Time to get started folks! Time to get back to basics.

Yes..These are still being made.

Now that oil is at $120.00 a barrel and the stations around here want about what seems to be $120.00 a gallon I started pursuing the local hardware store ads for you guessed it...a push mower.

I found a good one for less than $100.00. I called a neighbor and we zoomed down there to pick one up.

When we got there there were already a few people that had the same idea..because they had a few left in boxes unassembled.

I got it home and assembled it. There is nothing like the nostalgia of childhood when I had to cut grass as a kid with one of these. I wanted to put a big bow on it and present it to my oldest as a present but he still had not gotten over the last “present” I had given him..a shopping cart to haul groceries from the store.

It cuts really well. It is so quiet I could hear the bees this time as I started mowing around the mini-orchard getting in the way as I ducked under the blossoming trees to get the grass growing around them.

America has lived in grand denial. In the words of Baldwin, white supremacy has caused this nation to believe in rationalizations so fantastic it approaches the pathological. She has lived among slaves and masters and the descendants of slaves and masters far too long without any meaningful degree of reconciliation or compensation, even apology is long overdue. Other colonial societies such as the French and Australia recently apologized for colonialism, but not America, the chief colonizer of the modern world. She is mainly guilty of domestic colonialism, having enslaved the Native Americans, and then kidnapped millions of Africans who were brought to these shores for eternal servitude. After emancipation, America promised the freed Africans a few acres and a mule, but never delivered. She promised freedom after her slaves provided 200,000 troops who were decisive in the Civil War, but disarmed them and returned them to virtual slavery called Reconstruction, which was short-lived and essentially put the freed slaves in neo-servitude, at the whim of terrorists known as Klu Klux Klan.

White America benefited from four centuries of slavery and neo-slavery. The neo slaves fought in her imperial wars against fascism abroad but were subjected to fascism upon returning home. A few slaves benefited from slavery, even having slaves themselves, yet in the end found themselves facing the glass ceiling, especially when they refused to be running dogs for imperialism now called globalism. General Colin Powell is the most recent example. America duped him and made a fool of him before the world when he gave his fabricated United Nation’s speech to justify the invasion of Iraq. He was replaced with a more pliant Negress in the person of Condi Rice. We are urged to recognize racial progress in her shameful role as Secretary of State. We have achieved equality, for have we not placed ourselves (African Americans) in the position to be charged with war crimes, having justified the slaughter of a million Iraqi men, women and children in the unprovoked occupation and destruction of the jewel of Arabic culture and civilization?

But in our grand denial, blacks as well as whites will attempt to convince the world this point of view is left wing poppycock, the thoughts of a disgruntled segment of the black Americans who have failed to enjoy the benefits of capitalism, now globalism--no matter the disparities in birth and death, education, wage parity, housing, health care, homicide and suicide, in every aspect of Americana.

To mention race is to open a can of worms best left unopened because it makes Americans nervous, uneasy, and disturbed mentally if not physically. White Americans are made to feel guilty, thus etiquette demands no mention of race in civil discourse or casual conversation because we are all too sensitive and the endgame might be violence of the worse kind. And so we are mostly silent on the subject until this ugly monster of our body politic raises its head as it inevitably does from time to time, then after the most brief discussion, all sides are urged to sweep it under the carpet until the next round. Thus this racial drama continues ad infinitum without any real resolution and certainly no reconciliation.

We may have a plethora of interracial marriages with the resultant biracial children, yet nothing has been solved except for a kind of don’t ask don’t talk racial harmony, along with the children growing up in racial confusion called the tragic mulatto syndrome, whereby they try as best they can to choose sides in this racial drama without end. Clearly, Barak Obama is caught between the racism of his preacher and white grandmother. His endgame will be of great interest to the world at large, and even if he doesn’t become president of the US, he will have a role to play in racial politics globally.
Obviously, his persona is bigger than America, having an African father and a Muslim middle name (Hussein) than has endeared him to the Islamic world, no matter the outcome of the presidential election. With his now classic speech on race, putting himself in league with Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise and Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream, Obama, much to his dismay, has now become a Race Man, in the classic sense of that term whose definition escapes all but those of historical consciousness, which is most of us, black and white—except that we must now realize there is only the human race, except for those in league with me who claim membership in the Divine Race.

America’s Grand Denial can only be overcome by recovery from our racist white supremacy heritage, beginning by accepting the scientific definition of the human race (or Divine, if you agree with my spiritual notion), then entering a program of detoxification, recovery and discovery. Detoxification includes deprogramming our white supremacy values of domination and exploitation, including patriarchal authority and capitalist greed that has lead us to the present recession/depression worldwide. The free market economy is nothing more than pimping by gunboat diplomacy. You sell me your labor and natural resources at the cheapest price or I will take them at gunpoint, under the guise of bringing you democracy—an advance from the naked colonial era of spreading Christianity.

Recovery is discarding the Grand Denial that there is a problem or that the problem has been remedied, therefore stop making whites the villain and blacks the victim, in fact,
forget the entire matter—although blacks already suffer acute amnesia to the degree that they are a danger to themselves and others.

And who would tell a Jew to forget the Holocaust? And does not the Jew remind the world at every turn what the Germans did to them? We have a thousand times more right to tell the world what happened to us than any Jew, for our suffering lasted four centuries, not four or five years. For their four or five years (1939-1945) the Jews were given a state while we have not acquired one acre for four centuries (1619-2008) of slave labor and government sanctioned terror that even Hitler emulated with his destruction of the Jews.

In order to recover from the addiction to white supremacy, America must make a searching and fearless moral inventory; she must admit to God the exact nature of her wrongs; be ready to have God remove her defects of character (being saved by the grace of Jesus Christ has not and will not solve America’s white supremacy addiction—the white Christian mythology allowed us to be burned on the cross or lynching tree—yes, strangely similar to Jesus). Rev. James Cone suggests America can only recover from the addiction to white supremacy by coming to an understanding of the relationship of the cross and the lynching tree. Listen to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit and ponder the life of Jesus Christ. You have had Jesus in your midst for over four hundred years and crucified him on a daily basis, even unto this present hour. America must examine her census, her graveyards in the south and north, the bills of sale, the insurance policies, her jail and prison inmates, the mental hospital patients gone mad as a result of white supremacy addiction—then make a list of all the Africans harmed, the Native Americans, the poor whites treated worse than you treated niggers—then make amends to such people, including reparations in the form of land and sovereignty.

Discovery for America in general will be when she accepts the radicalization of her culture to bring it in harmony with the global village, which involves the dismantling of institutions that perpetuate domination and exploitation of her citizens and other peace loving peoples throughout the world.

If America persists in her Grand Denial, then she must prepare for her self destruction, for it shall come at the hands of the man in the mirror, not from any external forces.
--Dr. M

Dr. M is the author of How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, A Pan African 13 Step Model, Black Bird Press, POB 1317, Paradise CA 95967, $19.95. If you would like to attend a session of the Pan African Mental Health Peer Group to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, please call 510-355-6339.
Check out my blog:http://www.marvinxwrites.blogspot.com” title="Race in America"> http://www.marvinxwrites.blogspot.com

First of all folks, I must apologize for being a week late in getting this out, since I pestered my hard core writers to submit articles and I myself missed the deadline. But it’s all good. It has been a little over a year since we relaunched the newsletter.

As you can see...things are pretty much on ice and snow up here where I’m at. Marty the Monk that resides in my herb garden finally had enough snow melt around him to acually show his face for the first time in weeks, indicative of the social and political landscape that is shifting into place.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past several months, you should know that this country is now in a recession; it does not matter what the pundits on tv are saying....they have been smoking some really good herb in order to get on TV and tell everyone with a straight face that we are not. The Food and Drug Administration is in shambles, so much so that the entire food industry cannot be trusted to have food that is safe for human consumption.

Food prices have gone up noticeably, gas is forecasted to be at or above $4.00 by spring (which is less than a month away) and anything that is remotely linked to those indexes will also rise in price.

This means that we need to start to lessen the impact on our households which is already strapped for much needed cash. We need to start relying on ourselves to really provide what we need without relying on a government which at best gives band aid solutions and at worse is totally indifferent to us as a people- which is pretty much business as usual for them. However....there is a newfound sense of urgency. With the currency pretty much not worth as much if anything we will now have to start doing rather than spending in order to make ends meet.

So continuing in the spirit of self-determination and self-sufficency we will continue our mission to provide guidance and ideas to help you on your journeys...not matter how small or big they may be.

Wing Power, wave power, people power. Italian inventor Lucien Gambarota tries to capitalize on all three. VOA’s Paul Sisco explains in this week’s Searching for Solutions report.

Lucien Gambarota is a visionary, and his vision is a cleaner world.

He founded Hong Kong-based Motor Wave Limited in 2006. He explains, “Everything we are doing is related to one subject—energy. How do we transform the available energy around us?”

One of Gambarota’s current projects involves recycling and reinventing fluorescent lights. He says he has developed a system for breathing new life into spent tubes.

“I don’t know how to explain it, because it is so amazing that it works. The first time that I realized that we can do it, I was really amazed. It is possible that if we can make this system more available, there may be no more need for recycling of tubes because these tubes can last for thousands of years.”

Gambarota says he hopes to begin marketing a fluorescent tube, generator and mini-turbine package for about $200 later this year.

Gambarota has formed a partnership called “Powered by You” with a fitness chain to demonstrate his alternative lighting system.

“This is how we use it. We start with two batteries and then we have, same as we have with the wind turbine, we have an inverter that converts DC power into AC power and then it goes into the lights,” he said.

Dylan Wade is a director of operations for California Fitness. He says the partnership with Gambarota is a perfect match. “… a good marriage as far as, ‘Hey, I’m not just going to be healthy when I’m inside of California Fitness, but I’m also going to be responsible and making sure my environment is going to be healthy for the future as well.’ “

“California Fitness is a very typical example,” says Gambarota. “Human energy—how do we transform it and use it into something else and not just wasting it?”

At the Hong Kong Sea School, Gambarota’s patented micro wind turbine technology generates electricity at minimal wind speeds. He says, “Each turbine’s power is added to the next one, so here at the end is what we collect. (It) is the sum of all the energy collected there. This is like an addition machine. That is why it works.”

School principal William Hutchinson adds, “If we get about 10 knots of breeze, which is reasonable average breeze, we can power about 90 percent of this building.”

Gambarota says the conditions have to be right, the breeze sufficient and the roof large and flat. If that is the case, the company says Gambarota’s environmentally friendly turbines, made from recycled plastic, can cut energy expenses in half.

Yoruba Libation

Omi Tutu- May the water be cool.
Ona Tutu- May our paths be cool.
Ile Tutu- May our homes be cool.
Egun Tutu- May our ancestors be cool.
Ori Tutu- May our heads be cool.
Tutu Laroye- May a calm messenger precede all our prayers.
Olodumare ajuba gbogbo iku embeleshe- God, we give you homage and salute the ancestors that sit at your feet in counsel.
Olodumare ibaye ibaye tonu- We give praise to the owner of existence and those that made the sacrifices for life.
Ibashe Olojo oni- I call upon and give praise to the owner of this day.
Ibashe Ori: I call upon and give praise to my guardian/the extension of God within me.
Ibashe Irunmole: I call upon and give praise to all the primordial spirits.
Ibashe Orunmila eleri ipin ibikeji Olodumare- I call upon and give praise to you Orunmila, witness to all choice of destiny, second only to God.
Ibashe Esu: I call upon and give praise to you Esu.
Ibashe Orisha- I call upon and give praise to all the crowned heads/deified ancestors.
Ibashe gbogbo Egun wa: I call upon and give praise to all the ancestors of good character.
Ibashe to the head priest of all Ifa Adisa Mokanranwole.
Ibashe to all Oluwo and Babalawo of good character.
Ibashe to all Iyanifa of good character.
Ibashe to all Orisa priests of good character.
Ibashe to all Egungun priests of good character.
Ibashe to all those who have practiced Ifa before me.
Ibashe to all those who are practicing Ifa now with me.
Ibashe to all those who will practice Ifa after me.
Ibashe to all peoples of good character.

Ibashe Ibashe Ibashe O- I call upon and give you all praise, I call upon and give you all praise, I call upon and give you all praise, and may my prayers and praise be blessed and confirmed by you Olodumare.

Ase!!!

Below are some of the powerful teachings proverbs found in the temples of Luxor.

- The best and shortest road towards knowledge of truth is Nature.
- For every joy there is a price to be paid.
- If his heart rules him, his conscience will soon take the place of the rod.
- What you are doing does not matter so much as what you are learning from doing it. · It is better not to know and to know that one does not know, than presumptuously to attribute some random meaning to symbols.
- If you search for the laws of harmony, you will find knowledge.
- If you are searching for a Neter, observe Nature!
Exuberance is a good stimulus towards action, but the inner light grows in silence and concentration.
- Not the greatest Master can go even one step for his disciple; in himself he must experience each stage of developing consciousness. Therefore he will know nothing for which he is not ripe.
- The body is the house of God. That is why it is said, “Man know thyself.”
- True teaching is not an accumulation of knowledge; it is an awaking of consciousness which goes through successive stages.
- The man who knows how to lead one of his brothers towards what he has known may one day be saved by that very brother.
- People bring about their own undoing through their tongues.
- If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck.
- Leave him in error who loves his error.
- Every man is rich in excuses to safeguard his prejudices, his instincts, and his opinions.
- To know means to record in one’s memory; but to understand means to blend with the thing and to assimilate it oneself.
- There are two kinds of error: blind credulity and piecemeal criticism. Never believe a word without putting its truth to the test; discernment does not grow in laziness; and this faculty of discernment is indispensable to the Seeker. Sound skepticism is the necessary condition for good discernment; but piecemeal criticism is an error.
- Love is one thing, knowledge is another.
- True sages are those who give what they have, without meanness and without secret!
- An answer brings no illumination unless the question has matured to a point where it gives rise to this answer which thus becomes its fruit. Therefore learn how to put a question.
- What reveals itself to me ceases to be mysterious—for me alone: if I unveil it to anyone else, he hears mere words which betray the living sense: Profanation, but never revelation.
- The first concerning the ‘secrets’: all cognition comes from inside; we are therefore initiated only by ourselves, but the Master gives the keys.
- The second concerning the ‘way’: the seeker has need of a Master to guide him and lift him up when he falls, to lead him back to the right way when he strays.
- Understanding develops by degrees.
- As to deserving, know that the gift of Heaven is free; this gift of Knowledge is so great that no effort whatever could hope to ‘deserve’ it.
- If the Master teaches what is error, the disciple’s submission is slavery; if he teaches truth, this submission is ennoblement.
- There grows no wheat where there is no grain.
- The only thing that is humiliating is helplessness.
- An answer if profitable in proportion to the intensity of the quest.
- Listen to your conviction, even if they seem absurd to your reason.
- Know the world in yourself. Never look for yourself in the world, for this would be to project your illusion
To teach one must know the nature of those whom one is teaching.
- In every vital activity it is the path that matters.
- The way of knowledge is narrow.
- Each truth you learn will be, for you, as new as if it had never been written.
- The only active force that arises out of possession is fear of losing the object of possession.
- If you defy an enemy by doubting his courage you double it.
- The nut doesn’t reveal the tree it contains.
- For knowledge ... you should know that peace is an indispensable condition of getting it.
- The first thing necessary in teaching is a master; the second is a pupil capable of carrying on the tradition.
- Peace is the fruit of activity, not of sleep.
- Envious greed must govern to possess and ambition must possess to govern.
- When the governing class isn’t chosen for quality it is chosen for material wealth: this always means decadence, the lowest stage a society can reach.

- One foot isn’t enough to walk with.
- Our senses serve to affirm, not to know.
- We mustn’t confuse mastery with mimicry, knowledge with superstitious ignorance.
- Physical consciousness is indispensable for the achievement of knowledge.
- A man can’t be judge of his neighbor’ intelligence. His own vital experience is never his neighbor’s.
- No discussion can throw light if it wanders from the real point.
- Your body is the temple of knowledge.
- Experience will show you, a Master can only point the way.
- A house has the character of the man who lives in it.
- All organs work together in the functioning of the whole.
- A man’s heart is his own Neter.
- A pupil may show you by his own efforts how much he deserves to learn from you.
- Routine and prejudice distort vision. Each man thinks his own horizon is the limit of the world.
- You will free yourself when you learn to be neutral and follow the instructions of your heart without letting things perturb you. This is the way of Maat.
- Judge by cause, not by effect.
- Growth in consciousness doesn’t depend on the will of the intellect or its possibilities but on the intensity of the inner urge.
- Every man must act in the rhythm of his time ... such is wisdom.
- Men need images. Lacking them they invent idols. Better then to found the images on realities that lead the true seeker to the source.
- Maat, who links universal to terrestrial, the divine with the human is incomprehensible to the cerebral intelligence.
- Have the wisdom to abandon the values of a time that has passed and pick out the constituents of the future. An environment must be suited to the age and men to their environment.
- Everyone finds himself in the world where he belongs. The essential thing is to have a fixed point from which to check its reality now and then.
- Always watch and follow nature.
- A phenomenon always arises from the interaction of complementaries. If you want something look for the complement that will elicit it. Set causes Horus. Horus redeems Set.
- All seed answer light, but the color is different.
- The plant reveals what is in the seed.
- Popular beliefs on essential matters must be examined in order to discover the original thought.
- It is the passive resistance from the helm that steers the boat.
- The key to all problems is the problem of consciousness.
- Man must learn to increase his sense of responsibility and of the fact that everything he does will have its consequences.
- If you would build something solid, don’t work with wind: always look for a fixed point, something you know that is stable ... yourself.
- If you would know yourself, take yourself as starting point and go back to its source; your beginning will disclose your end.
- Images are nearer reality than cold definitions.
- Seek peacefully, you will find.
- Organization is impossible unless those who know the laws of harmony lay the foundation.
- It is no use whatever preaching Wisdom to men: you must inject it into their blood.
- Knowledge is consciousness of reality. Reality is the sum of the laws that govern nature and of the causes from which they flow.
- Social good is what brings peace to family and society.
- Knowledge is not necessarily wisdom.
- By knowing one reaches belief. By doing one gains conviction. When you know, dare.
- Altruism is the mark of a superior being.
- All is within yourself. Know your most inward self and look for what corresponds with it in nature.
- The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground.
- The seed includes all the possibilities of the tree. ... The seed will develop these possibilities, however, only if it receives corresponding energies from the sky.
- Grain must return to the earth, die, and decompose for new growth to begin.
- Man, know thyself ... and thou shalt know the gods.

This project has been years in the planning, months in the making, and days in acually getting it started....The hard-core, die hard grower in me refused to sit idly by and spend yet another winter thumbing through seed catalogs dreaming of the next season.  I had a workshop that was sitting idle and collecting gardening tools which to me is a huge waste of this particular space. As of yesterday it is a green house....Albeit a messy one with no plants but it is one now.

Last week we did a complete roof tear off of the old roof, put on ice and storm shield and tar paper. We then cut out holes for the sky lights, installed the sky lights, put the flashing on and then proceeded to shingle the roof accordingly....often working waaaaaaaaaaaay past sunset and plummeting temperatures. It has once again for me been a race against the weather...since as of today I have a snow advisory for my area (about 4 inches expected) tonight. As you can see by the pictures (because there was no way I was getting back on that roof today) we are almost done with the shingling. The roof is sealed but we tried to get as much done anyway.

This picture is of the inside...we will start the insulation of the greenhouse most likely next week.....when the temps warm back up a bit.

For those of you who are still growing and gardening...I will be joining you again soon!

This is my least favorite part of the season.

Clean up.

Pulling the half dead plants that have struggled after getting through the first few freezes. It was time to put them out of their misery and thank them for hanging in there for what has been a very trying season. Mulching leaves into the grass and tilling the main garden over.  Four Hours of work later I stand on top of the lowest part of my roof to take it all in. And, to snap this picture of the sun beginning to set for the day.

The season goes all too fast too soon up here.

With the low temperatures starting to be consistently in the 30’s starting next week it was only a matter of time before this would have had to be done.
Now to start planning for next season......or better yet- grow some indoors!  Do both!

Do you know any Black males who are seniors in high school who want to go to college out of state for FREE? Several Black Colleges are looking for future black male teachers and will send them to universities/ colleges for 4 years
FREE.

The “Call Me MISTER” program is an effort to address the critical shortage of African American male teachers particularly among South Carolina ‘s lowest performing public schools. Program participants are selected from among under-served, socio-economically disadvantaged and educationally at-risk communities. The program is a collaboration between Clemson University and four historically black colleges in South Carolina : Benedict College, Claflin University , Morris College and South Carolina State University .

The project provides:

a. Tuition for admitted students pursuing approved programs of study at participating colleges.
b. An academic support system to help assure their success.
c. A cohort system for social and cultural support.
Visit http://www.callmemister.clemson.edu/index.htm for more details and the online application or call (1-800) 640-2657.

PLEASE FORWARD TO AS MANY FRIENDS/FAMILY SO THAT THEY CAN ALSO SPREAD THE WORD.