel the need destroy someone else's property. 

Could you determine what to say on the news when something goes down in my area?  I should know exactly what to say. You don't know until you study your surroundings, your area, and the people you bring into the life that are better than you. Second, do what no one does because what is this power of shiny things? These are your shiny things, this is what allowed the light of your journey to shine. We have this thing where we see the now shining, but it wouldn't be shining at all because if this WANT that is the base of all bad seeds from the garden of bad fruits and vegetables. The brain starts to realize, your melanin starts to itch with discomfort telling you its time to move forward and take the big step. Talented, gifted, things that you can possibly have on this Earth to live by should not be the same things blocking your path to success.

I pray every day for as long as I need to. I meditate whenever I choose to have alone time for peace and the divine energies from Jesus, which I call my "Holy Chakras". (which also is the tilte of one of my articles). If you don't have religion out there, The only way I can recommend is that you follow Christ. That is all. When you do this, you are guaranteed a life of fruitful and healthy lifestyles. Stop questioning yourself and others. Give yourself a prayer at something you've never done before. Something you've always wanted to do. Something you NEED in life. I'm going to wrap it up with that this being said, I won't raise my fist now, I will raise my hands only for the one and only Lord Jesus Christ himself who has helped me knock down all walls or a stressful lifestyle. It's time for you to get to know your culture and your heritage, however, religion plays a big role in mines, and it could in yours too. Africans, Hispanics, ect.. whatever your ethnicities are, just be yourself, stick with God and you'll never go hungry again, you'll never WANT what is not for you. God placed you on this Earth to follow him and you will know everything else under the sun, you'll shine brighter than your past. Good job fellow reader, you are on your way to shine, this is my Black Voices blog that I dream to be shared with others who might need the same helping hand. START NOW. Have a nice night, and a nice morning, and a nice day. Take care!

Milz L Mayhorn

Twitter: @Thatshim4real

[whisperthatruns]

           I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, there’s not enough            troops in the army to force the southern people to break            down segregation and accept the Negro [pronounced Nigra]            into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes,            and into our churches.                                    —Strom Thurmond, South Carolina                                    Senator and Presidential Candidate                                         for the States’ Rights Party, 1948            I said, “I’m gonna fight Thurmond from the mountain to            the sea.”                                    —Modjeska Monteith Simkins, Civil                              Rights Matriarch, South Carolina, 1948

The youngest has been married off. He is as tall as Abraham Lincoln. Here, on his wedding day, he flaunts the high spinning laugh of a newly freed slave. I stand above him, just off the second-floor landing, watching the celebration unfold. Uncle-cousins, bosom buddies, convertible cars of nosy paramours, strolling churlish penny- pinchers pour onto the mansion estate. Below, Strom Thurmond is dancing with my mother. The favorite son of South Carolina has already danced with the giddy bride and the giddy bride's mother. More women await: Easter dressy, drenched in caramel, double exposed, triple cinched, lined up, leggy, ready. I refuse to leave the porch. If I walk down I imagine he will extend his hand, assume I am next in his happy darky line, #427 on his dance card. His history and mine, burnt cork and blackboard chalk, concentric, pancaked, one face, two histories, slow dragging, doing the nasty. My father knows all this. Daddy's Black Chief Justice legs straddle the boilerplate carapace of the CSS H.L. Hunley, lost Confederate submarine, soon to be found just off the coast of Charleston. He keeps it fully submerged by applying the weight of every treatise he has ever written against the death penalty of South Carolina. Chanting "Briggs v. Elliott," he keeps the ironside door of the submarine shut. No hands. His eyes are a Black father's beacon, search- lights blazing for the married-off sons, and on the unmarried, whale-eyed, nose-in-book daughter, born unmoored, quiet, yellow, strategically placed under the hospital lights to fully bake. The one with the most to lose. There will be no trouble. Still, he chain- smokes. A burning stick of mint & Indian leaf seesaws between his lips. He wants me to remember that trouble is a fire that runs like a staircase up then down. Even on a beautiful day in June. I remember the new research just out: What the Negro gave America Chapter 9,206: Enslaved Africans gifted porches to North America. Once off the boats they were told, then made, to build themselves a place--to live. They build the house that will keep them alive. Rather than be the bloody human floret on yet another southern tree, they imagine higher ground. They build landings with floor enough to see the trouble coming. Their arced imaginations nail the necessary out into the floral air. On the backs and fronts of twentypenny houses, a watching place is made for the ones who will come tipping with torch & hog tie through the quiet woods, hoping to hang them as decoration in the porcupine hair of longleaf. The architecture of Black people is sui generis. This is architecture dreamed by the enslaved: Their design will be stolen. Their wits will outlast gold. My eyes seek historical rest from the kiss- kiss theater below; Strom Thurmond's it's-never-too-late-to-forgive-me chivaree. I search the tops of yellow pine while my fingers reach, catch, pinch my father's determined-to-rise smoke. Long before AC African people did the math: how to cool down the hot air of South Carolina? If I could descend, without being trotted out by some roughrider driven by his submarine dreams, this is what I'd take my time and scribble into the three-tiered, white crème wedding cake: Filibuster. States' Rights. The Grand Inquisition of the great Thurgood Marshall. This wedding reception would not have been possible without the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (opposed by you-know-who). The Dixiecrat senator has not worn his sandy seersucker fedora to the vows. The top of Strom Thurmond's bald head reveals a birthmark tattooed in contrapposto pose: Segregation Forever. All my life he has been the face of hatred; the blue eyes of the Confederate flag, the pasty bald of white men pulling wooly heads up into the dark skirts of trees, the sharp, slobbering, amber teeth of German shepherds, still clenched inside the tissue-thin, (still-marching), band-leader legs of Black schoolteachers, the single- minded pupae growing between the legs of white boys crossing the tracks, ready to force Black girls into fifth-grade positions, Palmetto state-sanctioned sex 101. I don't want to dance with him. My young cousin arrives at my elbow. Her beautiful lips the color of soft-skin mangoes. She pulls, teasing the stitches of my satin bridesmaid gown, "You better go on down there and dance with Strom-- while he still has something left." I don't tell her it is unsouthern for her to call him by his first name, as if they are familiar. I don't tell her: To bear witness to marriage is to believe that everything moving through the sweet wedding air can be confidently, left-- to Love. I stand on the landing high above the beginnings of Love, holding a plastic champagne flute, drinking in the warm June air of South Carolina. I hear my youngest brother's top hat joy. Looking down I find him, deep in the giddy crowd, modern, integrated, interpretive. For ten seconds I consider dancing with Strom. His Confederate hands touch every shoulder, finger, back that I love. I listen to the sound of Black laughter shimmying. All worry floats beyond the gurgling submarine bubbles, the white railing, every drop of champagne air. I close my eyes and Uncle Freddie appears out of a baby's breath of fog. (The dead are never porch bound.) He moves with ease where I cannot. He walks out on the rice-thrown air, heaving a lightning bolt instead of a wave. Suddenly, there is a table set, complete with 1963 dining room stars, they twinkle twinkle up & behind him. Thelonious, Martin, Malcolm, Nina, Dakota, all mouths Negro wide & open have come to sing me down. His tattered almanac sleeps curled like a wintering slug in his back pocket. His dark Dogon eyes jet to the scene below, then zoom past me until they are lost in the waning sugilite sky. Turning in the shadows of the wheat fields, he whispers a truth plucked from the foreword tucked in his back pocket: Veritas: Black people will forgive you quicker than you can say Orangeburg Massacre. History does not keep books on the handiwork of slaves. But the enslaved who built this Big House, long before I arrived for this big wedding, knew the power of a porch. This native necessity of nailing down a place, for the cooling off of air, in order to lift the friendly, the kindly, the so politely, the in-love-ly, jubilant, into the arms of the grand peculiar, for the greater good of the public spectacular: us giving us away.

Nikky Finney, “Dancing with Strom,” Head-Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books, 2011)

[birdlord]

Every Book I Read in 2016

Here’s a list of the books I finished in 2016! By the way, keeping a list like this WILL make you disinclined to start books and not finish them...when I was going through my notes to write these up, I found one or two that I didn’t manage to finish, but otherwise I finished ‘em all! Asterisks mark re-reads (though there’s only one this year!). Here’s last year’s list. 

01 * Anne’s House of Dreams; Lucy Maud Montgomery - There are plenty of unlikely plot points in LMM’s books, but this one really takes the cake (SPOILER ALERT): woman marries a man out of blackmail, he disappears at sea, returns brain damaged, gets trepanned in Montreal, and turns out to be his own cousin. WHAT IS THAT EVEN, LUCY

02 Kindred; Octavia E. Butler - Oh just your typical sci-fi time travel slavery story! A thoughtful gloss on the idea that time travel is a white-man’s game (since any other type of person is likely to be disregarded, or killed, or put in jail in an earlier time period in the West) & complicating any modern person’s idea that if they were put in a difficult situation in the past, they’d certainly be able to get out of it easily, with their superior knowledge. I just came across a graphic novel version in a bookshop today, so check that out too if you’re more inclined towards a graphic interpretation.

03 The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society; Annie Barrows & Mary Anne Shaffer - I read this without much prior knowledge, so I was surprised to find that this book with a cutesy title was in fact an epistolary novel about the German occupation of the Channel Islands, and as such is fairly intense (though still imbued with cheery, stiff-upper-lippishness).

04 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Clash of Two Cultures; Anne Fadiman - This is perhaps the first work of medical anthropology I’ve ever read, and it was eye-opening. It’s not that I didn’t know that western medicine doesn’t easily leap cultures, doesn’t cross cultural barriers in spite of our own belief in its efficacy. But knowing this abstractly is a different experience than seeing it laid out bare, in the body of a Hmong child in California, born with epilepsy.

05 Rain: A Natural and Cultural History; Cynthia Barrett - Two great tidbits from this book: 1) witch-hunts in Europe coincided with the worst years of the Little Ice Age, since witches were presumed to be affecting the weather. 2) Settlement of the Great Plains in the 1870s was brought on by mistaking weather (some wet years) for climate (arid with occasional wet periods).

06 In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex; Nathaniel Philbrick - This is the “real story” that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. Or, a 2000 nonfiction history of that story, anyhow. Interesting narrative but I found it somewhat weakly-written - Philbrick weirdly (for a book about ships) consistently confuses the meaning of ship tonnage, which is a measure of volume, not mass. What a nit to pick, but here we are. The film version has some seriously bad CGI and added lots of stuff to juice the drama.

07 The State We’re In; Ann Beattie - A book of linked short stories, all set in Maine. I don’t know that I would have noticed that they were all in Maine if I hadn’t read it on the dust jacket, as it’s not really a set of stories where, like the setting is a character, or what have you. Not that I need everyone to be wearing a lobster as a hat, but the connection felt a bit weak.

08 Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure; Alastair Gordon - a book about the design of airports, from their earliest incarnations until the milennium. There’s some great material in here about airports and american imperialism in central and south america, under the auspices of Pan Am. Unfortunately I read the un-updated version, so it didn’t cover much in terms of the way airports have physically been changed since 9/11. I want THAT book. 

09 The Argonauts; Maggie Nelson - This is probably the best piece of “confessional writing” I’ve ever read. It’s shot through with theory in a way that’s really invigorating, but is at the same time extremely personal and revealing, with thoughtful perspective on radically and motherhood, producing and reproducing.

10 A Bell for Adano; John Keene - More WWII occupation, but this time from the occupiers’ POV. An American major is assigned to administer a city in Italy, and decides to return their church bell to them. Hijinks, stereotypes, bureaucracy and some good ol’ American stick-to-itiveness ensue.

11 The Fly Trap; Fredrik Sjoberg - ostensibly a book about an entomologist who lives on an island in Sweden, it’s really a collection of digressions on summer, a fellow entomologist, travel, and collecting as avocation and vocation.

12 Spill Simmer Falter Wither; Sara Baume - the story of a man, and a dog, and the four seasons that they spend together; a year of increasing dread and discomfort. Exceedingly well-described, just thinking about this again months later has put me right back in a slightly damp Irish seaside town, full of prying watching eyes.

13 How to Watch a Movie; David Thomson - Often more of a biography of a film critic than a book teaching the reader “how to watch a movie”. He might well have called it “How to Watch a Movie Like Me, and Also Be Me, I’m Great”. I did appreciate the comparison of cuts in a film to periods after a sentence - a way of adding rhythm to a scene just as one adds it to a paragraph.

14 Mislaid; Nell Zink - A lesbian woman  in 1966 in becomes enamoured of a gay professor at her college, marries him, has some babies, and leaves him a decade later. She and her daughter take to the south and live as African Americans, leading to some identity-politics hullabaloo and a pretty nonsensical over the top ending. Zink is poking at her readers, hoping they’ll feel uncomfortable.

15 Station Eleven; Emily St John Mandel - A lifetime of having Can-con thrust on me leaves me with the sense of vague embarrassment when a book is set in Canada. It feels specific where Americanness feels general, universal. Silly, I know. My desire to see an author’s description of how civilization collapses is ultimately well-satisfied in this book, though it takes a long time for the book to get there.

16 First Bite: How we Learn to Eat; Bee Wilson - A look at how we (and our families, friends, and cultures at large) shape our food preferences. Wilson takes us through her own past of disordered eating, and learning to feed picky children, all the while consulting with neuroscientists and nutritionists for backup. The overall message is about the possibility of change; even bad habits can be altered, even those learned as a wee babby.

17 The Slave Ship: A Human History; Marcus Rediker - This was an amazing, absorbing read, using the slave ship as a site to examine the slave trade in general, its innovations and consequences. Reducer points out that it’s only on the ship that Africans forged a collective sense of africanness, since they would have come from different linguistic and familial groups. It’s the shipboard life that allows the categories of “black” for the diverse enslaved people, and “white” for the multiethnic and multilingual crews to be created.

18 The Devil’s Picnic: Travels Through the Underworld of Food and Drink; Taras Grescoe - This guy is like a low-rent Canadian ersatz Bourdain. Blecch. 

19 On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation; Alexandra Horowitz - Horowitz takes the same walk with 11 different experts, in the hopes of learning or noticing something different every time. Perhaps because of being harnessed to this conceit, she often takes on the pose of a naif, which can strike the reader as a bit rich given that she’s got a PhD in psychology and works on animal behaviour. Is this the editorial hand, making sure the science doesn’t get to be too much?

20 Counternarratives; John Keene - Engrossing short stories (some longer than others, perhaps novella-length?) placed in various north and south american colonial contexts. Each is expanded from a short historical documents (e.g. newspaper announcements) and provides enough background to understand the subjects as complex people in their own rights.

21 An Age of License; Lucy Knisley - All of her books are pretty open, emotionally-speaking, but this one feels especially nakedly exposed. Her feelings will seem familiar to anyone who has gone through a big breakup, then made some assorted attempts to get their shit together. Not everyone gets to do that while on an expenses-paid European book tour, but there you are.

22 Something New; Lucy Knisley - Knisley made her name in graphic travelogues like the one above, but her more recent books concentrate on more conventional life milestones: marriage, pregnancy, motherhood. I read this book about wedding planning while planning my own, in summer 2016. While the problems I encountered were different than hers, I did actually find it useful (and yeah, I made sure that I read it in time for it to come in handy!).

23 Midnight’s Children; Salman Rushdie - This book made me wish for a great documentary (or something?) about India just after independence - I think there was loads of nuance that I didn’t capture at all due to my own ignorance. I found myself distracted frequently while reading this, which is especially bad since the book’s narrator is careening around constantly, breaking narrative rules all over the place. So beware losing focus, or you may be lost for some pages. I appreciated Rushdie’s description of the family’s privilege - our hero doesn’t describe his family as wealthy, and it’s easy to lose that fact until the moment of child-swapping. Or rather, returning?

24 Love & Other Ways of Dying; Michael Paterniti - A collection of harrowing essays, which – before you read the copyright page, which obviously everyone does, right? – you’d be right to assume that they were written for men’s magazines.

25 One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding; Rebecca Mead - Besides the graphic novel above, this is the only book about weddings I read whilst planning one. And it’s a polemic against the wedding-industrial complex that 1) felt considerably out-of-date 9 years after publication and 2) espoused ideas that I was already in the bag for. So, ok but not ground-shaking.

26 Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster; Steven Biel - Though I read the un-updated version of this book, there were a couple of takes that I found interesting here that I hadn’t come across before. Firstly, post-disaster narratives tended to cast Titanic as a moment of per-WWI loss of innocence, but this is overblown, since there was lots of unrest already in 1912 (e.g. extensive strikes during King George V’s coronation summer in 1911 which threatened starvation, suffragist demonstrations. And secondly, the idea of muscular Anglo-Saxon protestant manhood was reaffirmed culturally after the sinking, contrasting their nobility to emotion (perish the thought!) and violence from “latins” and other foreigners.

27 American Youth; Phil LaMarche - A slight little book about gun violence in New England, in which a fatherless (part-time, anyway) boy falls in with a group of conservative teen wingnuts, the sort who would now be recruiting on Reddit instead of at the high school cafeteria. Angsty and pretty much resolutionless, so a fine representation of the experience of adolescence.

28 A Severed Head; Iris Murdoch - Expect the sort of soap-opera plotting typical of Murdoch. Set in London during the choking post-war fog, which reasserts itself over and over. I’ve been hit over the head with her brilliance in the past (The Black Prince, sigh), and this one didn’t pull that particular trick, but I did enjoy it.

29 Their Eyes Were Watching God; Zora Neale Hurston - Janie talks her way through the American south, attaching herself to various places and people until she finds herself, finally, reasonably content. I thought it was interesting that her ability or inability (willingness or unwillingness) to bear children isn’t an issue in any of her relationships. I realize that this is a low bar to clear, but yeah, I’m happy when women aren’t reduced to their decisions about children.

30 A Burglar’s Guide to the City; Geoff Manaugh - Manaugh sees cities (and architecture) in a way that most people don’t, and in this case he’s taking on the mantle of the law-breaker, the intruder. The book combines tales of epic burglaries involving tunnelling & hiding, LAPD helicopter ride-alongs, lock picking seminars, and tidbits about the securitization of the city. E.g. did you know that Paris’ nickname The City of Light came originally from its streetlights, which were installed on police orders?

31 Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure; Ingrid Burrington - Look, I know you need an excuse to look at your city through different eyes. And here it is! Obviously some of this is NY-specific, but having the ability to see the physical traces of the internet’s infrastructure is a great superpower to have.

32 Pond; Claire-Louise Bennett - lacking a thread of narrative through the entire book, it’s uncertain whether the best way to read this is as a novel, or as a series of short stories with the same protagonist. A woman lives in an Irish cottage, and equally divides her time musing about her surroundings and her own mental state. A quote I liked: “Then it occurred to me that perhaps I’d been terrified for longer than all day, and had rather mixed feelings upon realizing that - I wasn’t much keen on the idea that I’d been terrified for years, but it seemed possible”

33 Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature; Hab Wylie - This book looks a literature that acknowledges the Atlantic provinces as a contemporary space, rather than as a place frozen in time, and set outside the forces of globalization and finance. That latter notion is shorthanded as “the folk”, eg “The Folk paradigm is complicit in the colonial tactic of constructing the land as unoccupied, because it cultivates the impression that the Folk have always belonged here”

34 February; Lisa Moore - Inspired by the above, I picked up this one from the library. It covers the story of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig that sank with all aboard off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982, and its long-term consequences for a particular family. I found the interlocking timelines to be pretty effective, and the emotional fallout from the disaster is handled with the appropriate weight and solemnity.

35 Combat Ready Kitchen: How the US Military Shapes the Way You Eat; Anastacia Marx de Salcedo - Once you find out how much military logistics affects the way the civilian world fabricates, ships and even eats, it’s hard not to want to dig in a bit further. This is the story of how military rations became industrial foods. Interestingly, where the “clean-eating” food world might expect the author to reject the convenience foods whose history she’s tracing here, she takes a far more pragmatic approach. I was a bit less fascinated by the specific scientific advancements, and wish more time had been spent on the history.

36 Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture; Jon Savage - A long monograph on adolescence prior to the creation (and cultural ascension) of the teenager in the post-WWII era. Naturally, no matter what the surrounding historical events, there’s always a generational divide between the young and their parents, and Savage plots that rift over and over again, from the 1890s to the 1940s. Sadly his research is restricted to Western Europe and North America only, I’d like to see something similar that has a broader scope (though I’m sure one of the prerequisites of a teen culture is some amount of surplus time, resources, etc which are certainly not available prior to the achievement of some serious development).

37 Our Young Man; Edmund White - A slim little thing (I’m sure all it ever snacks on is plain air-popped popcorn) with allusions to Oscar Wilde, and barely a place towards the AIDS crisis. A change of perspective in the final third was much appreciated, though the new protagonist is scarcely less self-obsessed than the first.

38 When God was a Rabbit; Sarah Winman - I felt a bit like this book’s reach exceeded its grasp. It felt more like a homey, British ensemble dramedy than the lofty Literature it presents itself to be. I was, however, with it until world events (I’ll keep it spoiler-free for y’all) crash into the narrative in a clumsy and un-earned fashion.

39 The Sport of Kings; CE Morgan - A huge, and wide-ranging tale about lineage, blood, wealth and slavery in Kentucky, with a thin veneer of horses to help the whole thing go down a bit easier. Both massively compelling and by times stomach-turning, this is book can be a rough read. I could see a tilt into High Melodrama appearing in the final quarter or so, and I wished mightily that it wouldn’t go where I thought it was going…..but it did.

40 The End of Average; Todd Rose - I was hoping for an interesting history of the science of averages, and/or the idea of designing for “the average human” and that’s what I got in the first third or so. Then the book devolves (or evolves, I guess, depending on your perspective) into a gung-ho self-help book about bootstrapping your way to the top, even if you’ve been disregarded your whole life. Meh.

2016 by the Numbers

Read on a screen 1

Read on paper ALL THE REST :):)

Book Club Reads 4 (our club met 7 times this year, but 3 of those book I’d finished in 2015)

Graphic Novels 2

Fiction 19

Nonfiction 21

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Reflections on Asmara’s Modernist (and Colonial) Dream

World Bank building, Asmara (all images, courtesy of the author)

Asmara is itself a giant monument to colonial folly. When it comes to architecture, the Italians simply lost their heads.

—Michela Wrong, I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation

In early July 2017, Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Hundreds of modernist buildings in the historic city center, built between 1935 and 1941 under Italian colonial rule, made it onto this prestigious list, along with the city of Asmara itself. This moment comes as Eritrea, which sits like a narrow, slanted pistol along the Horn of Africa, continues to face fierce criticism. Its government is considered one of the world’s most repressive regimes. This is a place where, in recent years, more and more young people have been fleeing, across harsh lands and seas, to reach the porous shores of the Mediterranean so as to escape the government. Asmara first became the capital city of Italian Eritrea in 1897. By the time the Italians left in 1942, they had built edifices with off-white petrol stations the shape of aircraft and pastel villas the size of spaceships, leaving a remarkable legacy of Art Deco and Futurist architecture throughout the city. Many Asmarinos now carry the burden of living with this displaced heritage — one that wasn’t even of our own making in the first place.

When I first heard about Asmara becoming a World Heritage Site, I felt overwhelmed. I have been there only twice: when my grandmother Berrezaf died in 1985, and to visit my estranged father in 2006. Unlike me, most of my family, now living in the U.S., retains strong ties with Asmara. I wondered how this news must have made them feel, since they had left the city in haste after 20 or 30 years. All that was left, it seems, were their stories, a few old photographs, and some curt phone calls to those they had left behind (the government was known to eavesdrop on such conversations). However, this time around, I felt as though the city’s long-forgotten modernist buildings had come back to life. But this only made me question why Asmara was given this designation, especially as the country is reeling from the effects of decades of political and economic hardship.

Africa Pension, façade

In the summer of 2006, I stayed for almost three weeks at Africa Pension, a majestic pastel pink hotel built in the early 1930s that sits on a calm hill overlooking the city. It had cold marble floors and wide mauve sunken sofas. Power cuts meant that showering felt like skinny-dipping in the Arctic Sea. Walking around the narrow, manicured sculpture garden at dusk, I could sense that Asmara’s architecture had escaped the brunt of war. Down the hill toward the World Bank building was an immaculate Art Deco villa, built in 1938. I would go there to read one of the few local English newspapers and surf the internet on broadband. All the newspapers talked about was President Isaias Afworki, a stubborn war veteran who refused to step down after more than a decade in power. Everyone, from street cleaners and journalists to armed guards and diplomats, had to give in to his omniscience. He was the only ruler the country had known since gaining independence in 1991.

It was only after 2012 that I managed to come to terms with Asmara and its countless murky stories of war, exile, and colonialism. After reading I Didn’t Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation by British journalist Michela Wrong, I came to understand why Asmara, which sits at an altitude of 2,325 meters, had managed to escape the ravages of the war for independence from Ethiopia, which lasted from 1961 to 1991. As Wrong also observed in a 2014 BBC podcast, “War, which so often razes beautiful cities, did the opposite in here, keeping Asmara safe.” I realized that my generation, living in exile, had lost out on the opportunity to shape Asmara’s modern history. I suspect this void has allowed the government to distort the stories of the city center’s modernist sites.

St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral on Harnet Avenue, Asmara

My cousin Dawit, who now lives in Colorado, calls Asmara, where he was born and raised, “the lost city.” He finds it odd that Eritrea’s repressive regime has been lobbying tirelessly for these historic sites to gain world recognition, while very little has been done to protect them since the government first came to power in 1991. He argues that while Asmara’s buildings “might still be there, [Asmara] has lost itself to tyranny.” Seeing some of these buildings today, looking decrepit on YouTube, has left Dawit feeling sad and helpless. Although he remains fiercely loyal to this “lost city,” he no longer believes in what he describes as the government’s “lost causes”: the way it takes credit for the country’s triumphs, while locals often suffer the cruel consequences of its stifling grip. This just goes to show how the government’s undisputed role in Asmara becoming a World Heritage Site can muddy the appeal of public spaces to local residents, even going as far as to alienate Asmarinos who have been forced to flee the regime.

But governments can’t dictate how the memory of public spaces echo our longing for a sense of home. Biniam, a close family friend and former Eritrean government official, insists that “even after dictatorship, life goes on.” He paints a rosier picture of Asmara, describing his best memories at one of the city’s oldest cafés, Bar Vittoria on Itegue Zehaitu Street. Hearing him talk from his new home in California, I realized that landmarks can carry the weight of history, but it is people, such as the young waitresses in olive green aproned dresses whom I spoke with while I was there, that fill places with life. Biniam longs to go back to his family in Asmara, to savor the aroma of fresh coffee and cake as vintage Millecento cars drive past Bar Vittoria. He emphasizes that Asmara meant a great deal to him and so many others long before it was designated a World Heritage Site: “it’s home; it doesn’t matter what others think,” he said. The Italians might have built those sites, he said, but Eritreans have always owned the memories that continue to live inside them.

Bar Vittoria, Asmara

Memory and politics alone don’t determine how citizens and government officials memorialize monuments. There’s a strong sense in which the people of Asmara now “own” the buildings themselves, too. My cousin Eirmias pointed out that Asmara, where he went to university in the late ’90s, could now reclaim its place and dignity within colonial history. Furthermore, preserving and promoting these landmarks could help improve tourism and possibly even the economy, leading Asmara to a better future. Eirmias told me this as he described the joys of student life, drinking cold Melotti beer — also known as Asmara birra — at the small bar in Selam Hotel (built in 1937) with a handful of fresh roasted peanuts and a chance to watch some television. I walked past this Art Deco building often on the way to my father’s office. From the outside, it looks low, pale blue, and rectangular. I could sense that Eirmias was quite conflicted about these historic sites now coming back to haunt us. On the one hand, he was proud to embrace them as legitimate Asmara landmarks: “Now we own them,” he said, speaking from his home in Houston. Yet he couldn’t help but feel that “Italians used our forefathers as slaves to build this city… They enslaved us, but we still love them.”

I don’t believe Asmara can ever reclaim its place in what began as a rigorous colonial construct. Inhabiting public spaces isn’t the same as owning them, and these buildings will always be a bold reminder of Italian rule. If anything, this historic designation has forced me and some members of my family to come to terms with the pitfalls of memorializing public spaces for political reasons, as the government has done: parading this historic moment as a triumph for the people of Eritrea, as well as the struggle for independence, while the country suffers the consequences. That’s usually why our own personal stories become skewed and monotonous, told only through the misleading eyes of power and propaganda. What I find even more disturbing is the apathy, coming especially from those of us living abroad, far away from the regime. We’re still struggling to reconcile our colonial past and unsure of our role in the future of Asmara, especially under Afworki. I wish we could learn from the Italians, for whom, as Wrong said on the podcast, “Asmara was a gift… There was room to stretch, [and the architects] could be as daring as they liked.” Only if Asmarinos become just as daring can we possibly begin shape the future of the country’s many endearing modernist sites and our lives inside them.

The post Reflections on Asmara’s Modernist (and Colonial) Dream appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[mandingomag]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmDaAWZ8A1E) Published on Nov 11, 2015African Slave trade: who started it, and who stopped it Historians estimate that between 10 and 18 million Africans were enslaved by Arab slave traders and taken across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 650 and 1900. [Slavery remained legal in the islamic world until 1970. NINETEEN-seventy.]...Many male African slaves were castrated [by muslims] under the belief that the blacks had an uncontrollable sexual drive... In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana (750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population were slaves. In Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of slaves. In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala of the Cameroon, the Igbo and other peoples of the lower Niger, the Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba a third of the population consisted of slaves. The population of the Kanem was about a third slave. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1396–1893). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves. The population of the Sokoto caliphate formed by Hausas in the northern Nigeria and Cameroon was half slave in the 19th century. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population of Arab-Swahili Zanzibar was enslaved. Roughly half the population of Madagascar was enslaved... Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the slave markets of Zanzibar. Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the city each year... The Anti-Slavery Society estimated that there were 2,000,000 slaves in the early 1930s Ethiopia (the only part of Africa not ruled by whites at the time), out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million. Slavery continued in Ethiopia until the brief Second Italo-Abyssinian War in October 1935, when it was abolished by order of the Italian occupying forces... (That's right: Mussulini, a member of the AXIS freed 2 million black-owned slaves. When will Steven Spielburg make a movie about THAT?) When British rule was first imposed on the Sokoto Caliphate and the surrounding areas in northern Nigeria at the turn of the 20th century (a century after Britain had outlawed slavery), approximately 2 million to 2.5 million people there were slaves. Another 2 million black-owned slaves freed by white people. You're welcome. In 'The Slave Trade Today', (on Amazon.com) Sean O'Callaghan toured the Mideast and Africa and covertly visited many slave markets. Since Islam allows for slavery and slave trading, he was able to see much of the real world of Islamic slavery. This all happened openly and legally as recently 1962: "Ten boys were ranged in a circle on the dais (used to display the slaves), their buttocks toward us. They were all naked, and I saw with horror that five had been castrated. The (slave dealer) said that usually 10% of the boys are castrated, being purchased by Saudi homosexuals, or by Yemenis, who own harems, as guards." p 75 "Why had the girls (female slaves who had just been sold) had accepted their fate without a murmur, the boys howled and cried?" "Simple" said the Somali, we tell the girls from a very early age - 7 or 8 that they are made for love, at age NINE we let them practice with each other, and a year later with the boys". In Mecca: "We take note of 20 tall Negroes in turbans walking near the Kaba. They are eunuch slaves and are employed as police in the great Mosque. There are about 50 of them all together." "The streets are full of slaves... we see a few old slave women. They are recognized by the poverty of clothing... but we see nothing of the younger women slaves who are kept in the houses of the city." "As we move along we see two or three very old men and women who look like black skeletons. If we go to the mosque at sunrise we shall see some of these, if we go at sunset they will be there too, and if we pass by at midnight, we shall see them there still .. Sleeping on the stones in their rags. They have no home but the mosque, and no food but what they receive in alms; (they were) turned out to seek the bounty of Allah, as their masters would say." Blacks started the African slave trade, Muslims exanded it and carried it to new heights of brutality, white people stopped it. Then Europeans gave blacks and muslims independence and blacks and Muslims restarted the African slave trade started all over.

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#ArtLivesHere

It all starts with an inquisitive child, eyes wide open, held tilted forward, right on the edge of the frame. The problem with children – or at least mine own biggest problem with them – is that they always ask the difficult questions. It is no surprise that in some of our cultures children are usually discouraged, sometimes violently, from asking too many questions. It is even worse, I found out on Wednesday evening at the Blend Restaurant and Bar, when the question is a silent one. A stare. That is, when one is tasked with interpreting a child’s silent stare. Which is exactly what Mo Matli’s lens burdened us with at her maiden exhibition “Intrinsic Melanin” for Bloem First Fridays. The photograph of the boy is one of many adorning the Blend’s meshed wall. The boy with the menacing poser is staring down at us as we ask Rashid Vries, the main model of this exhibition, if as a person living with albinism feels black, or black “enough”. What is blackness vele? And what are the degrees to blackness – how much of it is enough? Is it the melanin perhaps? I choose to go with the photographer on this last one; ‘Intrinsic melanin’. Blackness in not just – to correct Biko’s formulation – a question of pigmentation. It is intrinsic in the centuries of dispossession (of land, labour and sense of being) that mark us all. No amount of pigmentation variations – be it natural as in the case of albinism or cosmetic as in bleaching – can alleviate blackness. Try as you might! (And I secretly root for those who try; who wouldn’t wanna escape?). I hear the boy whisper Fanon’s sagacious words to my ears; “I am over-determined from without. I am a slave not of the “idea” that others have of me but of my own appearance.” Kids and their bloody questions! I panic; can we move past the albinism of Rashid? Is he not a beautiful man – of course he is! That is the reason Mo shot him. Did he not just say he’s an engineering student? How did he manage to make the transition to being a model? And would he be doing more of this modelling thing? Can. We. Just. Not. Make. Him. A. Slave. Of. His. Appearance? We all know what that is like – it is our collective pain. We enter and nervousness engulfs the room. We attract security escorts in shops. We don’t get served in restaurants. Then why do we do it to him! But we were enslaved by his appearance – do albinos make albino babies? The boy in the top right corner of the wire mesh quizzically, even whimsically, asks a question that would’ve saved us four centuries of msunery had we knew the power to pose the question when the three ships docked at the cape; ‘aninyi perhaps?’ A question Ayanda Mabulu asks of white patrons of the #Amandla![Re]form,Debate,[Re]dress? exhibition catalogue book launch at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum the very next evening. The exhibition has been running from December last year, and it is one of the few that is decidedly black – in both the artists and the subject matter. Also curated by a black woman – another “milestone” in the museum’s history. Laughable really, the whole thing, were it not so painful. And indeed the artwork was painful. On opening night in December I thanked my imposed masculinity for not breaking down in tears when I confronted Reatile Moalusi’s photograph – titled #FMF III – of protesting students holding a placard with the words “police we are your children”. I was, in the words of Ayanda, paining. And this pain permeated through most of the artwork on display. This was, after all, ‘resistance art’. On the Thursday however, as I walked up to the Museum, I was joyously singing Makeba’s version of ‘Bahlelibonke etironkweni’. I was dancing even. Not one iota of my being told me there was something intrinsically wrong about finding joy in a song – a lamentation really – about black people (someone’s parent, child, lover) languishing in jail for daring to be. Enter Ayanda! I got to the museum and like a dog wishing to mark territory headed straight to the loo. The song still ringing in my head. I went straight for Moalusi’s photograph afterwards – it elicited fokol in me. I moved right along. All the artworks were quite. Boring even. So I gave them all a cursory look just to maintain my lie as a cultured person (we are responsible for the upkeep of our lies). One oil painting did manage to insult me though; Martin Steyn’s ‘Die land is ons land.’ A white man laying languorously on a large expanse of land. But only enough for a ‘Nxa!’ I went and took a seat and waited for the show – for that’s what it was, pre-Ayanda, a show – to get started. Sooner it ends, sooner I can check-in and say something banal like “what a lit time we had at Oliewenhuis” and live another day known as the patron of the arts. But Ayanda wasn’t about that life. When asked to introduce himself, after the flurry of self-congratulatory speeches from those involved for doing something so “radical” and other artists had literally just stood at the podium and said “Hi my name is….” and left, Ayanda recited ithakazelo zakhe. At their tale end he excused the ‘unsophisticated juvenile tongues’ of our paler counterparts and gave them a pass to just call him Ayanda. It got uncomfortable; but the kind of discomfort that makes things ‘lit’, that will have us tweet ‘bars!’, but threatens very little. He too must have noticed he was playing into the masochism (we seem to enjoy performing our pain) of the zeitgeist; a candidate for a meme. He went further. “We are not entertainers…we are not going to dance for you.” Some uncomfortable laughter could be discerned. Loso logolo ditshego akere? But how long will we hide behind laughter? He goes deeper. “You are worthy to be protested.” He tells the 1652s. We are now lodged in Fanon’s black abyss. There is no way we could laugh our way out of this one. Someone attempts to clap him off the podium. “Wait I am not done!” He must have heard IceBound on how applause kills. “This is not art…this is our pain!” He stands in front of Asanda Kupa’s “Situation right now.” A painting that painfully reminds one of the haunting line “the children are flying, bullets are dying” in Makeba’s ‘Soweto Blues’. Indeed this is our pain, it is not something to pretty up some dining room in Woodlands. “Fuck that! And fuck you.” He leaves the mic and walks away. “Thank you,” the curator, Tshegofatso Seoka, walks calmly to the stage, smiling away all that just happened. Time for the formalities is over, we hear, now let’s go mingle. But clearly her smile and infectious charm are not enough, she comes back after leaving the podium to disclaim that “Ayanda’s views” (not our collective pain, our immutable truth; just one man’s views in the melee of our wonderful freedom of competing ‘views’) do not represent the museum nor anyone who cares to distance themselves from such ‘anti-nation building’ sentiments. So much for encouraging debate! On Friday though at Pacofs “Lipstick” was looking to entertain and dance for us. But the perennial party-pooper I am (what with my constant search for meaning), what was meant to excite my baser instincts, led me to some very uncomfortable questions regarding black sensuality and femininity – the later a topic any black man must avoid like a plague in these perilous times. (Hotep policing alert!). It would seem to me, from the show and elsewhere, that black South African sensuality and femininity (I point out femininity specifically as it has been assigned by patriarchal determinism as the bastion of sensuality) is couched in white femininity on one extreme and black American sensuality at the other. It was quite telling that the women on stage all wore blond silky weaves, and displayed the Monroesque damsel in distress and non-patriarchy threatening feme fatale type of femininity. One that is very white in character. In this instance they looked to the music that'd be churned at a Mystic Boer karaoke night. All not local – important point this. When they got sensual, seductive, they looked to the Trace playlist; of course your girl B! led the pack. Again – all American. Femininity – white . Black – hypersexuality. This dichotomy is worth annals of literature. But let us not digress, the question here is where is our organic femininity and sensuality – one rooted in the soil of you will. The music says it all as to how the writer and director imagine femininity and sensuality. It is here that we need the wisdom of king Hlaudi's 90%. Music (and culture in general) influences how people imagine themselves. Music in particular speaks specifically to how we imagine ourselves in the libidinal economy. It is worth noting that when Hlaudi took the logical decision to play 90% local music on public radio, the loudest critics where Metro FM’s Sunday’s ‘love movement’ listeners. They begged profusely that 90% not apply here; as there simply weren’t enough romantic songs locally. Dare not ask what is more romantic than Masekela’s ‘Marketplace’ or Mahlasela’s ‘Kuyobanjani’. It became apparent then that South Africans don’t deem ourselves capable loving – being romantic – on our own terms (not that we do much on our own terms, the colony we are). This is especially surprising from a people that (admittedly mostly when selling ourselves to tourists) describe ourselves as ‘musical’. We can compose a struggle song one time! – as Tatz Nkonzo ably demonstrated – but to express the love in our heart, we need to cross the sea and search for our dictionaries and twangs (the current Lesedi FM TV advert is a welcomed deviation from this abnormality). This is highly disturbing. It also explains why Babes Wodumo blew up so big; despite a largely mediocre album. She represented something that has been absent from South Africa’s popular imagination for a long time; authentic township black female sensuality. Lipstick though stuck to the colonial script; no “I love Hansa and fucking” Brendaesque ‘bad girl’ sensuality, or cheesegirl fragile femininity was invoked. Never mind a new kind of black femininity or sensuality outside the confines (be it submission or rejection) of patriarchy being imagined anew. But because God is a lesbian and o hana ka seatla, there was another happening not too far (listen to me lie!) from Pacofs where we could surely not suffer the dearth of local music. Protential Inc. was hosting ‘Love & Hip Hop’ at Club Zanadu. The people were beautiful; all seemed to be genuinely happy to see us. We were home. We were happy. The line-up was packed, the stage was never lonely – Mafia Code especially owned that space, their energy and fresh sound (christened Koriana-Trap) puts them miles apart of most upcoming and established artists. The bar too. Conversation centred around there – a few pleasantries were exchanged, not enough insults, and mild curves all fought for space on that counter. The pool tables too had plenty of company. It was a Dostoyevsky paradise – everyone had somewhere to turn to. Local music too aplenty – but the incorrigible amongst us insisted that the DJ must play local local music, from Bloemfontein, from the Free State. “Don’t all these rappers dotting the place have EPs? Play those!” But they were sad to learn that rappers were begged to submit music for the playlist but dololo. ‘So what to can must happen?’ the organisers asked. These people and their bloody questions! We thus failed dismally to Hlaudirise that set. CJ though – still very much part of Simple Stories! – heeded Hlaudi’s leadership somewhat on Saturday evening at the Blend. His set, an eclectic mix of original compositions and covers, had a healthy dose of South African covers. One novel thing he did was to cover a living and still active South African artist – Zahara. This was refreshing as our local artists, on the rare occasion that they do cover local songs (ironic this), stick with the dead – the “legends” (another word Rampolokeng warns us about). I guess this gives credence somewhat to Mosoeu’s gripe that all black people are good for is dying. CJ and his girlfriend also set the bar high, and simultaneously cut wings of unsupportive lovers, by Skyping throughout his performance – twas the romantic thing ever! So long as there is an IP address no lovers should be apart on such occasions. He dedicated a song to the three of us sitting in the front row, about women who bluetick us kanti they’re curving the greatest experience they could ever have. He was right, as least in my case (coz vele mna yhu ndiGreat, ndiWow, in this thing of loving), and for that I will give him a pass for (correctly, we must concede) assuming our sexuality and relationship status. We were all shocked when he confessed, on a Beyoncé classic, to having a big dick – aaram skepsel. But artist are known for revealing a bit too much of themselves. We just sang along; sans the confession. He led us through a medley of emotions and genres. We travelled from RSA to UK to USA and back home. All the time, like a good captain, he kept us in the loop. And landed us safely into the comfortable bosom of the night. A lovely cloudy cool night. We were free to do the things that made the pots disappear. When all was said and done, all that could be done the Sunday after the Saturday was braai meat, recount our failures and plan for more so that we can fail better next time, all because #ArtLivesHere.