Daily news reports are telling us that It’s hot all over the globe. There are areas on our little blue planet this summer that are experiencing record temperatures, baking, if you will, everything that’s exposed to the radiance of the sun. A headline from USA Today.Com dated July 21,2023, reads: Extreme Heat is Killing More People, and the Worst is Yet to Come.

I was born and reared in the Southern part of the United States, the sate of Arkansas to be precise, and I know what hot summers are. All this talk of global warming and how the planet is slowly becoming a planetary convection oven, causes me to think about the summers of my youth. However, those days didn’t seem to hold a candle to the death-valley-like days we’re experiencing now, even in some areas that haven’t experiencing such boiling temperatures.

Being poor, in Cross County, Arkansas, we had a half step next to nothing. Air conditioning was something we only enjoyed when we went to town and entered a department store, which didn’t happen that often. Other than that, we relieved ourselves from the effects of the heat by opening all the windows and doors of the shanties in which we lived. If we were fortunate enough to have a window fan, we would have it running full blast. That provided little cooling from the summer heat, because the confounded thing would only blow hot air. Even though it was hot, I don’t recall it being as scorching as it is now. Kids always ventured out into the heat, at some point during the day, to toast our melanin-rich skins with extra shades of darkness. Sunburn was the farthest thing from our minds. Now, dark-skinned people are being told that the sun’s rays are harmful to those who are rich in melanin like me. I’ve seen dark-skinned people with damaged skin from the sun, as proof of that.

Summers in the heat of my youth provided a warm playground for me to enjoy the dusty roads of Cross county, smell the sweet aroma of the hot sun drying things after a shower, taste a bowl of homemade ice cream cranked by hand in an ice-cream maker, and frolic among the planetary dog days of summer. Now, I resist venturing out in the heat we’ve been sentenced to in Arkansas. When the weather forecast is for seven days of triple digit temperatures, you dread going outside. Air-conditioned climates are the only creature comfort you want.

Yes. I do find myself thinking about the summers of my youth; however, they were tepid compared to the boiling days of summer we’re having now.

I’m old and blessed…hope you will be too.

If you’re like me, the evening news oftentimes depresses me to no end. I just heard a news story that seems unreal. There are some five hundred thousand Americans with cancer who don’t have access to drugs that are critical to prolonging their lives. A doctor was interviewed on the broadcast that I saw who said there have been a shortage of certain cancer treatment drugs since 2011. Being a cancer patient myself since 2000, stories like this are of major interest to me. I would fine it difficult, to say the least, to maintain my sanity if the drugs I use to keep my cancer markers low were suddenly out of production.

As I listened to the story I just mentioned, I was even more astounded to hear that the primary reason some five hundred thousand cancer patients in America can’t get the drug they need is because the pharma industry sees no benefit in producing them. You heard me right, because they can’t make a profit, the greedy pharmaceutical companies have chosen to cease production of certain cancer treatment drug. They’ve relinquished production of these drugs to China and India. Now, due to violations of certain safety regulations in India production of drugs has been reduced.

The term capitalism is neutral, as are other terms like politics and bureaucracy; however, modern-day practitioners of this term have given them horrible characteristics. One would think the pharmaceutical industry would have some sense of providing service to that segment of the community who are literally dying without what could make a difference. During the 1920s, we would hear terms from politicians like “a chicken in every pot.” After World War II, there was an air of growing together economically. It was capitalism for all. Now, it seems individual capitalism is the way to go. Who cares if cancer patients need life-saving drugs, certainly not our pharmaceutical boards of directors and shareholders.

Being a person of faith, I’m told to pray for good stuff. Yeah, I do that, but I still find my head going from side to side often. I think my head was shaking much more than my heart praying at this news story.

I’m old and blessed…hope you will be too.

I remember when I was much younger than I am now. Harkening back to when I was fifteen years old, the idea of having a driver’s license occupied a considerable amount of my thoughts. The fact that several young folks in my school had received that rite of passage on or around their sixteenth birthday did little to calm my anticipation of what having a driver’s license would be like. Through the remainder of my teenage years, my twenties, as well as the three decades that came afterwards, I expected much more from upcoming events and experiences than occurred. Usually, my expectations were far in excess of what the reality presented. That’s not to say I was always disappointed. Far be it from that, new experiences often gifted me with opportunities to learn, be happy, be joyous and the realize that life offers a great deal of variety. Life also offers each of us a mixture, in varying percentages of good, bad and ugly. I recently heard someone say: “I’m willing to let life happen to us and then take away the shiny pieces.”

At some point after fifty, I started to adjust my expectations of what was coming around the corner. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying I suddenly morphed into this sour individual who viewed life as a hell hole, offering up only dry toast and burnt eggs. However, I did begin to realize that the future must be allowed to roll out its own plan regardless of what I had done to engineer it. I think we all know that one can’t live life completely void of expectations. One can, however, make optimum use of the present. Seize each moment, squeezing all the life out of it you can, in the manner that’s important for you. In other words, live life the way you want to. If this is done, I think you’ll find you’re so full of life that you won’t have time to participate in Bated Breath Exercises. Do you remember the late R&B singer Otis Redding? Here are the lyrics to (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” one of his most popular songs:

Sittin’ in the morning sun
I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes
Watching the ships roll in
Then I watch ’em roll away again, yeah

I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Watchin’ the tide roll away, ooh
I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Wastin’ time

I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the Frisco Bay
‘Cause I’ve had nothing to live for
And look like nothing’s gonna come my way

So, I’m just gon’ sit on the dock of the bay
Watchin’ the tide roll away, ooh
I’m sittin’ on the dock of a bay
Wastin’ time

Looks like nothing’s gonna change
Everything still remains the same

I can’t do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I’ll remain the same, listen

Sittin’ here resting my bones
And this loneliness won’t leave me alone
2,000 miles I roam
Just to make this dock my home, now

I’m just gon’ sit at the dock of a bay
Watchin’ the tide roll away, ooh
Sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Wastin’ time

I’m old and blessed…hope you will be too.

The recent brawl at the dock in Birmingham, Alabama was heartbreaking to say the least. To see a gang of people mindlessly attack an individual who was simply doing his job is just ridiculous to say the least. My heart ached to see the video, as I wondered what the response of this man’s relatives would be as they watched this. Of course, social media was generously peppered with posts of folding chairs soon after the incident. (A man coming to the rescue of the gentleman attacked brandished a folding chair.) Many of them were quite hilarious. I even meandered onto the band wagon and posted one myself. Not being a psychologist, I offer this observation, people can suffer so much that it becomes necessary to laugh in order to mask the pain.

History shows us that empires come and go: Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Rome, Greece. And if we use history as the great teacher that it is, and that we normally pay little attention to, our great country/empire will go at some point, too. If we look closely at the inner dynamics of past empires, we’ll see that internal divisiveness played a role in their failure. We’re at a point now, and we’ve been there before, where the kind of thing that occurred in Birmingham continues to hold us back from becoming that great light on the hill that we could be.

To recall the words of Rodney King, spoken in 1992, “Why can’t we all get along? “That question continues to wait for not only an answer, but an answer that will be operationalized to its fullest. My naivete’ motivates me to ask this question: What if we all woke one morning and all manner of “isms” would be gone: ageism, racism, sexism…all gone. Nirvana would be a great gift, wouldn’t it? 

It’s been a few days now, and people involved in the “Brawl in Birmingham” are being charged with whatever violations of the law they assumingly deserve. This imperfect legal process will probably cause further conflict, because there will be disagreement about the appropriateness of the charges, as well as the adjudication applied.

Human beings just don’t seem to be able to get it right. History shows that to be the case. However, we must not give up hope. History also shows us that as we keep trying, we do improve things incrementally. I’m hopeful for that and for the grace of God that we haven’t blown ourselves up yet.

I’m old and blessed…hope you will be too.

When I hear politicians make comments that slavery was beneficial to kidnapped Africans. There are undoubtedly worthless comments that politicians can make; however, ones such as these are ludicrous. I can only surmise that they make these comments to serve several purposes, among them: 1) soften the harsh, inhumane experience of my ancestors in a land that was foreign to them and 2) lob a shot at efforts to educate all about the true history of the American slave trade. It’s ridiculous and pitiful that there are people wielding political power today trying to rewrite the truth. They couch these efforts in terms that are appealing to those who want to keep the truth from their children. I’ve always thought that the truth stands by itself whether one tries to conceal it are not. It always finds a way to reveal itself.

What is the truth about the Africans who were kidnapped on the African continent, brought to a strange land, and made slaves. I’ve chosen to phrase the previous sentence the way I did because slave traders didn’t capture and ship slaves across the Atlantic Ocean. Africans were forced by their captors into the mindset of being slaves. These were also people who brought with them a plethora of skills that their slave masters were experts at applying to producing a bounty from which America is still reaping rewards.

Though slaves in the Americas are typically portrayed as either field hands or domestic servants, many slaves were in fact skilled laborers whose crafts were a vital part of the American economy, particularly in the antebellum South. There is ample evidence for skilled African and African American slave labor, including the manifests of slave ships, which identify artisans such as woodcarvers and metalworkers. Records of sale from the early years of the slave trade through the mid-nineteenth century indicate a higher price for skilled individuals. The narrator of Fifty Years in Chains; or, the Life of an American Slave, describing a slave auction, relates the sale of several skilled slaves: “a carpenter … and a blacksmith [who can] put new steel upon an axe or mend a broken chain … and a good shoemaker, well acquainted with the process of tanning leather” (Ball 1859, p. 99).

It’s beneficial to those in power, at least they act that way, to ignore how they got where they are. Why is it so difficult to acknowledge the involuntary contributions of captured Africans to the development of America. Logic would tell any thinking person that capturing and bringing only unskilled people to the institute of slavery in America, and expecting optimal productivity makes no sense. All great empires have capitalized on the skills, abilities, and knowledge of their underclass, reaping invaluable rewards with little to no investment for compensation to the involuntary laborer.

And so, to the cunning political leaders and others who want to tell history in a way that suits their purpose, I struggle to express my retort without emotion; thus, I say, “Sit down and shut up!”

I’m old and blessed…hope you will be too.