For Black Men, Barbershops Are About More Than Hair

Imagine If . . .

Imagine if Lebron came home to Cleveland.

Imagine if the team struggled early but finished the regular season strong.

Imagine if their big man went down, but they still found a way to power through the Eastern Conference.

Imagine if they faced the top seed in the Finals.

Imagine if they pushed Game 1 to overtime but lost another star to injury.

Imagine if everyone counted them out.

Imagine if they shocked the world and took the next two games.

Imagine if fatigue caught up with them, and they lost Games 4 and 5.

Imagine if they defied odds, logic and the basketball gods to come back and win the series in 7.

Except this isn't Hollywood. It's Cleveland.

Nothing is given. Everything is earned.

The new Nike ad.

"Like My First Day of School"

Making a Way

Sun Cedar from Moonhead Visuals on Vimeo.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/775767204/sun-cedar-kickstart-employment-for-our-at-risk-com

As seen on Upworthy -

http://www.upworthy.com/see-a-company-that-only-hires-people-deemed-unemployable?c=upw1&u=6861cbea6edfdfe5a709ee39ad3c14b64135e61f

Worth Repeating

Recently I wrote about an app that is a collection of local newspapers from all over the world.

It's called "City Papers."

I've used this to get a view of how the recent events are playing out in their local papers.

It's been enlightening.

At 99 cents, it's the best bargain in the iTunes App Store.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/city-papers/id497263176?mt=8

We Claim Him

Lester Holt, the newly appointed anchor if NBC News, spent his formative years in Sacramento and in 2012 he was featured in the SacTown Magazine.

The article is linked below.

http://www.sactownmag.com/October-November-2012/Lester-Holt-Q-A/

Here's to Lester!

A well deserved promotion.

A Poignant Quote

The recalcitrant pledges to “take our country back” that began after the Inauguration were simply more genteel expressions of the sentiments that Roof articulated.

The fact that Roof appears to have acted without accomplices will inevitably be taken as solace. He will be dismissed as a deranged loner, connected to nothing broader. This is untrue. Even if he acted by himself, he was not alone. 

The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/terrorism-in-charleston

Forgiving the Unforgivable

An excerpt from The New Yorker's "Mercy and a Manifesto in Charleston," by David Remnick - 

It is an enduring mystery of life how the moral range of humanity can stretch from a twisted young racist such as Dylann Roof, who faces charges of slaughtering six women and three men during a Bible-study class, to a woman such as Nadine Collier, who is the daughter of one of the victims, Ethel Lance, and who was able to find it in her heart to turn to Roof at his bond hearing and say, “I forgive you.”

How many of us are capable of that? Imagine the capacity for grace in Felicia Sanders, who lost her son, Tywanza, in the Emanuel A.M.E. Church massacre, and who said to the alleged killer at the hearing, “Every fibre in my body hurts, and I will never be the same. But as we say in Bible study, we enjoyed you. But may God have mercy on you.” We enjoyed you. This is a superhuman form of endurance and pity. The world is such a fallen place that it is somehow easier to comprehend the deranged cruelty of Dylann Roof than the unfathomable and uncompromising mercy of Nadine Collier and Felicia Sanders.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/mercy-and-a-manifesto-in-charleston

Better Than a Night Light?

You be the judge.



Two places to buy it:

https://www.touchofmodern.com/sales/mylight-me-9adb7245-a7bc-49bd-b015-6a11d60aa18b/bed-light-deluxe?open=1&utm_term=bed-light-deluxe

http://www.amazon.com/Bedlight-Activiated-Ambient-Lighting-Automatic/dp/B00K9KBAH8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434904611&sr=8-1&keywords=mylight.me

Clarity of Purpose

Many folks on the conservative side of the table, claim they have no idea what prompted the massacre in the church in Charleston, South Carolina.  Well, this kid left a manifesto, declaring his hatred of black folks in explicit detail.

It's clear and it's chilling.

Read it in it's entirety below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/20/dylann-roof-manifesto-charleston-shooting_n_7627788.html

Happy Father's Day!

To all of you fathers out there far and wide.

We celebrate who you are and how much you mean to us.

I think motherhood and fatherhood are distinctly different, and not just for the obvious reasons.

For most women, we instinctively know what to do when our babies are put in our arms.  Sure, we bumble around reading advice articles and books on how best to do the job and prepare for the role, but there's something innately present that kicks in when we become mothers.

For guys, I think it's different.

I believe men are more dependent on role models to use as guideposts on what to do and how to behave as fathers.

Their relationship with their kids is a direct reflection of their relationship with their fathers.  Sometimes it's to emulate what they had growing up, but many times it's deciding to do just the opposite of what they experienced.

Too many women have had to wear both hats, of Mom and Dad, and thank God, they took up the banner/cross (depending on your perspective) and did what they had to do.

I realize that there are some families that are better off without the father present, when he becomes a destabilizing force, bringing more harm than good.

But in most cases, the reality is . . . guys, we need you.

Even when we're pushing you away.

Whether you're living together as a family, and especially when you're not, we need to know you'll be there, no matter what.

We need you in the lives of your kids.

We need your experiences to guide them to maturity, leading them down the right path.

We need your strength, especially when we're tired and weary.

We need your clear-headedness.

We need your help, even when you stumble and fall.

But most of all . . .

We need your love.

Can we live without you and these things you bring to the table?

Yes.

Is it the best?

No.

So to all of the fathers who questioned your impact or wavered in your fatherhood role, know this, we need you more than you'll ever know.

And . . .

On this day that recognizes and celebrates you, we take this opportunity to thank you, too.

Happy Father's Day!

More Marble Fun

This is an ad for this product, so please forgive me.  What I wanted you to see is the fun, cool, creative way to combine marbles and music.

A Musical Interlude

Marble Run Clock

I've always been fascinated by marble runs and clocks.  This gizzie combines these loves for a fun way to tell time.

Juneteenth

From The Root - 

Juneteenth: 150 Years Ago, Black America Got Its Own Independence Day

What better way to celebrate the start of summer than marking the day when the last slaves in the nation gained their freedom?

BY: LAURA SAUNDERS EGODIGWE

Posted: June 19 2015 2:30 PM

 

Official Juneteenth Committee in Austin, Texas, June 19, 1900 COURTESY OF AUSTIN HISTORY CENTER, AUSTIN PUBLIC LIBRARY

I

n 1865, enslaved Africans on Galveston Island, Texas, had been declared free two years earlier but didn’t know it. With the United States still divided over the institution of slavery and recovering after the Civil War, members of the Confederacy weren’t eager to spread the word.

Only after Union soldiers, led by Major Gen. Gordon Granger, worked their way South for more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation did word reach Galveston Island. On June 19, 1865, known as Juneteenth—a melding of the day’s month and date—the last remaining slaves in America were declared free. Juneteenth, America’s “second Independence Day,” is now celebrated around the country. It is officially observed in 43 states and is a state holiday in Texas, home of the last to know.

There are conflicting explanations for the more than two-year delay of the news that slavery had ended in Texas. Among the possible reasons: Plantation owners withheld the news; federal troops allowed the delay so that slave owners could reap one final cotton harvest before the Emancipation Proclamation—which was issued on Jan. 1, 1863, to free the slaves in the Confederate South—was enforced; and a messenger who was on his way to Texas to deliver the news was murdered. Adding to the issue that made Texas the last holdout was that Union troops never made successful inroads against the Confederacy in that state.

Whatever the reason, June 19, 1865, is regarded as the day all enslaved people in the nation were finally free. “There were many emancipation days prior to June 19, 1865, in other states, but each of those days celebrated freedom while Texas still had enslaved people,” Galveston native Sam Collins tells The Root. “Galveston, Texas, represents the last place enslaved people were freed after the Civil War. It’s the day slavery finally ended everywhere in the United States, and we should celebrate that day.”

Collins, a descendant of those slaves, is using preservation to ensure and protect his ancestors’ place in history. In 2005 Collins bought Stringfellow Orchards, a plantation once owned by Confederate soldier Henry Martyn Stringfellow. In the years since, he has worked to preserve the property and has become a local Juneteenth champion, hosting an annual Juneteenth celebration on June 13 that featured Ruby Bridges, who in 1960 became the first African-American child in the nation to desegregate white elementary schools.

Ruby Bridges and Sam Collins
CAROL WARREN PHOTOGRAPHY

Collins remembers riding his bike past Stringfellow Orchards and being warned not to enter its grounds. Now, as owner of the former plantation, he is preserving the property while preserving history. Collins is chairman of the Texas Historical Commission State Board of Review and is on the board of advisers for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He and his wife also worked to have the Stringfellow house listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The property has been featured on PBS’ This Old House and on HGTV’s If These Walls Could Talk.

“We must never forget what Juneteenth meant to the former enslaved people,” he says. “Some people still suffer today in various forms of bondage; Juneteenth is a celebration that may give those people hope that they, too, may one day be free.”

The announcement that Gen. Granger read—General Order No. 3, declaring “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves”—brought with it rights: the right to assemble, to marry and to worship, as well as the right to work for pay. At Stringfellow Orchards, that meant double the going rate. Stringfellow paid his men—black and white—$1 a day versus the normal 50 cents. The legacy of that decision is still felt today, according to Collins.

“The economic impact of Stringfellow’s dollar-per-day wage is still felt today by descendants of Frank Bell, one of the black men who worked there,” he says. “They still own land bought by their ancestor with those wages.”

Art has also played a part in preserving the history of Juneteenth. Collins was part of the process to have paintings from artist Ted Ellis’ Juneteenth Freedom Project (pdf) featured in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., this week. 

Sam Collins with Sen. John Cornyn III (R-Texas) and artist Ted Ellis with his painting Free at Last. COURTESY OF SEN. JOHN CORNYN III’S OFFICE

Free at Last, the central painting of the series, was inspired by and completed at Stringfellow Orchards. Through a grassroots funding effort, Collins intends to raise money for the creation and installation of the painting and donate it to a national museum to be preserved for future generations. The painting depicts a freed slave surrounded by images significant to African-American culture and history, including a quilt, signifying storytelling; a broken chain representing freedom; and a tear for the pain and struggle suffered during slavery.

Ellis completed the painting in 2008 at Stringfellow Orchards. “Sitting at the property with my canvas, brushes and paint, I was moved to capture the importance of this event and why, in 1865, the last vestige of slavery was officially ended,” Ellis tells The Root.

Adds Collins: “Juneteenth is not just about slavery—it’s about freedom. When you focus on freedom, it’s about everybody.”

http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2015/06/juneteenth_150_year_s_ago_black_america_got_its_own_independence_day.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr%3Acontent%26

Church History

An excerpt from The New York Times Magazine's

"Before Charleston’s Church Shooting, a Long History of Attacks"

In the coming days, the world will find out more about Dylann Storm Roof and his state of mind. But to dismiss him as simply a troubled young man is to disregard history. For 198 years, angry whites have attacked Emanuel A.M.E. and its congregation, and when its leaders have fused faith with political activism, white vigilantes have used terror to silence its ministers and mute its message of progress and hope. Denmark Vesey’s story should never be forgotten — nor should the tragedy of June 17.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/magazine/before-charlestons-church-shooting-a-long-history-of-attacks.html?nlid=38867499&_r=0

Facing the Music From a Song We Don't Want to Hear

From Charles P. Pierce at Esquire - If you're short on time, skip down to the last paragraph.  It says it all.

Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable 

In which we confront the dark heart of America. Again.

What happened in a church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unthinkable." Somebody thought long and hard about it. Somebody thought to load the weapon. Somebody thought to pick the church. Somebody thought to sit, quietly, through some of Wednesday night bible study. Somebody thought to stand up and open fire, killing nine people, including the pastor. Somebody reportedly thought to leave one woman alive so she could tell his story to the world. Somebody thought enough to flee. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unthinkable is not one of them.

What happened in a Charleston church on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unspeakable." We should speak of it often. We should speak of it loudly. We should speak of it as terrorism, which is what it was. We should speak of it as racial violence, which is what it was.

We should speak of it as an attack on history, which it was. This was the church founded by Denmark Vesey, who planned a slave revolt in 1822. Vesey was convicted in a secret trial in which many of the witnesses testified after being tortured. After they hung him, a mob burned down the church he built. His sons rebuilt it. On Wednesday night, someone turned it into a slaughter pen.

We should speak of it as an assault on the idea of a political commonwealth, which is what it was. And we should speak of it as one more example of all of these, another link in a bloody chain of events that reaches all the way back to African wharves and Southern docks. It is not an isolated incident, not if you consider history as something alive that can live and breathe and bleed. We should speak of all these things. What happened in that church was a lot of things, but unspeakable is not one of them.

Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them. Let Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, look out her window at the flag of treason that is flown proudly at her state capitol and think about these things, and speak of them, before she pronounces herself so puzzled at how something like this could happen in South Carolina, the home office of American sedition.

Let Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, both of whom want to lead this troubled country, consider what it meant to absent themselves from campaign events in Charleston and think of these things and speak of them before they turn to their consultants about whether or not staying in a grieving city was what a leader should have done.

Let the elite political media that follows the two of them, roughly thrown into a maelstrom of actual news, look out onto the streets of Charleston and realize that politics exist for the purpose of governing a country, and not simply to entertain it.

Let Squint and the Meat Puppet think about these things and speak of these things before inviting Donald Trump, who is a clown and a fool, to come on national television and talk about his hair. Not to think about these things is to betray the dead. Not to speak of these things is to dishonor them.

Think about what happened. Think about why it happened. Talk about what happened. Talk about why it happened. Do these things, over and over again. The country must resist the temptation present in anesthetic innocence. It must reject the false comfort of learned disbelief and the narcotic embrace of concocted surprise. There is a ferocious underground fire running through American history. It rages unseen until it flares again from the warm earth. It has raged from the death of Denmark Vesey in 1822 to the death of the Reverend and state senator Clementa Pinckney on Wednesday night.

This was not an unspeakable act. Sylvia Johnson, one of only three survivors of the massacre, is speaking about it.

"She said that he had reloaded five different times… and he just said 'I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go.'"

There is a timidity that the country can no longer afford. This was not an unthinkable act. A man may have had a rat's nest for a mind, but it was well thought out. It was a cool, considered crime, as well planned as any bank robbery or any computer fraud. If people do not want to speak of it, or think about it, it's because they do not want to follow the story where it inevitably leads. It's because they do not want to follow this crime all the way back to the mother of all American crimes, the one that Denmark Vesey gave his life to avenge. What happened on Wednesday night was a lot of things. A massacre was only one of them. (Bold mine)

Follow the link below to find the original article with hyperlinks to articles providing historical perspectives.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35793/charleston-shooting-discussion/

Well, Of Course He's to Blame

From Digbysblog - 

“And he voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.” (Bold mine)

That is an NRA board member talking about one of the Charleston massacre victims, State Senator Reverend Clementa Pinckney. Seriously. They are blaming him for the massacre. Evidently they are sticking with their story that if only people had been armed at their prayer meeting they could have seen this coming and taken out the shooter before he could kill anyone. Clairvoyance comes with concealed carry, you see. Turns average Americans into comic book super heroes with the ability to read minds and stop time. So if those people had been armed the only person who would have been shot and killed was the "bad guy."

The idea that being armed will stop gun violence is ridiculous. Not to mention the fact that I'm pretty sure what he's suggesting --- that black people arm themselves and start shooting white people who threaten them -- isn't what his NRA constituency has in mind. They seem pretty clear on the fact that the black guys are always the "bad guys."

I don't know how much more of this fatuous garbage I can take.

Yep