Thanks!

To all the folks who have stumbled upon my blog and all my regular readers, thanks for making this short February the best month I’ve had yet!

Ya'all come back now, ya heah!

Those Amazing Humans, #247, Anita Hill

Remember "Long Dong Silver"

The article below is reprinted from a “Daily Times” of Los Angeles article with contributions from Mark Pratt of AP. It gives you a recent picture of the principal characters and how they are dealing with repercussions of the monumental struggle between Hill and Thomas during Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings so long ago. Personally, I cannot believe Thomas was confirmed in the light of her testimony. Of course I am an unabashed liberal and a feminist to boot; worked with women almost exclusively in my educational career; so I suppose I am biased, so sue me.  

WASHINGTON — Anita Hill is refusing to apologize for accusing then-Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her, in an issue that Thomas’ wife has reopened 19 years after his confirmation hearings.

“I have no intention of apologizing because I testified truthfully about my experience and I stand by that testimony,” Hill, now a Brandeis University professor, said in a statement released Tuesday night.

Thomas’ wife, Virginia, had left a voicemail message on Hill’s phone on Oct. 9 asking her to say she was sorry for the allegations that surfaced at Thomas’ confirmation hearings for a seat on the high court bench in 1991.

In her statement, Hill said, “I certainly thought the call was inappropriate.”

 She had worked for Clarence Thomas in two federal government jobs before he was selected for the court by President George H.W. Bush for the Supreme Court.

 Virginia Thomas is a longtime conservative activist and founder of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, which opposes what she has characterized as the leftist “tyranny” of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. She was a keynote speaker earlier this month in Richmond, Va., at a state convention billed as the largest tea party event ever.

Mrs. Thomas said in a statement that she was “extending an olive branch” to Hill.

In a transcript of the message provided by ABC News, which said it listened to the recording, Thomas identified herself and then said, “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day,” Thomas said.

When Hill heard the voicemail, she contacted Brandeis’ public safety office, which in turn informed the FBI.

In her statement, Virginia Thomas said she did not intend to offend Hill.

“I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get passed what happened so long ago. That offer still stands, I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same,” Thomas said.

Hill declined comment to reporters who stopped her in Waltham on her way to work Wednesday, asking them politely to move.

“I need to get off this street and I don’t want anybody to get hurt,” she said. “I don’t have any comment right now. Please, let me go teach my class.”

Andrew Gully, a spokesman for Brandeis, said the school “completely supports” Hill’s decision to alert campus security about the call. He said Wednesday was “a routine day” on campus.

“We’ve moved beyond it,” he said. “We’re finished on this end.”

FBI Special Agent Jason Pack, a spokesman at bureau headquarters in Washington, declined to comment on the voicemail.

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Clarence Thomas adamantly denied Hill’s accusations that he made inappropriate sexual remarks, including references to pornographic movies. Thomas said he did talk about X-rated movies while at Yale Law School, adding that so did many other young people in the 1970s.

The allegations nearly derailed his nomination and sparked a national debate about sexual harassment on the job.

Thomas called the nationally televised hearings a “high-tech lynching.”

He broke a 16-year silence about the hearings in a 2007 book, “My Grandfather’s Son,” writing that Hill was a mediocre employee who was used by political opponents to make claims she had been sexually harassed. The justice’s wife first suggested Hill apologize in interviews the couple gave after the release of the book.

Those Amazing Humans, #246, Samuel L. Jackson

Makes s**t better. Makes better s**t.

Samuel L. Jackson has been crafting memorable characters on screen for over two decades now. Many fans would say his Jules Winnfield, the foil for Travolta’s Vinnie Vega, in “Pulp Fiction” (1994) was the role that put him squarely in the public eye. That may be true but if I had to pick my personal favorite it would have to be “Black Snake Moan”. If I had to pick a Jackson part I wish I had never seen. it would have to be his Octopus bit in “The Spirit”.

“Black Snake Moan” had several factors I look for in film likeability: blues music, social commentary, positive character evolution, and sleaze. And it was a showcase for Mr. Jackson’s considerable talents, as thespian and musician.

“The Spirit”, wuddint nuttin’ goodaboutit.

To end on a positive note, if you like Soul music (sweet soul music) and you have not yet seen “Soul Men” with SJ and Bernie Mac playing off each other as an estranged Sam and Dave-like soul duo, give yourself a treat and rent this hilarious mofo. 

Those Amazing Humans, #245, Langston Hughes

Harlem Renaissance Man

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!

Those Amazing Humans, #244, Cornell West

Smarter than Kanye

Theologist, Philosopher, Intellectual, Performer, Musician, Orator, Writer, and I suspect that’s not nearly the whole of this man’s life, Cornell West, is one of a kind. Softball Marxist, Southern Baptist, Jazzbo-HipHopper, Serious Jokester, Popstar and Pundit rolled into a likeable ball.

Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is a Professor at Princeton University, where he teaches in its Department of Religion. West is known for his combination of political and moral insight and criticism and his contribution to the post-1960s civil rights movement. The bulk of his work focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their “radical conditionedness.” West draws intellectual contributions from such diverse traditions as the African American Baptist Church, pragmatism and transcendentalism.^[1]

^{His activism, academic credentials, political experience, and philosophical ruminations are noteworthy, but I know you are more interested in his contributions to pop culture, so here:}

West appears in both The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. He plays Councilor West, who serves on the council of Zion. West’s character advises that “comprehension is not a requisite of cooperation.” In addition, West provides philosophical commentary on all three Matrix films in The Ultimate Matrix Collection, along with integral theorist Ken Wilber.

West makes frequent appearances on the popular political show Real Time with Bill Maher.^{[25][26][27][28][29]}

West was featured on Starbucks Coffee Cups with The Way I See It #284 quoted, “You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people. You can’t save the people, if you don’t serve the people.”

West’s book “Race Matters” appears in a second season episode of the West Wing, in which the character Charlie Young is reading at his desk.

In Anna Deavere Smith‘s work Twilight: Los Angeles, she briefly delivers a speech in the style and words of West.

In the 2008 film Examined Life, a documentary featuring several noted academics discussing philosophy in real-world contexts, Cornel, “driving through Manhattan, . . . compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be.”^[30]

West appeared in the rock-umentary Call + Response, a video aiming to raise awareness about human trafficking.

Rapper Lupe Fiasco mentions West in his song ‘Just Might Be OK’ from his album Food & Liquor with the line ‘I ain’t Cornel West, I am Cornel Westside, Chi-town Guevara.”

West has recorded a recitation of John Mellencamp‘s song “Jim Crow” for inclusion on the singer’s upcoming box set On the Rural Route 7609.

West has recently completed recording with the Cornel West Theory, a Hip Hop band endorsed by West which also bears his name.^[31] He has also released two hip-hop/soul/spoken word albums, one under “Cornel West” (entitled Street Knowledge), the other under “Cornel West & B.M.W.M.B.” (entitled Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations).^[32] Both works are musical expressions of West’s personal politics and beliefs which he has annunciated in his previous written works.

He appears in conversation with Bill Withers in the Bill Withers documentary, “Still Bill”.

Harvard University‘s undergraduate student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, suggested in October 2002 that the premise of Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode “Anti-Thesis” was based on the West’s conflicts with Harvard president Lawrence Summers.^[33]

West appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on February 1, 2011 to begin Black History Month, and held a near hour long discussion on the importance of studying black history for all people to answer the question, “What does it mean to be human?”

Everything that isn’t italicized came from that wonderful Wikipedia.

Those Amazing Humans, #243, Lois Mailou Jones

Paint it black.

Lois Mailou Jones (November 3, 1905 – June 9, 1998) was a prize winning artist who lived into her nineties and who painted and influenced others during the Harlem Renaissance and beyond during her long teaching career. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is buried on her beloved Martha’s Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery.

Dr. Jones began painting as a child and had shows of her work when she was in high school. “Every summer of my childhood, my mother took me and my brother to Martha’s Vineyard island. I began painting in watercolor which even today is my pet medium.”

After graduation from the School of the Museum of Art in Boston, she designed textiles until a decorator told her–“You couldn’t have done this, you’re a colored girl.” She began looking for a way for her name to become known and was turned down for a job at her alma mater. She was hired by Charlotte Hawkins Brown after some initial reservations and founded the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina. As a prep school teacher, she coached a basketball team, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for church services. Only one year later, she was recruited to join the art department at Howard University in Washington D.C and remained as professor of design and watercolor painting until her retirement in 1977. While developing her own work as an artist, she is also known as an outstanding mentor.

In 1937, for her first sabbatical from Howard University on a general educational fellowship, she went to Paris for the first time where she worked very hard producing 35 to 40 pieces during one year’s time, including “Les Fetiches” a stunning, African inspired oil which is owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum [1] and one of her best known works and her first piece which combined traditional African forms with Western techniques and materials to create a vibrant and compelling work.

“The French were so inspiring. The people would stand and watch me and say ‘mademoiselle, you are so very talented. You are so wonderful.’ In other words, the color of my skin didn’t matter in Paris and that was one of the main reasons why I think I was encouraged and began to really think I was talented.”

After marrying Haitian artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel in 1953, Jones traveled and lived in Haiti. In many of her pieces one can see the influence of the Haitian culture, with its African influences, which reinvigorated the way she looked at the world. Her work became more abstract and hard-edged, after her marriage to Pierre-Noel. Her impressionist techniques gave way to a spirited, richly patterned, and brilliantly colored style. Further travels to eleven African countries enabled Jones to synthesize a body of designs and motifs that she combined in large, complex compositions.

In 1980, she was honored by President Jimmy Carter at the White House for outstanding achievements in the arts. Her paintings grace the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Portrait Gallery, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Palace in Haiti, and the National Museum of Afro-American Artists and many others.

In her nineties, Jones still painted. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton collected one of her island seascapes “Breezy Day at Gay Head” while they were in the White House. Lois felt that her greatest contribution to the art world was “proof of the talent of black artists.” The African-American artist is important in the history of art and I have demonstrated it by working and painting here and all over the world.” But her fondest wish was to be known as an “artist” — without labels like black artist, or woman artist. She has produced work that echoes her pride in her African roots and American ancestry.

 The above excerpts were taken from a longer article in Wikipedia. I am learning right along with you other ignorant folks out there who were not aware of this rare talent. And Lois was not aware of my rare talent either, so we’re even on that score. My genius will only be appreciated long after my demise. A gypsy woman told me that a long time ago. But enough about me, here’s one of Lois’ pictures:

Ubi Girl

 

Those Amazing Humans, #242, Slim Harpo

Shake Your Hips Rhythmically

Those Amazing Humans, #241, Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer a gifted pioneer in white, male domain  

From The Seattle Post Intelligencer

Pure Writer

By JOHN MARSHALL
P-I BOOK CRITIC

Her father was a shoeshine man who died when she was a child, her mother was a maid who brought her along on jobs, yet Octavia Butler rose from these humble beginnings to become one of the country’s leading writers – a female African American pioneer in the white, male domain of science fiction.

Butler, 58, died after falling and striking her head Friday on a walkway outside her home in Lake Forest Park. The reclusive writer, who moved to Seattle in 1999 from her native Southern California, was a giant in stature (she was 6 feet tall by age 15) and in accomplishment.

She remains the only science fiction writer to receive one of the vaunted “genius grants” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a hard-earned $295,000 windfall in 1995 that followed years of poverty and personal struggles with shyness and self-doubt.

“People may call these ‘genius grants,’ ” Butler said in a 2004 interview with the Seattle P-I, “but nobody made me take an IQ test before I got mine. I knew I’m no genius.”

Butler’s most popular work is “Kindred,” a time-travel novel in which a black woman from 1976 Southern California is transported back to the violent days of slavery before the Civil War. The 1979 novel became a popular staple of school and college courses and now has more than a quarter million copies in print, but its birth was agonizing, like so much in Butler’s solitary life.

“Kindred” was repeatedly rejected by publishers, many of whom could not understand how a science fiction novel could be set on a plantation in the antebellum South. Butler stuck to her social justice vision – “I think people really need to think what it’s like to have all of society arrayed against you” – and finally found a publisher who paid her a $5,000 advance for “Kindred.”

“I was living on my writing,” Butler said, “and you could live on $5,000 back then. You could live, but not well. I got along by buying food I didn’t really like but was nourishing: beans, potatoes. A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time.”

Steven Barnes, another African American writer, knew Butler during her early writing days in Southern California and later in the Washington when he and his writer wife, Tananarive Due, lived for a time in Longview before returning to Los Angeles. Barnes saw Butler’s confidence grow along with her reputation.

“Octavia was one of the purest writers I know,” Barnes recalled Sunday. “She put everything she had into her work – she was extraordinarily committed to the craft. Yet, despite her shyness, she was also an open, generous and humane human being. I miss her so much already.”

Due added, “It is a cliche to say that she was too good a soul, but it’s true. What she really conveyed in her writing was the deep pain she felt about the injustices around her. All of it was a metaphor for war, poverty, power struggles and discrimination. All of that hurt her very deeply, but her gift was that she could use words for the pain and make the world better.”

This is a link to an interview by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now back in 2006.

http://www.archive.org/stream/dn2005-1111_vid/dn2005-1111_512kb.mp4

Those Amazing Humans, #240, Mae C. Jemison

High level acheiver

“•When I’m asked about the relevance to Black people of what I do, I take that as an affront. It presupposes that Black people have never been involved in exploring the heavens, but this is not so. Ancient African empires — Mali, Songhai, Egypt — had scientists, astronomers. The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group.”

Mae Carol Jemison (born October 17, 1956) is an American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992.

Jemison says that as a young girl growing up in Chicago she always assumed she would get into space. “I thought, by now, we’d be going into space like you were going to work.”^[3] She said it was easier to apply to be a shuttle astronaut, “rather than waiting around in a cornfield, waiting for ET to pick me up or something.”^[3]

After the flight of Sally Ride in 1983, Jemison felt the astronaut program had opened up and applied.^[1] Jemison’s inspiration for joining NASA was African-American actress Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek.^[4

In 1993, Jemison also appeared on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.^[22] LeVar Burton found out, from a friend that Jemison was a big Star Trek fan and asked her if she’d be interested in being on the show, and she said, “Yeah!!”^[23] The result was an appearance as Lieutenant Palmer in the episode “Second Chances“.^[23] Jemison has the distinction of being the first real astronaut ever to appear on Star Trek.^[

^{All the above borrowed from Wikipedia with the exception of the opening quote.}

Those Amazing Humans, #239, Estevanico

I know I say this a lot, but here’s another epic movie story waiting to happen. I can see it now, Denzel as Estevanico, starts as a slave, makes the transAtlantic voyage, goes through storms, shipwrecks, further enslavement by Native Americans, becomes only one of four survivors who make it to Mexico City, continues his expedition up into what is now New Mexico and Arizona, assumes the mantle of explorer, conqueror, and healer, and eventually gets slain by the Hawikuh Indians, who scoffed at his Mighty Mojo.

From Wikipedia:

There goes the neighborhood.

Estevanico (c. 1500–1539) (also known as “Mustafa Zemmouri”, “Black Stephen”, “Esteban”, “Esteban the Moor”, “Estevan”, “Estebanico”, “Stephen the Black”, “Stephen the Moor”, “Stephen Dorantes” after his owner Andres Dorantes ^[1], and “Little Stephen”) was the first known person born in North Africa to have arrived in the present-day continental United States. An enslaved servant, he was one of four survivors of the Spanish Narváez expedition and traveled with explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca across northern New Spain (present-day U.S. southwest and northern Mexico). Estevanico, Cabeza De Vaca, and Andrés Dorantes de Carranza were helped by the skills of their comrade Alonso Del Castillo, who became known as a healer among the indigenous people they encountered.

From a website, Island Mix, I stole these passages by a contributor, Kephren1 (sorry I can’t credit more specifically).

Leaving Mexico City, the party traveled in a northwesterly direction. The journey proved a veritable triumph for Estevanico. Everywhere he was received with honor, thanks to his size and strength, his dark skin, his daring, bravery, and bluff, as well as his good nature and ready wit, his reputation as a medicine man, and his knowledge of Indian life and lore. The most beautiful virgins were given him as presents. These he accepted and incorporated into his retinue, much, it is said, to the displeasure of the chaste Father Marco, who, soon after they crossed the Rio Grande, dropped behind, letting Estevanico blaze the way.

At last, Estevanico arrived on a mountaintop from where he saw what appeared to be a city with great battlements and buildings that looked taller than even those of the Old World. He again dispatched messengers to Father Marco to urge him on, and sent envoys ahead to the city with presents and his emblem of power to proclaim that a great black chief had come from the south with a message of peace and to heal the sick. But the chief of the “city” wanted none of Estevanico or his medicine. He sent back to say that the medicine was no good and that if Estevanico knew what was good for him he’d stay out. This served but to excite the black chief, who gave the order to march. He arrived at the “gates of the city” early the next morning. Once more the chief of the Hawikuh, as these Indians were known, sent a messenger warning Estevanico away, but brushing them aside he walked in boldly. What happened after this is conjecture. Some writers say he was met with a shower of arrows and spears, and that his followers, seeing him fall, ran away panic-stricken to Father Marco. Another version is that the Indian chief asked him how many brethren he had and he replied many, so they killed him to prevent him from telling them about the Indians, and that his body was cut up and a piece sent to each of the fourteen or fifteen headsmen and his dog was killed later. One fact is certain, however. The expedition was attacked, and many of its members killed, among them Estevanico.