When I was growing up, I only heard people talk about Dogwood Winter and Blackberry Winter, you know those mini-cold spells during otherwise warm spring temperatures. Some years ago, I was talking to someone whose family had roots in Arkansas. It may have been a cold spell during May and she said it was “Stump Winter”. Which translates, she explained, as the wood pile is a memory and the only wood to be had were the tree stumps left from clearing the land.
It rained yesterday and the next couple of days will be much cooler. Might be Dogwood Winter as the Dogwood and Redbud trees are blooming.
Did you see the solar eclipse in August 2017. I bought special viewing glasses and went outside with everyone else. It was eerie and the insects reacted like it was dusk. One of my co-workers sent me the picture of the eclipse and I think she took it. I didn’t even think to do so. I experienced the moment and felt the eeriness of it. I wondered what the ancients made of the solar eclipse without the scientific knowledge we have. Frightened people tell stories grandiose enough to contain and explain their fear of the unknown. And we have the audacity to laugh at those stories.
There will be a solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Make sure your solar eclipse viewing glasses are certified by the International Organization for Standardization. ISO should be printed on the glasses with the specifications that the glasses are required to meet. Be safe when looking at the sun and never do so directly without protection.
In the 1980s, there was a annular solar eclipse that I viewed through a pinhole solar eclipse viewer. Me and a co-worker hastily made it as neither one of us thought we would be able to view the eclipse as it was a workday. I think that was the first solar eclipse that I viewed.
The president of Russia showed ancient pictures of Black Jesus, the Apostles, and Black Virgin Mary which are kept in a Russian vault. Seems like he does that every so often. Maybe, I am a cynic, but probably an African country or countries are not singing in harmony with him and this is his way of currying favor. Most people who know history know that all the European gods, pagan and otherwise, were once Black. The Greeks told us that their gods were Black. I’ve written about this before. I believe it was the Italians who first painted the blond/light brown hair, blue-eyed, fair skinned Jesus that is ubiquitous today. (However, the picture of Jesus most frequently seen today was painted in 1940 by Warner Sallman, an American painter who worked in the field of advertisement. 1940’s United States–deep in the era of Jim Crow and white supremacism. This painting of Jesus was Sallman’s self-portrait and had nothing to do with the Jewish Jesus depicted in the Bible. See the informative article–The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European by Anna Swartwood House — https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-how-jesus-came-to-resemble-a-white-european-142130) Black churches take note of that picture of the white Jesus that you still have hanging on or painted on the walls of your church–it’s the self-portrait of a white man who was born centuries after the Biblical Jesus. Further, there are plenty of Black Madonna and child statutes in churches across Europe. Some were painted over, but many were not.
We have to remember…paraphrase of Desmond Tutu…white missionary who had the Bible told the African to close his eyes and pray. When the African opened his eyes, he had a useless Bible and no land or resources. They use what was to close our eyes to their present machinations. It’s 2024–we should be wise to their ploys.
Francis Scott Key Bridge opened in 1977 and construction began in 1972. The Francis Scott Key Bridge was rammed by a cargo ship. It was a tragic accident. Yet, before the bodies of the men who were killed when the bridge collapsed were recovered the white supremacists were spewing lies and misinformation. A dule y elected mayor was called a DEI mayor. Some nebulous conspiracy caused the ship to ram the bridge. Clickbait…the toddler’s tantrum for attention. No facts, just emotion mongering. The white supremacists are really ramping up their rhetoric that no Black person can be competent in any position. Sad…but the white supremacists know that they cannot compete. Their white skin has mired them in mediocrity for too long and their non-intelligence is highlighted every time they open their mouth to spew tired, old cliches.
We know white people have always lied. Remember “forked tongue”? Look up what the legislature in Tennessee has done openly and with no remorse, lied about a bill and lied about a deal regarding TSU. The Republican lies about just about everything, but take particular note how the republicans have lied to Black people. We don’t seem to understand that the whites lie to placate us while they underhandedly carry out whatever nefarious agenda that will benefit whites and whites only. No, black people have not done better under Republicans. We have done worse. Believing anything white people say is like believing the fox will tend to the chickens as it tends to its kits. We know that white people are hypocrites who claim that they are Christians and that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Have they read the following two verses with any discernment?
Proverbs 6:16-19 The Jerusalem Bible There are six things that the Yahweh hates, seven that his soul abhors: a haughty look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that weaves wicked plots, feet that hurry to do evil, a false witness who lies with every breath, and a man who sows dissension among brothers.
Proverbs 6:12-15 The Jerusalem Bible A scoundrel, a vicious man, he goes with a leer on his lips, winking his eye, shuffling his foot, beckoning with his finger, always scheming evil, he sows dissension. Disaster will overtake him sharply for this, suddenly, irretrievable, his fall will come.
If they have (and they haven’t) they would know that their God hates a liar and a person who sows dissension. They would know that their God has said that one who is a liar, an evil schemer, and/or a sower of dissension will meet with disaster and their fall will come. So they, and only they, have been and continue to be the architects of their own disaster. However, they who cry victim the loudest will always blame someone else for their well deserved downfall which was foretold by their God.
What we should know is that the King James version of the Bible was translated to justify slavery in the English colonies and colonization of lands for the enrichment of the English empire…read monarchy. (In my opinion the decree to protect the monarchy, justifies the above assertion which I agree with and have read in the past in other sources.)
Are we, Black Americans, so blinded by the Stockholm syndrome that we fail to see the firing squad pointing its guns at us? How do you vote for a person who calls you vermin, less than, not equal to, not a human being? How do you vote for a person who has told you that you will have no rights that will be honored by a white person if he is elected? Remember Dred Scott? How do you vote for a person who says I will put into place policies that will discriminate against you so white people can have everything as they did in that “great” past? The dissonance must be deafening. How do you, as a Black American who votes for the above, reconcile/ameliorate that dissonance?
At some point in the past, most U.S. politicians had a public moral persona and their peers policed each other’s persona. No more. If the former president had any morals, he would not be running for president, but concentrating on his legal troubles. But, he sees the presidency as a “get out of jail card”. He has no view of the country except as a vehicle for his grift. And as he does not have the intelligence to present a beneficial plan for the future of this country, he will be the puppet who signs off on Project 2025 and a theocracy. I don’t understand why people don’t believe him and his handlers.
Rumi-–Anything which is more than our necessity is poison. It may be power, wealth, hunger, ego, greed, laziness, love, ambition, hate or anything.
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