touch

I used to go to the Kingdom Hall. In my final days there, I came to know a man named Jim Salda. He was an intelligent man--the first person I ever met who carried a programmable computer in his shirt pocket, a device he talked about with pride.

Brother Salda designed highway construction for the State of Oklahoma. Took a lot of high level math to do his job--I politely got lost every time I listened to him tell about the latest highway he had a hand in. He had his quirks and they did not mesh well with God's People.

One of his quirks was that he hugged people. He hugged everybody--man, woman... boy, girl. He was always in his own peculiar world and, for whatever reason, saw good in every person he met so deemed them huggable.

This quirk of his bothered some people and he got in "trouble." It's sad, I think, but most people are not comfortable being hugged. Some fellow Kingdom Hallers reported him to The Elders®. I understood why they did.

His hugging made me uncomfortable too. I grew up where "I love you" was never heard and hugs were never felt. My upbringing was probably a lot like yours. That's just how it was back then.

Over time, Brother Salda broke down the wall that Life had made for me. I had an epiphany. I came to love Brother Salda. One day I came into the Hall, Brother Salda was there with his usual hug, and it didn't bother me any more. He had passed on his unique gift I will carry with me from now on.

The gift of Touch.

Here's what I know:

1. I will not touch someone I don't like. I keep a distance of at least 2 feet from them. (Normal human beings... like Brother Salda.... are wired to do this naturally. I just never knew.)

2. I cringe when someone I don't like touches me.

3. People who touch me are sending me a critical message. It most likely means they care about me in some special way. To them I am not just another glob of chemicals.

4. If I touch you, I care about you. The act of touching, simple as it is, represents a huge leap for me in the area of personal development.

Brother Salda... may he rest in peace... taught me it's alright to touch.

escort

On November 14, 1960, the schools of New Orleans, Louisiana got integrated. On that day, for the first time since Columbus landed on North American soil, a human being of African descent, went to a previously all-white school in the Deep South in the United States. A little black girl.

Her Daddy didn't want to let her go. He'd been raised in the South and knew to what depths of evil good ol' white "Christian" boys and girls were all too happy to go against people of a different color.

The little girl's mother, as black women tend to do, put her foot down. "Hell nawwww!" She wanted not just for her daughter to get a better education, but all American children.

An artist commemorated the event with a painting he called The Problem We All Live With. Cool work of art. Take some time.

Ruby Bridges thought she was at Mardi Gras. "There was a large crowd of people, they were throwing stuff and hollering... just like at Mardi Gras!"

U.S. Marshal Charles Burks spoke of the American champion he had the privilege of escorting: "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She never whimpered. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very proud of her."

Indeed.

As soon as Bridges got into the school that day, all those nice Christian white folks stormed in and snatched their children out. All the good Christian teachers left, too. Except one. Barbara Henry. For the next year, Mrs. Henry taught Ruby alone -- a classroom of one teacher and one child.

Every morning as little Ruby walked to school, one "Christian" woman threatened to poison the little girl. Hearing the threat, the Marshals only let Ruby eat food that she brought from home.

Another "Christian" woman carried on a single woman protest w/ a black baby doll in a wooden coffin. It scared little Ruby "more than the nasty things people screamed at me."

Her mother told her to call on God for help. "Remember, if you get afraid, say your prayers. You can pray to God anytime, anywhere. He will always hear you."

Father Bridges lost his job. Ruby's sharecropping grandparents in Mississippi got pushed off their land. But others in the community, black and white, stepped up and supported the family in a variety of ways.

Some whites kept their children in the school Ruby went to despite the protests. A neighbor gave Mr. Bridges a job. Locals babysat, guarded the house, walked behind the federal marshals' car on the trips to school.

In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, Life went on for this decent family and innocent little girl. Somehow this girl with a heart of iron... a family that kept believing in America's promise, overcame the ugliest part of America.
________________

On January 5, 2009, a 7 year old black girl no different than Ruby of the 60s was escorted by Secret Service Agents to her elementary school in Washington D.C.

Her name is Sasha, and her daddy is the President of the United States of America.

hair

Twice... two times this past week... two different people asked me the exact same (to me, inane) question: What ARE you????!!! Both times I was a bit confused about where they were coming from, tho I've heard varieties of the same question for 50 years. Fiddy.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN what am I? I'm a Human Being!" I was at work so couldn't/didn't precisely say what I really wanted to say: "What THE FUCK do you mean... 'what am I,' dumbass"?

Both times I asked what they meant, both asked about hair...

Here's the deal: I had nothing to do with the shape, color, texture, or look of my freekin' HAIR. At the least, it had something to do with a union with Ruth and, I presume, John Herbert long about February 1957. At best, God himself had a hand. Least in the equation is me, the molecule in the petri dish who survived from way back then.

Here's the bigger deal:

I like my hair. It's one of my finer physical attributes.

I hate my hair. Over the years it's given me more grief than I will go into here. My hair is a living being. A thing. I wish I could go to a barber and get it really fixed once a week--I've tried--but going to barbers is a waste of money. Because my hair is a monster. I go to a barber and I end up cutting my hair my own damn self anyway.
_____

So maybe you've got issues, too, with some part of you. A feature the world notes but you, if not hate, have problems with.

Well, what you gone do?

Your skin is too white or too yella. Or maybe it's jet-black and don't show up well in photos.

Maybe your eyes are cat-eye green. Or blue.

Or you got a big booty. Or a small one.

Maybe you got luscious "thunder" thighs. Or they're too skinny.

This could go on and on ...

Here's the ultimate question: do you love yourself, jus.t as you are? Andn if the answer to that is no, the second question is "can you?"

Someone supposedly once said: love your neighbor as yourself. The pillar of the Golden Rule.

I'm here to say: loving neighbor as much as self only works if you love yourself FIRST, despite the flaws you are the only one who knows.

head with a heart

True story.

It happened this Thursday. March 12, 2009, in Boston, MA. Don't believe me? Google it if you have to....


President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, I'm thinking "smart dude... edumacated" Paul Levy, called a meeting -- the kind that's happening all over the country these days amongst similarly edumated smart boys, with far different outcomes than his. He stood before a mass of people he thought he'd soon be laying off, sending on their way into the cold, dark night.

In the days before the meeting, he'd watched the transporters--people who push patients around in wheelchairs--saw them talk to the patients, put them at ease, make them laugh. Treat them like human beings. The transporters were practicing medicine.

He poked his head into rooms and watched people who deliver the meals, making small talk with the patients and their families. Making small talk. Making them laugh. Forget their troubles. The food deliverers were practicing medicine.

He watched the people who polish the corridors, who strip the sheets, who empty the trash cans. Many had second jobs, were just barely scraping by. He did not look forward to making their lives more difficult than it was.

So, in the Sherman Auditorium that Thursday, he looked out over a sea of people -- technicians, secretaries, administrators, therapists, nurses -- the heart and soul of a hospital. Beth Israel had hired about 2,000 over just the last six years and the chances that they could all keep their jobs and benefits in a free-falling economy weren't good.

He had a bold idea: to keep everybody employed. But he needed some help and had no idea how or if it would come.


"I'd like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners - the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don't want to put an additional burden on them. Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice if we're going to keep everybody. It means that others--those at the "top"--will have to give up more of their salary or benefits."

The words had barely crossed his lips when the auditorium erupted in thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.

CEO Levy stood and felt the sheer power of it rush over him, like a massive wave. His eyes welled and his throat tightened so much that he didn't think he could continue. It was not what he expected. The lump had barely left his throat when he started getting e-mails.

A nurse said her floor voted unanimously to forgo a 3 percent raise.


A guy in finance who got laid off from his last job at a hospital in Rhode Island suggested working one less day a week.


Another nurse was willing to give up some vacation and sick time.


A respiratory therapist suggested eliminating bonuses.

"I'm getting about a hundred messages per hour," Levy said.
______

It's primal.

Sure. People are worried about the next paycheck, worried if they'll have a job in six months... shit... next week. But a lot of them, a lot of us, have figured out that, economy aside, everybody's in the exact. Same. Boat. My boat don't rise because yours sinks. Your boat sinks? Well... here we go...

Good story.

Google it. It was the very nicest thing I heard all week.

enough

When is enough, enough?

You've been hanging with what you thought was a bad-ass "other" but things have not been so peaceful. You'd like to understand them and have them to understand you but such has not always been and never was the case.

Thoughts rush in on a warm Sunday morning with light jazz in the air, it dawns. What do you do?

When is enough, enough?
^^^^

You have a job you truly do not like. Maybe a boss you do not respect. Times are tuff and you try to deal. Maintain. You need a job. But man... you can take only so much and you have your self-respect to nurture.
When is enough, enough?
^^^^

You have a family member who's lost your respect. They family, sho nuff, but they are nothing like you. I mean... they lost your respect, man! Straight up. What do you do?

When is enough, enough?
^^^^

Go here. Click down a couple times on the player and listen to what jazzman Donald Harrison is telling you in his "Mr. Cool Breeze." Around the 2-minute mark... oh yeah. If your mind is right, you'll know exactly what to do.

You'll know when enough is enough. Point blank. You'll be at peace and all will be right with the world.
^^^^

p.s. Stick around for NILS's Catnap. Wow. When *that * mofo plays, hope you got a significant other somewhere around. Oh my.

Eyewitness Testimony

This story will break your heart, then put it back together. It's an amazing 20 minutes of televsion that everyone connected with the criminal "justice" system needs to watch.









For more, click.

art show

A Saturday night in Oklahoma. Oklahoma! Who'd-a thunk it? I'm gonna hafta readjust my world view. Again. Brittaney was right. Whatever.

*shrug*

Leader of The Republican Party®

He is the undisputed Leader Of The Republican Party®

* As a young broadcaster in the 1970s, Limbaugh once told a black caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back."

* On air he once wondered: "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"

* Early in the Clinton administration, he put up a picture of the First Cat Socks then asked his fawning audience: "Did you know there's a White House dog?" Next came a picture of 13 year old Chelsea Clinton, a kid who had done nothing to anyone. She was a kid, but a target for limbaw. When some of his fans, to their credit, objected, he claimed it an accident and blamed it on a technician.

* Colin Powell's well-reasoned, impassioned, and logical endorsement of President Obama on Meet The Press was made only because Obama is black

* All blacks say "axe" instead of "ask." (I've joked about this myself but no. Not all blacks. limby knows.)

* It's okay to pronounce New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's name as Mayor Nay-ger.

* "Blacks can't swim."

* Women live longer because their lives are "easier."

* Torture of un-tried captives is nothing more than a college frat prank.

* President Obama traveled to Hawaii, not to visit his dying grandmother, but to cover-up of his secret KENYAN birth certificate.
And it goes on and on and on.

Here's the deal:

A majority chunk of limbaw's audience are mad as hell uneducated white males from their late teens to early 30s. They are the kind of loser Hitler motivated in the 30s. Except this time the recruits are named Bubba and Billy Ray, drive a rusted 20yr old Ford pickup truck, and speak a form of southern American English; not named Gustaf, drive a '44 Volkswagen, and speak guttural German.

With the advent of this special brand of human in these times, the dictionary has added "dittohead." Meaning: "me too." "What he said." Is limbaw a racist for plumbing the depths of the "base"? Don't know. Not going there. But every educated American with the slightest knowledge of American history knows our racial history. limbaw is wrong, not stupid. He knows his audience and he plays to them. Good for him. He's making money! Millions! On the backs of his white male, uneducated, unemployable pawns. Beautiful. Only in America.

In the past 2 weeks, limbaw's audience has grown from 14 to 25 mil given the media's attention. Almost doubled. Dude is making serious change. And pumping up disaffected, un-employable white males who are mad that, forget their lack of education and un-employable status, are mad that a black family lives in the White House.

I love it. Eviscerated and emasculated republican "leaders" like steele--ain't he a joke?!!--wish limbaw would shut up because they know what I know but they don't have the balls to say it. They all genuflect, every single one. Kneel down to the emperor with no clothes. That's exactly where they need to be.

But being the "leaders" they are, they sit in the corner and mum's the word. The let limbaw paint the republican party as it is: a party of buffoons wanting America to fail so their dwindling base can somehow "win."

The days of me-against-you politics are over. Thanks to limbaw, republicanism is a dead party for at least a generation. limbaw, like the former C+ Yale cheerleader, will be seen as the icons who kept Liberal Democrats in office for 50 years.

doofus

Here's what you get when you're a black boy trying real hard to impress in a white people's party where they don't give a flip about you.

Simple.

You'd think half-way smart colored people would have figured out white people by now. I mean, it's two thousand something, right? Not 1960. Some have, some haven't. My goodness. What's up with house negroes trying to impress mastah? Give me a physical break.

Wake up, black people. Step up. Average ain't no good no mo. Being the average colored boy will make you the butt of jokes. White folks might acutally laugh at you amongst themselves.

They will actually poke fun and post you up as fodder on their websites.

For the record: hip-hop michael steele is an idiot. He does not represent Black America or, it appears, white republicans! His parents are probably twisting in their graves. Most likely, he was raised better.

santelli and other "experts"

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

"Experts" are funny.

The heart of the First Lady

I have to tell you--and I don't mind telling you--I teared up big-time when I saw this. If you've ever seen Mrs. Obama's mother interviewed, you'll know this sort of behavior is genuine. One of the best comments I can ever make about about someone is that they were raised right. Well, Michelle Obama was raised right.

At their Convention in Minneapolis this summer, millionaires McCain and Palin made fun of the time President Obama spent as a community organizer right out of college, earning $13,000 a year. On cue, the crowd of mostly white Americans laughed along. The nerve of a low-life like that, hob-nobbing with poor blacks and Latinos on the south side of Chicago, to think he could be president of the worlds greatest nation!

Of his time of service as a community organizer, the President said:

"I can't say we didn't make mistakes, that I knew what I was doing. Sometimes I called a meeting, and nobody showed up. Sometimes preachers said, 'Why should I listen to you?' Sometimes we tried to hold politicians accountable, and they didn't show up. I couldn't tell whether I got more out of it than this neighborhood."

But, "I grew up to be a man, right here, in this area. It's as a consequence of working with this organization and this community that I found my calling. There was something more than making money and getting a fancy degree. The measure of my life would be public service."

Had he wished, he could have done what his fellow Columbia University grads did. At 24, his first job could have paid him a starting salary of six figures. But no. He took a different path. Took a job that paid chump change. One of service to his people. Common folk. And Republicans mocked him. During the campaign last Fall, an idiot here where I work LOUDLY said that "Obama better not come to Oklahoma because if he does, I just might shoot him myself."

I don't know... maybe it's just me... but it seems that Mr. Prez and the First Lady are a nice match.

First Lady, helping to feed the homeless, and happy doing it. Talking to them as if they are regular people. I like the look and sound of it.

Granted: I am one cynical mofo. That said, I really believe America is on the right track. I'm thankful to have lived long enough to see the Nation being led again by two righteous people. Times may be tough but better days are ahead.

Read the whole story here.

drunken Nigger faces

"This president will get what's coming to him, just like Lincoln."

There you go.

White America is waaay cool!

michael steele -- wow

In a dictionary, look up "punked negroes" and you'll see a pic of steele.

wow.

Alabamans? Georgians? Mississipians think this colored boy got clout? Please.

Rush let steele lick him up front-side and back on national radio.

I so sorry rush, boss. I didn't mean what i so inarticulartly said. i bees so wrong, massuh rush.

oh, don't worry yaself about it, boy. it aint no big deal. you a fool and didn't recognize. now, run along and do like i said!

yessah. i sho will!

_____________

Hey steele: I aint mad atcha. You gots a "position" now. You "in". I been where you at right now, but it's been a while. Like, back in the 60s. Good luck, sucking up.

Nazis and other Americans

Americans agree: heinous German Nazis back in the 1940s, them that gassed all them 15 million Jew men, women, and children, were scum. Them nazie a-holes where scumbags.

That view is held here in the U.S. except in the rural South. And the "great" midwest. Nazis are pop'lar down and over there. Hardcore neocons are pop'lar in Texas. I digress. We'll address trailer living neocons who vote against their own interests some other day.

Your boss tells you to do something. From experience, you know. You just know. You KNOW: boss (including "company procedure") is dead-wrong morally, ethically, spiritually. Let's say you know you're smarter than your boss (fat chance) and there's no law against boss's directive. Still. It doesn't feel right. Maybe you like your job and (these days) you need your job. What do you do?

Let's say...

It's the 1940s.
You're in the military. You're a guard guarding prisoners. Your boss/supervisor/immediate uppity-up says your job is: turn that wheel when all the prisoners get in. You know that turning the wheel locks the door. And on the other side is a gas chamber.

It's the late-1950s.
You're in Selma, Alabama. You're a police officer. Hired to "protect and serve." Your boss says: sick the dogs if little "colored" kids show up. Little kids show up... kids not all that different than yours. You got a gun. Or a water hose. Or a rabid dog foaming at the leash?

It's the 2005s.
You're a member of the U.S. Military. You're told to "do whatever it takes" to get information from the "sand niggers, whatever it takes."

It's the 1950s thru to the current time.
You're a taxi driver. Your boss says: "drive by niggers, regardless of how they are dressed."

It's the 1800s thru to the current time.
You serve on a prison parole board. Your boss says: go easy on the whites, give blacks the max because, as everyone knows, blacks lie all the time.

It's March, 2009.
You're a police officer. Your partner totally brutalizes a teenage WHITE GIRL in a holding cell.

(The real problem emerges.)

It's March, 2009.
Within a limited sub-set of Americans, in the midst of the most perilous economic times in the U.S. since the 1920s, on national radio you hear someone saying he wants the president, the symbol of America, to fail. In other words, he wants a less than "white" America to fail.
___________

It would be so funny if people weren't losing jobs and homes.

Those subhuman white German Nazis were tried in German Nuremberg, convicted of "crimes against humanity," and EXECUTED. Why? Supposedly... supposedly because they just didn't have the guts, the common decency, to say "hell naw" when their boss was being an amoral, inhumane and unethical idiot.

So... what you gone do?

the Scorpion

My Great Friend "the Scorpion" blogged:
Watch your Thoughts, they become words.
Watch your Words, they become actions.
Watch your Actions, they become habits.
Watch your Habits, they become character.
Watch your Character, for it becomes your Destiny.

Intriguing. Food for righteous thought.

I Agree some; disagree some.

You? Check out "the Scorpion"!

ps. Don't let the name bug you out. She frontin'. She a widdle bitty kitty w/ a heart a'gold. Her man ain't bad either.

more than a grocery cart

I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot, about to leave. My phone rang. Nephew T had "one question." Yeah. Right.

A young woman, late 20s, maybe early 30s, rolled out of the store with her young fam. She had three little ones with her--ages maybe 7, 4 and 2, the youngest sitting in the cart's baby seat. A gray-haired older woman, maybe her mother, was with them too. Young woman popped the hatchback door of her cute little SUV and emptied the grocery cart. She unloaded the littlest one and plopped her in the rear driver seat. The door closing securing baby girl closed pretty quick. I wonder if little one got buckled in.

My phone convo continues but I keep watching.

Having one of my own, I notice that none of the youngsters were wearing jackets. Not even baby girl. Mom and Gray Hair did, though. There was a definite chill in the air. 50-something.

My convo was going strong. I kept watching.

The time came for her to leave but what happens with the grocery cart? There was a cart corral about thirty feet away, just past one row of cars. Surely this mother, with little ones watching, would have an interest in setting an example for her little ones.

My phone mate said something funny and I broke up laughing.

It was just too far to walk and Gray Hair lost her voice... forgot to speak up and ask "what's wrong with you??" as Mom moved the cart a few feet away from her small SUV so it wouldn't scratch her car. There is a slight pitch in the parking lot--it runs downhill, slightly--so down the hill the cart commenced to roll. Gravity was doing what it do. Bang! against one vehicle, bouncing off, and it continued to roll still. Fortunately it got caught on a curb before rolling into one of the busiest streets in this part of town.

Mom and Gray Hair were oblivious. It wasn't their car.

cannibalism is usually wrong

"I will be voting for John McCain because I'm voting against Barack Obama. My attitude is, from my point of view, we have to defeat Barack Obama, get McCain elected, and then stop McCain from implementing half the things he wants to implement. It's a 2-step process."

Wow. A McCain voter who says he didn't like his vote. Too funny!

In January [2008], Levin predicted: "if conservatives don't act now to stop McCain he will be the Republican nominee and he will lose in the general election."

Interviewer: you still stand by that?

Levin: we'll find out, won't we?

Needless to say...
_________

He makes good points. When asked to define conservatism, he said (among other things):

conservatism promotes individual liberty w/in an ordered society that creates societal harmony;

government is necessary but ought to be limited;

it's not possible that a few human beings can make good decisions for tens of millions of human beings because man is imperfect an will always be imperfect

failure creates success; most successful people have failed more than they've succeeded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBcMP4y73hE&feature=relatedx





Lone "liberal" on Fox 'News': "Israel certainly needs to defend itself, it certainly should defend it's right to exist, but this administration has had nothing but disengagement that's been their policy for the last six years; Clinton was engaged, Carter was engaged, Bush 41 was engaged with Lawrence Singleburger. This administration -- their policy has been disengagement. Isn't this party the result of that."

The Great One: "Okay, okay... I got it. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. Why are you excusing the enemy? Why are you excusing the terrorist? Excuse me. You're blaming george "the former Yale cheerleader" bush."

Wow.

I love these conservative Republicans and Fox News. Love 'em. I hope they stick around forever. America is in real deep trouble, but "I want that hat."

Too funny.