COVID, the Double Helix of December 25/26

 

COVID, the Double Helix of December 25/26, and Winter Solstice Omens for  2021

 

My first winter solstice (1943) was so perfect that I have no memory of it.  I reckon I do a far better job of recalling imperfection.

 

Today's sunshine-brightened dawn of solstice is framed by pandemic, the externals which so deeply and effectively give us but one rational choice: prudent mental and physical resistance.

 

This morning I watched the video of how Ayana Mathis orchestrated the photographing of 32 black male writers on November 30, 2018 at the Brooklyn Historical Society library.  That event was clever advertising for

ARCADY

GIORGIO ARMARI

TOMMY HILFIGER

VERSACE

PRADA

ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA

and several other designers of haute couture,  the excessively priced clothing  that distracts what is ultimately important as we gaze at actuality. At least at such actuality as the naked eye can behold. While the costuming of male bodies was symbolic acknowledgement of  exceptional talent and artistic prowess, it was at the same moment a disabling incarceration of targeted male bodies.  So much for our nation's ongoing reception of the gifts of black folk.  Or, as W. E. B.  DuBois put it, "…until the day comes when color caste falls before reason and economic opportunity the black American will stand as the last and terrible test of the ethics of Jesus Christ."  The ongoing presence of the test in the context of our nation's systemic racism is a mighty problem for the world's future.  When I gaze at the actuality of the problem, I think about the double helix of December 25/26, our annual asymmetrical sliver of time.

 

This line of speculating directs me to think of James D. Watson's The Double Helix (1968) and how the work of serious science constantly reshapes ideologies and worldviews.  Sugar-phosphate backbones and hydrogen-bonded base pairs.  Where is the oxygen we must have to continue our lives?  Is it in a Christmas/Kwanzaa brew?

 

This line of thinking about the sub-atomic directs me to Robert Sinsheimer's mind-scratching review of The Double Helix in the journal  Science and Engineering.  Sinsheimer's opening sentence demands pause and reflection:

 

"This is a saddening book for it reminds us of that which we would rather forget ----that in homo sapiens brilliance need not be coupled with compassion, nor ambition with concern."

 

Intensified by the mindsets that erupt during the current pandemic, these words assume a value they did not possess in 1968.  Back in that day, most serious social activists wore practical, affordable clothing.  They did not ignore dressing up from time to time, but compassion, charity, and concern seemed to trump "looking good" and being "sharp as a tack."

 

The winter solstice warns me not to discard values that are not fashionable, values that enabled my ancestors to get over so that I might be.  Actuality is all.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            12/21/2020 11:12:01 AM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CLA paper

CLA,   April 6, 2018 Jerry W. Ward, Jr. PHBW:   Negotiating the Ideas of Seven Writers [1]                 Founded in 1983 by Dr. Maryemma Graham, "The Afro-American Novel Project" (AANP) had the initial goal of identifying all published novels written by African Americans from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century.   AANP became The Project on the History of Black Writing (PHBW) in 1990 to reflect an enlarged vision and a more ambitious aim.   PHBW want to make a substantial contribution to what we then spoke of as our "Profession" by organizing bibliographic information and databases, sponsoring institutes and seminars, and by encouraging our colleagues to have rigorous engagements with all genres of black (African American) "writing" within   frames   of historical inquiry.                              The Project's   working frame was an   adaptation of the paradigm of unity in African American Studies , f
Read more

reading notes for September 23, 2019

Reading Notes for September 23, 2019 Eighteen years after the tragedy of 9/11 as I re-read Amiri Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America" (2001), two meanderings occur: 1) a chance temptation to ask what the term "pro-Semitic" can mean in the contexts of (a) Israeli and world politics and (b) to what extent the amount of foreign aid the USA donates to Israel truly matters, and 2) a more focused temptation to ask if Morrison's Playing in the Dark sheds light on the motives that govern projects devoted to discussions of slavery beginning with 1619. I suspect those projects are at once very literary and very political. Such speculations arose during a September 12 conversation with one of my former UNCF/Mellon mentees whose research on redemption now teaches me, the former mentor, a few things about the urgency of scholarship in the twenty-first century.   The journey forth happens in the cognitive territory of "universal enslavement,"
Read more

Musings, February 8-9, 2021

    MUSINGS OF THE DAY   The mother- and father-ships of sanity have landed   Let our enemies of whatever color they be know this as we eradicate them with the tools of insanity.   Mr. Ramcat informed me this morning that I need to tie up loose ends and thank all the people who have made my life a rich and satisfying experience of 77+ years.   If you deserve my gratitude, you know who you are.   Four quotations to brighten the day------   "I don't regret my years as a prosecutor assigned to juvenile court.   In some ways, I think it is why I was put on this earth." ---Daphne R. Robinson   "While there are books and articles concentrating on young black men in the social sciences and education, thee has been comparatively little input from scholars in the arts and humanities/" Howard Rambsy II   "The hashtag 'black lives matter,' which now rings prophetically through various quarters of the United States of America and int
Read more