For The “Black Lives Matter” Crew, You Are Late! “People Who Are Darker Than Blue”

As we again commemorate the only true Black American (descendants of slaves) Holiday in America, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Day here on January 18, 2016, I think it timely to resurrect the late musical genius of Curtis Mayfield, who would want to point-out his words to this latest generation of look-a-like black immigrants who did not get the message that we already fought and WON this battle. “Black Lives Matter” is taking the USA back in time to where we were. DO you homework, stay in school till you get a University degree and behave yourselves, you new, Caribbean and African can brown-skinned peoples! Dr. King’s real birthday was January 15, 1929, by the way. Another famous Capricorn leader like Muhammad Ali and even Confederate General Robert E. Lee!

“We people who are darker than blue
Are we gonna stand around this town
And let what others say come true?
We’re just good for nothing they all figure

A boyish, grown up, shiftless jigger
Now we can’t hardly stand for that
Or is that really where it’s at?
We people who are darker than blue

This ain’t no time for segregatin’
I’m talking ’bout brown and yellow two
High yellow girl, can’t you tell
You’re just the surface of our dark deep well

If your mind could really see
You’d know your color the same as me
Pardon me, brother, as you stand in your glory
I know you won’t mind if I tell the whole story

Get yourself together, learn to know your side
Shall we commit our own genocide
Before you check out your mind?

I know we’ve all got problems
That’s why I’m here to say
Keep peace with me and I with you
Let me love in my own way

Now I know we have great respect
For the sister, and mother it’s even better yet
But there’s the joker in the street

Loving one brother and killing the other
When the time comes and we are really free
There’ll be no brothers left you see

We people who are darker than blue
Don’t let us hang around this town
And let what others say come true

We’re just good for nothing they all figure
A boyish, grown up, shiftless jigger
Now we can’t hardly stand for that
Or is that really where it’s at?

Pardon me, brother, while you stand in your glory
I know you won’t mind if I tell the whole story
Pardon me, brother, I know we’ve come a long, long way
But let us not be so satisfied for tomorrow can be an
An even brighter day”

Songwriter:
Curtis Mayfield

Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

All HUMAN lives DO matter in the physical world; we must embrace the heavy lifting – without violence, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King did – in order to live together. Are you up to being smart instead of ignorant due lack of extensive historical education? The lives who are traditionally celebrated the most are the ones who uphold the standards of manners, respect for authority, etiquette, follow the simplest of rules in society and embrace peace. Maybe choose a different slogan? I liked “Power To The People” from the 1060s and 1970s…

Finally, I’ve noticed that too many people I talk to business-to-business do not know Monday is a Federal Holiday! This is troubling on many levels as too many businesses choose to ignore it and conduct business as-usual – some spitefully (see “Red” states). Doing this undermines the fact that President Reagan signed it into law in 1983 after it ran the gauntlet of the U.S. Congress. If you have a sales business, why aren’t there “King Birthday” sales, for example? Jus’ sayin’…

“…And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we’re free at last!”

25 Of 6 2 4 Things I’ve Learned In 60 Years W/Myself

I have been through the financial “mill” at the time of this post, having to make sure that my retro move at the age of sixty [60] is truly temporary and be able to repay the lady I want to marry for her help in 2010, while a fifteen-year younger, sick-in-the-head sibling seems hell-bent upon having me be stuck there, ensuring the failure of the remnants of our “family” while I try to help my octogenarian Mum, my fiancee` overseas and her elderly Mum! OMG! Heaven help me now, or end this madness!

I always push to leave every situation that I encounter better than when I found it. it is my “motto”.

Therefore, I now offer for better or worse, the lessons that I have learned via sixty years on this rock, with the prayer that, if nothing else, they will entertain you to maintain your cool – which in these days and times without my soul-mate in the same postal code , is so very hard to do.
“Observe!”

1. Patience is a virtue because it is so difficult to consistently sustain. However, the payoff is worth it because most often, when we get what we are waiting for, it comes like a torrential rain following a drought.
2. There comes a point when I have to push the envelope to get the results I need.
3. I never liked banks and adulthood validates this thus far; they are greedy and try to get something for nothing every chance they get.
4. Driver’s licenses are much too easy to obtain (skill wise and especially with all of the distractions in the cockpit installed by automakers these days)
5. When given the chance these days, most people will cheat the laws or be lazy.
6. When It rains, most lose the ability to drive their vehicles safely.
7. To take my time; allow enough time so I do not have to rush to work or an appointment – or for love to happen.

8. Watching TV is a waste of time
9. Not to watch the “news” so as not to have high blood pressure regarding the drama of the world that I cannot control.
10. Not to watch this era’s rich millionaire athletes in shorts run up and down basketball courts while I am struggling to make ends meet! (none of them would lend me a helping hand, anyway) I do not “identify” with their values (or lack thereof).
11. To be concerned, but not to worry.
12. That there are some people that I will never reach – even those technically “related” to me – never, just move on, because “family” will disappoint more than any stranger because I have (false) high expectations thinking that they “know” me…
13. Man is his own worst enemy (our brain).

14. Technology ended common sense (the sixth one)
15. To listen to the hopeful, quieter voice in my head more than the louder, frustrated voice on the other shoulder.
16. To take my time, do not always be in a rush because you will usually get there at the same time anyway
17. The degree that I value more than my high school or college diploma is the one I earned at the “Cool School” whose classes were held on the mean streets of New York City, circa 1960 – 1989.
18. “Don’t believe the HYPE!” (an old lyric that still applies, y’all)

19. No matter when I want something, if I just put things in-place to happen, they will evolve to fruition when they are supposed to…unless my traitorous, fifteen-year younger lesbo sibling gets wind of it, to block it, for some unbeknownst reason, that it will never reveal (demonic spirit we surmise…).

20. To embrace the positives that people bestow upon me and try to earn money with them for Inna and me!

20-A. That being back in New York City briefly, has reinforced that it is not the “great” city that it was prior to “9/11’ but now an Orwellian police state, still running scared and recently managed by a Nanny Mayor who greedily over-regulated the adults who inhabit it.
21. I really believe “everything in its own time” is true.
22. That life is like cycling the hills of Nashville: we work hard, pumping-up the steep hills in order to enjoy the pay-off which is the coast down super-fast on the other side of it.
23. It is true that many dogs resemble their owners!
24. To pick my “spots” in life like a basketball player (I once was pretty good at it); there are times to be aggressive; times to give the “head-fake”; times to show patience…
25. That there are more idiots and morons in the world than ever in our past “Ossie & Harriot” youthful days! Not that I am perfect, mind you, but come ON guys, enough dumbing-down of America (and stop letting every other country’s criminals come over here just because you want more people to pay taxes!)

25A. I am not an “African-American”. I am a Black American (with a little native-American Cherokee mixed-in), the proud descendant of the slaves who were brought here from Afrika, against their will. I’ve never been to Africa, nor do I have the desire to go there (allergies), unless Nina can convince me it is a romantic trip to take, and even then we will have to meditate upon it, lol! “African Americans” are those imports since the 1980s who “look” like us, but who have much more disdain for the Brothas from the USA, and more money to spend with the traditional American establishment!
26. Things DO happen in “threes”. For-example, get one “cut” on your hand or other body part, two more are sure to follow very soon! Or, famous deaths – they always happen in “threes” (three in-a-row)!

I hope that you have comments on a similar vibe in your own cosmic existence which you can espouse here…

My Five Worlds – Life in my Galaxy

My Five Worlds

As I carried-out assigned Handyman tasks today I realized another of my blessings to be thankful for and acknowledge here as 2011 rapidly heads into our collective and personal histories. I am like the planet Jupiter with its many moons, even though my birth planet is Saturn, because I have five worlds that orbit me as satellites. Maybe you can relate to my universe or not; “whateva” please comment below if my description moves you to! My worlds are: 

1 – Bachelor World: Where I’ve lived daily when not around other people and which is progressively irritating between my ears as an increasingly lonely, middle-aged man. I know how much “talent” I have, still do not “look [my] age and remember many things others do not, which makes them “amazed” at me. Right. This is the place of my principles; the jokes I tell myself which only I “get”; it is deciding to sleep-in or get up and go to the church on Sunday and cooking great meals that I wish I could share with one special person. It is where my frustrations, independence, insecurities, poetry and secret anger lives. It is the humidor of my greatest wealth to-date: the music of my life – the music in my mind that plays randomly, daily depending upon which curve ball life-in-general is throwing to me at the moment, from Classical to Solid Gold Oldies.

2 -Diverse World: This could also be called “the world in which many Black American people live in” because by-nature and because we were born in the mostly Caucasian USA, we were once (if you were born before let’s say the year 2000) considered largely marginal to the American society as a whole. However, my Diverse World is better than many because I have intelligence, education and was raised kind-of “middle class” by my parents. Yes, I am proudly one of the Baby Boomers! I had the dual blessing of learning to use correct English and learning to break-it-off Ebonics-style when necessary! In other words, in this world, “white” Americans are largely as comfortable around me as I am around them (once some of them they get over their pre-programmed initial ‘upon site’ stereotypes and hear me speak) in most instances. The ones who do not, are not part of “Diverse World”, obviously, yet I am fully aware of them and their presence if they get within earshot. It is the world I get to experience when I do handyman work at better-to-do-than myself clients’ homes; they trust me. If you are a Mexican maid or worker for “white” Americans, you might understand my “Diverse World”. In this world, the music is all over the place and “Dance” music, the descendant of “Disco” is accepted. All of my “Gay” friends live here as well.

3 -Intercultural World: My favorite place to be and largely because my fiancee, Inna, responded to my repeated attempts to gain access to it in recent years and found me! Intercultural World is my future of travel, married life with Inna and happy, loving discovery of what I should have explored many years ago. We Black Americans of my ilk, who were not forced to travel overseas because of wars were not actively encouraged to escape our nation’s borders, and that is the current sadness and frustration of Intercultural World for me. It took an inordinate amount of time to get my first U.S.A. Passport precisely and partly because I had a past without international travel and some of the wrong kind of socio-government “baggage” a$$ociated with it. Intercultural World is the world of “Cheetah”, Inna’s loving nickname for me. I like it! Other inhabitants of Intercultural World are Inna’s elderly parents, her grown-up son from her previous marriage and other non-English speakers here in the States who I interact with even though I know just a few words of their languages! Once I finally go to see Inna in Ukraine and return, I hope you will benefit from my new experiences and broadened mind in this space. 

4.Black World: This is the place that I believe many of the people who look like me, many of whom I have known for the longest period of time in my life inhabit. Many of my high school and college friends/acquaintances live here. They still mostly listen to Rhythm & Blues music which I really cannot fathom much anymore unless I’m in the mood for some “O’Jays” or sharing with Nina some stuff on You Tube. I visit there when I go to work at the Black newspaper I work for, and now this dynamic is quite the contrast-yet-similar to the “old days”. This satellite has its roots back when we protested for equal civil rights in-order to have equal access to American society. Way back it was “colored World”, then “Negro World”… Sadly, in Black World, I see many of my “Brothas & Sistas” missed the boat either intentionally or by dint of “da Man”. On this moon is where I hear some of the wost spoken English an English Major can ever experience! The political correctness posse tries to rename Black World as “African American World”, but I can’t go there because I’ve never been to Africa – I was born here in the USA. Similar beings try to also disguise it as “Multicultural World”; another non-starter with me. My Mum and Dad always cautioned me about some of those in Black World” because they picked-up the worst traits from the slave masters who founded the the USA and are often act like “crabs in a barrel”. I heard a coworker say it recently (butchering the phrase, by-the-way) and smiled/frowned simultaneously to myself. 

5 -Family World: Speaking of my Mum,part Cherokee Indian, who I love to hear laugh at my jokes on the telephone, is my best friend and one of two women whose advice I will take without question – amazing for me – the other one being my fiancee`, and my late Dad “the Major” who once around this time in 1962 won everything in sight one night on the original TV game show, “The Price Is Right” with Bill Cullen as the host, my Family World is ever-shrinking from the vast body that is was when I was a boy. Maybe you can most-relate to this World if you are of a certain age. Maybe that is part of the reason I am finally ready to take a wife and not go into the “good night” alone if that be the Creator’s will – that and finally finding the true soul-mate; all timetables differ on that desire. If you have a parent over seventy years of age and/or siblings older or younger than you, you can relate to Family World. Outside of the occasional greeting card or even rarer birthday card from a remaining Aunt or my “Godfather”/Uncle, the only inhabitants of Family World are me and my Mum. We comb this world with a combination of past recollections of happy times, updates from her on who recently passed-away and me reminding her that she “just told “ me something she just said five minutes ago! I love how she takes those reminders with good humor and I take her cue to not let it “get” to me like it did a few years ago when she first began showing those symptoms. I still can happily mine her former school teacher mind when need be, garner sage advice and know I am surely blessed to still enjoy her company her in the physical Family World.

Please describe your world(s) in the comment section below.