Sunday, July 1, 2007

Oklahoma: The Grass is Greener


It's a slightly overcast, warm, good Sunday. I'm still in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After a lifetime in California, I'm shocked to find the place being so very Kool.. I see that what I really need is the opportunity to make some good friends, page-up at a good church, and be in an environment where I can afford to buy a home (and some land attached to it), meet a good woman of beauty and heart, and prosper.

They all here in Oklahoma. I most likely won't live here forever, but it's just a kick in the behind that I remained so stuck in California for so many years. Cali ain't the be-all, end-all by no means. It's "over-done" with too many rats in the cage—plus, people everywhere know what time it is. Yeah, there are some Neanderthals here, but by far, there are more people who will smile back and say "hello". Kool. (And there's sooo much green, fertile land to buy a farm on here in the Midwestern "Heartland.")

This morning I flagged down a sister in a car and asked here where a black church was. She pointed out the directions and told me it started at 11:00am. About an hour later, I started walking down that green bordered country road to church. Right away it started raining. A few feet up the road some old sisters in a hooptie say me walking and asked me if I was going to church. I said yeah, and they told me to hop in. Turned out the directions were slightly wrong and I might not have found it had it not rained and had they not been there at that particular moment. Church was good.

There are a lot of ways to be wealthy ... and I regret that I've felt the pull of being a loner for so many years. It's kept me struggling spiritually and economically far longer than it should have. (As in, "It's who you know, that counts." That's including God!) Perhaps worse than that, being a loner and believing in the "American" lie of "being independent" from others has also malnourished the manhood I've always wanted to actualize. Yes, a man does need to stand on his own two feet, provide for himself, his family, and then to do charitable acts of goodness and kindness for others... but in order to do that, he has to come through the gauntlet of relationships with others. It is through the spiritual, physical, economical, and moral challenges and difficulties with others that my adolescent edges are scraped off, and my masculine heart is forged.

Again, I voice my concern about the economic racism that is so strong in California and many other urban centers across the country. I see sooo many opportunities in "off the chart" places like Oklahoma for anyone with a business sense. Google is coming to Tulsa. I suspect that Oklahoma City holds more prospects than Tulsa. But you’d better do your homework and get some skills BEFORE you move to slower and/or more rural parts of the country. (They have plenty of "haves" and "have-nots" here already. You want to capitalized on all the gentrifications you’ve lived through in places that are now over-crowed and over developed.) Bring that experience with you.

I'm waiting on my trainer-truck, and then I'll be heading out. When I see other places of "good prospect", I'll send you a shout about them. Until then, God bless you my friends.

How Bad Do You Want It?


DATELINE: Tulsa, Oklahoma - July 1, 2007: Well, all those Mardi Gras parade floats filled with drunk black men dressed up as Indians, decrying their, "Indian Blood," wasn't a case of insanity after all. In my search to find a place to buy a small farm and create a livelihood in rural America has brought me here to Oklahoma, a place rich in Native American … and black history.

Oklahoma was part of the Indian Territories and has a rich history that is intertwined with African American history and African-Native American history.

There are physical monuments (towns, buildings and structures) built by blacks that remain today. The Buffalo soldiers also had a very significant role in settling this area. The area near Ft. Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma, was where the first black Civil War Union Soldiers distinguished themselves in what has been known as, The Gettysburg of The West.

More significant is the history if black Seminal Indians who came up from Florida with the aboriginal Florida Seminoles. There were actually three branches of Native Americans relevant to African American History:

1.) White acculturated Indians (the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and others. For example, the Creek changed their names to Scottish surnames, took blacks as slaves, and changed their names too..)
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/resour.htm

2.) Aboriginals like the Seminoles who were never concurred and who never adapted to "the white mans ways"

3.) African-Indians and Seminole Freemen. Many Africans who ran away from white slavery and escaped into Spanish controlled Florida, were adopted by Seminoles. Blacks who were their off-spring were never slaves and proved unsuitable for Andrew Jackson’s campaign to force them to become slaves. http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/
So it is here that I find myself now, seeking to start my next leg in re-creating my life, and discovering that Oklahoma is a far more fertile ground than California for anyone who has developed transferable skills. There are plenty of opportunities here for people who want to start their own small business. There are a lot of good people here. The land is green for those who want to farm and prepare themselves for the "Global Recession" that is certainly heading our way. (And we KNOW who is historically hurt worst by "recessions." I wish I'd left California earlier.)

African and Seminole towns in the Indian Territories
http://www.african-nativeamerican.com/6-towns.htm

What We Believe:

"Every problem is an opportunity in work clothes."
~Henry J. Kaiser