The Benin Bronzes and Colonial Theft

In the movie Black Panther, Killmonger talks to a British museum curator, testing her expertise on various African artwork and artifacts. When Killmonger finds the item he's looking for and not so coincidentally tells the curator that she is incorrect about its origin, he informs her that she need not worry about such things any more as he is going to take it off her hands. 

She haughtily tells him that the item is not for sale. Killmonger asks her how does she think her ancestors obtained these items in the first place? Did they pay a fair price for them? Or did they, secure in their greater capacity for violence and total contempt for anyone not white, just take them. It's a powerful scene.

People, unfortunately especially people who are descended from colonizers and imperialists, often forget that much of the world's greatest art is in European museums not because of honest trade but because of violence and theft. I was reminded of this because of a recent NY Times article that detailed the halting and slow efforts of two people to convince European museums (in this case a British one) to do the right thing and return stolen art (in this case masks from Benin in what is now Nigeria).

In 2004, Steve Dunstone and Timothy Awoyemi stood on a boat on the bank of the River Niger. In the back of the crowd, Mr. Awoyemi, who was born in Britain and grew up in Nigeria, noticed two men holding what looked like political placards. They didn’t come forward, he said. But just as the boat was about to push off, one of the men suddenly clambered down toward it. “He had a mustache, scruffy stubble, about 38 to 40, thin build,” Mr. Dunstone recalled recently. “He was wearing a white vest,” he added. The man reached out his arm across the water and handed Mr. Dunstone a note, then hurried off with barely a word. 

That night, Mr. Dunstone pulled the note from his pocket. Written on it were just six words: “Please help return the Benin Bronzes.” At the time, he didn’t know what it meant. But that note was the beginning of a 10-year mission that would take Mr. Dunstone and Mr. Awoyemi from Nigeria to Britain and back again, involve the grandson of one of the British soldiers responsible for the looting, and see the pair embroiled in a debate about how to right the wrongs of the colonial past that has drawn in politicians, diplomats, historians and even a royal family. 

Waverly Woodson: D-Day Hero

My maternal grandfather was a WW2 Veteran. Unfortunately by the time I was old enough to be interested in such things I didn't see him that often. He was gone way too soon as far I was concerned. I can still get stories about him from other relatives but it's not really the same as getting it direct from the source.

I don't know if my grandfather was ever in combat. I do remember the seemingly HUGE rifle that he brought home. Memory is important. And it's because of the importance of memory that Joann Woodson, the 90 year-old widow of WW2 D-Day hero Waverly Woodson, is fighting to ensure that her late husband receives all the praise and commendations that he should have received during his life, including the Medal of Honor.

PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) – For years, a widow has been fighting for recognition of her late husband's heroism during D-Day. Waverly Woodson Jr. was one of an estimated one million African Americans who served in World War II, including 2,000 who were at Normandy. All served in segregated units and their contributions are often overlooked. Joann Woodson, 90, wants everyone to know the sacrifice her husband made when he stormed Omaha Beach 75 years ago as a medic.

"He said that the men were just dropping, just dropping so fast. Some of them were so wounded, there was nothing that you could do but just give them a few little last rites," Woodson said.

Black Women Alabama Master Quilters

I definitely remember my paternal grandmother making quilts. I'm not sure about my maternal grandmother. I think she must have, but I'd have to ask other relatives about that. She lived down south so I didn't see her as often as I should have. 

Quilting was and from what I can tell still is a predominantly feminine activity so it's highly unlikely I would have been encouraged to pick up that trade. I think a few of my female cousins might have some skills in this area. Either way, whatever your particular family heritage may be there are likely talents and interests that are passed down from mother to daughter, father to son, grandparents to grandchildren and so on.

Brooklyn Museum Hiring Fracas

The Brooklyn Museum recently hired a white woman to be its curator of African Art. Some people didn't like this hiring decision, to put it mildly. 

A recent decision by the Brooklyn Museum to hire a white person as an African art consulting curator has prompted opposition on social media and from an anti-gentrification activist group that argues the selection perpetuated “ongoing legacies of oppression.” In response to a letter from the group that stated its concerns, Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, said in a statement on Friday that the museum “unequivocally” stood by its selection of Kristen Windmuller-Luna for the position. “We were deeply dismayed when the conversation about this appointment turned to personal attacks on this individual,” Ms. Pasternak said. 

She also extolled the expertise of Dr. Windmuller-Luna, calling her an “extraordinary candidate with stellar qualifications.” Dr. Windmuller-Luna, 31, has Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Princeton, and a bachelor’s degree in the history of art from Yale. She has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, N.Y. Her appointment to the Brooklyn Museum was announced late last month.

In its letter earlier this week, the activist group Decolonize This Place called the museum’s selection of Dr. Windmuller-Luna “tone-deaf” and said that “no matter how one parses it, the appointment is simply not a good look in this day and age.”

“Seriously, @brooklynmuseum? There goes the neighborhood for good,” opined Philadelphia journalist Ernest Owens on Twitter.

John Henry

John Henry was a little baby, sitting on his papa's knee
He picked up a hammer and little piece of steel
Said "Hammer's gonna be the death of me, Lord, Lord
Hammer's gonna be the death of me"

The captain said to John Henry
"Gonna bring that steam drill 'round
Gonna bring that steam drill out on the job
Gonna whop that steel on down, Lord, Lord
Gonna whop that steel on down"

John Henry told his captain
"A man ain't nothing but a man
But before I let your steam drill beat me down
I'll die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord
I'll die with a hammer in my hand""

Now the man that invented the steam drill
Thought he was mighty fine
But John Henry made fifteen feet
The steam drill only made nine, Lord, Lord
The steam drill only made nine

John Henry hammered in the mountains
His hammer was striking fire
But he worked so hard, he broke his poor heart
He laid down his hammer and he died, Lord, Lord
He laid down his hammer and he died

John Henry" is a folk-blues song that is more closely associated with the Appalachian-Piedmont blues tradition than the Mississippi one. Like many of the best folk songs, it may have been based on real life events. It was certainly used as a rallying song during the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties. It has foreboding, superhuman heroic acts, and of course, death. In the very first stanza of the song the hero, then just a child, knows that he's not long for this life and will die in a heroic sacrifice. Of course, the nature of the sacrifice is debatable, especially in today's post-industrial world where physical labor often is considered suitable only for people not smart enough to do anything else. There are many different interpretations of this song. As with most blues songs there are several different lyrical variations. But every version hits the key points. John Henry was a steel driving man who, when threatened with loss of his livelihood via automation, takes up the challenge and beats the machine, but only at the cost of his life.

General John Kelly and The Confederacy

I want you to imagine any US general or politician saying that Nazi Gestapo/SD head Reinhard Heydrich, a prime architect of the Holocaust, was "a principled man and skilled violinist who gave up a promising career in the performing arts to serve his country with honor and dedication. Now we may disagree with his principles but that was a long time ago. Things were different then. We shouldn't judge people by today's standards. Heydrich made the decision to soldier for his country. And that's not something to be lightly dismissed".

Such a statement by anyone with anything to lose would probably not be made during normal times because the statement is so profoundly callous and ignorant about the evil that Heydrich committed. But we are not in normal times, as Trump Chief of Staff General Kelly recently demonstrated.

“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly told Ingraham. “He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

“I think we make a mistake, though, and as a society and certainly as, as individuals, when we take what is today accepted as right and wrong and go back 100, 200, 300 years or more and say what those, you know, what Christopher Columbus did was wrong,” he said. “You know, 500 years later, it’s inconceivable to me that you would take what we think now and apply it back then.LINK

Movie Reviews: Detroit

Detroit

directed by Kathyrn Bigelow

The 1967 Detroit riot or rebellion started less than a mile from where I would later grow up. In separate incidents during this time both of my parents were shot at by police, soldiers and/or rioters. My mother, a paternal uncle and my paternal grandfather were nearly killed by police shooting at the car my grandfather was driving while he was trying to get my mother safely home. A bullet missed my mother and left a scar on my uncle's shin. Another paternal aunt would later regale me with stories of the National Guardsmen/Army troops riding in armored vehicles shouting racial slurs at black teens and threatening to shoot them. And of course many older uncles and second cousins would from time to time over the years mention the repressive and disgusting behavior of the police back in what I came to think of as the bad old days. I mention all this to say that although I wasn't on the scene or even yet thought of when the riot took place I feel as if I had a very personal stake in what was going on. Some of the buildings that were part of my panorama growing up were the same buildings that were seen on the newsreels of the events in 1967. People died in part so that I could walk freely in my city and succeed to the best of my God given abilities instead of being assaulted by police or trapped in a dead end racially segregated job. So I was intrigued to see what a strong talented director like Bigelow would do with this story. Would she mess it up? Would she get down to the nitty gritty? Would she confirm ugly stereotypes about whites working with "black" stories and themes?

Unfortunately I would have to say that as a storyteller Bigelow missed the boat here. Technically the movie is superb. The camera work, lighting, cinematography, settings and look of the film are all top notch, with one or two minor complaints I'll mention in a moment. Bigelow is a master (mistress?) of her craft and shows it here. But the narrative is too sharply focused on the incidents at the Algiers Motel. The Algiers Motel (which has since been torn down) was a place that was a sort of no-tell motel. People often went there to commit adultery. Some prostitutes worked that area. 

HBO's Confederate Show

As you may have heard the creators and show runners of HBO's smash hit series Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B Weiss, have decided to create and produce another show for HBO. Tentatively titled Confederate this show will imagine a modern day world in which the slave owning South won the Civil War as well as subsequent conflicts with the North. Slavery is still legal in the South but not the North. A black husband and wife couple, Malcolm and Nichelle Spellman, will also write for and produce the show. No scripts have yet been created. No storyline or theme has been divulged. And that is all anyone who is not named David Benioff, D.B Weiss, Malcolm or Nichelle Spellman, or who is not within the small group of HBO executives who greenlit the show or who is not married to or related to the show creators knows about Confederate at this time. 

Though the proposed show Confederate hasn't been viewed by a single mumbling soul many people immediately came out against the show. These reasons ranged from personal taste to fears that it would embolden the right-wing to concerns that whites would mess up the story to worries that it would by definition bolster lies about black inferiority to somewhat presumptuous fears that the American populace just didn't need to see this to accusations of cultural appropriation, imperialism and race-pimping/concern trolling. 

Book Reviews: The Black Russian

The Black Russian
by Vladimir Alexandrov

Today Russia has a reputation, fair or not, as a xenophobic haven for Neo-Nazis and white supremacists and thus a hostile place for anyone of apparent African descent. But at the turn of the 20th century this wasn't the case. Frederick Bruce Thomas, an African-American, made and lost a fortune in Russia during the pre-Bolshevik years. He also repeated his success in Turkey. Thomas' story is an example of what someone intelligent can do when freed from the strictures of American racism. Thomas' life is also an unfortunate example of how American racism can still reach out and touch people far from its shores. The Black Russian is lastly an intoxicating tale of the events around the time of the First World War and how they shaped the world we live in today. I knew that the Turks stole (conquered) Constantinople from the Byzantine Greeks in 1453, renaming it Istanbul. 

I had forgotten that in the aftermath of WWI the Greeks, with Allied assistance, attempted to partition Turkey, conquer (retake) the Greek founded city of Smyrna, and make Istanbul an international city, with the likely aim of eventually claiming it for Greece and of course changing the name back. The Greeks were unsuccessful, something that would have a negative effect on Thomas' life and business interests. Frederick Thomas was born in 1872 Mississippi, not a place that was very hospitable to black people, especially black people who "didn't know their place". This was probably a designation that fit both of Frederick Thomas' parents, Lewis and Hannah, as well as his stepmother India, who helped to raise him after Hannah's death. Former slaves, Lewis and Hannah (and later India), had left sharecropping as early as 1869. Lewis and Hannah purchased their own farm.

The Thomas property grew to over 600 acres, a decent sized farm then or now for a single family. The Thomas family wealth allowed them to donate land for schools and churches. The family made business partnerships with white English immigrants and hired local black residents as workers and sharecroppers. White people noticed the economic power wielded by Lewis Thomas and his wife. This would prove to be the downfall of the Thomas family in Mississippi.

Confederacy Redux

Recently, in the South people have begun removing some noted Confederate monuments from places of honor.  There are so many of these though that it would take forever to do it. Some US federal institutions are named after Confederates. It's important to remember that the Civil War was started by Southern white supremacists who feared that Northern whites were insufficiently dedicated to the twin causes of black slavery and white supremacy. So the South tried to break apart from the United States. The South started the bloodiest war ever experienced by the United States. Ironically, in their desire to defend and expand their right to own, whip, rape, exploit and murder black people, the Confederacy ineptly but fortunately brought about slavery's demise earlier than otherwise would have been the case. 

With the exception of the honest white supremacist, many present day defenders of Confederate monuments, flags and namesakes do not like to admit what it is they are actually defending. The United States is not a white man's country. Black people actually do have rights that white men and women must respect. And despite Kris Kobach's best efforts Black people get to vote. How about that? All of this was anathema to Confederates, then and now. For Confederates blacks were slaves. Period. End of story. There was a Supreme Court decision which established that blacks had no rights whites needed to respect. How much more clear does someone need to be. At its core the Civil War wasn't about tariffs or balance of powers between the Federal government and states. It was about enslavement and exclusion. This isn't a modern revisionist idea.

Blissfully unencumbered by any political niceties, after all they were about to start shooting people, Confederate politicians detailed for posterity their purpose in seceding. If we weren't living in a post-truth society this evidence would prevent particularly malevolent or obtuse people from arguing that the Civil War from the South's POV wasn't about slavery and white supremacy.

Hannah Duston: Heroine?

The other day I was reading thru the latest Quarterly Journal of Military History. I'm not sure I saw enough to justify the $13 purchase price but I did read about the story of Hannah Duston. I hadn't known about this story before. I thought it interesting and relevant to today's world. As you know the French and English colonized much of North America. They brought over their national, political and religious rivalries. These conflicts routinely erupted into war. In 1687 during the war that was alternately known as King William's War or the Second Indian War, the Abenaki Native Americans, allied with the French, attacked the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts. They killed 27 English colonists and took captives, including one Hannah Duston, her six day old daughter, and her nurse Mary. Hannah's husband Thomas escaped with the couple's other older children, though some people in Haverhill wondered if he was a coward. Some people thought then and now there's no way Thomas Duston should have been alive if his wife and baby were captured. Thomas' defenders argue that he had responsibilities to his other children to consider. As I've written elsewhere you have to make hard choices in tough situations. Hannah may or may not have been raped. That can't be determined. What is certain however is that the Abenaki military party decided that Hannah's new baby daughter Martha wasn't likely to survive the trip north. And they didn't want to be bothered with the trouble of taking care of a baby. So they killed the infant by dashing her brains out against a tree. 
As you might imagine that didn't go over too well with Mrs. Duston. But she bided her time. She was assigned/sold/gifted to a different Abenaki group. Six weeks later, in New Hampshire Hannah saw her opportunity. Along with Mary and another English captive, a fourteen year old boy named Samuel, she went Lizzie Borden on her captors while they slept. Hannah, Mary and Samuel killed two men, two women and six children.

Likely motivated by revenge, a bounty on Native American scalps, and most of all the need to prove that women and a youth had done what they claimed, Hannah Duston also scalped the Native Americans. She escaped back to her home. Hannah Duston became the first woman in colonial America to be honored by a statue. There are memorials and statues across Massachusetts and New Hampshire commemorating Hannah Duston. In fact the axe she used to handle her business is honored in a museum. Some descendants of the Abenaki felt that any glorification or commemoration of Hannah Duston was not only wrongheaded  but racist. 

Margaret Bruchak, an Abenaki historian, said in order to properly understand the Duston story, it’s important to understand the Abenaki culture’s view of combat and captivity.

“The whole point of taking a captive was to then transport that person safely. For the whole of that journey they were treated like family,” Bruchak said. “When captives were taken, they were almost immediately handed off from the warriors to individuals who would then look after them. Hannah, we know for a fact, was handed over to an extended family group of two adult men, three women, seven children and one white child.”

That’s why the Abenaki viewed Duston’s actions after she escaped with such horror, she said.
“It’s almost like the Geneva Conventions, when you think about it. Hannah betrayed the Abenaki Geneva Conventions. It wasn’t while she was in the midst of warfare that she did these supposedly brave acts. It was while she was in the care of a family,” Bruchak said. “If she had merely escaped, there probably would be very little story to tell, but the fact that she escaped, then stopped and went back to collect scalps – the bloody-mindedness of it is really quite remarkable. …

LINK
The Abenaki historian here glosses over the kidnapping of Hannah Duston. It takes some serious chutzpah to criticize Duston for bloody-mindedness after her baby was murdered. The reason that this story and the Abenaki reaction to it struck a chord with me is because it was not long ago that some conservative (and not so conservative) whites got very upset about the unveiling of a Charleston, South Carolina statue commemorating African-American freedom fighter Denmark Vesey, who attempted to lead a slave revolt and escape to Haiti. Vesey was betrayed, tortured and executed.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.Y. — ON Feb. 15, a group of activists in Charleston, S.C., unveiled a life-size statue of Denmark Vesey, a black abolitionist who was executed in 1822 for leading a failed slave rebellion in the city. For many people, Vesey was a freedom fighter and a proto-civil rights leader. But the statue, the work of nearly two decades, brought out furious counterattacks; one recent critic called him a “terrorist,” and a historian denounced him as “a man determined to create mayhem.”

Radio hosts, academics and newspaper bloggers condemned the project as “Charleston’s parallel to the 1990s O. J. Simpson verdict,” and suggested other African-Americans they believed more appropriate subjects of memorialization, like the rock pioneer Chubby Checker or the astronaut Ronald E. McNair.

LINK

Yes, because when I think of someone who stood up against all the odds and was willing to die for what was right, Chubby Checker is the first person who comes to mind. Ridiculous. That is exactly like an Abenaki historian saying that the Hannah Duston statues in Haverhill should be replaced with Rob Zombie ones. And the people complaining about the Denmark Vesey statue seem to have missed all the statues and other commemorations given to slaveowners and rebels. Now although you could make (and some have made) the argument that the European settlers never should have been in Massachusetts in the first place I don't think anyone would argue that a mother who had just seen her captors kill her infant child by dashing its brains out wouldn't be justified in seeking some payback. Similarly you have to be tone deaf and ignorant not to understand that if you violently enslave someone (and their children and their children's children) then you shouldn't be too surprised or outraged if they decide to make you bleed rather than submit any longer. Now whatever you think of violence (and if you're like most people you probably seek to avoid it) you must understand that violence begets violence and hate. In short if you mess with me I am going to mess with you. That's human nature. As Muhammad Ali said: “I'm a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I'm no cheek turner. I got no respect for a man who won't hit back. You kill my dog, you better hide your cat.” There's no way we can logically admire Hannah Duston and scorn Denmark Vesey or Gabriel Prosser or Nat Turner. Or rather there is no way we can do that and still pretend to aspire to a universal sense of morality. If you have a severely attenuated moral sense that only responds to what is "good" for your kith and kin, then yes you can cheer for one and not the other, but don't be surprised if someone calls you on your hypocrisy. No human can be kidnapped, enslaved or see his or her relatives brutalized and not want to do something about it. It's a cliche but it certainly often remains the case that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. History is less about what actually happened and much more about what we're supposed to learn from what happened. So although history is past it's very much a political endeavor of the present. There is a reason why Duston is glorified while people like Vesey, Turner, Prosser and John Brown are ignored or denounced.

June 2014 Book Of The Month

It looks like this book could be an important companion piece to the book We will Shoot Back, which we earlier discussed. The author, Charles Cobb, is a former SNCC member and on the ground activist who actually participated in the human rights struggles of the sixties and had to deal with the reactionary threats and violence directed at Black people or other supporters who dared to suggest that segregation was wrong, black people were human and that blacks could vote. Cobb was there as were many other people. It is of course instructive to realize as many of the great names have died or lost their way struggling against personal demons, that nothing that the "leaders" accomplished, not one single thing, could have been done without the active support of many more people, of whom Cobb is one. Cobb, who is a journalist, is interested in showing the importance of armed self-defense in helping midwife real American democracy. His argument is that guns made the civil rights movement possible. He is dissatisfied with the idea that Rosa sat down, Martin stood up and white racists saw the light. It is a great frustration of mine that guns and gun culture have become in the American imagination almost exclusively the provenance of right-wing, reactionary and occasionally down right racist politicians, groups or individuals. People constantly forget that a key portion of Southern and for that matter Northern white supremacy was that black people did not, could not and would not defend themselves. And in this culture letting everyone believe that they could hurt you with impunity was not necessarily the best idea. In fact it was a stupid idea. It tended to attract bullies. Cobb describes how black WW2 vets were important in helping to relieve and reverse years of deliberately inculcated fear. Once you've seen that men whom you were told were superior to you can die just like you can, it tends to change your attitude about things.

Book Reviews-Wolfsangel, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, Demon Shield

Wolfsangel
by M.D. Lachlan

Wolfsangel is a somber historical fantasy tale of the origins of the titular German rune and of the werewolf legend. It intertwines this with Viking action adventures and the ongoing battles among and between the Norse gods the Aesir. This was enjoyable but in a far different way than I had expected. Although there are a few scenes of extreme violence and horror, the book tends to avoid those to concentrate on mental agonies, worries and magic, much of which is wielded by women. So the action is actually relatively infrequent or at least I thought it was. M.D. Lachlan is the pen name for author Mark Barrowcliffe.

The Aesir are among my favorite gods to read about simply because they are almost all serious bada$$es. War and battle are their primary focus. This tends to be true even of those deities who represent more peaceful elements of human existence such as fertility, farming, love, travel, etc. The Norse eschatological myth, or Ragnarok, is similar to other Indo-European myths and indeed to some things that are described in Revelations. There will be horrible wars. Humanity's violence, lust and lawlessness will exponentially increase. Families will dissolve in violence and incest. People will murder and rape each other with glee. There will be seemingly endless winters which kill off large numbers of people. Eventually all the bonds restraining evil entities will dissolve. The forces of evil, giants, demons, etc will meet the Aesir and their chosen human heroes from Valhalla in the Final Battle. Unlike Revelations however the "good guys" are doomed to lose. Odin, AllFather, King of Gods and Men will be killed and eaten by the wolf Fenris, who is said to be so large that his lower jaw scrapes earth while his upper jaw reaches heaven. Other wolves will swallow and eat the Sun and Moon, putting out the world's lights. The fire demon Surtur will burn the world, indeed the entire universe, destroying everything. But the world will be reborn with new even more powerful gods. This fate can't be changed.

The father of Fenris, the evil trickster god Loki, was banished from Valhalla when he admitted his involvement in the murder of Odin's son Baldur. Loki was bound with his son's entrails at the center of the earth and placed beneath serpents dripping venom onto his face and eyes. There he will stay until Ragnarok. 


In Wolfsangel the Viking King Authun has a vision that a Saxon woman has a son destined by the gods for great things. He leads a suicide mission (for his men, not himself) to raid the village and seize this child to raise as his own. Authun is surprised when he finds twin babies instead. But he takes them both and returning to his land, raises one boy Vali, while giving the other, Feileg, to the witches. Vali eschews raiding and direct violence, preferring to win via tactics and trickery. Vali's considered the biggest coward in the North. Because Authun has a well earned reputation for being the hardest and most brutal man in the North, the prospect of a "weak" son inheriting his kingdom causes political and personal problems. Feileg is sold to wild men and literally lives as a wolf. As both brothers grow to adulthood it becomes apparent that there are magicians and non-human entities that watch them. Each brother has powers that are dangerous to their enemies...and their friends.

Wolfsangel has some interesting points to make about the nature of good and evil and whether one is possible without the other. Odin, who raises strife for his own amusement and is the patron god of berserkers, hanged men, and magicians, is perhaps not "good" at all, while Loki, who constantly torments and tricks the Aesir but rarely harms humans, may not be as "evil" as some might think. Or maybe eternal beings are by definition beyond good and evil. Even in the Abrahamic traditions we have God acting in ways which are opaque to humans. In a theme shared with Christianity and some other religions Odin sacrificed himself to himself and hung dead on a tree, his side pierced with a spear, for nine days and nine nights. He did this to gain more knowledge, particularly the runes. Wolfsangel suggests that the experience and the knowledge may well have driven Odin insane and made him even more brutal than before.

This was a good book, if not quite what I was expecting. it was different, I'll say that. It moves at its own pace. It will definitely take a moment to figure out what's going on. Hints are given throughout the story but I didn't think they were obvious ones. Magic is not shown as something easy that works quickly. It's slow, painful and may work in quite different ways than the practitioner intended, if at all. It's mostly associated with women and may be related to childbirth. The shamans wielding magic always have to pay a cost.






Sundiata, An Epic Of Old Mali
by D.T. Niane

The Mali Empire was a West African multi-ethnic superstate that lasted roughly 400 years. It was famous for its wealth, legal administration, education (Timbuktu was a center of learning), music, culture and war making abilities. It had standing armies with chain mail clad knights and specialized infantry famed for skill with spear and bow. The leading group of the Mali Empire was the Mandinka people. Eight current states of West and North Africa make up the former Mali Empire. The founder of the Mali Empire was a historical figure who has since taken on legendary qualities. His name was Sundiata. This is, as was traditional among his ethnic group, a combination of his mother's (Sogolon) and father's (Maghan Kon Fatta) names. It translates into English as something close to "Son of the Lion" or "Sogolon's Lion". That's a pretty cool name for a prince if you think about it. Anyway the story starts when a king of Mali (Maghan Kon Fatta) receives a hunter/griot in his court who has the gift of prophecy. The fellow is smooth. In fact he's so smooth that he may not only be a messenger from God but perhaps supernatural in origin himself. He tells the king that his true successor is not yet born. No the king must marry a supremely ugly hunchbacked woman. This woman will bear him a son who will lead the Mandinka to heights of power not yet dreamed of. Well the king thanks the visitor for the prophecy and doesn't pay a lot of attention to it. 

Some time goes by and the king is holding court outside when he receives some visitors from the outskirts of his empire. They are accompanied by a hunchbacked maiden (Sogolon) of surpassing ugliness. Sogolon is as ugly as the king is handsome. In fact she's so ugly people call her buffalo woman. Heeding the prophecy the king decided to marry her. She bore him a son, Sundiata, who was as ugly as his mother. Sundiata did not walk until the age of seven and apparently could not talk. Now the king already had a wife, the beautiful and ambitious Sassouma, and an heir, her son Dankaran. Neither was pleased with Sogolon or her son. Both made fun of them and tried to undercut them at every opportunity.

Shortly before the King died he told the seven year old Sundiata that he would be king after Fatta's death. The King also expressed that wish to his nobles and counselors. However when he died Sassouma convinced everyone to ignore those wishes and install her son as king instead. And she then conspired to kill Sundiata, his mother and his sisters. Eventually Sundiata and his family had to flee the royal court. And this starts an epic tale of magic, intrigue and plotting which sees Sundiata travel many lands and gain much wisdom and experience before eventually returning home to liberate his people. This is taken from oral traditions. It's a very short book without a lot of dialogue. My edition ran less than 100 pages. It's reminiscent of stories like The Illiad or The Silmarillion in that via a mix of legend and history it communicates the particular cultural values of one group of people as well as telling the common Hero's Journey that is found in every culture.








Demon Shield
by Bruce King

There are slightly different explanations among monotheistic religious traditions as to why Satan and his demons/devils war against God and despise man so much. Islam's take, which is echoed elsewhere, is that Satan and his rebellious angels were jealous of the gifts and love which God gave to man, whom they considered a lower form of being. Upon being ordered to love and serve man, Satan and company scornfully refused and initiated a war in heaven, which of course they lost. Being consigned to eternal hell and blocked from God's glory made them if anything angrier and more jealous of man, who having an eternal soul, has the possibility to join with God in heaven, something that is forever denied to Satan and his minions. So from pure spite the evil forces of the universe attempt to profane, mock and destroy God's shining achievement, humanity, and drag human souls down to hell with them.
That is the story told in Demon Shield. This was the writer's first novel but it certainly didn't read like it. Unfortunately the publisher went out of business shortly after this book was released. I never did get any other books by the author, though having re-read this, I would certainly like to do so. This book remains out of print. However if you like grim visceral pulpy horror that hearkens back to Stephen King's grimier stuff -- Bruce King wrote a note giving thanks to Stephen King and hoping that the book would scare him -- you might want to pick this up if you can find it online or in your local used book store.

A yuppie couple, Angelica and Robert Marsten (she's a bookstore manager, he's a law student and public defender paralegal) moves in next door to an abandoned church which has, via evil magic, become home to a Satanic entity. Via some stupid decisons, bad luck and personal weaknesses, the entity is able to start scaring, influencing, and ultimately possessing the wife, Anjelica. Ultimately mayhem ensues but the book takes its sweet time getting there. The demon is much more interested in savoring human fear and corrupting the human soul than it is in just killing humans, though obviously it enjoys that too. This particular demon's primary initial tool happens to be lust so the book is full of explicit and nasty sexual situations which become more and more outre. Demon Shield is subdivided into four parts , Foreplay, Penetration, Obsession, and Release. This is truth in advertising. If prurient in your face horror is not occasionally your thing, this is simply not the book for you. But if you love possession stories and battles with the devilish, this is worthwhile.

The couple's only hope is Merin Whitley, a magician/exorcist who has previously tangled with demons and has the literal scars to show for it. He lost his wife in the last serious dust-up. Merin is worn down from his long battles. Once he enters the fray he realizes that this demon is the one he's struggled against before.This is pretty hardcore horror that definitely won't appeal to the Twilight or True Blood crowd or anyone who's looking for misunderstood monsters. The monsters here are not misunderstood in the least bit. They are Evil. They don't like humans. Period. They don't like dogs either. The Marstens have a devoted Rottweiller which tries to warn them of what's going on.

February Book of The Month: The Black Count

The Black Count

By Tom Reiss

Alexandre Dumas is best known today for his swashbuckling adventure/revenge stories such as The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Corsican Brothers and several others. What's not widely known is that details of and inspiration for Alexandre Dumas' bestsellers often were drawn from stories and memories of his own father, General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.

Thomas-Alexandre, who generally preferred to be known as Alexandre, was the son of a dissolute French nobleman (who sold his own children into slavery) and a black Haitian slave. He rose to claim aristocratic status and worked his way thru army ranks to become a General (and rival of Napoleon). He died when his son was only four. Once you become familiar with the General's story, his feats of derring-do, his struggles against racism, the intrigues of nefarious aristocrats and bigoted bureaucrats, great battles in the Alps, fortunes won and lost, it becomes very apparent that his son the novelist loved him dearly and put bits and pieces of him in just about everything he wrote.

It is amazing how the more things change the more things stay the same. The accounts of police harassment that the elder Alexandre had to deal with in France, especially if he were in the company of a Frenchwoman, as he often was, read like something out of 1930s Mississippi. There were French laws requiring the registering of anyone with African blood and petty apartheid rules were occasionally enforced (No black person could be called "Sir" or "Madame".)
On the other hand, like Britain, France had a tradition of not tolerating slavery within its borders, regardless of what it was doing in Haiti or elsewhere, and of rewarding talent regardless of race. It was between these clashing interests that people like General Dumas and Chevalier St. Georges made their way..

Author's essay from Amazon:

I've always loved exploring history. It's like an uncharted hemisphere, and when you look at it closely, it has a tendency to change everything about your own time. I'm also drawn to outsiders, people who have swum against the tide. I often feel like a kind of detective hired to go find people who have been lost to history, and discover why they were lost. Whodunnit?

In this case, I found solid evidence that, of all people, Napoleon did it: he buried the memory of this great man – Gen. Alexandre Dumas, the son of a black slave who led more than 50,000 men at the height of the French Revolution and then stood up to the megalomaniacal Corsican in the deserts of Egypt. (The "famous" Alexandre Dumas is the general's son – the author of The Three Musketeers.) Letters and eyewitness accounts show that Napoleon came to hate Dumas not only for his stubborn defense of principle but for his swagger and stature – over six feet tall and handsome as a matinee idol – and for the fact that he was a black man idolized by the white French army. (I found that Napoleon's destruction of Dumas coincided with his destruction of one of the greatest accomplishments of the French Revolution – racial equality – a legacy he also did his best to bury.)

I first came across Gen. Dumas's life in the memoir of his son Alexandre, the novelist. And what a life! Alex Dumas, as he preferred to be known, was born in Saint Domingue, later Haiti, the son of a black slave and a good-for-nothing French aristocrat who came to the islands to make a quick killing and instead barely survived. In fact, to get back to France in order to claim an inheritance, he actually "pawned" his black son into slavery, but then he bought him out, brought him to Paris, and enrolled him in the royal fencing academy, and then the story begins to get interesting.

What really stuck with me from reading the memoir was the love that shows through from the son, the writer, for his father, the soldier. I could never forget the novelist describing the day his father died. His mother met him on the stairs in their house, lugging his father's gun over his shoulders, and asked him what he was doing. Little Alexandre replied: "I'm going to heaven to kill God – for killing daddy." When he grew up, he took a greater sort of revenge, infusing his father's life and spirit into fictional characters like Edmond Dantes and D'Artagnan, with shades of Porthos, too. But the image of the angry child stuck with me and drove me onward to discover every scrap of evidence I could about his forgotten father.

And recovering the life of the real man behind these stories was the ultimate historical prospecting journey for me: I learned about Maltese knights and Mameluke warriors, the tricks of 18th-century spycraft and glacier warfare, torchlight duels in the trenches and portable guillotines on the front; I got to know about how Commedia del Arte influenced Voodoo and how a Jacobin sultan influenced the Star-Spangled Banner, about chocolate cures for poisoning and the still brisk trade in Napoleonic hair clippings. I discovered the amazing forgotten civil rights movement of the 18th century – and its unraveling ...

Naomi Schaefer Riley: Arrogance and Ignorance

I can outline but do not fully understand such scientific concepts as Schrodinger wave equation, general and special relativity, Olbers' paradox, Planck's law, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, study of fluid mechanics, Bernoulli equation, or several other ideas that are basic building blocks of modern physics and engineering. I've got the big picture on some of those ideas but definitely can't go into the nitty gritty details or the mathematical equations. Why? Well I took a few classes some decades ago and enjoy reading about them but I'm not a physicist or an engineer. So I'm not the man to speak with authority about any of those topics in either an applied or theoretical sense.

Imagine if I didn't let that little lack of knowledge or any basic credentials in physics stop me. Suppose I sauntered into a convention of physicists discussing string theory and smugly informed them that not only were their equations and calculations all wrong but also their entire field was balderdash, completely worthless. I declared the only reason they were involved in the field was because of a Eurocentric bias against non-Western modes of understanding the Universe. So to me, they were all, by definition, losers and racists with a special hatred of black people.


Let's say that, once challenged to share my credentials and experience in the field, provide some evidence of my claims, or even simply show that I had even read some of the sources which I was categorically dismissing, I arrogantly responded that I hadn't read any of their simple-minded twaddle and had not the slightest intention of doing so. If I were asked to leave it wouldn't be censorship. It would be an incident of experts involved in grown folks' discussion realizing that I was neither expert nor grown and had nothing of value to add.

Former Wall Street Journal writer Naomi Schaefer Riley did what I just described above, only being a conservative, she substituted black studies (history, sociology, everything) for physics. She was invited to give her opinion on the field by the Chronicle of Higher Education. When you're writing critically for something which is read by actual educators and scholars you need to come correct but Riley did not. You can read what she wrote here. Her essay shows that she has such incredible contempt for anything investigating the history, culture, or sociology of black people that she not only thinks such academic endeavors are not worth her time, she doesn't think they're worth anyone's time.  For example:

You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them....

Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man

OK. By all means please read the entire piece yourself. Riley had more to say, much of it nonsensical in my view but make up your own mind. The biggest problem with what she wrote is that she freely admits she didn't even read the dissertations she was mocking. Because to her it's just not worth her time. In some aspects her know-nothing attitude is akin to what Dubois had to deal with at the turn of the century.

Now I do not believe that social sciences are quite as rigorous as the disciplines of physics or mathematics (personal bias) but I do believe that before you dismiss something you need to at the very least know something about it. That's true in every discipline, soft or hard science, music, sport, art, whatever. It's an academic and logical crime to jump to a conclusion without even evaluating the evidence. Clearly Riley was not willing to engage in fair criticism; her mind was already made up beforehand. So the Chronicle of Higher Education(CHE) decided maybe it would be for the best that she blogged and critiqued elsewhere. On cue, the usual suspects started screaming and crying about academic freedom and political correctness and censorship.

This all misses the point. Riley's puerile and viciously lazy condemnation of an entire academic body of knowledge is really quite breathtaking in what it reveals about the thinking of SOME right-wing, mostly white conservatives.

• There is nothing that black people have done, are doing or will do in America that is worthy of rigorous study.
• The only reason anyone would study black history, sociology, anthropology, etc is because they hate white people.
• Black studies are only of worth to the extent that they agree with a conservative ideology around race.
• Even if some black person somewhere did something worth studying, black studies departments lack the ability to produce such study.

That pretty much sums it up. Never mind that there are such esoteric fields as Judaic studies, seminars on Ottoman economics, scholarly books about music printing in Leipzig during the 30 Years War, or a myriad of other popular or obscure topics in which some number of people study, become expert, teach and obtain doctorates. Only the study of Black people , and especially the study of Black people by Black people seems to call forth such putrid bile by the right wing. 

Riley ignores the fact that there is of course no reason that you could not be both right-wing and an expert on Harlem Renaissance poets or Negro Baseball league economics. You could be damn near fascist and know more than any living soul about sharecropper political economy in the Mississippi Delta of the late thirties or musical sharing between 1920's Cuba, Jamaica and New Orleans. So you can make your own judgments on why Riley is so fearful and contemptuous of Black studies. You can also read what Black Ivy League scholars had to say about their field here.


QUESTIONS
1) Was the CHE right to part company with Mrs. Riley?
2) Do you think black studies is a worthwhile field of endeavor?
3) Is it fair to condemn something without examining it?
4) Can you explain special relativity in ways that I could get it?

Rosa Parks' Estate Squabble

Rosa Parks' is a civil rights icon and hero to many. Since her death in 2005, Ms. Parks has become a pawn in a legal tug-of-war. Her estate which included memorabilia once valued at $10M and a cash value of $370K, is now in the midst of dysfunction. A New York City auction house is in possession of her memorabilia and legal fees have drained her estates cash value.


Per Detroit Free Press:

The financial portrait of Parks' estate, which has been kept under seal since her death, is outlined in a new Michigan Supreme Court filing that offers the first detailed glimpse into a long-running feud over the distribution of her assets.

The legal filing contends that Wayne County Probate Judge Freddie Burton Jr. allowed two court-appointed attorneys, John Chase Jr. and Melvin Jefferson Jr., to pile up excessive fees that drained nearly $243,000 from the estate, or about two-thirds of the cash value.

After the money was gone, the lawyers persuaded Burton to award them Parks' vast memorabilia collection and the rights to license her name, which Parks had given to her Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development long before she died.

Steven Cohen, who represents Elaine Steele and the institute in the probate case, filed the request Tuesday, asking the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision that stood behind Burton's handling of the case and accused the judge of overstepping his bounds by arbitrarily appointing Chase and Jefferson as fiduciaries when the lawyers were not previously involved in the case.

"Since Mrs. Parks' death in 2005 ... the court system of her adopted city has embarked on a course to destroy her legacy, bankrupt her institute, shred her estate plan and steal her very name," Cohen said in the filing. Cohen wants the institute and Steele to get the property back.

Who should be held accountable for the mismanagement of this estate?

Should a court have the authority to manage an estate the way they've managed this estate?