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 internationally, suggest that liberal idealism has only half-lived up to its promises.

Stefan M. Wheelock

 

"The question for me is less how the state constructed citizenship or black citizens  or how texts about black people produced a black civic presence  or black (in) humanity  and more how black theorists thought about and mobilized citizenship within and without legal constructions through their own collaboratively developed texts and spaces."

Derrick R. Spires

 

 

A segment from INSTALLMENTS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

In the antiquity of my youth, I delight in re-inventing Tougaloo College as a magic kingdom for growth and development.  Whether we say so or not, for those of us who belong to the Class of '64, Tougaloo was magic, a unique opportunity to learn inside and outside the classroom.  Our raw intelligence, severely compromised by domestic terrorism in the State of Mississippi, was nurtured by teachers who truly cared for our futures, for our survival in a world of amorality crude and refined.

 

From out of somewhere remote from pandemic and the complex troublems of 2021, the spirits of those who had an indelible impact on my beliefs arise.  I have in mind such college teachers as  N. J. Townsend,  St. Elmo Brady, Ronald Schnell, Ernst Borinski, Rhoda Voth, and Elizabeth Sewell and the Tougaloo graduates ---Alton Joseph, Flora Lawrence, Roy Banks, Roy Long,  and Mamie Martina---the teachers at Magnolia High School in Moss Point, Mississippi who did good work in the world. I praise all of them for teaching me how to spin webs of excellence.

 

Following instructions from Mr. Ramcat (C. Liegh McInnis knows better than anyone else who and what Ramcat  is), I remember Dr. Elizabeth Sewell (1919-2001) and listen to what she is saying for a world elsewhere.  Like Hamlet's father she is saying "remember me."

 

As I dance between Speculative Reason and Practical Reason (common sense), I remember Dr. Sewell for her constructive criticism of my horrible efforts to write poetry, but most of all for her books  The Field of Nonsense 91952), The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History (1960) and The Human Metaphor (1964) and for her introducing us to Karl Polini  and Edward Charles "Ned" O'Gorman.  I am remembering Elizabeth Sewell in order to remember what is unfinished and shall always be so about the history of education at HBCUs.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            February 8, 2021

 

 

MUSINGS  #2, February 9, 2021

 

Writing during a pandemic  is like writing during a time of war or writing under the threat of genocide and terrorism.  Horror informs liberation.  Driven by a sense of things coming to an end, writers may give special attention to small details and the complex torture of being alive.  People who still believe that close reading of texts and events has value position themselves to think critically. They are not 100% correct or 100% incorrect.  They dwell in the middle ground of the perpetually  uncertain. They have a love affair with the uncertain  and the never to be answered. 

 

In the atmosphere of pandemic, writers magnify the what was always there and taken too easily for granted,  In whatever genre they write ---non-fiction, poetry, fiction or drama ---, these writers bear witness to the fragility of the "normal."  Some of us thank them for exposing "the normal" as a grand illusion.

 

Writers deal with the actual from conflicting perspectives or ideologies.  As they deal with daily events or instances of the past coloring a future,   they suggest  that denial of rainbow promises is dominant in the USA, that denial intensifies the sense of division among American citizens. Denial is our daily trauma.  Denial promotes doubt that our nation shall overcome divisiveness, shall overcome the desire of Proud Girls and Boys to destroy democracy.

Life may seem to be an institution that enslaves us to beautiful ignorance, that kills us with Faith, Hope, and Charity and material disinformation.  This false vision is a paper dragon we can defeat with fire. Writing is the fire.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            February 9, 2021