April 15, 2021; Checks and Balances

Can a man die of oxygen deprivation if there’s a strong, heavy knee placed on his neck for 9 (oh, just give and take, the killings haven’t even slowed down yet, homeys) minutes? Or must we dig for alternative causes like all the ills that black folks have been heir to and victim-blamed for throughout these last great American centuries—drugs, poor self-care, poverty, despair, lack of faith in the SYSTEM and the MAN, systemic denigration [note the intended pun! The word means ‘to blacken’!] and devaluation—till we come up with something resembling business as usual.

How will you observe this American President’s Day?

Now, I understand why it is important to trust and respect these institutions and figures. We have to believe in something, since much else in American history is now revealed to be quite embarrassing in the eyes of the whole world. But can the answers to my wonderment about the American President’s Day really be found in the Constitution? Or the politics of the Founding Fathers? The same men who thought and asserted they could uphold E Pluribus Unum while holding and fathering slaves?

Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may be in Utah

I wandered, literally, up and down the bruited and brutal ‘Oregon Trail’ which so many nineteenth-century Americans eager (or greedy) for a ‘better life,’ for the ‘American Dream’ set out on, in unbelievably rickety wagons, with children, wives, cattle, guns, food, elders (most in small quantities, except sometimes children) for the Pacific West and Northwest.

Annus Mirabilis, or Year of Wonders

Dear Friends and Readers, Is it possible? Is our Annus Mirabilis almost over? Really? 2020 is not going to jump back and take another swipe at us, sink down with us to the bottom of the ocean, turning off our living daylights?

The Three O-s

I will express strong love for Obstinate Older Oaklike men with thinning hair (as long as it’s not orange); I will let my heart flutter a little now and then; and I will even cry as I smile or laugh like a fool. The latter might happen at 7 pm CST tonight when my president addresses the nation.