Black Solutions

Be Small

2011-09-08T05:47:00.000-07:00

It's about control.

I never thought I'd be advocating for some of the issues that I will be in the coming weeks and months ... but I now see, that "Social Engineers" ... and well meaning people who've been brainwashed by them ... are using issues of race, sex, sexuality, gender, and religion to insert fear and division as their way to control.

Yes, it's the same as it's always been... but subtle in its approach because the fear is often married to "niceness." Don't cave to clicks. Don't make the world smaller for another small person. If you slander, label, slur, or be-little anyone, what you're actually doing is making the world smaller for yourself.

QUESTION: Why aren't we focusing our anger on those greedy bastards holding and grabbing all the money instead of calling each other words like, "... bitches, fags, whores, punks, losers ... Lib-weirds, and all the zillion other words we use against our neighbors?

Afraid?

Black Religion: Hurting or Helping Us?

2011-07-07T01:29:00.000-07:00

It seems we're at a point where we cannot advance without dealing with "The Spiritual." And no, I am most def NOT talking about religion. (Well ... I'm not recommending it, nor am I advising it.) Spiritual to me is a part of my body and my personal psychology. Take Yoga for instance. If my "life nerve" is tight, then my thinking is also tight... easily angered and reactive.

At my age, I'm forced to reflect that without mainstream Christianity, I would never have gotten sober and remained sane all these years. But I also see the limitations of the Black Church and ask: "If Christianity needs reformation--again, then do I have time to wait on it?"

I reject the concept of a god that loves Baptist and hates Hindus. (What kind of god is THAT? That sounds more like the guy in the corner market down the street.)
I reject the abomination of "Prosperity Christianity" that puts money at the forefront of God... even higher than the necessary concept of learning to love and accept ourselves so that we can love and accept others

I reject the Christianity of The State ... this vile "religion" that tells us we must now kill Muslims ... because God wants us to have their oil. Naaa... don't sound right partna.
The Christianity I got was almost a "Boogie-Man" religion. God wasn't just there to punish me, He didn't want me to think too much and would send me to hell if I took a Yoga class. ("Hmmm... if God created everything ... how come I can only put my money into the plate at the "JUmPin' JiviNg" Church"?)
I love Gospel music ... but there's far too much externalization in service. Where's the time to, "Be still and hear my voice"? Meditation isn't owned by anyone. East and Western traditions do it. Jesus was both praying and meditating in the Garden of Gethsemane when they came for Him. And if Jesus is all of God, who was He praying to and why when we are to enter Heaven, are we expected to find Him sitting on the right hand of God The Father?? Bad theology for those who teach it and lazy theology for those who accept it.

To be a "Spiritual Warrior" means to go out beyond the fence line ... out beyond the boundary the "overly religious" warn you to stop. It is there we find the need to have faith because it is there we confront the archetypes of our minds and listen, learn what The Cosmic Christ ... the Great "I Am" is trying to teach us.

I advocate that we shed the limitations of the religion slaves were given by slave owners.
Explore the Eastern philosophies from whence our Western spirituality came from.
Accept yourself fully as you are... shadow and light... made in God's image...
Seek out people and places to guide you to your heart ... your own INNER Light and from there, connect to the One Soul that unites us all.

If "The Garden of Gethsemane was a state of mind ... a state of agony, then I likewise believe that "The Garden of Eden" was also meant to be a state of mind ... of innocence, virtue, and love. I want to spend more time ... "getting back to the Garden" than being lost in lust, pride, greed, envy, anger(fear) and sloth.

It's from here we can begin to rebuild bridges to each others hearts and minds... and begin to climb out of the dark prison that we've been locked in these past 30 years... or more...

I'm back

2011-06-13T18:15:00.000-07:00

Well ... this is the first post in a long time. I gave up posting after Congress passed SB 510. Yup, it's official. They call it the "Food Safety Law." Ironic, eh? They're pouring Fluoride in our waters (poison and it drops children's I.Q. rates up to 7 points) and filling our food with corn syrup and cancer causing aspartame.

All I wanted was for them to allow small farming to return. Manufacturing is always the cornerstone of wealth in a country... and new ideas are often driven by agriculture. But now that Monsanto is so huge, they want to control everything. I won't bore you with more "doom and gloom" because my premise has always been, "Every problem is an opportunity in work clothes," right?

Well, right now, as I see it... we have two choices:

Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye because you should have listened before they gained all this power... or
Begin healing yourselves so that you can join healthy communities with others and build bridges of cooperation and survival.

That's the direction this blog is taking. Spiritual and psychological survival in the dark days ahead. Peace, and hope things look brighter tomorrow.

What now?

2010-07-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

I stopped posting entries for a while ... because honestly, I was in the middle of a transition. I'm not out of that transition yet, but it's clear that business is no longer "as usual."

When I look into the darkness, I ask, "What will they now allow us to do?" This New World Order is essentially a corporate dictatorship. When I look into the positive side of all this, I can see where, "something is coming ... something is changing!"

Cosmology from every culture proclaims that there are countless numbers of angelic light beings eagerly waiting to guide us ... to encourage us, and assist us. So if the predictions about the Mayan Calender are true, then what do we have to fear? Nothing.

If they are to be taken in perspective of the end of THEIR world ... then that means life will go on after 2012 ... but it won't be "business as usual." Life ... will ... be ... different. Then again, all this may be just more "Y2K" style hype. The oceans will heal ... even after this massive destruction. The Military Industrial Complex will hold itself in some kind of check ... and while the greedy rich will continue to rob us into abject poverty, there will be opportunities for those who decide to act on them.

I predict fewer Americans will find economic salvation in Corporate America. India has a BILLION people and so does China. Both have better secondary school systems than we do ... and they don't complain. So ... I strongly advise all reading this entry to begin looking into how they can make a job for themselves.

80 million Baby Boomers are entering retirement. That's huge! Think of all the goods and services you can provide pampered Boomers. (Look three steps past the problem ... and you'll get paid!)
Monsanto's genetically modified crap they're feeding us is creating health hazards daily. 1 out of 3 children born after the year 2000 will get early onset Type-2 Diabetes. Two out of three of those will be children of color. View some of Will Allen's videos on Urban Agriculture and think: "Organic Urban."
While Hate Radio has been brainwashing millions ... seducing them into quagmires of racism and elitism, the killer psychiatry institution is pouring Prozac and other useless drugs down their depressed throats. (That's right, psychiatry has never cured ONE person. The Rockefeller family owns all drug pharmacies and Rockerfeller has been quoted for being very “concerned” about over population.) Create small models of joy. We've forgotten what functional looks like. Every neighborhood should have some kind of community organization or club of shining hearts so that those emotionally constipated retards can look over the fence one day and marvel: "Wow ... they're actually having fun..." and join in. (I predict funding for those few who still retain social skills.)

All I’m saying is that things are going to become more intense. Things are going to change for many of us ... and eventually, for all of us. Like Mother Jones said: “Educate yourself for the coming struggle.” Start looking at your talents and how much innovative comfort you can carve out of life. Quality rather than meaningless quantity. Put more positive, supportive PEOPLE in your life rather than cell phones and other meaningless gadgets you hope will raise your self-esteem and make you happy. Be well Divine Spirits.

The End of America

2010-07-17T23:38:00.000-07:00

Naomi Wolf ‘s recent book, “The End of America” shines a creepy light on our current, “reality behind the reality.” Click on the link below and view the trailer. What angers me most about this ... is that while Social Engineers who use puppet masters like Rush Linbaugh and Fox “News” commentators to convince over half the county to sink even deeper in cesspools of racism, elitism and denial the REAL threats have not only sold the store, they’ve sold the shelves too.

Democracy as the slave owning framers of the constitution meant it to be is over. The T-Bills have been sold to China. Most of the mineral rights too. So what is this big saving hero called, the Solar Green Industry going to use? Germany is already way ahead of us in technology. So, with all this out-sourcing, and shutting down manufacturing, what do they need with most of us?

I predict is that at some point, they’re going to send many of the able-bodied young men and women out into the middle of the country to work (safely) on rebuilding the power grid that up-coming solar storms may knock out anyway.

You want to make decisions based upon what the reality truly is ... not what they tell us the reality is. Below are the 10 steps that Naomi Wolf list what every dictator does to close down free and open society.

The 10 Classic Steps Dictators Use to close down a Free Society

1. 1. Invoke an External and Internal Threat

2. Establish Secret Prisons

3. Develop a Paramilitary Force

4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens

5. Infiltrate Citizens’ Groups

6. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens

7. Target Key Individuals

8. Restrict The Press

9. Cast Criticism As, “Espionage” and Dissent As “Treason”

10. Subvert The Rule Of Law

Find simple needs that need to be filled that make some kind of living for you and others. This will keep you out of Prison Nation. Think three steps beyond any problem ...and you’ll get paid.

New Black Professionals

2010-03-27T16:16:00.000-07:00

"You write the laws ... but let ME write the songs because the youth will act out the songs." -Aristotle

All we see is images of young black people killing each other, selling and abusing drugs, dropping out of school and lining up for welfare. But I'm pleased to report that there is a backlash in the black community against the values and images of Thug Nation. They may still be dancing to Hip Hop, but I'm so glad to see that many, raised by parents who called themselves deep in the game (but only came out losers) have lined up for accounting jobs, worked hard to educate themselves, and are now stepping into the workforce as new professionals.

Those who graduated from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) are armed with the knowledge it takes survive and flourish in a society that wishes to either brainwash them into impotency or deny them access to the table. Nothing new. All the information they need is now published both online and are waiting on library and bookstore shelves for them to access.

But a far greater issue sits like a time bomb within their souls ... and that's the still uncompleted answer to the question, "Who am I?"

I love watching YouTube videos of Cornell West, Dr. Ben (Dr Yosef AA Ben-Jochannan), and Dr. John Henry Clarke. What everyone needs--not just "young black professionals"--is the bar raised on the consciousness of what it means to be human ... to live a successful life ... and what it takes to be happy. We're aware that blind materialism sure isn't it, and a person with a professional degree who hates themselves is a setup for everything from addictions to major depression.

Do your own search of: "Young black professionals" and judge for yourself. Get back to me with any comments all those websites raise. Peace.

Obama Says "He'll Pay' ... $2,500 A Year To Go To School

2010-01-29T11:10:00.000-08:00

Reprint: (ARA) - Where there's a will, there will always be a way. So the economy is crashing around us. Everywhere, dust is settling over the graves of greed. And yes, now really is a good time to both, STAY in college and to start or return to college.

Think: "Multiple Income Streams." The Obama administration's stimulus bill is supposedly designed to get the economy moving again. Most of the bill's $70 billion for education will go to low- to middle-income individuals.

"A major part of the bill is a $13.8 billion tuition tax credit boost called the American Opportunity Tax Credit," reports ARALifestyle. "This tax credit reimburses 100 percent of the first $2,000 of educational expenses for lower income students. For the next $2,000, students will receive a 25 percent reimbursement. In short, lower income students will receive $2,500 in education reimbursements per year.

The bill also features other benefits for low-income students. Families that do not earn enough to pay income taxes can receive a $1,000 education refund.

"These kinds of incentives from the government don't come along very often," says Janet Hill, financial aid and education counselor at ClassesandCareers.com, a free online education service. "If people have been thinking of going back to school, now would be the time to do it. If they are hurting financially, they can easily get the money they need to get a degree." These benefits are set to expire after the 2010-2011 school year.

Fortunately, thanks to a growing number of online education options, degree-seekers can take advantage of President Barack Obama's stimulus bill without leaving their jobs. Sites like ClassesandCareers.com have helped nearly 500,000 degree-seekers get their stimulus money and enroll in online universities."

But the consumer has to be cautious. The word went out that there weren't enough medical professionals. People flooded little medical colleges by the thousands ... and now there are too many of them. Same with IT professionals like Graphic Designers and "Computer Technicians." NPR recently ran a story advising listeners to imagine fifteen Empire State Buildings of empty office space. That's how many empty office space is presently in Silicon Valley. Research. Do your homework. Question what you'd REALLY like to do. Avoid standing in the line that's already crowded.

That set, Hill continues, "We help people learn how to take advantage of this bill," says Hill. "All they have to do is visit our form and fill it out. We guide them through the rest."

If you are a low-income individual and want to get money to go back to school, visit ClassesandCareers.com, fill out their form, and indicate which schools you may be interested in. An education advisor will contact you and help you get your share of President Obama's stimulus money to go back to school."

One word of caution children ... the country is still built upon mountains of debt. Read the fine print and ask before you sign. Take time before you decide.

Free College for Black males???

2010-01-28T07:43:00.000-08:00

This information is too important to post only once. Please, if you know any black males who dream of going to college but see no way of being able to afford the cost, 13 Black Colleges and Universities are working with Clemson University to send them to school absolutely FREE.

The text below is reprinted directly from the "Calll me MISTER" website. Click and view all the links on the left side to view the program in greater detail. The goal of the program is to increase the number of black male teachers in under-served and rural communities. There was a time when I would have even balked at going into places like the Mississippi Delta to teach ... but these days, being able to live and work (earning a decent salary) at a very esteemable position in a rural area is pure GAME. I repeat over and over that owning a home with a few acres on it within a 45 minute radius of a city or college town is the number one choice. (If you don't know, read past posts to learn why.) But before I digress, read about the program below. Each link takes you to a different site.)

"The mission of the Call Me MISTER (acronym for Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models) National Initiative is to increase the pool of available teachers from a broader more diverse background particularly among the State's lowest performing elementary schools. Student participants are largely selected from among under-served, socio-economically disadvantaged and educationally at-risk communities.

The Call Me MISTER program is contributing to the talent pool of excellent teachers by identifying and supporting students like Mr. Mark Joseph (shown here), who are literally "touching the future" by teaching children. Mark's teaching degree was made possible through the Call Me MISTER program.

The project provides:

Tuition assistance through Loan Forgiveness programs for admitted students pursuing approved programs of study in teacher education at participating colleges.
An academic support system to help assure their success.
A cohort system for social and cultural support.

“Call Me MISTER” was developed by some of our State’s visionary educational leaders who sincerely believe we can build a better tomorrow by getting you involved today.

Maintained by MISTER@clemson.edu
Copyright ©2009 Call Me MISTER, 203 Holtzendorff, Clemson, S.C. 29634, (800)640-2657"

Supporting Our Own Slavery

2010-01-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

Recreated from Luther Brook's "Heteplandproject"

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

This is from an interesting article originally printed in "The Guardian." I love President Obama and I hope that it's simply too early to evaluate which direction he's going ... "the same old trip," or is he shrewd enough to give the Military Industrial complex what it wants in exchange for breaking off something for the people who elected him later? We'll just have to wait and see.

Luther Brook's reprint of The Guardian's story (below) points out the lie behind our "Drug War." It's been close to 30 years and more Americans are in prisons than in any industrial nation on earth. UN Drug Tsar Antonio Maria Costa, estimated that the "Drug Industry" is a $325 billion dollar industry ... and that's probably a low-ball figure. Just ONE example of how dangerous our current drug policies are is privately owned prisons that drain money from the public treasury and places those funds in private pockets.

Drugs and crime chief Costa went on to say that he has uncovered evidence that the $352 Billion dollars of confirmed criminal drug money was effectively laundered by large US and European legal financial institutions. But even more alarming was the report that "the (drug money) was the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year."

The report further stated that "poppy/opium crops were stopped by Taliban completely in 2001 because it was "un-Islamic". It was only after we invaded that it restarted and crops have increased in size every year since we invaded.

NOTE: Afghanistan is yet another poor country that never invaded by the United States. In 2005, Canadian ex-Minister of Defense Gordon O'Connor reported that heroine is again being produced in that country. The much-demonized Taliban had stopped it. Okay ... so if the poppy/opium production is $300 billion+ industry and Afghanis are dirt poor... who's running it all???

In terms of President Obama's current policy towards I'm not in favor of this quick, knee-jerk reaction that is coming from so many on the Left. The race is early and "our horse" still has a long way to run. But let's face it, all this is occurring within the cauldron of the "American Empire" that has been built on U.S. Banks and our "New Roman Empire Military Forces."

The problem is one of priorities. Have our ruling classes become so greedy that they are blind to how their empty, bottomless desire is running the country into economic and moral ruin? Silly question isn't it?

As we look for solutions to our current state of economic and moral decay, we have to realize how important drugs are to keeping us imprisoned and existing in lives of hopelessness and lovelessness. I don’t care if it’s marijuana, Crystal Meth, Cocaine or heroine, you can’t yearn to enjoy any part of “God’s Full Bounty” if we’re choosing to live in the Hells of addiction and demoralization.

New Ag Blog

2009-08-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

Well, now that I'm off that truck, I've begun working on a blog devoted just to agriculture. "WHAT'S a BROTHA FrOm Berkeley doing blogging about FARMS?"

Urban Farming
I don't care if it's raising a garden in your backyard, or developing a small "farm" inside the city limits with the intention of providing your neighborhood with fresh vegetables, fruit and meat ... the time to plant is NOW!

Check out the amazing opportunities posted on my newest blog. Everything from the 200 Agriculture related career fields that are currently going wanting for college educated people to fill them ... to stories about a 70 year old Detroit man who makes a living shooting Raccoons and selling the meat and skins to his protein starved neighbors.

Check it all out on: greenfred

Green Jobs

2009-05-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

The Recovery Act President Obama's number one priority upon entering the White House, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was signed into law on February 17th. The act is intended to revitalize the U.S. economy, and includes crucial investments in transportation, infrastructure, education, and energy. 

The Recovery Act totals $787 billion, including billions that can be used to green the economy, create green jobs, and build green pathways out of poverty. 

$6 billion in has been allocated to the Weatherization Assistance Program, which will go to weatherize homes to make them leak less energy.
The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants means that every city, county, state and tribe in the country will receive some portion of over $3 billion to spend on projects that reduce energy use or conserve resources.

$500 Million for Green Jobs Training will be allocated through competitive grants for green jobs training. Both advanced skills training and pathways out of poverty programs are eligible for grants.

Green Jobs Training Grants The federal recovery package allocated $500 million to be given out in competitive grants for green job training programs across the county. There will be grants available for advanced
skills training and for pathways out of poverty programs.

A Green-Collar Job Strengthens Urban and Rural Communities. Essentially, the new green economy will be more "hammer and nails" than high tech. Still, to get all that cheap energy being produced in Texas up to an icy home in upstate Maine, the entire United States power grid is going to have to be updated. That's a LOT of jobs. All kinds of jobs. Be well Space Travelers.

CHange

2009-05-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while. I'm undergoing a major change. The truck driving was interesting ... but it's time to start a real life again. I saw enough of the country and went "gaw-gaw" over enough farms to KNOW I want to live on one.

Personally, I'm putting my hopes on updating my marketing skills. New Media Marketing ... Going to take a minute, but running away from life ... just ain't no life at all.

I will be developing some new "Green" blogs shortly. Stay tune. Share your thoughts. Find someone to love. Meditate. Pray. Enjoy the journey. Peace.

Hypocrisy In The Hood

2009-01-17T19:49:00.000-08:00

Interesting. We arguably in what may be called the middle phase of a Black Civil War. This ... "Civil War between the "Thug Kulture" and those who identify with the more positive aspects of the Black Community are, and have been at odds for a long time now.

Naturally, this is only one front of a larger "war" ... a spiritual war we're all deeply embroiled in regardless if we know it or now. (SEE: "Materialism, addictions, criminality, domestic abuse, racism, sexism, pornography ... et al...)

You might say it's the old story of man's inhumanity to man. Since the early 80's, we've been slowly seduced out of our collective humanity. Driving that truck, I witnessed people from Rock Hill, South Carolina to Portland, Oregon ... depressed and hardened towards each other. Last Christmas was the meanest I've ever seen.

Now, the Obama Inauguration is at hand. Many of the people who will be clapping and pounding themselves on the back will be "folks" who love to refer to themselves and others as, "Niggas."

It's been a long, dark night ... a Holocaust of killing each other ... of terrorizing black neighborhoods by the very black men and women who should have been defending and building it up. "I gotta get my bling on."

It's going to be interesting to watch. Obama wasn't elected by black people, but he is a Standard Bearer for people of every hue and strata. The forces of darkness are going to come quick, fast and in a hurry to divide and conquer the Liberal Left. There will be confusion. But in all the things I hope for ... paramount in my mind, is the death of Thug Kulture and the transformation of da Nigga.

I'll be out of touch for a while. Peace. Be aware of the larger war we're all in. In other words space travelers ... "Be ye as wise as the serpent, and as humble as the dove."

Dick Gregory

2008-12-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

Dick Gregory may be the only person on the planet right now who I can listen to talk about the current state of racism and oppression in America. It's just too late to discuss being a victim or to pay too much attention to the illusionary, "Oppressor."

If every human being is a spiritual being having a human experience, then being a "victim" ... or a "perpetrator" are merely roles we either choose to play or "attach" to and have difficulty letting go of. (This is only background babble because by now, most folks know this already... at least intellectually, if not emotionally.)

Dick Gregory has worn many hats. Among them being, social activist, comedian, writer, and entrepreneur, grandfather, and spiritual adviser ... but the thread that weaves them all together is that he is a healer. A "social counselor" that tells both the emperor and the field hand that they have no clothes ... that they've forgotten who they are ... and like the father, chides them to the point of awareness that yes, they can and must ... do better.

Please play the video below. Like Dr. Phil, John Bradshaw, and Jesus Christ, I too agree that the burden of unnecessary guilt and shame lie at the heart of America’s ills. I hope you’ll "YouTube" all his videos. He speaks to the healing heart of us all ... black, white, yellow, brown, red … male, female ... et al ...

Black Renaissance on Pine Street

2008-12-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

So I'm eating breakfast at this cafe on Adeline in Berkeley. The guy at the table next to me has just finished a bowl of something ... some kind of greenish cooked cereal or some sort of Split Pea soup. A short stack with home fries follows. (Hmmm ... interesting. Either this guy is from some Eastern European country or he's just a very hungry fellow who knows how to eat.)

So I strikes up a conversation. Turns out the couple are far-left Berkeley types. Not many left these days. I tell him a bit about me, and then he pauses, and tells me about this brother down in the Lower Bottom (a.k.a. "West Oakland") who is creating this whole movement around black art, music and writing.

It takes me a week, but I find the scrap of paper deep in my pocket, and read, "Marcel Diallo's" name on it, along with the words, "blackdotcafe magazine".

Google then name in, and BaM! There's all these stories and links about a new urban revival of da creative arts in an area once labeled Oakland's Buttermilk Bottom. West Oakland. Once home to Pullman Car Porters, Southern Pacific and Sante Fe trains, Chinese Cleaners, and a strip of African American bars and night clubs linked to the infamous "Chitlin Circuit" that ran under the South's Cotton Curtain, up to Harlem, across the Midwest, and even out to Northern and Southern California.

So, here's this Marcel Diallo sitting next to actor Don Cheadle. (Ya gotta click on some of these links and read this stuff..) They're talking about how developer Rick Holliday came up with the idea of renovating the dead heart of West Oakland's 7th & Pine Street area. The surprising part of all this to me is that this has been going on for some time ... and like the West Oakland Farmer's Market, far too few people know about it.

I'm sooOOOOoo glad to read about all of Diallo's work ... even though it's a bit too urban for me. But it's important ... because like the cliché says ... "the artist, the poets, and the musicians create the consciousness of the race."

We've had 30 years of Korporate State control of the music. Started in the 70s actually ... when they took the stage out and this thing called, "Disco" suddenly appeared. All that great, REAL, music ... gone. The Great Communicator (Ronald Regan) came in and university scholarships began disappearing. A tragic thing called, "Homelessness" appeared in both America's cities and its rural areas. Drugs began pouring in from "no where" and high school drop-outs were suddenly getting all the contracts that people like Aretha Franklin, O.C. Smith, and James Brown once had. The Giants of Rhythm and Blues suddenly couldn't BUY a job ... but high school drop-outs like "Too Short" and "Snoop Dog" couldn't find pockets deep enough to hold all the money that was thrown at them.

Like Aristotle once said: "You write the laws, but let me write the songs because the youth will act out the songs."

It's been a long, dark, night upon the land folks. We need visionaries of every hue at the table ... writing, sculpting, painting a path to a New Renaissance that will stop the killing, free some souls, and fill some hearts, minds ... and stomachs.

An Argument For Black Spiritual Marriage

2008-11-30T18:36:00.000-08:00

The state of relationships in America is bad enough, but in Black America, it's a train wreak. The Congressional Black Caucus produced statements that alluded to the numbers of African-American divorces being on par with the general population (about 50 per cent divorce rate) ... but the alarming co-statistic was that only about 75 per cent of blacks are even getting married in the first place. So, what's keeping so many black folks single?

While the stressors may be many, "the cure" seems to be all point back to issues of ethics, morality, and spirituality. In his book, "Blessings Of The Flesh, Sins Of The Spirit," esteemed theologian Matthew Fox correlates the Seven Major Chakras of the East with the Seven Deadly Sins of the West. Old news for spiritual seekers, right? Yes and no.

Lust simply isn't sufficient to carry an adult, mature relationship very far. Yet, within Black American cultures, the over-emphasis on sex and sexuality continues to be an over-value commodity. People still think sex alone will bring them happiness. While sex is an important piece to the human experience, determining what to do with that most sacred parts of our anatomies is best mapped out by centuries of spiritual exploration. (Notice my continued reference to the word, "Spiritual" rather than the word, "Religious.")

In their paper, "An Exploration of Factors Related to the Decline in Black Marriages," W. E. Harris, Jr. and Kelly D. Bradley assert:

When Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, married couples headed more than 70% of all black families. In 2002, the number had declined to 48% (Kinnon, 2003). One of the factors influencing the decline in Black marriage rates has been the rising rate of incarceration among Black men at all educational levels over the past 30 years (Kiecolt & Fossett).

It's odd, but when most people begin having in their relationships with others, they often first seek out the help of a therapist or a psychologist. But all of modern psychology sits on top of old world theology that it doesn't want to recognize. So why look to a watered-down set of instructions rather than seek out an experience in all it's fullness, it's majesty and its "AWE"?

The answers to that question are many. From, it's easier to take drugs to attempt to simulate a spiritual experience, to the willful decision to not be disappointed by one of the mainstream religions all too many have lost faith in. But spirituality involves our personal spirit along with whatever cosmology one finds faith in ... from Yoga, to Buddhist Mediation, to Greek Orthodox Meditation, Catholic Comptemplative Prayer, and on to religious metaphysical practices like the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah. Spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra enjoys using phrases like:

"We are literally made of start dust. Carbon. The process of photosynthesis nurtures us--is a part of us. We are essentially the eyes of The Universe in co-creation with God."

This is similar to fingerprints at the tip of each person's hand. We all have them, but each is different. Religion helps teach us the beginning practices that lead to spiritual experiences. But to be a Spiritual Warrior, one has to be willing to relinquish fear, and to relax in faith, surrendering every pre-conceived idea of what God the Spirit is. That can means work. But the work that we were born for. This fellow Space Travelers, is a of the journey too good to miss. May I leave you with this?

Anything you put in front of God, will either eat you—or you'll eventually lose it.

Meaning? In this alienated, pornographic age, we essentially have to even learn how to physically love our wives and husbands. To make an alter out of the body of another means creating yet one more "false god" in our life. One more demon.

Opening to spirituality means opening to a higher, deeper, richer experience in life than people who cling to crutches like alcohol, drugs, porn, and the delusions of power will ever achieve. We really are "spiritual beings have a human experience." Life is really amazing.

May you sincerely, be happy.

Post-Obama: Still Addicted to Negativity?

2008-11-20T16:17:00.000-08:00

I left the room after hearing his first press conference, and breath an unconscious sigh of relief. For the first time in 30 years, I did not feel like my government was persecuting me. ("Phweeeph"!)

So it's been a little over a month, and there is still a lightness in the air. The California Bay Area hasn't felt this good since the 70's. Yet, already, the bloggers, writers, and media reporters are re-hitching up their little wagons to stars of hatred, fear and resentment.

It's like half the population is addicted to being the victim. Literally ... addicted. In his book, "People of The Lie," Dr. M. Scott Peck speaks to the fundamentals of "Evil."

I guess I'm alarmed at how quickly people can go from elation, hope, and joy ... to returning to the slop of their "Lazy Thinking" ... blaming others instead of getting to work on creating the society ... the culture ... and the individual lives we most want to experience.

It's been easy to point fingers at all the many sources of evil that has came at us these past 30 years. OK ... longer ... but there's been breaks... and it's during these "breaks" that the greatest change can occur. The 60s was a wonderful break. That decade gave us Dr. Martin Luther King, an end to institutionalized Jim Crow, and privileges like the right to vote. And now, as President-elect Obama prepares to enter the White House, we all stand, at a threshold of another unique time in history where great change can happen ... if we only become aware of how the trauma of racism has become a habit in our thinking.

"Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. The evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. Spiritual growth requires the acknowledgment of one's own need to grow. If we cannot make that acknowledgment, we have no option except to attempt to eradicate the evidence of our imperfection. Strangely enough, evil people are often destructive because they are attempting to destroy evil. The problem is that they misplace the locus of the evil. Instead of destroying others they should be destroying the sickness within themselves."

I suppose what I'm challenging everyone ... blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, et al ... is to begin ... quickly... to think about what each of us as individuals can bring to the table to make this a better place to live. Stop looking at the faults of others for a minute, and begin thinking about what they need. More, what do I need to be fully happy, healthy, joyous and free ... and what am I doing to stop that from becoming reality in my life? That is the work and the great opportunity of this moment.

Here are some quotes by Dr. Peck ... food for thought...

Books by Dr. M. Scott Peck

"The 100 best places to raise a family" Huh??

2008-11-18T19:16:00.000-08:00

I just read the latest atrocious list put out by MSN's "Best Places To Live." The subtitle reads:

"Find out which American cities are the best, worst for you and your brood"

"Television executives seized the idea long ago: American families value where they plant their roots. The Cosbys had Brooklyn. The Cunninghams, Milwaukee. The Simpsons, Springfield. But fathers face reality when they're not in prime time. They want to raise their children somewhere safe, where they can attend good schools with favorable student-teacher ratios, above-average test scores and respectable budgets. Plenty of museums, parks and pediatricians also contribute to a good quality of life, whereas multihour commutes, expensive houses and divorcing friends and neighbors do not. Best Life editors used these categories and data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics, the FBI, the American Association of Museums, the National Center for Health Statistics and the American Bar Association to evaluate 257 cities. Here are the best — and worst — places to raise a family."

Well ... I they may have input some data into somebody's laptop over lunch, but they certainly didn't take race or class into the equation.

5. San Diego, California
Yes, San Diego is a lovely place, IF you have the cash to live in one of it's better neighborhoods.

7. Minneapolis, Minnesota
Has anyone BEEN to Minneapolis lately? Another over-crowded city with all the problems of any large urban center ... and it's COLD. But my biggest gripe with this choice is ... well ... it's Minnesota. Both Minnesota and Wisconsin have cultures that drip with passive-aggression. They are the hands-down worst "lookie-loo" drivers in the country. They love to take their boredom and anger with them when they leave the house.

10. Santa Rosa, California
Gangs, drugs and classism.

11. Wichita, Kansas
One of the best jokes on the list. How did they miss all the crack/meth and alcohol abuse in Wichita??

12. Los Angeles, California
I cannot figure this one out. L.A. is Porn Nation's Headquarters. Gangs, crime and random violence ... THIS is a greater place to raise a child than (Number 50) Fairfield, California?? Hmmm ... I guess it would be if you had several million dollars in the bank...

If any of you have any better suggestions about good places to raise working and middle class black children, PLEASE send in YOUR list.

Hip-Hop Going Green??

2008-10-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

Al Gore's, "Inconvenient Truth" turned Hip-Hop artist Jennifer Johns Green.

"My fears for bringing life into this world prior to seeing this film were based more in the violence in urban streets of America - I had no real understanding of where we were and how far we had to go to get to a safe space again with the environment. I began to think about Katrina and the Tsunami and why there had been snow in the Bay Area....it sent me spinning..."

As the shadow of the Green Movement inches closer, the wisdom of Van Jones echos like a freight train approaching from a canyon. " In Jones thinking, if only white middle and upper income people buy into reducing green house gasses and leave out the vast majority of lower income people of color around the world, then all the hoopla and business strategies just won't work.

Jennifer Johns has teemed with a long list of others on an 8 week tour to raise awareness and get the word out that, "there are no disposable people and this is not a disposable planet."

The Sustainable Living Roadshow Johns will be a part of will tour across the nation, reaching out to all parts of society. "All of us come from different backgrounds and will focus on different ways we are BEING THE CHANGE."

I invite you to look at the "Green For All" website and familiarize yourself with as much of it that you can. Change is the only constant ... and here at the beginning of the worst economic melt-down since 1929, opportunities for sustainable living and Green Career opportunities hang like ripe fruit waiting to be plucked.

What Constitutes, “Home”?

2008-10-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

I heard an interview on New Dimensions this morning about the concept of "home." Writer John Lane lives and teaches in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Prior to meeting and marrying his current wife, his life was spent in between a series of basement apartments and his pickup truck. Not finding home until his late 40’s prompted this college professor to look deeper at:

• The "time and space" of places we attempt to make "home" in
• Persistent issues disruptive to creating sustainability
• Why understanding the history and topography of our home place is important
• How to explore your own home place
• Why it is important to learn the dreams and deeds of the ancestors of a home place
• How a community turned tragedy into a blessing
• What it took to build a sustainable house

Below are links to his websites. Read about how a small group of people got together, and created a literary community where there was none ... and in the process, found home.

1.) http://www.ugapress.org/082033040X.html

2.) http://www.kudzutelegraph.com

Quick Poll on Palin Qualifications

2008-10-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

PBS has an online poll posted asking if Sarah Palin is qualified. Apparently the right wing knew about this in advance and are flooding the voting with YES votes.

The poll will be reported on PBS and picked up by mainstream media.

It can influence undecided voters in swing states.

Please do two things -- takes 20 seconds.

1) Click on link and vote yourself. Here's the link:
http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

2) Then send this to every single Obama-Biden voter you know, and urge them to vote and pass it on.

The last thing we need is PBS saying their viewers think Sarah Palin is qualified.

Green Movement Reaches For The Rainbow

2008-09-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

Overwhelmingly White, the Green Movement is Reaching For The Rainbow.

(Reposted from, "The Seattle Times, Published on Monday, March 10, 2008, by Paula Bock.)

"What's a nice black guy like me doing in a movement like this?" Van Jones strides the stage at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, a charismatic lawyer who grew up in rural Tennessee, graduated from Yale Law, and founded the Ella Baker Center for jobs and justice in Oakland, California.

Tall, 39, his pate shaved, he cuts a striking silhouette in a black turtleneck and blazer, but it's his daring message that electrifies the crowd. He's in Seattle to talk about "The Unbearable Whiteness of Green" and how the environmental movement needs to include people of color and the poor if there's any hope of slowing global warming.

All 250 seats quickly fill: Boomers wearing fleece, techies fiddling with gadgets, eco-chic in ethnic garb.

On an ordinary Wednesday night on an ever-warming planet, this is clearly Seattle's coolest spot, and for a predominantly white city, the crowd is remarkably racially diverse.

"The Prius people, the polar-bear crowd are great," Jones says. "We're not mad at them. We like them! At the same time, if the only people who can participate are the kind who can afford to put solar panels on their second home, the green movement is going to be too small to fix the problem. If we want to beat global warming, there's no way to do it without helping a lot of poor people. If you design a solution that does not do that, it's a solution that's too timid."

In Jones' eyes, the first wave of environmentalism, led by Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, focused on preserving the nation's natural beauty in parks. The second wave, led by Rachel Carson of "Silent Spring," concentrated on federal regulation of toxics. The third wave, he says, is about investment. Initially, that meant individual consumer choice: hybrid cars, organic food, energy-efficient light bulbs. Now, it's evolved into major public spending and community-wide action.

Jones' grand vision? Think New Deal and civil-rights movement combined with a clean-green industrial revolution. The nation needs to train masses of "green-collar" workers to conduct energy audits, weatherize and retrofit buildings, install solar panels and maintain hybrid vehicles, wind farms and bio-fuel factories. The icing? Wiring buildings and installing solar panels can't be outsourced.

"Brother," Jones says, "put down that hand gun and pick up this caulk gun."

(Click on title link to read the entire article.)

First Day Back

2008-09-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

Okay ... I've been talking about quitting for some time now, right? So I took a short load up to Dallas after I dropped in Laredo, Texas last week. Thought about it for a few days ... and on Wednesday, I gave Arrow back the keys, cleaned out the truck ... and on Thursday ... I caught a plane back to the California, Bay Area. Got here last night.

Yes, California is no longer California. Yes ... people are driving themselves (and others) CRAZY from competing with each other over NOTHING. Mindless competition-with no prize! Quality of life continues to nose dive... but it's where I grew up and it seems it’s the best place for me to prepare for Phase II of my plan to move to a small farm in the country.

Logistics was a major issue. When you drive a semi … that truck is your life. It’s your home. It's where you have much of your stuff stored. It’s your place of work. It's what's keeping you eating. So, I was glad when several things just "fell into place" (with the help of God, of course).

Two friends had a bedroom ready for me. So I had a clean house, use of the kitchen and one of his cars when needed. (I gave my sister my old Honda before I left. I want to buy a used truck or van before I leave and head south with it.)

A recruiter already promised me a job as soon as I bring in a copy of my DMV (it's clean).

So the problems of shelter, employment and transportation in an area where those three are often difficult to obtain where solved enough for me to resign from my OTR trucking job.

So I arrived, called up one of my "Bible Go-To" partners ... and he tells me to slow down, take a week off. Needing exercise, I started walking down University Avenue feeling so good about not having to drive today .. no chains to throw ... no heavy tarps to wrestle with ... no straps and binders ...

I see this brother walking towards me that looks vaguely familiar ... we start talking ... and guess what? As of this moment ... in the hard to live-in, over-crowded Bay Area ... the place where 15 months ago, I had leave and travel to Oklahoma just to get a job just 15 ...yeah ... suddenly on the first morning back, I have:

1. A new job I start on Monday (The brother owns a Body Shop in Alameda)
2. A good wage driving ... and going home every night
3. I have a new apartment he's throwing in FREE above the shop
4. AND I have a "new" van that he had the court take from a customer who wouldn't pay ... for only $500.00!!!

I can now take some of those free classes I'll need later, along with the Horticulture classes. Then to South Carolina where I’m already making contacts in agriculture, small farming, and funding.

Peace and blessings to all.

Urban Farming?

2008-06-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

Food prices soar ... and will continue. Even if you have a tiny backyard, you now have a defense against supermarket bankruptcy. 'Yall going to eventually learn the truth in what I'm saying. As a truck driver, I travel from New York City to Crystal Springs, Mississippi, and the signs are everywhere ... GET YOU SOME LAND.

I don't care if it's that vacant lot next door, or 100 acres in the country, buy something as soon as you can! The most recent word is that housing prices will continue to deflate as foreclosures increase. Then, about two years from now, prices are going to rise again.

Right now, Real Estate Speculators are doing with farm and country land what they did to home prices in urban and suburban areas all over the country. DO SOMETHING.

A friend of mine just sent me a link to a site called, "Little Homestead In The City." Have a look. It's chocked full of ideas about how to live self-sufficiently while living in the city.

Small Farming for Profit and Stewardship

2007-11-21T18:07:00.000-08:00

This post is being "re-posted" because the link to my older post appears to be broken ... and perhaps no other post sums up the direction of this blog quite as well. Here are two people who decided to do whatever they needed to do so they could do what they WANT to do. That means stepping out of the box, defining what their dream life would look like, what is essential for them, and then partnering to get it done.

North Carolina farmer Alex Hitt and his wife Betsy have worked their 26 acre farm in Graham, N.C. into an environmental gem and profit center. "Over the years, Hitt has reduced acreage and labor by improving their soil with cover crops, concentrating on high-value crops that grow well in the area. What he has not reduced is profit, thanks to direct marketing through the Caroboro Farmers Market and Weaver Street Market, a cooperative grocery store in the area.

"Each acre returns a minimum of $20,000 annually, while four high-tunnel greenhouses (that shelter young or delicate crops) bring in $1,000 per crop. The Hitts embrace their small scale, growing 80 varieties of 23 vegetables along with 164 varieties of cut flowers on just three acres. Alex and Betsy were winners of the 2006 Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture from Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program." (~Reprinted from "Small American Farm" magazine, January 2007 issue.)

Alex and Betsy Hitt will deliver the keynote address at this year's Future Harvest Alliance Conference in Hagerstown, Maryland, January 12-13, 2007. Learn more about this and other Future Harvest-CASA information on their website at: http:/www.futureharvestcasa.org/, or email to: fhacasa@verizon.net.

In rural areas where the average income is between $13,000 and $18,000 annually, the Hitts are making far more by doing their market research and making money in ways that people raised in urban areas might seem unorthodox. Yet, who wouldn't relish spending a day selling products they've grown and produced on their own land? It isn't hard to make organic Cheese ... and you can use milk from the little, gentle cow I mention on: www.blackfarms.wordpress.com

Hustle ... Legal, right?

2007-10-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

I was standing in line at a Newark, New Jersey coffee shop waiting to buy a donut. The guy next to me spoke very broken English. Said he was from Poland. Been here five years. Yet he had the newest cell phones and dressed like he had cash. Turns out he buys used cars at auctions, fixes them up, and then sells them. Makes a damn good living. No bosses to please. No HR Department to get turned down by. Just cash.

Being from the SF/Oakland Bay Area, I suffered economically when I was younger simply because I lacked ideas. "Everything Changes". If you're up today, you'll be down tomorrow. So a brother needs both a 21st Century skill set AND an 18th set of skills.

It's simply being a man. If you're smart enough to move out of the California Bay Area and purchase a home, then ... why shell out much needed cash to pay some joker who lives around the corner to check out your pad and halfway fix the holes in your dry wall? Learn how to do it yourself... it's all much easier than you think.

There are increasing numbers of places like SF City College's Evans Street Campus that teaches courses like:

Auto Body Repair
Home Building (from the ground up)
Auto Mechanics
Class A Truck Driving
HazMat
Motorcycle (two stroke) engine repair
Blue Print Reading

FOR FREE! Did you get that playa (I never figured out why so many people think they want to be players when life ain't NO game. Trust me.)

Besides, if you don't live in San Francisco or San Mateo Counties, how much game does it take to ask someone to use theirs ... or to simply tell the people you're homeless? (Happens every day playa.)

See, the idea is not to do these kind of gigs forever... the idea is to gain a currently needed skill and make enough money to buy some CHEAP property (with acreage) and then get onto doing the kinds of creative activities you really want to do. Remember the link I always preach ... rural real estate ... LAND in the country?

www.unitedcountry.com

Ways To Make Money

2007-10-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to make a living ... and with increasing numbers of Baby Boomers dropping out of the workforce daily, things look great for younger generations (as well as still able-bodied boomers who aren't ready to quit yet.)

I'm an 18-Wheeler Semi truck driver ... but I can actually make as much money as you can driving a simple F350 pickup truck. Yep. They're called "Hotshots"and no, you don't need a Class A License to make truck driver's pay. Just a reliable pickup with enough pulling power to pull a small flatbed and you're in business.

Of course, if you want to deliver freight to all 48 states, you'll need stickers for the states you drive in along with increased insurance. But where there's a will, you can bet you can find a way. Bad credit? No problem, just start talking to the people who are in business to give you a loan and they will direct you to the folks who'll help you clean it up.

Criminal record? No problem. You'll be your own boss for one, and two ... almost every county in every state has a "Clean Slate" program that will expunge your record faster than you could have ever dreamed.

Benefits to this method of trucking?

1. You're your own boss and you control your time off
2. You have far less mechanic bills
3. When you reach a city, you don't have that HUGE tractor to manuver
4. The entry cost is a fraction of buying your own semi tractor-trailer
5. You can live anywhere, you don't have to starve, and you're your own man ... or woman (yes ... there ARE a lot of women in trucking.)
6. You can buy a trailer for 3 grand or less

Shanty Towns In Oakland??

2007-09-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

"The only constant is change ... when you resist it, change happens anyway, pulling you along kicking and screaming."

The place looks worse every time I return to Oakland. Economic racism looms large here. In an area where blacks experienced leaps in their personal incomes during and after World War II, it is now very clear that the black dollar has been written off in California as well as in many other states.

I parked my semi near the Oakland Coliseum and walked over the bridge to take BART. Hearing voices I looked down and was shocked to see a SHANTY TOWN here in Oakland!

The time when the plan was to: "Get a good education, and get a good (government) job is OVER!" Through. Ka-Put. Time for a new plan peoples. In other words... you can change, die, or wish you were dead.

It's been said that when God closes one door, He opens at least one more. Folks, we are faced with the same old Existential Dilemma that Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Camus, wrote enough books to fill up vaults about. In short, we are FORCED to be free.

China and India are now the world's number one and two largest economies. What do they have us looking at on television? Paris Hilton. In California the public health system is already overwhelmed and the parole system is hanging on by a tread. The recent Sub Prime Housing debacle threatens to ignite the global recession that has been rumored for the past ten years. And what is the black community's response? To demand Reparations.

Wake up folks! Everybody is trying to bring a covered dish to the table and all we're looking for is a free meal?? THIS from the son's and daughters whose ancestors walked out of Africa and peopled the world?? Oh Noooo ... we can do far better.

But the news is actually good for those who can see the signs, take faith in God, and walk towards a far more promising future. Land is cheap and plentiful in the Midwest and South. (Well ... many have already woke up and moved to the south so it's getting crowded in someplace already.)

I strongly feel that it's better to learn trades than are immune to recession than it is to get an English Degree. If your first dream is to become a doctor, nurse or teacher and you have the means to do so, then by all means, DO. Rural areas NEED those skills. The key is ... get some of this cheap land while it's still cheap.

In Oklahoma where my trucking company is based out of, I can buy 20 acres with an old house on it, a barn and water on or near it for under $100,000 dollars. In some cases, around $56, 000. The quality of life is far higher there and you can grow your own organic food without worries about the increase in genetically modified crops.

Wake up folks ... it's time to go. It's also time to relearn how to love each other .. and ourselves. Nothing teaches that like self-determination. The only Klan you have to worry about these days are those thugs living next door. Me? I'm buying land in areas where blacks are (many are very integrated), and building large fences protected by very large dogs.

Oklahoma: The Grass is Greener

2007-07-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-07-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

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

The Meaning of Your Life?

2007-05-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

One life to live ... for whom?

Living in a time and place where all around us are messages promoting hoarding and spending, it's very easy to lose track of what really satisfies you. So much so that many don't have a clue. America is increasingly getting ... fatter. Oh yeah ... there's so many reasons, right? But the main one is that fork at the end of our wrist.

Furtunately for us, a couple of people in San Francisco got together and started a microfinance startup named Kiva Microfinance is using the internet to bring normal people together to help alleviate poverty in Uganda .

There have been years when I made pretty good money, and other years when I made squat. But the primary constant element that determined the quality of my life was ... people. How did I connect with? Whom did I touch or allow myself to be touched by. In today's increasingly alienated world of violence, suspicion, and hatred, it's ... almost vital to find something worthy to integrate into my life. I can give a few bucks to some body standing on a corner looking for a handout (... a quarter that may go directly into the pockets of the beer industry...) or I can log onto Kiva and for as little as $35.00, have a positive, sustainable affect on the lives of an entire village of (industrious) people. For more on the story, visit : "Jewels In The Jungle."

Log onto the site. Have fun. Feel good about yourself. Feel good about others ....

Alternative Building: Papercrete

2007-04-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you've got your eye on a piece of property that has a 3 bdrm/1.5 bath house on it, 17 acres of land, a barn, an all season creek (fresh water is going to be increasingly more important), and is divided between 5 acres of cleared pasture/farmland and the rest in timber that you can mill or sell.

We've already learned that one of the best small farm practices is to use no more than three acres for crops and flowers. So what else can you do with all that land?

How about greatly increasing the equity of your "empire" by adding another structure to it? Building Green and "Alternative" allows you to creative wonderful, mortgage-free buildings at pennies to what traditional buildings cost. The building can be wood burning Sauna cordwood building or a Strawbale "Adobe" home that keeps you warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer while decreasing your dependence on both energy and energy companies.

The latest ... and the building style that has recently caught my eye is Papercrete .... a substance that creates lightweight "concrete-ish" mix or "adobe-ish" blocks to build with.

Like cordwood homes, you don't have to be a builder to build a house. There are books and videos at your local public library. You can begin your search by clicking on the links and by googling some keywords like: alternative building, papercrete, cordwood building, strawbale houses, and building with cob.

Farm or Go to College FREE?

2007-04-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, so not everyone wants to move to the country.
And not all black folks seem to be eager to move "down south.
And younger people may have so many other dreams than ... to become a farmer.

One of the most exciting new opportunities I've heard of ... in my life! ... is a current program that is sending young black males to college F-R-E-E !!

Black male college grads are in such short supply that they are now sending us to college free. (That's too sad to laugh at.) But it's true... there are about 13 black universities and other colleges who'll pay for your college. Here's the info:

For information about the Call Me MISTER program, please contact us through one of these methods:

Email:

MISTER@clemson.edu

Telephone:

Call toll-free : 1-800-640-2657

Mail:
Call Me MISTER

203 Holtzendorff

Clemson University

Clemson, SC 29634

Moving In Christ

2007-03-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

I've reached a point where to continue posting info without including comments about the religious experience I've been going through that brought all this about ... is casing me to pause. I wanted to keep "church and state" separate. But I see now, it won't be easy because God pervades all ... and the devil is very active these days.

Let it suffice to say right now that all the difficulties I've been through in my life has been a result of my forgetting a relationship with God. When we do, God often removes His hand of Grace from us and allows those who love darkness (both human and spirit) to attack us. This has been soooo weird .... but this is a mild description of what happened to me.

But I can now go with confidence ....anywhere ... urban or rural, because I'm aware of the utter necessity of "moving in God's Will" ... not mine~and not man's nor woman's. The new "real" blog will have to have a separate page to document the spiritual calling we who are feeling the call to self-sufficenciy and healthier living through Green farming.

Just Gotta Have a Tractor!

2007-03-17T17:30:00.003-07:00

It's amazing how cheap these Kuboa Tractors are. Yes, Kubota is Japanese, but they're made in Georgia and Kubota also makes most American tractors. Only the paint jobs and names are different ... they say.

I priced one in Fairfield, California and discovered that you can get a four wheel drive and a front loader and a back hoe for around $17,000!! This isn't even the smallest model.

I plan to own no more than 20 acres and farm around three. The tractor above is just rignt. Plus, all the impliments I'll ever need will add up to around no more than $25,000. When you think about how much farm tractors used to cost ... I find this amazing!

For more information, pull up the Kubota website.

New Money For New Farmers

2007-03-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

This is a unique and wonderful window of time. At 53, I've seen "windows" cycle through before. Some were Bardos ... transition points ... that led to good eras and some were bad ... like the bardos that led to disco (smile) and The Eighties ... that wonderful time when black people old enough to work got clowned BAD. (Some who seniors I talked to said the 80s were worse than The Great Depression. "At least everyone was poor during the Depression. In the 80s, it was like we wasn't nothing at all.")

Well ... we need to learn Big Time from it.

Right now the Department of Agriculture is actually recognizing that only 1% of the American population farms. The average age of the American farmer is 60. So, suddenly they are planning to recruit new young farmers.

Department of Agriculture Highlights Young New Jersey Farmers
American Farm Bureau story on Farm Policy Changes & Child Bearing Age Farmers
Financial Security For New Agriculture: MUST READ!!!
Department of Ag Helps New Farmers Get Started$$$$$$$

Slow Postings

2007-02-22T15:07:00.000-08:00

Black Solutions is preparing to move to a paid site that will:

Be more secure, and
Present a deeper level of information

Please bear with us while we make this transition. The process will take a few weeks. It's amazing how fast things are happening once I began exploring and walking towards the JOY of my First Dreams.

My Buddhist landlord helped me with a recent quote from Gandhi:

Don't worry about all the world's problems .... "How will your next step help the poorest person on the planet?"

Mulling over that question creates both great opportunity and great wealth. But the "wealth" is not always monetary ... and when it is, shouldn't such funds be used to take care of the basic needs of you and your family ... and after that, care for those deserving poor who you can help?

[NOTE: You cannot help everyone ... and "everyone" who wants help ... is not "deserving."]

Fear of Change?

2007-02-18T20:09:00.000-08:00

This site is talking about change. Moving away from urban madness and buying rurual land to create ... whatever. Change.

Whenever I discuss life changes with most people, fear and adventure are the first two things that pop up. Fear of change, fear of success and/or fear of failure are key ingredients that keep people stuck in addictive, abusive and maladjusted lifestyles.

"Every where I went, I took myself with me…"
This is an old cliché commonly spouted around recovery rooms. In the first stages of realizing how they've kept themselves stuck for years in unhappy circumstances, addicts of all types, alcoholics and co-dependents often realize that simply changing geographic locations is not enough to change an unsatisfied, unrealized life. Chances are, if a person was unhappy in St. Louis, he or she will be just as unhappy in San Francisco. We're talking about the life skills needed to develop happiness, contradict shame and trauma … and to intentionally engineer the quality life that says, "I'm not going to simply survive … I will flourish" ....in any enviornment I find myself in.

"If you find yourself in a bucket of shit, don't stomp around," Right?
Let's call that bucket "shame." African Americans often get a double dose of shame. Shame comes from many sources, but it's also comes from the common cultural values we get simply by being born and raised in a Judeo-Christian country. The second wave often comes from abuse, poverty, a lack of parental "good attention", and/or internalizing oppression. You don't have to live with shame. Read John Bradshaw. Join groups. Talk and "normalize" the events of your life. Stop doing the things that make you feel bad about yourself and start doing more that make you feel good. We're talking about walking completely out of the bucket and forgetting it was ever there.

It's absolutely necessary to cultivate mental and emotional habbits that make you feel good about yourself:

Expecting good things … tell yourself that 007 is MY year!
Expect people to like you. When you do, you radiate a charm and welcome that attracts people
Faith! They say you cannot be a Man without faith. But faith is only effective when we believe in ourselves … that God or your Buddha Nature loves you … and in turn, you love others.
Have and repeat a good opinion of yourself.
Stop telling yourself the same old negative stories about your life. Look at things from different perspectives. Instead of blame and guilt, take a step back and look at what the life experience was trying to teach you.
Take an honest inventory of yourself and rid your life of secrets. "I'm as sick as my secretes."
Live authentically. I'm not "exceptionally proud of everything I've done in life, but 12-Steps told me that if I didn't do everything I did… good, bad and indifferent… I wouldn't be here. I'd have exploded or imploded. The proof is that you're still alive … able to make yet another "growth change."
Joy. We don't have to get all complicated. We don't have to spend years on somebody's couch paying them for hearing our tired whining about our mothers… we just need to make a decision to move constantly towards JOY!
Love. We all need it. Unfortunately not as much as food or air, but to really do what we come into this life to do before they throw that shovel of dirt on your face, find FIRST LOVE for yourself. We get into all that trouble when we settle for second and third choices. Decide to walk out into the sun and live YOUR life. Not your father's life, nor the people on TV, nor the folks you went to high school with …YOUR life. Decide what's best for you and if you can't live with it in the light of the noon day sun … then you're going to have to let that ball and chain go.

God rolled away the stone of Egypt's Reproach on the Children of Israel before he allowed them to go into the Promise Land. "Risk the blind leap of faith into the wounded hands of Jesus and you end up with nothing" … a charismatic speaker once said when I was in early sobriety … and I still hear the truth of it 21 years later. This is where faith comes in again… if you believe that the "stone" has been rolled away from your heart… from your life… then you can walk boldly into the "Promise Land" of your new dream life.

Feel good about yourself, your family and whatever new community you're walking towards. Get up early in the morning ..before the noise starts, and put on a good record of thoughts about yourself. Then read all you can about small farming, permaculture, intentional communities and rural Real Estate. Join us on http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/blackfarms/ and lets begin taking the next steps.

World Hunger Will Increase By 2015

2007-02-15T15:23:00.000-08:00

The Bahamas imports over two thirds of their food but help is on the way. Micro and small farming techniques are being developed by Tuskegee Agricultural Chemists. Their goal is to funnel better small farming techniques directly to small landholders.

Professor Per Pinstrup-Anderson, from Cornell University in New York, says that improving agriculture is the key to both future national hunger and international famine.

"When you put money in the hands of farmers that money is spent on creating employment and reducing poverty elsewhere," said Pinstrup-Anderson.

"We have found in our research that for every dollar you invest in agricultural research you generate about $6 of additional income among the farmers and about $15 of additional economic growth in the society as a whole. Much of that will help poor people in those countries," he concluded. "

From BBC Online. Click for Full Story.

The world will have 100 million extra hungry people by 2015, scientists say.

I’m not sure how good their journalism is, but Prophecy Central list links to these stories:

One in six countries facing food shortage

Famine threatens 11 million in Horn of Africa

'Millions more starving' by 2015’

From Prophecy Central. Click for full story.

One of every eight American families is on
the edge…

USA Today ran the following story about homelessness and hunger in America. I've posted a few story highlights:

"Families with children are among the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. The Conference of Mayors found that 41% of the homeless are families with children, up from 34% in 2000. The Urban Institute reports about 23% of the homeless are children.

"Cities and shelters are also seeing the shift. In New York, the number of homeless families jumped 40% from 1999 to 2002. In Boston, the number of homeless families increased 8.3% to 2,328 in 2002 compared with 2001.
"An estimated 3.5 million people are likely to experience homelessness in a given year, the Urban Institute reports. People remained homeless for an average of six months, according to the Conference of Mayors survey — a figure that increased from a year ago in all but four cities.

From USA Today. Full Story click for full story.

My question is, in light of the economic, cultural and social problems facing us in urban America, WHY ARE WE STILL SO COMMITTED BE THE LAST RATS OF THE SHIP?

How many tea leaves in the bottom of the cup does it take to see that becoming increasingly self-sufficient by producing as much of your own food, and growing it on land you own ---preferably with water on or beneath it. Please look through this and Black Farms post (and archieves) and follow the links to your survival, your freedom, and a greater quality of life.

Mint Farming? Amish Acres?

2007-02-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

As a born and bred urbanite who is seriously planning on moving back to the land within the next two years, I am continually researching:

Ways to make it on the land, as well as,
Exactly what does, "making it mean"? ... what are my expectations?
What crops bring in money to the small farmer
Are my expectations for sustainable living too low ... can I actually bring in a profit too?

These and other questions brought me to Mint Farming. A kind new friend on www.tribe.com informed me that crops like mint could be easy as well as profitable. A quick search brought up Amish Acres. This site provides not only information about the crop, but the directions on everything from planting to harvesting.

Like anything, you want to do your homework. While the appeal of growing mint is that you plant it, treat it perhaps once, and do little besides ensure proper watering before harvesting the crop, nothing is guaranteed for small framers any more than they are for large, corporate farms.

"Mint is a small, unstable market with frustratingly little solid economic data," says Montana State University economist Gary Brester.

That’s why linking up with associations like the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) , that featured award winning small farmers Alex and Betsy Hitt and told the story of how they make above average earnings on just three acres of their 27 acre North Carolina Peregrine Farm. (Click here for photos.)

The web is filled with information for new hobby farmers. New Farm’s web site is a treasure trove of information and it also host a forum to ask questions and read problems and solutions encountered by other small and organic farmers. One of this site’s niche appeals is that it covers both national and international farming. They also plan to offer online courses for both the veteran farmer interesting in organic farming, and courses for tenderfoots like myself.

The United States Department of Agriculture's web site also offers a treasure trove of information to people who love the idea of growing crops for their family and/or for sale to the public. The link below details the planting of cover crops which are used to enrich soil and protect the land after the fall harvest.

NOTE: I encourage you to look at the text in this article closely. Links aren't easily viewed in some browsers.

Mother Jones Highlights Environmental Racism

2007-01-30T14:50:00.000-08:00

Environmental Racism:

Silent Existence

We all know it exists. Predominately black and people of color living near Richmond's Standard Oil Refinery ... cancer clusters and nothing is done.

The old Navy Shipyard at San Francisco's Hunter's Point... again, more cancer clusters, asthma and high rates of other diseases ... yet little is done.

But my question is ... WHY do people continue to stubbornly stay where the job situation is bleak, and health risks are enormous? Moving is a simple answer for many, but there are some for whom the answers are more complicated.

Read Mother Jones articles on this and other related issues- "Black Gold"

Then, glance below and think about:

Different ways to live
Different ways to parent
Different ways to work

Types of people who are moving “Back To The Land”

2007-01-29T14:30:00.001-08:00

emagazine.com ran the following article on, “Young Professionals Go Back to the Land.” (Written by Jason Mark)

“A growing number of smart, ambitious people are rejecting the lure of lucrative careers for the promise of a simpler agrarian lifestyle. Many of those in the new crop of young farmers boast the kinds of diplomas typically found in Silicon Valley cubicles, Wall Street suites or Hollywood editing rooms. But instead of pursuing fast-paced careers, these members of the so-called “best and the brightest” class are choosing to spend their days weeding carrots and building compost.” More

Young Black Farmers

Another story by "dyverse productions" did a story about young black farmers. It' s both interesting and inspiring to learn of young black people expanding the possibilities of their future.

In short, there are segments of every population who are returning to the land and discovering the many ways to make a higher quality of life for themselves. Farming the land is only one choice.

When you have land with water on it, you have control of your life. By all signs, those who do will be amongst the lucky ones in the future. If you don't have a desire to move back to the land, it is perhaps in your best interests to connect with those who will. There are also many Urban Farming choices.

For a more complete story, visit: Black Farms

8 Cheapest Places In America To Live

2007-01-13T22:24:00.000-08:00

This blog isn't written for everyone ... and certainly not for every black person. Many African Americans who I've recently talked to state that they are concerned about "being separated" by some outside force (e.g. "da government") or some other unknown agency in some unknown conspiracy. But regardless to what their opinion is about moving away from California (or another urban area) and moving to the rural South or Midwest, almost all voice an uneasy concern about the future.

China is poised to become the Number 1 world's economy. When that happens, many of the countries, foreign corporations and non-Americans with money invested in this country that hold negative feelings about our politics are going to pull their money out. Should that happen, our economy is going to be rocked ... and we all know who will feel it the worst.

Even if that scenario doesn’t happen, according to many of Wall Streets best economic prognosticators (I'll allow you to goggle it this time ... I've previously posted an article on this or on http://blackfarms.wordpress.com/ ), we will still most likely experience a number "deep" recessions. Again, we all know who gets hit the hardest during "recessions."

It is to those people who either haven't been able to acquire the kind of Real Estate and land they dream of and need that this blog speaks to. You may be a young adult with a family you'd like to raise in a more wholesome place, or perhaps someone near retirement--or someone who simply sees that as the greater urban stresses (the economy, crime, adult illiteracy, drug addiction and moral decay) continues to worsen, it's best to get out of the way and head for higher ground (with fresh water if possible). In that spirit, Black Solutions is re-posting a link to a story that ran today on www.msn.com

8 Cheapest Places To Live

Californian's Chances of Success: From Birth To Death

2007-01-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

State's children less likely to succeed:
California is 34th in nation in study of criteria that help identify chances to excel.

(click on map to enlarge graphic)
"Children growing up in California, fabled land of opportunity, have a worse chance of achieving the American Dream than children in most other states, a new study says.

The real Golden State is Virginia, where children are most likely to become well-educated adults with steady, high-paying jobs, according to researchers from the nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education Research Center in Washington, D.C.

Children born in New Mexico were deemed least likely to succeed.

The researchers stacked up all the states and the District of Columbia against 13 measures of success, ranging from parents' employment and English fluency to children's test scores and graduation rates.

California ranked 34th among the states and was below the national average in seven areas: percent of children whose parents work full-time, speak English, graduated from college, earn at least a middle-level income; percent of children proficient in reading and proficient in math; and percent of adults who work full time.

California had by far the nation's lowest percentage of children whose parents speak fluent English: 62 percent. The next lowest was 73 percent, in Texas. Nearly everyone's parents speak English in Virginia: 91 percent."

[Reprinted from SF Gate. Full Story]

Small Farming for Profit and Stewardship

2006-12-31T10:40:00.000-08:00

North Carolina farmer Alex Hitt and his wife Betsy have worked their 26 acre farm in Graham, N.C. into an environmental gem and profit center. "Over the years, Hitt has reduced acreage and labor by improving their soil with cover crops, concentrating on high-value crops that grow well in the area. What he has not reduced is profit, thanks to direct marketing through the Caroboro Farmers Market and Weaver Street Market, a cooperative grocery store in the area.

"Each acre returns a minimum of $20,000 annually, while four high-tunnel greenhouses (that shelter young or delicate crops) bring in $1,000 per crop. The Hitts embrace their small scale, growing 80 varieties of 23 vegetables along with 164 varieties of cut flowers on just three acres. Alex and Betsy were winners of the 2006 Patrick Madden Award for Sustainable Agriculture from Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program." (~Reprinted from "Small American Farm" magazine, January 2007 issue.)

Alex and Betsy Hitt will deliver the keynote address at this year's Future Harvest Alliance Conference in Hagerstown, Maryland, January 12-13, 2007. Learn more about this and other Future Harvest-CASA information on their website at: http:/www.futureharvestcasa.org/, or email to: fhacasa@verizon.net.

Eco Villages

2006-12-26T14:55:00.000-08:00

Great things are occurring in Intentional Community organizations. Many today are looking at building Green and Permaculture planning in their process of creating sustainable living in rural as well as urban and suburban settings.

It's almost as if time spirits from the 60's went to school, experienced all the ups, downs and changes that life can bring, and now armed with "Green Master's Degrees", PhD’s in urban planning, psychology, and agriculture, are coming full cycle to the commune and readjusting their earlier fantasies of Utopia to fit the realities of today's world. Questions remain:

Who will watch my back when crime rates rise?
Where will I raise my children as predator populations increase?
With crack babies now raising meth babies, where will I find a quiet, peaceful place to live?
How will I earn a living in rural settings ... and perhaps even "flourish rather than just survive?"

I attest that this is a window of time when the answers to the questions are not only possible, but point to far greater rewards than we even imagine in these current cities of despair.

White American is on the move working in this direction. Why are we still anchored to places where there is little or no money, and where we are dying?

Example of a Farm Business ... Like Dogs?

2006-12-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

Here's just one of thousands of ideas you can purchase that will change your life ... and most likely add years of contented living.

When most urbanites think of moving to rurual areas, one of the first things that pops into their heads is: "How am I going to make a living?"

Do what you like. Follow your passion. If you like dogs, there are a surprising number of kennels and horse properties up for sale. You may not want to buy large farm animals like horses, but Kennels and Horsefarms.com is a website aimed just at that market. The asking price for:

10+ Acres
2 Master Suites
32 Separate Fenced Exercise Areas
4 Bdr 3 1/2 Bath
72 Runs

Asking Price: $299,000

Here's how the property above is listed:

This is a lovely Southern home, complete with the white columns. Brick and the setting is magnificent. White four board fence lines the roadside, sweeping lawn, complete with large magnolia trees, between the road and the house. Fenced back yard for security. The house is large, I haven't measured but would guestimate about 3000 sq. ft. Four bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, two story with a ground floor master suite and another on the second floor. Full balcony opens onto both back bedrooms upstairs. Formal dining room, Living room, and huge family room kitchen combo. Double attached garage.

Located in South Carolina, convenient to both Columbia and Orangeburg. On paved secondary road.

The kennel is located in 3 buildings, totaling 72 runs, with 32 separate fenced exercise areas, all fenced with 6' chain link. Approach is down a long paved drive that winds thru the grounds. Large shade trees surround all the buildings.

There is a significant amount of deferred maintenance on all the buildings, some need more work than others. Kennel is currently operating and making a living, it could do much more. Currently offering no training, no walks, minimal grooming. Owner does no advertising.

Seller may do some owner financing with significant down. This is an opportunity for the buyer with vision.

Now Is The Time ~ Start Planning

2006-12-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

Unless you're young or grew up on a farm ... or earned a degree in agriculture or something, they type of "farms" I'm urging African Americans to purchase are best called: "Hobby Farms" or "Truck Farms."

For middle age folks and older, the prospect of buying over 1,000 acres of land, and actually FARMING them ... well, it's a bit un-daunting to say the least. Otherwise, owning something like three, five ... ten ... up to 40 acres is what I'm talking about.

1910 was the peak era for black land ownership. For African Americans to regain that same level of land ownership, each black person must own a minimum of 1.37 acres of land for us to even get back what was lost ... or depending on how you look at it... what we gave up.

Toiling all day every day in 100 degrees on over 100 acres of Georgia red clay wasn't easy and I'm sure there were more than a few who were only too happy to sell the family farm. (Especially knowing that they weren't paid the same earnings for what they produced as white farmers were.) In fact, if you look at programs like television programs like PBS' "Homecoming," you have to be wary of the propaganda they're selling. Still, it too is a valuable story about the feelings that linger in the souls of many black Americans about "Home" ... wherever that is.

I remember stories my mother told me about life on the farm and how during The Great Depression (..yeah ... some of those stories did get old...) they never suffered like people in urban America or farm workers who were in dust bowl areas... because they had everything they needed. Fresh food, farm animals, cows for milk, plenty of fresh water that ran through their land ... even horse and buggy if the gas ran out.

Even though most financial forecasters aren't sounding the alarm bells of a new depression any time soon, there are plenty who are saying that the next ten years ... and for sometime thereafter, we may be in for "Sinking Globalization" and "The Muddle Through Decades."

I don't know about you, but at age 53, I've learned from experience, that black people don't do too well in recessions ... especially a series of recessions! I was born near the end of the Baby Boom ... and it seemed like every time I stood in line, and finally got my turn at bat, game was either over or called for rain.

I attest that in Capitalism 101, to have a top, you have to have a bottom.

I assert that the playing field is not fair and never will be fair when it comes to us ... unless we can gain far more economic and moral power than we have today.

Owning land has always been one of the quickest routes to wealth. Americans seem to love to move ... and now the bulk of who is moving .... is moving to either the left or the right coast. Both are already over crowded. [SEE: http://www.city-data.com/forum ]

THERE'S NO MORE ROOM LEFT ... and still they're moving in. More rats in the cage means lower earnings, lower quality of housing, more traffic jams. Just this morning I heard a radio story about a new computerized fast lane in Minnesota or someplace. As global funds decrease, you can bet State and local authorities are going to be squeezing us for as much as they can.

Isn't it a far more logical decision to confront our fear of change, and do something different?? The definition of insanity is what? Yes ...

"Doing the same thing over, and over again, expecting different results."

African American mental health isn't all that good right now ... and with increased stressors, there will be more crime in the hoods, and more self-medication for all the drama, and yes, more mental illness. It's time to go!

So Much Land To Be Free In

2006-12-04T17:17:00.000-08:00

During the Great Depression, many people fled the drought-stricken region that stretched from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle. The struggles of those who stayed are the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan who follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains during the Depression, going from sod huts to new framed houses to basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out.

One of the most powerful and thought provoking aspects of "The Worst Hard Time" is the fact that the Midwest has never recovered from the Dust Bowl exodus. Even to this day, farmers in the Midwest going bust. "All across the Grain Belt stand abandoned homesteads, symbols of untold stories of failure, flight from the land, and even suicide." They leave behing land, farm homes, barns, etc...

Perhaps to entice urban-weary Brits, even the BBC did a story on Mid West Farmers Going Bust. But the Reverse Black Migration Movement is not about trying to become prosperous farmers as much as it is getting out of the way of the insanity and ever increasing cultural doom that life in Urban America is for us. Therefore, land with a farm house and out buildings, electricty, and water already on it is a huge gift just waiting for us. I dream of small Intential Communities of like minded black people with vision seeing this opportunity and sizing it.

A common Buddhist quote is: "Everything Changes." Sadly, what is true for the "American Farmer," may be a good thing for black people seeking to join the "Back To The Land" movement. (Click here for Wikipedia’s write up.)

Heretic or "New Theology"? Bishop Charlton Pearson

2006-12-04T15:46:00.000-08:00

Have you ever stood outside... some place where it's hot, and just wished for a breath of fresh air? Well, I just felt one while listening to NPR. It wasn't a great, cool, "Winds of Change"kind of breath ... it was just a faint one ... a small whiff that moved the grass tops just a bit ... so faintly that you could miss it if you weren't paying attention. I'm always talking about why American (and especially Black America) needs to update its theology, knowing that we'll never be a monolythic people, SEVERAL updates ... hell ... newer versions completely are in great need. But I'm getting a head of myself.
The story was about a modern American "Heretic" and "This American Life" began the story with:

"The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson (pictured), an evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the Reverend, he was denounced by almost all his former supporters, and today his congregation is just a few hundred people. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse ... he stopped believing in hell..."

The power of this story is not that the good Revern got himself in trouble by using his God given brain to actually think about his subject ... it was that ... well, it's a viewpoint long overdue.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" goes the old saying. Well, it's obviously broke and the current nation-wide Meth / Crack / OxyContin epidemics prove it. Transpersonal Psychology says that addicion is a spiritual emergency.

In, "Reality Isn't What It Used To Be," Walter Truitt Anderson discusses the strange combination of issues we're currently walking around feeling ... or choosing not to feel. "We still have the same pre-modern Gods, yet we live in a postmodern world and it seems the theologians haven't kept up pace with the Space Age we entered 30 years ago ... let alone define The Divine in our post-modern, alienated, fantasy-fueled, drama ruled dysfunctional world of The New Millennium.

We're still battling with worn out, premodern concepts like:

"God took my parents" *sniff* (where? ... um ... WHY??)

God as Santa Claus (i.e. "If I'm a good boy, God will give me a new Mercedes!")

If Jesus Chist lives only at MY church ... what's going to happen to good old Hapka at work?

So ... what exactly should religion do for us?

Religion is supposed to help us make sense of our world.

It's supposed to help us see The Divine increasinly in ourself and in others.

It should give us the faith we need to be adults. (It's said you can't be a man without faith.)

It's tasked with providing us with enough strenght to embrace "The Other" ... and the other isn't just the man or woman we hope to marry ... in todays world ... it's pretty damn near every body other than the person walking around in our shoes ... most days...

We obviously have enough guilt and shame. Guilt and shame are the key ingrediants for addiction ... as well as for Mental Illness... so shouldn't we have more guys and gals like Bishop Pearson walking around instead of fearfully nailing him OUT of the chruch ... because ... well ... because he's showing the emperor's lack of clothing ... despite all the money we've been giving so he could buy some?

A Few Black Stats

2006-11-30T12:05:00.001-08:00

A few stats...

65% of black children grow up without a father
1 out of every 32 Americans are either in prison, on probation or on parole
Black women are three times more likely to be sent to prison than white women
The Number One killer of young black men age 25 and under is AIDS

Wanna See What You're Missing?

2006-11-29T17:49:00.000-08:00

Some black people will look glance at this blog and agree with its premise immediately. Others will need more convincing. So take a quick look at your room, studio apartment, or home in the hood, and then look at what you can have for shockingly cheap when you move out of the chaos and into nature.

United Country.com Just type in a state you're curious about or perhaps the home state of "your peoples"... and be prepared for shock and awe....

Ranch & Country.com Don't stop there. The web is full of possibilities. On the day I pulled up this page, they were featuring a "rustic cabin" in Colorado for $148,900.

The links above are simply the tip of the iceberg. Here's a scenic little country home ... national forest on 3 sides, a spring-fed pond, sheds and a barn on 36 acres for only $149,000!

Raped His Mother?? Time to Leave

2006-11-29T16:48:00.000-08:00

Gary Helms, Jr. raping his MOTHER. (You know how them Alabama boys like ta take things in hand... sometimes ...) If not, it's important that I reprint the post because it is an illustration of how toxic this culture has become.

A shocking crime in AlabamaPolice in Albertville say 19-year-old Gary
Helms, Junior is charged with raping his 45-year-old mother. Police say he did it to seek revenge against his brother after the two argued over a girlfriend.

The police report says Helms' mother was passed out drunk on the couch when
the rape started. She came to and recognized her son during the attack. The police report says his mother tried to get away but Helms held her down until he was finished.

Albertville police Sergeant James Smith says Helms confessed to the attack and was ordered held in the Marshall County Jail on a $100,000 bond.

"From what we understand the rape stemmed from an argument between him and his brother. And apparently they were arguing over a girlfriend. And the rape was some sort of retaliation towards his brother ... it's just pretty much a shock to the conscious of the general public."
Just when that was bad enough, today I was discussing the story with a sister (my age) who does Domestic Violence Work, and she calmly said:

"I'm not shocked at all by that.

""WHAT??" Was my responce.

"Black women have increasingly been having sex with their male sons for some time now. When this first came to light, I didn't want to believe it either. Then a boy sent me a poem he wrote ...."

You enter when I'm in the tub,
You wash my hands
Then you wash my body
Then you wash my penis
Then you kiss my penis
I try in vain not to be arouseand
....you tell me I'm your little man

For a long time we've discussed the demoralization of black men ... of men in general. But a culture can go no higher than it's women. When we've demoralized them ... or allow them to become demoralized ... it's over.

There is no "Next Generation." The kids are already beyond being "in trouble." It may take a long time to get past these Dark Days. It may take us several generations. In the mean time, I'm through with working in the non-profit world ...

Mental Health? It's filled with sociopaths and shit throwing schizophrenics who need five or six firemen and police to hold them down.

Homeless? Ahhh ... poor little 49 year old homeless vet ... why you still going in and out of prison? Ahhh ... here ... let me help you ... and in the process ... you look upon me as yet another Mark for your sociopathic vengeance ... because you can't feel anything else anymore ...

Substance Abuse? Ahhh ... poor wittle meth feind ... Crack wasn't enough, eh? Still in fear of feeling an adult feeling? Still in torment that you might recall ... even for a second ... some of the havoc you're wrecked on any and everyone who's ever tried to help or reach out to you? Ahhh ... and now your behavior mirrors someone with a Borderline Personality Disorder 'cause you want EVERYBODY to loose ... and the none of them can feel love anymore. None of them can truly love (as an unselfish adult does) any more. All they can feel is some measure of pleasure when they think they've made you suffer because you just didn't feel like kissing their rotten butts that day.Naaa ... time for me to get a farm somewhere ... and it's past time for them to reap what they've been sowing all these "gansta" 25 past years.

*spit*

"When families can't create love ... they create drama."

Creating Successful Black Culture

2006-11-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

"Like iron shapens iron, men
shapen men."

When I think about what it will take to once and for all, set down in stone, who we are as a people, one of the main things that comes to mind is the fact that we'll have to revise our image of what a man is.

You can say what you will about white America, but two things we do know that has helped their culture rise and create strength greater than most others, and they are:

THEY STICK TOGETHER ... right or wrong ... regardless of what is SAID, in the final analysis, the Republicans and the Democrats are on the same page when it comes to White Supremacy and controlling wealth and the means to power. They can argue fuss and fight about all the rest, and will even love and marry you ... but when it comes down to "you" and "them" .... "them" sticks together!
Men who know how to be MEN, teach other men. They can make all the John Wayne "rugged individualistic" movies they want ... but when they view that movie and when you view that movie, you can bet there's a different message being sent. For them, the message is what it takes to rule. For non-whites, the warped message someone gets translated into: "I don't need no-body telling me nothing! "I'M AN INDIVIDUAL!!"

We will need to do many of the same things that successful cultures do. That means, we will
need to use all parts of our society. At no time will we expect a large portion of black America to join one group of thinking that is striving in one general direction, but I do believe that if successful, those who do, will have a huge, major impact on all the rest.

In short, we will need to use men willing to work and learn integrity ... regardless if they are totally heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual ..... urban-sexual ... et al. The main thing is that they learn what to do with that most sacred part of their body, and to mature their emotions to the extent they can create love, safety and long term continuity in homes and in the New Black Village.

We will talk more about the extremely complex issue of sexuality later. Right now I'd like to end by telling you about a little motif of words that ran along the walls of an up-scale ice cream parlor in Portland, Oregon. The words were:

"If Michelangelo had been straight, he'd have painted the Sistine Chapel flat white."

Reasons For Self-Determination

2006-11-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

Okay ... so we can say that the lighter side of planning out our own long term survival on this planet is to simply stop "shitting ourselves" in front of God and "everybody" else on the planet. In short, by engineering our future, we not only have more fun and enjoy more profit, but we discontinue to long practice of being "played."

No more should we allow mainstream mis-leaders to co-op bits and pieces of our "kulture" and paste it in a misshapen image and face it back toward our young ... and instruct them that if they now want to be black, they must turn themselves into sociopaths.

(...Yeah, and far too many others folks who identify with being disenfranchise end up following suit too ... and then .. there goes your right-side car window and the glove compartment is all busted open ... all in search for the .35 cents you left in your ashtray two months ago, that is now going towards somebody's next hit of crack.)

"All living beings must:

have food
have shelter
have someone to love
have someone to be loved by
and a means to self-actualize themselves.

~Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

We ain't getting that these days. So ... who's fault is that? Yep. (ours) Time to get busy.

Backwards Migration --South!

2006-11-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

From the NPR website:

"The black farmer, working hard for his own, became the living symbol of the strong, independent black man," Williams writes. "Farming also allowed black families to move into other businesses, from funeral homes to preaching to construction, and thus served as the bedrock of all black wealth in America."There is a current "Reverse Migration" going on. Just as large numbers of blacks moved away from the rural South during the 30s, 40s and on into the 60s... so they are returning."

This site is all about getting out of toxic "Urban Centers" (a.k.a. "Cities") and either moving to a rural location alone, with your family, or with a new community you either join or create. Black Solutions will soon add a discussion forum for creating just that. (Amongst other things.)

By now I'm sure you've all read that there is currently a "Black Migration back south" going on. Leading the charge south are college educated blacks lured by large amounts of cheap land, nice roomy houses, and roads that separate you from your neighbors instead of thin walls. The fact that large numbers of blacks remain in the south adds spice to the seduction."Many blacks left not only because of economic opportunities but because of the political and social constraints of segregation," said Charles Ross, historian and interim director of the African-American Studies program at the University of Mississippi. "Those things have changed dramatically in the South."The Brookings Institution reported (May, 2005) that decades of vacating Dixie are reversing. "The New Great Migration", is officially listed as the period between 1965-2000. During the Fatter part of the '90s, the South was the only region in the U.S. that saw an increase in black residents.

African Americans migrated in great numbers away from the rural south during the period between 1910 and 1970. The left for both better living conditions and personal and psycological safety ... you know ... lynching. Now that official Jim Crowe laws have been eliminated and racial terrorism outlawed, blacks are free to hear the call of the original homeland of our ancestors.Personally I'm craving the feel of a used tractor and the smell of an old barn to explore. I want to raise big dogs, wonderfully healthy vegetables, and fresh fruits. I want to feel my muscles firm up from building fences in the hot summer sun.

Urban life is killing us. Plain and simple. People who carry the same cellular memory as their forefathers who walked out of Africa and peopled the earth, are now afraid of a camping trip to their local regional park. I want to trade neighbors who fear they cannot live without drugs and alcohol for wild turkeys cackling in the distance. I want the screech of an eagle to be my morning alarm clock and wonder how my roosters are alright ... instead of worrying about the windows on my parked car.

In the weeks ahead, I'll chronical the many reasons why like many (black, white, brown and yellow) are feeling the urge to move to the country too. Hope you check in with me from time-to-time.

Let's Focus on Solutions

2006-11-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix it, but...

Black Solutions asserts that Urban America has become a terminal disease that is killing black folks. (Sounds funny, right?) We don't need to run down all the facts and figures, 'yall know them...

Despite all the killings, AIDS is now the Number One cause of death for black men 25 and under. (And no, they ain't catching nor transmitting the virus by themselves.)

The Public Health System is now officially overloaded. They don't have enough money nor grant services to provide individuals with known cures they already have.
Black Theology (black churches) are soooo out dated... still preaching that same old Santa Claus version of God, that didn't keep pace with the Space Age we entered 30 years ago... let along this alienated, technocratic, "New Millennium." Transpersonal Psychology says that "Addiction" is a spiritual emergency. Hence, we need ways of interpreting our current time in ways that will allow us to release our guilt and shame (not the guilt and shame of old Moses and his crew) as well as inspiring hope and showing us The Divine in This age.

We could be here all day just listing the problems, but it's better to go right into some of the solutions.

Check out Dr. Ridgely Muhammad of Muhammad Farms. The page is dated 2003, but maybe this will get you into some research. Leave a comment or two if you find something of worth.

Then have a look at what Paul and David Roach are doing with the West Oakland Farmer's Market.

And Social Commentary from Art a.k.a. Frank Pembleton wrote:

"I've always said that Black people are a rural people, and that we weren't meant to live surrounded by concrete. This whole western urban environment is partly responsible for our jacked up mental, emotional, and physical condition. Half of what we call "Blackness" or Black culture is southern culture anyway. Black people are in denial about our southern roots, because for too long we have associated the south only with terrorism and pain. The white man has tricked us out of our birthright. We didn't just escape from the south, we were also driven from our true homes, not in the absolute sense, for the south isn't a specific place, but rather, rural living, amongst nature, with trees, grass, vegetables, and flowers, is where we should really be. Folks don't even understand. This urban environment is partly responsible for the insanity around hypermasculinity. The whole construction of Black male identity as being only about "hardness" or toughness is directly tied to this urban nightmare we're trapped in."

What we're up against: http://www.ewg.org/reports/blackfarmers/execsumm.php

Why rural or farm life is one of the best choices for what ails us currently.

Land provides self determination. I remember my parents telling us how people who lived on farms like theirs back in Mississippi, were immune to the horrors of The Depression.

When you own your own cow:

You have plenty of fresh milk
You have fresh cheese
You have cream…

When you own your own chickens:

You don't have to wonder what you'll eat for breakfast
You can even experiment with new omelets styles

When you grow your own vegetables:

You don't have to wonder what type of pesticides are on your tomatoes
You don't have to beg or steal

~You are healthy.
~You have dignity
~You are happy
~You don't see the insides of a Kaiser Stress Clinic
~The only boss you have is the bank … and God

This isn't a lifestyle change for everyone. Yes you can easily find 5-10 acres of land with a 3-4 bedroom house on it for under $150,000 (and MANY times under $100,000) in rural communities throughout the south and midwest, but you have to have ways of making money BEFORE you buy. This will work best if you deally:

You have done your research and have started making money through the internet ("new economy")
You are NOT afraid of hard work
Want to live out your life peacefully or raise healthy children
You are a business owner and you find a rural place about 45 minutes outside of a larger city (esp. one with a college or university)
You're self-employed ... i.e. as an artist or writer
You have a valuable trade
You're involved with medicine, teaching, Biotech or hightech.

There are plenty of internet sites that will show you plenty of opportunities.

Urban life ain't getting no better, and unless you're very skillful in a LEGAL career field, it most likely won't provide you with anymore opportunities than it has in the past.

The Purpose of Black Solutions

2006-11-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

This blog is intended to:

Provide creative solutions for the problems that currently face African Americans
To avoid the traps of remaining stuck in "Victim Status"
To hopefully provoke thought
... and occassionally insight humor