The Absent-minded Professor

There are a lot of people walking about as absent-minded professors teaching people for free everything that they have without even knowing this.

Its a bit frustrating because those very same people that we teach, they will conceal information, withhold information, or charge a lot for any piece of information to us.

There was a time when we did this with awareness.  The ancient universities of Timbuktu attests to that.  But I guess one can only say thank you so many times before jealousy and hatred sets in.  This is a lesson we MUST eventually learn. 

Mansa Musa did us no favor going around the world lavishly showing off his wealth.   Humility has its virtue.

In fact, humility is so great, it's like an emotional spine alignment -- it aligns many of the other virtues (diligence, modesty, kindness, and so on).

In recent news I read about a Masai boy who figured out a way to take parts of his mother's radio and turn it into a flashing light to chase away the lions.  Ingenious!! He was only 10.  He was "awarded" by being taken to MIT -- get this.. -- to "learn."

Good for him. But I wouldn't be surprised if suddenly MIT comes out with new ideas and take full credit for them.

I also heard of a different African boy who figured out how to make a generator out of scraps from a junk yard. Ingenious!!  He, too, was accepted into learning electrical engineering at an American school.  Again, I wouldn't be surprised if he, again, was the absent-minded professor.


Not so recently was this nurse who cared for her relatives with HIV.  She took such great care of them that she kept them a love for a very long time.  Everyone was amazed and of course gave her a scholarship to go and "learn" at a nursing school.

Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't go and learn more or that people shouldn't exchange knowledge.  but I am saying that the false pretense that they want to give and we only take narrataive is tiresome and no longer believed anymore.

I 

The Wake Up Call

There is a story from the Talmud about Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.  He and his friends were talking about the Romans who had taken over their city, Jerusalem. The Romans had taken over and were making themselves at home.  They paved roads, built bath houses, set up market places.

Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai, one of his friends, said, "How nice of the Romans that they built the city so much! Now we have bath houses, bridges, paved roads!"

Rabbi Yossi, another friend stayed quiet.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai protested, "They did all these things for themselves!"

A third friend who had Romans in his family, went back and told them what had happened.  Word got around and finally the Governor heard this and sought to punish them.

Rabbi Yossi was caught and as punishment for not speaking up for the Romans, he was banished to a far away land.  Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai, because he spoke nicely, was given a spokesperson position for the Romans.  And Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was to be executed!

So, **ahem** in light of this story, I'd like to sing the praises of social media! Social media has help Black folks to sound the Wake Up Call to our brothers and sisters.

Because of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, WhatsApp, including the recent Blaggenuf and everything else out there, Black folks are learning at an exponential pace.  The many things that were kept hidden from us, we are discovering and passing along to each other.  Inventors, warriors, scholars, song writers are all coming out from hiding.  We are learning and we are finding each other, our long lost cousins in Africa, in AFro-Mexico, not yet Asia though, but give it some more time.

Now we have unity.  Despite the people who are lamenting about unity, we should know we have at least two handfuls of people who are united.  But unity is not enough. The next step is organizing.

It's not enough to clump up in a jumbled bunch.  Each braid needs three strands... the strands must be separated before it can get intertwined to form a braid.

This is our new task now, Melanated Folks. Create the strands to form the braids.  A slight bit of separation in order to really come together.