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American “Gulags” Are Nothing New

The “fascism” that many are finally seeing first hand has been apparent to a lot of us for quite some time. My grandmother used to offer water to “road gang” convicts repairing the road in front of our family farm. I remember “helping” her deliver water (I carried the dipper) to those men (though she often cautioned me to “not get too close”). I remember the smell of the tar they laid on the road and the sweat pouring off them and the gratitude in their eyes.

For a long time, like a lot of people, I assumed that they “deserved” the punishment they were getting when oftentimes their only “offense” was “not having a job”.

We’ve had “gulags” for a minute, y’all.

“Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor that was practiced historically in the Southern United States before it was formally abolished during the 20th century. Under this system, private individuals and corporations could lease labor from the state in the form of prisoners, nearly all of whom were Black. Prisoners today produce products that have been bought by companies like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States#:~:text=States%20leased%20out%20convicts%20to,labor%20with%20very%20little%20oversight.

Public

Compared To What…

When I was in college 100 years ago I learned that while there were objective measures of art, for instance, line, color usage, brush strokes, harmonic progression, etc, art is best judged on how effective it is rather than if “I like it” or even “get it.”

That effective art resonates. That it speaks to the layers of the human condition.

Furthermore, we bring our own perspectives to art and that our perspectives change over time. For example, when I was growing up, my dad wore the groove out of “Compared To What” by Les McCann & Ed Harris. It did not move me back then. Probably scared me a little. But now, with 6 decades behind me, it’s my “Hallelujah Chorus.”

What Lamar left us with Sunday night was art. There were layers upon layers.

*sigh*

So… are y’all watching this thing tonight? My daughter thinks we should and I know my wife would want me to watch and frankly, I know I should watch if for no other reason that it’s an historic event. This is the first time that a black woman has represented a major party for the office of the executive in my country (ignoring for a moment that other countries have had female leadership for decades).

But she’s forced to share a stage with a tragic joke of a human being and an existential threat to democracy who really has no place sharing the stage with her in a sane world.

But politics has been reduced to a pageant sport in our current timeline and he’s fed into the fears of a lot of people afraid of “being replaced” and they are so scared of losing their place in our caste system that he actually has a real chance of winning.

Even though I’ll likely watch, I’m tired of covering this same old ground where we (you know, “the blacks” and “the gays” and the “illegals” and such) try to convince a large segment our fellows that we really have no interest in doing to them what has been done to us. Rather, we’d just be satisfied with being left alone in spite of the fact that the party in opposition has convinced them that we’ve somehow “taken” something that is inherently “theirs”

And frankly, I’m just tired of hearing his voice.

Snippet

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” – Ephesian 3:20

There is a section in the 20th verse of the 3rd chapter of Ephesians where the writer references the power of God “that is at work within us”.

I find that verse intimidating because much of the time I don’t feel very “powerful.” In engineering school I learned that power is “the capacity to do work”; the equation being power = work/time. Do a little algebra and we find that work = power/time which implies that a large amount of work can be generated by a powerful motor over a short period of time or by a small motor over a long period of time.

Therein in lies my problem: time.

I used to believe that my issue with this scripture is laziness (and I am lazy) but that’s not the root of it. Rather it’s the worry that I won’t have the time to complete the work I have before me. Which is wholly ridiculous when you think about it. We’re all time limited. We’re all on the clock and it’s going to run out for us all at one point or another.

Earlier this week, a college friend died of a burst aneurysm. He was around my age, late 50’s/early 60’s. Right now, one of my mother’s oldest friends is making her transition after just having turned 101 on the 11th. I’m sure they both would rather be here. I know that they made the best of their time based on the testimonials of friends and family and my own personal experience with them.

There is another scripture that says “Teach us to number our days, that we might incline our hearts to wisdom.” – Psalm 90:12 – which, loosely translated, says (to me, anyway) that rather than fretting over death, we should keep it ever before us as a reminder to stay on task. Or as one of my great-uncles used to say, “I intend to wear out, not rust out.”

Or finally, as Toni Morrison said, “We are already born, we are going to die, so you have to do something interesting, that you respect in between.”

Trad Wives Spat On Ruby Bridges

I rarely watch The State of The Union Address. I didn’t even like pep rallies in high school. But I hear Joe Byron did a good job being “forceful” and “energetic” last night. Which is good, I guess. I’ll vote for him regardless, because the presumptive challenger is unacceptable.

I’m really tired of playing this game: choosing between two old white guys who pee in our glasses swearing it’s chardonnay. But “democracy is on the line” and all that.

Meanwhile, I hear that the GOP rebuttal was given by the junior senator from Alabama, one Katie Britt, in what all the smart people are telling me is the GOP’s strategic shift to the “Traditional Wife (Trad Wife) Movement.”

I have thoughts on the “Traditional Wife” movement.

None of them are good.

Or particularly kind.

Trad Wives spat on Ruby Bridges as she tried to go to school.

In “The Good Old Days”, Trad Wives could only cater to the whims of their husbands because of the labor of non-White women (whose children were not allowed in their schools) taking care of their homes, and often, their children.

At the heart of the Trad Wife movement is misogyny and White Supremacy and a caste system that will eventually exploit the demographic it claims to “protect”. It’s the same warmed over BS from White Citizens Councils and The Drug War(s), namely: “We will protect you from the scary black/brown/Muslim/queer people. Never mind that ‘purity’ is an illusion.”

We could be mining asteroids.

Or curing cancer.

Or learning innovative new ways to feed people.

Yet I fear we’re going to have another “debate” on whether a woman’s place is in the home. A debate that never included women of color or poor white women in the first place.

Aunt Lois

Aunt Lois once told me of the time several spotted goats appeared on the family homestead out of nowhere during a storm. Her dad, my great grandfather, made inquiries throughout the community for several weeks but no one ever claimed them. She gently, but firmly, scoffed at my suggestion that perhaps it was some type of sign that our family was somehow “set apart” in the same manner as done in scripture (in the story of Jacob I believe).

On another occasion, when she caught me bragging on her carport about my impending baptism to some friends, Aunt Lois called me inside and cautioned, “Son you can go in that water a dry devil and come out a wet one. It’s just tap water. What matters is your commitment and growth.”

Finally, upon learning of  a betrayal by a girlfriend whom she never really cared for, Aunt Lois said, “You can set your best linen and silverware, light your finest dinner candles, and then take out your most prized crystal bowl and go out into the yard and fill it with chicken shit. When you sit back down at your finely set table and put that first forkful into your mouth it will not miraculously change to chicken salad.”

Do you sense a pattern? 

Which is not to say that Aunt Lois wasn’t filled with a sense of wonder. It’s just that she reserved it for important things; like an exceptional sunset or the satisfaction of a good day’s labor and the laughter of friends.

I Swanni!

A while ago I learned that many of the idioms that I heard regularly down south in my youth were merely obscure forms of english, even old english (or Olde English, if you please).

Peep the 2nd meaning of the verb form below. I used to hear folks say “I swan…” or “I swanni” (sp) all the time growing up.

I had decided that it was a prudish attempt to avoid saying “I swear”. Because, I reasoned, some folks took the biblical admonition against swearing, or even using the word “swear”, very seriously.

Looks like I had that all wrong.

swan
PRONUNCIATION:
(swan)

MEANING:
noun: 1. Any of various long-necked large waterbirds, usually in white plumage.
2. Someone or something of unusual beauty, grace, purity, etc.

verb intr.: 1. To move about in an idle, aimless way.
2. To declare or to swear.

Archeological

Time well spent organizing the home office today. I’m tired of the dining room table and I need the additional flat screen.

Threw out a lot paper. Too much paper. Sorted some books I forget I had. Old photos. Old tech.

Some dormant projects I might revive. I wish I knew what I was thinking when I started some of it. Barely makes sense now.

No real money found (about 42 cents). But I turned up some interesting artifacts.

Could really use the money.

Random Bullet Points On Gay Marriage

 

  • Someone much smarter than me (I believe it was a gay author) once remarked that straight people don’t have an issue with gay people until they imagine what they do in bed, behind closed doors.
  • I once remarked to a rather homophobic neighbor – upon her pronouncement that “what gays do is disgusting” – that I imagined that “what many of my neighbors do in the privacy of their own homes is disgusting.” I got the oddest look.
  • Marriage is a social construct, a contract basically. An agreement by which men conducted business and transferred property (including women).
  • If you’re going to “live by the Bible” then you’ve got a whole lot more reading to do (and I say that as a practicing Christian).
  • Many (most?… all?) of the arguments against gay marriage are the same (often “Bible based”) arguments once used against blacks and whites marrying.
  • Seems to me that the bigger threats to “traditional” marriage are infidelity and economics.
  • It does seem ironic that one of the most “counter-cultural” segments of our society is now seeking the trappings traditional monogamy. But then they’re using hip hop to sell yogurt (and Cube is making the lamest beer commercials ever) and I’ve even seen my beloved P-Funk shilling mini-vans. America eats its young. 

 Originally posted here: http://tmblr.co/ZG6b4yLCi76F