Tag Archives: Emmitt Till

Focuses Of An Eight Universal Year

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Posted by on in American Legion, Assistance, collaborating, Community, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities, Slow Food, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

January 2, 2024- I gave thanks, yesterday, to all who bless my life by their presence, both seen and unseen, both close at hand and far away. An Eight Universal Year is a year of acting upon what one learns during its predecessor, which is a year of reflection. So, going forward, in 2024:

Ghost Ranch- Beginning Sunday, January 7, it will be time to build on what I learned from supervising a disaster response team in Watsonville, CA, last April, as well as from the camp supervisory experience at Bellemont Baha’i School, last June. This time, though, I will be one of those supervised and the emphasis will be on applying disaster response principles and camp supervision protocols, in a preparatory situation.

Phoenix Area-In early February, it will be time to visit with Baha’i friends in Phoenix and vicinity, and see how they are applying learnings from their recent visit to Brazil, in helping to grow more vibrant and co-operative communities.

Spring Break in southern Arizona- From March 11-15, it will be time to focus on what is happening in the border region, from Bisbee and Coronado National Monument, to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and the Tohono O’odham Nation. I want to visit with people who are impacted by what is going on there, and offer Baha’i principles to individual and group situations, as much as possible.

Prescott to Cape Breton, St. Pierre & Miquelon, and back, via the Northeast and Deep South- From April 29 (evening) to June 1-2, it will be time to re-connect with friends and family in the Midwest and Northeast, honour the Micmaq people, on the 50th Anniversary of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Eskasoni, revisit friends in St. John’s and Grand Bank, NL, pay homage to the outpost of French and Breton culture in St. Pierre and Miquelon, and to the Blues culture/sacrifice of Emmitt Till, in Mississippi-also stopping to visit friends in Tennesse and Alabama.

Bellemont Baha’i School- From June 3-July 8, it will be time to focus on the summer camps that may be scheduled and on the needs of the campers and staff at our anchor property, west of Flagstaff.

Carson City and the Northwest- From July 12- August 1, it will be time to visit my extended family in Carson, and friends in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, pay homage to Four Winds International Institute and to the First Nations of Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast of BC and the Yakima Nation.

The Philippines to East Africa- From September 7-21, it will be time to visit Baha’i friends and their families in Greater Manila, western Luzon, Iriga, and possibly Cagayan de Oro, on Mindanao. From September 22-November 1, it will be time to connect with Baha’i friends and their families in Kenya, northern Tanzania, Uganda, Mauritius, Reunion-and, hopefully, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This last is not to be construed as a philanthropic effort, but an effort at strengthening cross-planetary (North America-Africa), and pan-oceanic (Philippines-Africa) networks.

Home Base 1- My efforts here remain to assist friends and community groups to continue building our own vibrant community. In spite of the appearances indicated by the above goals, much time and attention are to be devoted to Prescott and vicinity. There is plenty of time to be spent with Red Cross, Slow Food, Post 6, the local Baha’i community and friends around Yavapai County-so long as we are flexible with one another and not insisting that the wishes and goals of one person, or of a few, are to be adopted by everyone. (Friends in SoCal, Navajo-Hopi and Northern New Mexico, I will see you this year, as well).

In all this, my reasoning is that people appreciate actual time spent in their presence-whether here at Home Base 1, across North America, or across the globe. ’Abdu’l-Baha and my spirit guides assure me, on this, and that’s no “woo-woo”.

Misfits Abound

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Posted by on in Community, distraction issues, Historical, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Striving

April 21, 2021- The events of yesterday call to mind several aphorisms of my youth: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”; “People living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”; “The pot shouldn’t call the kettle black”; “What! Cast your finger at another? Behold, three fingers are pointing back at you.”

I thought of these, primarily as there were references to yesterday’s verdict, in Minnesota vs. Derrick Chauvin, as “mob justice”. Seems to me, there were such instances of mob justice in the cases of Emmitt Till, in the trial of the Mississippi sheriff’s posse (1965), and in the Central Park jogger.

Chauvin could have been railroaded, but he wasn’t. The crowd that gathered and yelled, outside the courthouse, could have intimidated the jury, but the jurors were not aware of them. This case, if there were to be an appeal, would have to be shown to have been influenced by the protestors in general and Maxine Waters in particular. Thus far, the walls of the courthouse have not been shown to have let the sound outside permeate the actual courtroom or the jury facilities.

While none of that excuses the pandemonium outside, the parallels between it and the all-too-common lynchings, which took place for over a century, ring a bit hollow. I daresay that, had there been no lynchings, there would likely not have been the welling up of anger among people of colour; there would have been no build-up of smugness, leading to the “gladiator” mentality that has led to excessive force ( in which none of the police officers of my hometown, in the days of my youth, conservatives to a one, would ever have indulged); there would not have resulted in tit-for-tat shouting matches between progressives and conservatives, in cities across the country.

It was the original presumption of superiority, among the de facto aristocracy, that led to the Civil War, to Jim Crow laws and, in our time, to the mass attempts to shrink-wrap the voting laws of various states. Misfits abound, and they are not necessarily those protesting outside the courthouses.