Shout out to the women gymnasts whose athletic abilities are phenomenal! The current crop of Black gymnasts are so much fun to watch. I remember gym class and the tumbling, balance beam, the trampoline… There were six week rotations in high school gym class…golf, tennis, archery, flag football, etc. We all had to walk the balance beam to pass the class, but I wasn’t any good at it. I never had the balance. Just think…the gymnasts have to know exactly where every part of their body is in space and time to perform their routines. I’ve also noticed that the gymnasts have more developed bodies. In the past, most of them looked like emaciated sticks. Now, some of them have thighs, curves, and breasts. And their routines and performances are better than ever.
The above picture is, I think, the flower of the chickweed. Usually, it blooms in spring and it is an invasive weed that I eradicate from my flower beds each year. Well, maybe not eradicate as it returns every year. This perfect bloom was brightening my yard in October. It’s a tiny bloom and I surprised myself by noticing it.
Some years ago, I found some Slave Manifests on some site which may have been the National Archives. At the time, I knew my mother’s Ancestors came from Virginia and my father’s Ancestors were from North Carolina.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Slave_Manifests_-_National_Archives_Catalog
I quickly realized that the Manifests were useless. I did not know when my Ancestors arrived and I did not know their names. The Manifests I reviewed listed an African name, sex, approximate age, and port of origin(?). I glanced at a Manifest on the above site and the names were Western (The Slavers were not creative. The list had many women named Elizabeth.) I looked at the Manifests a long, long time ago and I’d forgotten about the site. The above site has Manifests from Slave ships, but unless one knows when and where one’s Ancestor debarked and their name, either African or Western, I don’t know that the Manifests are that useful to the average genealogist.
I’m a sporadic genealogist. Most of my activity is when the latest census is released. I recently updated the family records as the 1950 census was released to the public in 2022.
A long time ago, I had a conversation with a white male and the topic was the Sudan. (I don’t know why, but that particular white male liked to pontificate on all subjects.) Must have been when Sudan was split into South Sudan and Sudan and that was in 2011. He said that South Sudan had no resources and he didn’t understand why South Sudan had seceded. I didn’t know that much about the secession and the reasons therefor, but I did know that South Sudan had oil reserves. He told me I was wrong and he would get back to me. He never mentioned it to me again. (South Sudan formally became independent from Sudan on 9 July 2011, although certain disputes still remained, including the division of oil revenues, as 75% of all the former Sudan’s oil reserves are in South Sudan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sudan)
That’s just to say, I only have a superficial knowledge and understanding of the conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, the Congo, Niger, and the other conflicts roiling Africa. I have wondered, does the West, et al make a deal with the so-called African leaders, i.e., when these men are elected, are they told in no uncertain terms by Western, Russian, and Chinese governments, you do as we say or we will kill you and your family. Because, otherwise, why do men who talk a good game about their plans to uplift their people turn into sadistic murderous dictators only concerned with funding their Swiss bank accounts? Are these men that glib? They may be and they are a great disappointment, not only to their people, but also to us in the Diaspora.
We do know that the current scramble for Africa is all about its abundant resources.
In the Aughts, I traveled to two Countries in Africa. In one of those Countries, we were stopped at a checkpoint. As we approached the checkpoint, our guide told us to be quiet and not to look at the males (boys?) brandishing automatic or semi-automatic weapons. Something, I learned later was cash, exchanged hands. The males were not part of the country’s military, but a gang extorting money from anyone who traveled that road. The gang would have no problem killing a group of Americans. They didn’t care that we were Black.
I remember a twinge of fear and the twinge remained throughout the stay, even though we stayed in a compound whose thick walls (brick or stone with strategically placed peepholes) were topped with broken glass and razor barbed wire. I remember the beach was so quiet, even though there were a few vendors selling their crafts on the beach.
When we were leaving the Country, the airport security/workers tried to extort money from us as payment for boarding the airplane. One of the workers told the others to leave us alone, so we got past that obstacle, only to have another worker re-start the extortion process. He made the mistake of letting one of our group pass…she was light skinned and I suppose males thought her pretty. He let the rest of us pass after being repeatedly told that we were in the group with her and that we had no money. He was not happy. All of this happened while our guide was negotiating a payment. He just shrugged when he saw that we were boarding the plane. Seems like someone should have told the trip’s organizer that no payment was required to enter the country, but payment was expected in order to leave. Needless to say, I’ve never wanted to return to that Country.
Just saw where Richard Roundtree of Shaft fame has passed. I enjoyed the first movie and the last two sequels. Wonder if anyone else noticed that the leads–Richard Roundtree was dark chocolate, Samuel Jackson was milk chocolate, and Jessie Usher was caramel?
Why do people who say they are good decide that evil benefits them more than the good they pretend to espouse? Why is it courageous to say that the sky is blue when, in fact, the consensus in the society in which one lives is that the sky is blue? How does one communicate with one who has decided not to abide by the societal consensus? Especially, when no facts support the view(s) of the espouser? Now, societal consensus is sometimes very wrong and we need the lone voice in the wilderness to challenge it, but some things are irrefutable.
What did Marvin Gaye say…There’s only three things that for sure; Taxes, death and trouble. (See, Trouble Man lyrics) Unfortunately for us, we live in a time and a society where all is relative. The I who is speaking determines the context and the meaning of their words and woe to us who assign society’s consensus to those words. However, upon further thought, maybe death is the only immutable, as lying is an antidote for taxes and trouble.
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