"Time is the fire in which we burn." Delmore Schwarz
aloha again,
listening to the WINTER SOLDIER Hearings on Captial Hill, a Democracy Now MEMORIAL DAY SPECIAL.Congresswoman Barbara Lee accidentally let the truth slip out..'War in which atrocities are required..uh,committed.'
Kill for Peace???
somthing has been nagging at me,
other than a dream where my youngest son M mailed me a large box of sh*t. i was once referred to as A BLACK GUY WHO REALLY ISN'T BLACK.
what does that mean? any Texan or rabid racist would clearly see i was black.just because i don't use Ebonics nor do my children? okay okay, over the phone you cannot usually tell that i am black.IT'S NOT MY FAULT!
i used to stutter as a kid especially at my last grade school, the brand spanking new PS 197. reasons,probable-i thot faster than i spoke, side fx of home violence,rape-unreported and then my father died. when my fathr died my Mother got loads of emotional support but i got Zilch, not from friends and family nor from school. i was expected to MAN UP and grief alone. IT SUCKED!
rather than therapy or support i,and other stutterers, got SPEECH THERAPY.a very nice young black lady taught us basicially how to speak Proper English, i caught a lot of grief & punches for Speaking White,part of our therapy was speaking slowly & distinctly to the entire school as school assemblies. Yippee.public humilation a la carte...
so this ability cut me no slack until DE WITT CLINTON HIGH SCHOOL which was about 90% white.there i sounded exactly like everyone else, made it easier to fit in. okay okay, the Truth once again. i was given a choice of Two High Schools to attend. STUYVESANT a coed school for anemic listless eggeheads near Carengie Hall downtown or De Witt Clinton a rowdy all-boy school next to the Bronx Zoo.you can tell by my description why i would forgo the company of women for a site where i could stretch my wings manwise.
i did okay at Clinton until the SATS, i was told by the lazy school counselor NOT TO STUDY as "it's nothing you haven't already learned in school" LYING BASTARD! black kids,when taught Shakespeare, got only the comedies whereas white kids got only the dramas.guess which ones were on the SATS??? i learned a valuable lesson that day,don't trust school counselors! this has worked out well for me. anyway i got a second chance on the UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND Tests where i scored in the 99% percentile,yes it was That Easy,where i qualified for a lot of schools my Mother couldn't afford.i chose the most affordable,i thot, Shaw University in Raleigh,North Carolina,where my Dad was from.turns out my Mother had to cash out her insurance policy to pay even the food bill which the scholarship didn't cover plus SHAW U LIED about its facility,teachers & benefits.half the school had closed down years before but the recruiter 'forgot' to mention it.
i do not like being lied to, even today i will not tolerate it. so i began school with a chip on my shoulder. i was assigned no credits extra work with a study group, we had a 'choice' between researching Barry Goldwater or Violence in America.our group voted unamiously to study Violence but our group leader,the Dean's brother, told us that Goldwater won and we would be studying that.i declared this to be BULLSH*T and was sent to see the Dean.fresh from that i was required to write a 14 page essay, which i did from the viewpoint of a serial killer...i was Expelled and sent home.i had a way with words even then.(no mention of the bullet holes in the screens or punched out holes in the walls, none of them mine but the school counselor blamed all of us in the room.so be it)
in other news,
say a prayer or kind words for the dead & dying and the virutal death of the American Dream; massive foreclosures,massive unemployment,bank bailouts & AIG coddling,union card check & Single Payer Healthcare FAIL,Homeland Security,Patriot Act and wiretapping still in da hizzie.
Happy (?) Memorial Day.my Dad is buried in a military cemetary in Long Island,3000 plus miles away.SIGH.
namaste y'all
semper chubby
mega
My partner knows the fight song for DeWitt Clinton... sometimes repeats it for no particular reason. He didn't go there, he went to Mount St Michael Academy, but I guess he had friends at the C.
ReplyDeleteMemorial Day - you reminded me, is presumably meant to honor the sacrifices of soldiers who died for.... what? Corporate profits uber alles? A government bought and paid for by giant multinational corporations? A libertarian-style society that says the rich and powerful are everything and the rest of us are nothing?
Well.... yes, that IS what they fought and died for, as it turns out: They just didn't know it at the time.
Yeah. As your firstborn, I don't speak 'black', or do anything that would distinguish me as belonging to this race except dress it, and all because I'm not illiterate and talk/type better than an overwhelming majority of most of humanity, I'm seen as 'acting white'. Double-Yew, Tee, Eff.
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