It’s time to Break It Down!

After 233 years and 115 Associate Supreme Court Justices, last week President Biden, as he promised in his campaign, nominated the first Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). When Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement (pending, until the end of the current term), President Biden indicated that he would name his nominee by the end of the month (February). Last Friday, February 25^th, the President introduced Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

While the headline will lead with Black woman, it should be noted that Judge Jackson has a wide array of legal experience. She is known to have exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character, and unwavering dedication to the law. Biden wanted someone committed to equal justice under the law, and who understands the profound impact that SCOTUS decisions have on the lives of American people.

Judge Jackson is widely regarded as one of the nation’s brightest legal minds and has an unusual breadth of experience in the American legal system, all of which when combined, gives her the perspective to be an exceptional Justice. She was Student Body President in High School, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, and cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was also an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Her career highlights include serving as a law clerk for Justice Breyer, served as a public defender, representing defendants who did not have the means to pay for an attorney (if confirmed, she would become the first former federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court.), served as Vice Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, served as a district court judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and served in her current capacity as an appeals court judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

During his announcement of her nomination, President Biden described Judge Jackson as “a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer, and a distinguished jurist.” All traits and attributes one would think essential for a Justice of the SCOTUS.

However, in a post Trump (presidency) world, we have come to expect the partisan divide to be self-evident. Following the script, a number of conservatives were quick to express that they were less than thrilled with the President’s nominee. The next day in a Fox News opinion piece, Carrie Severino, who heads the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, called Jackson “a politician in robes” and accused her of being bad for business, soft on illegal immigration, and hostile toward the pro-life movement.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Biden’s decision to consider only Black female candidates for SCOTUS would “humiliate” and “degrade” America. According to The Guardian, he said, “You should be elevated in America based on what you do … not on how you were born, not on your DNA, because that’s Rwanda.” This is where I ask you to recall the opening sentence of this post. The part that notes a Black woman has never been nominated, to say nothing of confirmed, in 233 years, and 115 prior nominees.

In response, WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin called Carlson’s comments “the perfect distillation of White supremacy.”

In a piece he wrote for The Week W. James Antle III argued that Biden should have chosen Judge Michell Childs, who would have gotten more Republican votes but would not have made the Democratic Party’s progressive wing quite so happy.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said I understand that Judge Jackson was the favored choice of far-left dark-money groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the Court itself. With that said, I look forward to carefully reviewing Judge Jackson’s nomination during the vigorous and thorough Senate process that the American people deserve.

Senator Lindsey Graham said, “If media reports are accurate and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the SCOTUS nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.”

While the GOP tide is decidedly slanted against Judge Jackson, a few conservatives have begun to express dissent. Yesterday, Lawyer William Burck, in a statement obtained exclusively by CNN, said of Jackson that “no serious person can question her qualifications to the Court and to my mind her judicial philosophy is well within the mainstream.”

Burck’s statement comes on the heels of similar endorsements by retired conservative judges J. Michael Luttig and Thomas B. Griffith, Republican appointees, who both sat on federal appeals courts. Their positions are at clear variance from the comments noted by the naysayers above.

All things considered, it is anticipated that after a spirited confirmation process, Judge Jackson will be confirmed. Undoubtedly, President Biden, ever the optimist, hopes several Republicans will, after meeting with Judge Jackson, and conducting confirmation hearings, vote for her, making her confirmation bipartisan. If not, however, it’s likely all 50 Democrats will support the President’s nominee, and Vice President Harris will seal the deal. Let’s just say, it’s about d… time. “SCOTUS Watch: We Have A Nominee!”

I’m done; “holla back!”

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/kbj/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/25/politics/supreme-court-ketanji-brown-jackson/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/01/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-nomination/index.html

https://www.republicanleader.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/mcconnell-statement-on-judge-ketanji-brown-jackson

https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/lindsey-graham-declared-that-the-radical-left-has-won-as-biden-selected-judge-ketanji-brown-jackson-for-supreme-court-seat/articleshow/89833844.cms

It’s time to Break It Down!

As we queue up the last full week of February, it turns out timing is propitious. Coinciding with the fourth and final installment in my BHM ’22 Series, a jury in Brunswick, Georgia delivered the verdict in the cases of Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan; guilty on all counts in the federal hate crimes trial. The trio was previously found guilty in November, for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

The presiding Judge, Lisa Godbey Wood, spoke to each defendant along with the attorneys advising them they have 14 days to file any post-trial motions, and that the U.S. probation office would conduct a pre-sentencing interview before scheduling a sentencing hearing. The defendants showed little to no emotion.

The jury foreperson was one of three Black jurors. She was emotional during the court’s reading the verdict, and wiped away tears, while the jury was being polled.

Arbery’s parents, Wanda Cooper-Jones and Marcus Arbery, Sr. looked on attentively as the clerk read the verdicts. Leigh McMichael, Travis’ mother, and Gregory’s wife, watched stoically. After all the verdicts were read, Mrs. McMichael was the only person who remained seated. The Arbery family and their supporters, along with the prosecuting attorneys were on their feet, embracing and congratulating each other.

Judge Woods thanked the jury and recognized both sets of attorneys. She told the prosecutors they had a “difficult task” due to the nature of the charges and told the defense counsel that although they were court-appointed, they represented their clients zealously. She added, no one need wonder whether the defendants got a fair trial or whether the attorneys were skillful – they did and they were.

The verdict was rendered yesterday, “Twosday,” one day before the two-year anniversary of Mr. Arbery’s murder, and two days short of three months after the three defendants’ murder conviction.

During the course of the hate crimes trial, prosecutors established that all three defendants spoke privately and publicly about Black people using inflammatory and derogatory language, including racial slurs.

During Monday’s closing arguments, prosecutor Tara Lyons underscored that Arbery was killed because he was Black, saying:

“The defendants did not see 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery as a fellow human being.”

Arbery was out for a jog when the defendants killed him. Now, after the second trial, the verdict is in…“Black History Month (BHM) Week 4: Guilty on All Counts!”

I’m done; “holla back!”

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/ahmaud-arbery-killing-hate-crimes-verdict/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/22/us/ahmaud-arbery-hate-crime-trial-tuesday/index.html

It’s time to Break It Down!

Twelve years ago, in February 2010, I wrote a series of 4 profiles on African Americans, 3 of whom were little known.  While their exploits were dramatic in all four instances, they were simply fundamentally, even stunningly life altering in some cases. In 2012, I synthesized the material from those four posts into one digest, which I reposted in 2019. I am reprising again today.

We live in an age in which, despite the ubiquitous nature of the Internet and the pervasiveness of the 24-7 news cycle, the names, exploits, and accomplishments of luminaries such as Henrietta Lacks, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Alexander Manly are enmeshed in an historical nebula; present, but barely known or visible.

By contrast, speak or write the name Barack Obama, and due to a variety of factors, almost anyone you meet in the civilized world is capable of spouting off a vast array of factoids, real, imagined, true or false.  As POTUS, President Obama certainly earned all the notoriety he amassed, while the relative lack of knowledge about Lacks, Brown, and Manly is in no way an accurate reflection of their relative importance.  All made important contribution to life, as we know it in America; at least one altered the dynamics of medical history around the world.

Alex Manly, who was African American, was also a descendent of Charles Manly, North Carolina’s 31^st Governor.  In 1898, Wilmington held the dual distinction of being North Carolina’s largest city, and predominantly black.  Mr. Manly was the editor of the Wilmington Daily Record, the only black-owned newspaper in the United States at the time.  He wrote a controversial editorial with both racial and sexual implications.  The piece was so super-charged that it is cited as the catalyst for the infamous November 10, 1898 Wilmington race riot. The gist of Manly’s editorial comments is aptly distilled in this quote:

• “Our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with the colored women.”

The rest is history; it took three months, but in November, after the August editorial that included that quote, Wilmington burned…and Manly and the robust black leadership class fled the city.  Manly was an example of a bold and defiant voice that emerging black leaders would demonstrate in the American South and across this country in the coming years.  The reaction of much of Wilmington’s white citizenry was equally clear, and at that juncture, more powerfully defiant.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was a native North Carolinian who was educated in Massachusetts, and who returned to her home state to lead an all-girls’ school, which she later transformed into a Junior College.

Ms. Brown made her mark fostering and improving African American achievement, especially among women.  Her considerable legacy includes:

• Active involvement in the National Council of Negro Women
• The first black woman to serve on the National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association
• Retired in 1952 as President of the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute, better known as Palmer Memorial Institute (PMI), the school she founded in 1902
• Ultimately responsible for educating more than 1,000 African American students who attended PMI between 1902 and 1970, when it closed

Henrietta Lacks is not from North Carolina (she hailed from neighboring Virginia), but her story’s impact permeates not only the Tar Heel (and Old Dominion) state, and the rest of the country, but spans the entire globe.  Ms. Lacks, who lived a short life, by almost any measure, died of cervical cancer at age 31 in 1951.  Posthumously, she would go on to have an inordinate impact on cancer treatment as well as several other serious diseases, all over the world, through cells removed prior to her death.  The essence of her story is that:

• Researchers at Johns Hopkins discovered a scientific breakthrough related to Ms. Lacks’ cells. In a departure from anything the scientists had seen before, the cells culled from Ms. Lacks continued to grow, outside of her body, and after her death. In fact, they did not just survive, they multiplied. In a circular irony, cells from Ms. Lacks’ culture were used to help Dr. Jonas Salk develop a vaccine for polio in 1955. Of course, Ms. Lacks had marched to help find a cure for that disease just four years earlier.

Unarguably, the Barack Obama story is one that most Americans are familiar with, at least tangentially.  President Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a Kansan mother, was born in Hawaii, graduated from Columbia University, and Harvard University Law School, and went on to become a Chicago community organizer.  Oh yeah, on November 4, 2008, he was elected President of the United States.  As such:

• He became the 44th American to serve as our nation’s President.  As POTUS, he was at the epicenter of national and world news coverage on a daily basis. His address, at the time, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, is among the most famous in the world; his title, Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces is one of the most revered. As President of the United States most people considered him the most powerful man on the planet.

One of President Obama’s historic appointments was the selection of Eric Holder as Attorney General (He also subsequently appointed Loretta Lynch, also an African American, who filled the position when General Holder stepped down to pursue other interests).  That would hold special significance this month anyway, as Mr. Holder is African American.  It has taken on an added dimension however, as Dr. Sharon Malone, Mr. Holder’s wife, distinguished in her own right, shared a part of her family history in a 2019 PBS Special, in which she detailed how her Uncle Henry, born nearly 30 after slavery ended officially, was one of thousands of black men arrested on fabricated charges and forced into labor camps and compelled to work without pay.  As Dr. Malone told the story, she asked that we:

• Imagine that this “convict leasing” system saw the groups of prisoners sold to private parties – like plantation owners or corporations – and that it was not only tolerated by both the North and Southbut was largely ignored by the U.S. Justice Department.
• Now, imagine that nearly a century after your uncle served 366 days in this penal labor system, you find yourself married to the head of the U.S. Justice Department, who, ironically, just so happens to be the first African American in the position.

There are many reasons why this information is not just historically significant, but contemporarily relevant.  None is more compelling than debunking the idea that the vagaries and vicissitudes of slavery and its variant offshoots no longer plague our society in general and African Americans in particular.  As Dr. Malone put it:

• “I want people to understand that this is not something that’s divorced and separate, and this doesn’t have anything to do with them.  If you were a black person who grew up in the South, some way or the other – whether or not you were directly involved in the system as my uncle was – you knew somebody who was, or your daily lives were circumscribed by those circumstances.”

Unless you are part of Dr. Malone’s immediate family, her Uncle Henry is likely even more of an unknown to you than Alex Manly, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Henrietta Lacks.  Yet, his story is as irrevocably interwoven into the fabric of African American and American History as that of President Obama.  In fact, African American History is American History.  Over this month, by all means, take at least one more moment to reflect on the fact it’s not just a month, it’s every single day, 24/7/365…“Black History Month (BHM) Week 3: Chronicles of the Evolution of American Life Redux ’22!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com/http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com. A new post is published each Wednesday. For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:

http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2010/02/profile-in-black-history-part-1.html

http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2010/02/profiles-in-black-history-part-2.html

http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2010/02/profiles-in-black-history-part-3.html

http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

http://www.eurweb.com/2012/01/eric-holders-wife-tells-her-story-in-pbs-slavery-by-another-name/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5s8ccKepCms

http://soundcloud.com/cherienic/dr-sharon-malone-of-pbs

http://foxhallobgyn.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65&Itemid=84

http://www.zimbio.com/Sharon+Malone/articles/6/New+Attorney+General+Wife+Superwoman+Doctor

http://video.pbs.org/video/2178379179/

http://www.blackchristiannews.com/news/2012/01/eric-holders-wife-dr-sharon-malone-shares-her-story-in-pbs-documentary-slavery-by-another-name.html

It’s time to Break It Down!

This past Sunday morning, the start of the second week of BHM, residents of a Houston, Texas neighborhood awoke to find White Supremacist flyers on the windshields of their cars, and in some instances, on their front doors. In last week’s post, I discussed a number of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s) receiving bomb threats in week one of BHM. The beat goes on.

William White, director of operations for tha Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in discussing the matter with CNN, said of the event, “This is horrifying.”

The flyer is entitled, “2026: A Race Odyssey.” It warns, “Think about it! At the current rate of decline, what will America’s major cities look like in ten years?” The center of the flyer depicts a racist caricature of African Americans in negative racial stereotypes. The pamphlet provides a web address for recipients to follow. CNN opted not to show the flyer, due to its racist and offensive nature.

Mr. White added, “I do believe that this is about voter intimidation. There is no place for that in the city.”

While February is BHM, the next election, the primary, in Harris County is March 1. Early voting starts next Monday, February 14.

White is not revealing the name of the neighborhood, due to safety reasons, but he does indicate it’s a diverse community. At least four residents received the flyers, although others may be afraid to come forward to report the act. Moreover, none of the residents are willing to speak with reporters; however, one of them did call his office to report the incident. CAIR is investigating. White hopes they may be able to get some information from area security cameras, as the perpetrator was disseminating the flyers. 

Mr. White is still gathering evidence to present to Harris County law enforcement and the FBI. He also hopes elected officials denounce the racist act. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said deputies took an incident report from a resident, which they will forward to their internal Homeland Security Bureau.

The FBI issued the following statement:

“The FBI Houston Field Office is aware of the incident involving the distribution of white supremacist flyers in a Northwest Harris County neighborhood and we are in regular contact with local authorities. FBI policy prohibits confirming or denying an investigation. However, if during the local investigation, information becomes known of a potential federal civil rights violation, the FBI is prepared to investigate. The FBI is the lead investigative agency for criminal violations of federal civil rights statutes. In October 2021, FBI Houston launched our participation in a nationwide initiative that encourages the public to report allegations of hate crime to law enforcement.

This appears to be at least the second time the group targeted a neighborhood with White supremacist flyers in the Houston area. Last November, Telemundo Houston, a Spanish language network, reported that racist flyers, with the group’s logo, targeted a neighborhood of immigrants. Those flyers were titled: “Wake up, White America!”

About the incident, the Southwest Regional Anti-Defamation League Director, Mark B. Toubin stated, “We are concerned about a recent flurry of extremist propaganda distributions in ADL’s Southwest Region. The racist flyers found recently in northwest Harris County are particularly vile and disgusting and it is understandable people who found them in their yards would be outraged and upset. We applaud the good people who recognize the message in the flyers is hateful and wrong. The flyers are designed to attract attention to the individuals and organizations who disseminate them, and we appreciate those who reject the flyers and the disturbing message they contain.”

Just as with the bomb threats, the jury is still out on the individual(s) who carried out this despicable act. There are a host of voices figuratively screaming at their highest decibel levels, trying to convince anyone who will listen that: 1) Racism is no longer a substantive issue in America, 2) Those who focus energy on trying to eliminate it are the problem, and in fact, are the real racists, and 3) That anyone teaching American students historical (and obviously contemporary) facts about racists acts that occurred/are occurring in this country, is a purveyor of Critical Race Theory (CRT). The facts beg to differ. Are you listening? You really should. In 1961, James Baldwin uttered a now famous line. “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time. ”Welcome to…”Black History Month (BHM) Week 2: This Is America!”

I’m done; “holla back!”

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/08/us/houston-white-supremacist-flyers/index.html

It’s time to Break It Down!

There really are other things I considered writing about today. In politics, there’s Trump and his pledge to pardon bad actors from the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, one Republican candidate encouraged supporters to go to the polls locked and loaded, while another, urged partisans to unplug voting machines if they saw anything they didn’t like. On the flip side, a GOP Senator praised a prospective Biden nominee for the Supreme Court. Also, a Democratic senator had a stroke, jeopardizing the Party’s hope for attaining a 50+1 majority for measures or initiatives President Biden of Leader Schumer might hope to get through the Senate. In sports, we are in the fortnight pause leading up to the Super Bowl, the widely acclaimed GOAT, Tom Brady officially announced his retirement, via Twitter, and my personal favorite, Andrew Wiggins was named a starter in his first NBA All-Star Game. Congratulations Cuz! However, I get lots of pushback from people who aren’t interested in politics, and who couldn’t care less about sports. After surveying the contemporary topical landscape, it occurred to me, one of the subjects, people find less appealing than politics or sports is…oh yeah, race.

Timing is everything. Yesterday just happened to be the first day of February, A.K.A. the introduction to Black History Month (BHM) – 2022. While I appreciate the tributes and observances associated with BHM, I am quick to note that I, as are all Black Americans, am Black every month, and the reality is, BHM is for White people. We know what we brought to the party.

So, as it happened, yesterday, the start of BHM, over a dozen HBCU’s, that’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities for the acronym challenged, were assaulted by bomb threats. The list is even longer if those recently receiving threats are counted, but yesterday’s victims include, Alcorn, Coppin State, Edward Waters College, Fort Valley State, Howard, Jackson State, Kentucky State, Mississippi Valley State, Morgan State, Rust College, Spelman, Tougaloo College, the University of DC, and Xavier. Howard was peppered with a double dose, also having received a similar threat Monday.

Other HBCU’s receiving threats in recent days are Albany State, Bethune-Cookman, Bowie State, Delaware State, and Southern.  All the threats are being investigated at this time. While no bombs have been found, the threats had to be taken seriously, and have proved to be the source of major disruptions across all the affected campuses. Typical response measures due to threats of this type are shelter in place/lockdowns, on-line classes only, and postponed classes. In the face of no bombs found, which is without question a good thing, it would appear the tactics were intended to instill fear and intimidation, at the very least.

I understand there are those who feel weary from what may seem to them, a never-ending discourse on race. If so, consider the experiences of the students at those 19 colleges and universities. This is just the latest in a seemingly never-ending torrent of aggressions, micro-aggressions, and other slights. “Black History Is American History: Welcome to Black History Month – 2022!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/01/us/hbcu-bomb-threats-tuesday/index.html

It’s time to Break It Down!

Covid-19 has run rampant throughout the United States. The issue has divided the nation into masking vs. anti-masking, and vaxxers vs. anti-vaxxers. One of the latest controversies to emerge is Gonzaga University suspending the season tickets of its most famous alum, NBA Hall of Famer John Stockton. While the current rage in NBA circles centers on The LeBron vs. Jordan GOAT Debate, most of us have forgotten just how much Stockton brought to the game.

To provide context, while no one suggests he is the GOAT, Stockton’s imprint is lasting. He has one, possibly two records that may never be broken, in addition to his ironman legacy. First, he amassed 15,806 assists. For perspective, the active assist leader, Chris Paul, has 8,672 assists after 16 seasons. Stockton has 3,715 more than Jason Kidd, who is in second place. It’s often said, records are made to be broken. Chances are, if the NBA assist record is ever broken, it will be by someone not yet playing in the League. Stockton also has a healthy lead in NBA steals, a category in which he accumulated 3,265. Chris Paul is also the active leader in that category, with 2,002. Also, as with assists, Jason Kidd holds down the Number 2 spot, with 2,684. The separation is not as great here, but keep in mind, Kidd has been retired for more than 8 years. Chris Paul doesn’t have that many active years left. Someone may surpass him, but it won’t be Paul. Finally, in a category that is difficult to even fathom, Stockton played 16 seasons without missing a game, and played all 82 games in 17 of his 19 seasons. That doesn’t even account for playoff games.

As impressive as Stockton’s metrics are, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, formerly Lew Alcindor, is, or at least should be, in the discussion for GOAT. When he retired, he was the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. Sidenote, LeBron James may actually play long enough to surpass Jabbar’s point total. However, Kareem also won a league-record six MVP awards, six championship rings, two Finals MVP awards, 15 NBA First or Second Teams, and a record 19 NBA All-Star Games. He was a two-time NBA Scoring Leader, and a four-time NBA Blocks Leader, the 1970 Rookie-of-the-Year, and holds Retired Jerseys in Milwaukee and Los Angeles…to go along with a statue in front of what was the Staples Center, now the Crypto.com Arena.  

So, what made this relative stat comparison germane? Here’s how it started.

In an interview with The Spokesman-Review, Stockton confirmed he is no longer allowed to attend basketball games at Gonzaga University, his alma mater, because he refuses to comply with the school’s COVID-19 mask mandate. The NBA’s all-time assist leader starred at Gonzaga for four seasons from 1980-84 before a 19-year Hall of Fame career with the Utah Jazz.

In first person, Stockton described it this way:

“Basically, it came down to, they were asking me to wear a mask to the games and being a public figure, someone a little bit more visible, I stuck out in the crowd a little bit. And therefore, they received complaints and felt like from whatever the higher-ups — those weren’t discussed, but from whatever it was higher up — they were going to have to either ask me to wear a mask or they were going to suspend my tickets.”

The 59-year-old, who appeared in a documentary last year promoting COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories, also asserted that more than 100 professional athletes had died after taking the vaccine. 

While there is no scientific data that supports Stockton’s claims, this is what he asserted:

“I think it’s highly recorded now, there’s 150 I believe now, it’s over 100 professional athletes dead — professional athletes — the prime of their life, dropping dead that are vaccinated, right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court.”

That’s where Kareem entered the discussion.

Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar criticized Stockton for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. The NBA legend, who has been an outspoken advocate for the vaccines, previously called out Lakers star LeBron James for comparing COVID-19 to other illnesses.

Of Stockton, he said, “I think statements like [Stockton’s] make the public look upon athletes as basically dumb jocks for trying to explain away something that is obviously a pandemic, and the best way to fight pandemics is through vaccination and testing. Those are the means by which we identify the problem and do our best to mitigate it.

I don’t understand anyone saying anything else that makes sense. It doesn’t make sense what he’s saying. This is a preventative measure that has been useful in many different circumstances.”

I’ve have tried to remove myself from the center of this debate. Principally, I decided that I would no longer argue with adults about their need to take steps to protect their health, not to mention the health and well-being of those who they love, and who love them. I can now take comfort in the NBA’s leading scorer doing it for me. “Battle Of Hall Of Famers: Kareem Calls Out Stockton’s Mask Mandate Defiance!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/kareem-abdul-jabbar-reacts-to-nba-legends-anti-vaxx-conspiracy/vi-AAT5GHE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareem_Abdul-Jabbar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stockton

It’s time to Break It Down!

Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Over the years, I’ve written a post about Dr. King, the holiday, and how it came to pass. Today, I am again revisiting a post I initially wrote and posted Wednesday, January 19, 2011, and that I reprised January 18, 2017, January 17, 2018, and again, January 23, 2019, examining the advent of the King Holiday. It’s been 36 years since the initial observance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday (MLK DAY), and 39 years since President Reagan signed the MLK, Jr. Holiday bill into law. Contemporary events continue to remind us that now is an apt time to look into the rearview mirror of time.

After over three decades of inculcation into the very fabric of our society, it may be largely forgotten that the conceptualization, submission and continual resubmission of the idea, the enactment, and the gradual national observance, was not the product of universal acceptance of a grand and enlightened concept, but rather, was emblematic of the civil rights struggle itself; steeped in controversy, and the eventual victory of a relentless movement to achieve richly deserved, and long overdue social justice.

Several members of Congress, a number of states, and even a President, using a host of creative means, sought to undermine, outmaneuver, sabotage, subvert, and otherwise derail the efforts of the measure’s proponents. Ultimately, the movement was consolidated, snowballed, and would simply not be thwarted.

The effort to create a King Holiday was started by U.S. Representative John Conyers, Michigan, shortly after Dr. King’s death, in the spring of 1968. It was first introduced in the House of Representatives in 1979, but fell 5 votes short of the number needed for passage in the Lower Chamber.

High profile opponents to the measure included Senator Jesse Helms, NC, Senator John McCain, AZ, and President Ronald Reagan. Both Senators voted against the bill, and Senator McCain publicly supported Arizona Governor Evan Mecham for his rescission of MLK Day as a State Holiday in Arizona. The campaign however, reached a critical mass in the early 1980’s. Spurred on by Stevie Wonder penning a song in King’s honor called, “Happy Birthday,” a petition drive to support the campaign would attract over 6 million signatures. It has been called the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. History.

Buttressed by what had become a wildly successful public campaign, Congress soon followed suit. The proposal passed in the House by a vote of 338-90, and in the Upper Chamber by a vote of 78-22. Given the dimensions of this overwhelming support, in the form of bicameral veto-proof votes, President Reagan signed the provision November 2, 1983, and it became Federal Law. The first observance under the new law took place January 20, 1986, rather than on January 15th, Dr. King’s birthday. A compromise in the legislation specified that the observance take place on the Third Monday in January, consistent with prior legislation (Uniform Monday Holiday Act).

Of course, that was not the end of the story. It would take more than 30 years after Dr. King’s death before the Holiday was fully adopted and observed in all 50 states. Illinois holds the distinction of being the first State to adopt MLK Day as a State Holiday, having done so in 1973. Twenty years later, in 1993, for the first time, some form of MLK Day was held in each of the 50 States. 

It was not until 2000 that South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges signed a bill to make MLK Day a paid holiday for State employees; giving the Palmetto State the dubious distinction of being the last of the 50 States to do so. However, Mississippi also sets itself apart by designating the Third Monday in January as a shared Holiday that honors the memory of Robert E. Lee and Dr. King…two fine southern gentlemen.

Last summer after entertaining a whirlwind, on again off again, job offer at UNC, journalist, McArthur Fellow, Pulitzer Prize winner, and UNC alum Nikole Hannah-Jones opted to choose Howard University as her next employer, over UNC. Ms. Hannah-Jones, who gained notoriety for her work on the 1619 Project, has become a lightning rod for discourse around issues of civil rights, and the much-ballyhooed topic known as Critical Race Theory, #CRT. 

This week, NH-J was invited to give an MLK speech on Monday. She discovered that a few members of the group hosting her wrote and subsequently leaked emails opposing her giving the speech. Those who opposed her felt it dishonored Dr. King to do so and characterized her as a “discredited activist” “unworthy of such association with King.”

This insight motivated her to call an audible. She scrapped her original speech and spent the first half of her speech reading excerpts from several of Dr. King’s speeches…without revealing that they were his words. She subbed BLACK for Negro, to avoid dating the material and giving away the fact that it was from over half a century ago. Literally, that’s all it took to transport to 2022.

Here is some of Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 2022 MLK, Jr. Day speech:

“It was in the year 1619 that the first BLACK slave was brought to the shores of this nation. They were brought here from the soils of Africa and unlike the Pilgrim fathers who landed here at Plymouth a year later, they were brought here against their will…”

“White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society…The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism…”

4:

“The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. A nation that continues year after year to spend more $ on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

“The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges…”

“These are the same people that now say to black people, whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat; that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps…”

“What they truly advocate is Socialism for the rich and Capitalism for the poor… “We know full well that racism is still that hound of hell which dogs the tracks of our civilization.”

“Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the ? of race, she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy.”

“The fact is, there has never been a single, solid, determined commitment on the part of the vast majority of white Americans to genuine equality for Black people.”

“The step backwards has a new name today, it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there…”

“The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.”

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance…with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that BLACK AMERICANS HAVE come far enough.”

“…for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality and that racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.”

“If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.”

“Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Black people are sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to THEM those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America?”

“I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the BLACK for their freedom…”

Oh, the uncomfortable silence as I read Dr. King’s words at a commemoration of Dr. King’s life when people had no idea that these were his words. When I revealed that everything I said to that point was taken from his speeches between ’56 and 67… Can you say SHOOK!

Then I read all the names that white Americans called King: charlatan, demagogue, communist, traitor — and brought out the polling showing more than three-quarters of Americans opposed King at his death while 94 percent approve of him now.

I left them with this: People who oppose today what he stood for back then do not get to be the arbiters of his legacy. The real Dr. King cannot be commodified, homogenized, and white-washed and whatever side you stand on TODAY is the side you would have been back then.

In fact, most white Americans in 1963 opposed the March on Washington where Dr. King gave the “I Have A Dream Speech” with that one line that people oppose to anti-racism like to trot out against those working for racial justice.

When the speech was over, Father Pfleger, who had been cheering me on from the crowd, whispered in my ear: That’s what you call the “You Gone Learn Today” speech and I . Because, yeah.

“This is why the 1619 Project exists. This is why the decades of scholarship that undergirds the 1619 Project exists. Because if we do nothing, they will co-opt our history and use it against us.”

Dr. King was a radical critic of racism, capitalism and militarism. He didn’t die. He was assassinated. And many, including Regan, fought the national holiday we’re now commemorating. “If you haven’t read, in entirety, his speeches, you’ve been miseducated & I hope that you will.”

As it was in 1622, 1722, 1822, 1922, and yeah, remains in 2022… MLK, Jr.: Quotes You Don’t Remember…Or Perhaps Never Heard (Relayed by Nikole Hannah-Jones).

I’m done; holla back!

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1483187472276328449.html?fbclid=IwAR3Gq0hLX0vDKCRlP693LO4TBL9-jWsBZnPiUg5Nqmf–T2c63h3l3BCwu8

It’s time to Break It Down!

In 2014, a 9-year-old girl wrote then-President Obama a letter suggesting that Harriet Tubman’s likeness adorn the $20 bill. In 2016, The President warmed to the idea and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said the Government would release a “final concept design” for the bill in 2020. However, after a change in administrations, subsequently, in May of 2019, Trump Administration Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced that the new design would not be unveiled until 2028. Many of the initial reports suggested that the delay was precipitated by Mnuchin slow playing the process. Upon further inquiry, several Obama era officials have stated the 2020 date was unrealistic, and that the timing for release of the new bills remains on schedule.

Meanwhile, this week, the United States Mint announced it has begun shipping quarters featuring the image of poet Maya Angelou, the first coins in its American Women Quarters Program.

Angelou was born, Marguerite Annie Johnson, April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, but became a North Carolina transplant, where she resided in Winston-Salem until her death. She was an author, poet, and Civil Rights activist. Her initial rise to prominence was fueled by the success of the publication, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in 1969. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou, who died in 2014 at the age of 86 (May 28), was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 by President Barack Obama.

The coin which depicts Ms. Angelou’s likeness has a design that shows Angelou with outstretched arms. In the background, there appears a bird in flight and s rising sun, images inspired by her poetry. The new mint program will issue 19 more quarters over the next four years, including 4 more this year; all honoring women and their achievements in shaping our American History.

Future 2022 honorees include physicist and first woman astronaut, Sally Ride, first female principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Wilma Mankiller, a leader in New Mexico’s suffrage movement and first female Superintendent of Santa Fe Public Schools, Nina Otero-Warren, and the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, Anna May Wong.

Senator Catherine Cortez Mastro, D-Nevada, the Senate sponsor of the legislation directing the Mint to issue the quarters honoring women, applauded the Mint’s selection of Angelou for the first coin. She said:

“This coin will ensure generations of Americans learn about Maya Angelou’s books and poetry that spoke to the lived experience of Black women.”

It’s a long way from the $20 bill to a quarter. That’s a gap worthy of a blog, in and of itself. But not today. There’s too much else worthy of investing energy on…like President Biden’s voting bills…but I digress. This post is about a deserving author, poet, and civil rights activist. “Maya Angelou: She’s On The Money!”

I’m done; holla back! 

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman

It’s time to Break It Down!

From time to time, I run across a story which, for my purposes, there is simply nothing to add. Today is one of those times. Thursday is the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt; an effort to overturn the duly executed election of the President of the United States. As is warranted, a serious discourse about this subject has ensued over the course of the past year. The country is split over the matter. Meanwhile Donald Trump has continued doubling down on the big lie. Below, the writer explores the countervailing notions that helped fuel the actions of January 6th, and also explain the existence of the ideological fault lines that cause so many Americans to line up on different sides of this issue and others that similarly divide us.

Dr. Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in ethics and political values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of “Stokely: A Life” and “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.” The views expressed here are his own. This Opinion appeared on yesterday’s edition of cnn.com.

Two opposing historical forces have the power to shape American democracy in 2022. These worldviews took shape in the aftermath of the Civil War and have, ever since, undergirded America’s legal and legislative systems, national policies on voting rights and criminal justice and our understanding (or, at times, denial of) of historical memory since 1865.

Centuries later, Americans exist between these two 19th-century poles — reconstructionist and redemptionist — and their opposition deepens the 21st-century social fractures confronting us about everything from classroom curricula to voting rights to the notion of truth itself. Understanding the deep roots of these contemporary conflicts is crucial to any effort in 2022 and beyond to thwart their toxic effects on US politics — and the lives of everyday Americans. 

The racial and political reckoning of 2020, one that spilled over into 2021, played out in large part based on the framework of American democracy that came into being during the Reconstruction period. That’s because the clash between the reconstructionist and redemptionist perspectives was, at its heart, a battle over the story we told the world and each other, about ourselves and our country. That battle continues and will likely define the politics of 2022. 

Reconstructionism grew from the effort to interpret the period after the Civil War as a second American Founding. Abraham Lincoln said as much during his famous Gettysburg Address in 1863; the war, he explained in a mere 270 words, would give America “a new birth of freedom.” Reconstructionists embraced the potential in these words to achieve a new country based on multiracial democracy — long before the modern civil rights movement in the 20th century.

Historians sometimes refer to the violent racial backlash that followed as Redemption. The “redeemer” South, populated by vengeful ex-Confederates and a resentful White working-class, vowed to reject any hint of Black equality and regarded Reconstruction as a political and moral disaster. 

Over time, from the late 19th century until the 1960s, and with a reach that carried well into the 20th century in ways that are still visible today, they successfully reshaped American memory regarding the cause of the Civil War. They enshrined myths and lies of Southern nobility into history textbooks, films, and popular culture — and found willing allies (first in the Democratic Party) in the Republican Party of the late 1960s who, in pursuit of economic greed and political stability, betrayed the struggle for Black equality they had once supported. 

They did so at the expense of the nation’s soul — and this struggle continues to play out in our own time. 

It’s happened quite literally in the public square. Monuments in praise of the Confederacy that sought to forever render Black Americans inferior — themselves erected in a concerted effort to fashion communities in a redemptionist image — took on new dimensions of complexity in the shadow of protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Likewise, BLM activists’ call to “defund the Police” were rooted in a Reconstruction-era criminal justice system that targeted Black people for punishment and whose determinations of Black criminality helped to facilitate the grotesque system of mass incarceration that America has today.

These Reconstructionist efforts to end the criminalization of Black bodies, in part by telling a fuller history of how racism shaped the creation of American law enforcement, clashed in 2021 with redemptionist attacks on teaching this history at all. The national controversy over so-called Critical Race Theory and how America’s history of racism should be taught in our classrooms grew louder, even as physical manifestations of redemptionism — Confederate monuments and symbols that dot the nation’s built environment — were removed. 

Late in 2021, news that the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia — the one that helped to spark the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 whose violence may forever mar that city’s landscape — will be repurposed as a work of art helped to illustrate the as-yet-unfinished reckoning with the legacy of the Confederacy. That rally left one woman dead and recriminations that reached all the way back to the White House, where Trump infamously proclaimed that there “were good people” on both sides.

This Lee statue, one of many erected in tribute to the Confederate General who famously surrendered to Union Chief Ulysses S. Grant outside the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia in April 1865, will be transformed by a local African American heritage center into a piece of public art that affirms, rather than denigrates, the ongoing search for racial justice in America. Another Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia, the headquarters of the Old Confederacy, has been removed with the statue and its enormous pedestal scheduled for transfer to the city’s Black History Museum. The Lee statue will become part of a public art effort, Swords into Plowshares, designed to transform symbols of racial hatred into evocative works of public memorial.

This has already occurred in Richmond, where, two miles from the place where the statue of Lee once stood, a new “Emancipation and Freedom Monument” consisting of two 12-foot bronze statues has been erected. This public art display, in contrast to symbols of the Confederacy, memorializes and celebrates the abolition of slavery and the resilience of the Black family symbolized by the statues of a man, woman, and infant child. 

These efforts at repurposing memorials and symbols related to America’s history of racial violence is part of a larger process that may lead to national healing. Consider the recent efforts to atone for a massacre and coup d’etat that took place in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898 and left hundreds dead — a brutal imposition of White political rule after the progress of Reconstruction. 

On November 10, 2021, 123 years later, the city buried Joshua Halsey, a Black man shot 14 times and buried in an unmarked grave. Researchers uncovered his remains, and while the 47-year-old father of four never lived to see an America not threatened by his dreams, his descendants — some of whom were in attendance at his funeral, along with some of Wilmington’s residents and local leaders — might.

Wilmington’s and the nation’s shame in this remarkable instance turned into an opportunity for shared mourning across color lines and political divisions. “There are so many people in our community who had no clue,” Linda Thompson, the chief diversity and equity officer for New Hanover County (where Wilmington is located) told the New York Times. “They are certainly trying, wanting to know more.” Such an example offers a path forward toward the creation of a new politics that is not held hostage by the continual stranglehold of ancient grievances. 

After the grotesque display of violence, privilege and racism at the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection, those who insisted “this is not who we are” were not entirely incorrect. The wildly unhinged (and modern-day redemptionist) attempts to overturn a federal election and to minimize the ongoing threats to our democracy for that purpose are not all of who we are. 

The ongoing battle between reconstructionists and redemptionists will shape American politics in 2022 and beyond. Whether they are the backdrop to the anniversary of January 6, the challenges confronting the Biden-Harris administration or the GOP’s anticipated success in the midterm elections, these competing worldviews continue, for better and worse, to forge our national identity. But they do not predetermine our destiny unless we let them. “What Goes Around Comes Around: 2021…1865 Mindset All Over Again!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right-hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/04/opinions/january-6-conflict-started-in-1865-joseph/index.html

It’s time to Break It Down!

During this holiday week, here’s a reprised edition of “Break It Down!”

This Issue has been revised from the Break It Down post I originally conceived, created, and published December 29, 2010, and subsequently re-posted in amended formats December 28, 2011, December 31, 2014, December 30, 2015, December 28, 2016, January 3, 2018, January 2, 2019, December 30, 2020 and today, December 29, 2021. This is my final post of the month, and of the year 2021. This is the 757th Edition of Break It Down, which debuted August 20, 2007 on the BlogSpot platform. I migrated the principal site to WordPress August 3, 2012, approximately three weeks before the Fifth Anniversary of the blog.  You may find this and most other posts at either site.

With this post I wish you a blessed and bountiful Happy New Year. Now, enjoy today’s blog post.

The one-half fortnight between Christmas and New Year’s Day is a unique occurrence in the unfolding of the American version of the Gregorian Calendar.  It is the only instance in which the space of a mere seven days separates two major holidays. Unquestionably, the timing is propitious.  Even in a second year dominated by the coronavirus, millions of holiday travelers are returning home from their Christmas commemoration and revelry, just in time to get a day off to “celebrate” the New Year…and recuperate from the old, most notably their extracurricular activities, including the exploits of New Year’s Eve. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I hope to the extent feasible, most people whose traditions include Christmas, celebrated, and plan to observe the arrival of the New Year, responsibly.

In last week’s post, I presented a re-formatted airing of my personally crafted Christmas Concert (https://thesphinxofcharlotte.com/2021/12/22/twelve-days-of-christmas-the-e-concert-2021-edition/) from past Noels. This week, I doubled down and revisited my trusty time capsule. Once again, this tack permits new readers to catch-up by seeing the piece, it allows long-time readers to reflect upon both the passing year as well as the theme lifted in the post, and finally, it ensures that those busy readers, with no time to invest in checking out a new blog during the holidays, will not have to miss anything. It’s a win, win…win!

With that loosely framed preamble behind us, here’s this week’s déjà vu all over again:

Since we are still in the Sweet Spot of the holidays, I shall practice minimalism. For your purposes, that means the blog should be available, but not intrusive. To that end, I am taking a page from the Christmas e-concert but going a step further. Instead of a concert, I give you a song…of reflection.

Robert Burns, a Scot, wrote a poem (Auld Lang Syne) in 1788 that has come to symbolize the spirit of mass contemplation that people around the world invoke as the clock strikes midnight, signaling not just the dawn of a new day, but of a new year. Undoubtedly, you have been somewhere, at some time, when you joined those assembled to sing Auld Lang Syne, which loosely translated means, Times gone by.

Once again, that time is upon us. After thoughtful reflection, even during Covid, I have had no choice but to conclude, my travails have been few and small, especially when compared to my blessings, which have been both abundant and vast! All praises to the one true, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God; a mighty fortress is He.

No need to thank me for my inherent thoughtfulness. But, by all means, “Drink a cup of kindness,” or eggnog, or Champagne, or “name your favorite adult beverage,” for me. And, if you are a teetotaler, water will do nicely, thank-you!

As I complete my final post of 2021, and prayerfully and faithfully reflect upon another year framed by the narrative of COVID-19, I leave with you this familiar Irish Toast:

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind always be at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

And rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

I invite you to click on the links directly below, which lead to an A cappella and a Jazz interpretation of Auld Lang Syne, arranged and performed by the late Lou Rawls (and listen to the remainder of this week’s edition of Break It Down):

It has been my unique honor and privilege to visit with you briefly for each of the 52 weeks this year. I hope you have derived a fraction of the pleasure reading (and occasionally listening to) the blog posts, that I have experienced from preparing and sharing them with you. May 2022 bring you the fulfillment of all your fondest desires, including a winding down of the global Covid plague. As it is shortly after midnight here in the Eastern Time Zone of the U.S.A., I humbly invite you to join in wishing me Happy Birthday (tomorrow). Moreover, as we rapidly approach Saturday, it’s my esteemed honor, and pleasure, on this the eve of the eve of the eve of 2022, to wish you “Happy New Year: Here’s to Auld Lang Syne Redux – 2022 Edition!”

I’m done; holla back!

Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com. Find a new post each Wednesday.

To subscribe, click on Follow in the bottom right hand corner of my Home Page at http://thesphinxofcharlotte.com; enter your e-mail address in the designated space, and click on “Sign me up.” Subsequent editions of “Break It Down” will be mailed to your in-box.

For more detailed information on a variety of aspects related to this post, consult the links below:

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/question279.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auld_Lang_Syne