Henry Lee Faulkner USN Ret. retired in 1983 as a Chief Navy Counselor, born Henry Lee Faulkner July 22nd, 1944. The youngest of three sons, to parents who migrated from the south in the late 1930s. At an early age, he established a tenacity for work, spearheaded by a labor-intensive father. He developed an inquisitive personality, nurtured by his maternal grandfather. He became an avid reader, way before his teenage years, under the persistent coaching from his mother.
Righteous minds must travel in unison. In a divisive world, truth through knowledge is paramount, with factual history as the cornerstone for growth. Then, and only through sharing from the Seat of our Souls, be the gateway to amalgamation. Circumventing or hiding facts is the same as building a wall, a virtual wall mightier than the walls of Jericho. With this mindset, I employ the autobiography of George Dawson, “Life is so good,” which has come into the limelight of critical race theory. A Texas school district has deemed parts of his book inappropriate for middle school students. . The growth of inquisitive minds must travel the road of truth. Mr. Dawson’s strength and serenity can be commanding, factors that can be encouraging from a man at the age of 98.
I read the hard copy some years ago and recently listened to the Audible version. Mr. Dawson and I were of the silent generation but years apart in age and demographics. The morality of our existence seemed to parallel. His work ethic mirrored Grandpa Charlie Hurt. When I spent the summers, I never saw Grandpa sleep, not even a nap, and he self-taught himself to read through the Bible. The difference between Mr. Dawson and myself is that I got to go to school. This book is a must-listen for more than one reason. Noting in the story gives it an R rating, but the causality of rejection becomes apparent as you listen.
I believe the ultra-conservatives don’t want students in their formative years to read challenging literature about this nation’s history because seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed and marginalized people. Creates understanding and empathy, causing their children to ask questions. Questions that would be uncomfortable to answer.
Life comes in a multiplicity of nuances and innuendos. Perception of things will not always equate to the truth being told. Beliefs and faith are often likened to experience rather than the demonstration of Godly Love. All in all, the best example of truth is in the consciousness, which resonates in the power of Love, consistently displayed from one to another, and more so than ever by thy mother. Mother’s Day will be upon us in four weeks, a time of reflection on the exquisiteness of their Love. I’ve searched my mother’s archives and could find only one picture with both of us in it. (Please, take a profile with your mother if you don’t have one before her heavenly days be upon you.) This picture was taken in 1953 at a roadside stop. Me, being an adolescent, not having a clue about the obviously pictured discontent. During the Jim Crow area, blacks traveled in motorcades for safety in numbers. The country did not start the Interstate Highway system until 1956, and the rest stops were few to none. And the Negro motorist green book was the Google Map of the Times for Blacks. Making long travels for a black woman was very monotonous and extremely unpleasant when it came to womanly needs. But, regardless of the displeasure, the splendor of the soul will always prevail in the potency of Love. Mind over matter will always equate to the truth, and an idle mind will always be the devil’s workshop. Paraphrasing my mother’s words, “Go read a book and occupy your mind,” she would say whenever I would get on her nerves, but not in a scolding way. Developing in me a fixation, an obsession with reading, a passion grown from the seeds of her Love. Like planting a crop in the spring of life. Producing an annual harvest of words pollinated by ideas, accentuating this need in me to plant a stake through writing. Thus, cultivating feelings and reflections on others from the seeds of my soul. Leaning on the African American proverb, “Each one teaches one.” By this, I share a call to battle across the nation. “Each one teaches one” by sharing the beauty of your mother’s Love on this Mother’s Day through a picture, a poem, or a short story. An arsenal of Love is a pesticide in the arena of divisiveness.
In my childhood on my grandparent’s farm, it was the rooster’s crow at dawn, which encapsulated the nature of God’s creation in the serenity of a loving family. This was God’s intention before giving Adam the task of working and caring for it. The Earth has evolved now to an invasion by Russia, beforehand by an insurrection in this country. January 6th, 2021, I was awakened by the sound of a train off in the distance and my dog Raven as she barked, my new morning rooster. The dawn erupted with the blast of a whistle. Its encroachment, giving warning to its tonnage by the roar of its engines, racing louder until it passes, leaving in its echo the clanging of rail cars, wheels churning upon the railways of the times. The sound and my reading of history jelled, slithering my mind into the reverberation of sledgehammers, pounding in unison, chiming to the words of Lightning- Long John (An old song by a chain gang). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5KtQynWvc Listening to the beat on YouTube carried me back to the 70s. The birth of Rap in New York. The 80s. The days of my kid’s high school years where school administrators refused to let blacks Rap in the school talent shows, claiming it was not music. Suppressing our cries by inserting divisive tactics, repressing believers to their only haven, the shield of the Church. Others to the streets in procurement by any means, reparations for atonement. All in a nation whose growth was upon the free acquisition of labor, the physical muscle of a people, grinding out history, building the networks of a nation that would become the most highly productive, leading to the most powerful economy in the world. All the while through demagoguery, the subjugation of minds, the embodiment of who we were as people. The powers to be, marching in cadence with non-judicious prudence, with laws that produced snuffing. From Jim Crow to segregation, until Doctor King’s “I Had A Dream” speech. A threat to the status quo, as his demise was a means to an end. In 2016 it became “Make America Great Again.” A college degree is not needed to connect the dots. Pessimism is not in my vocabulary, and Rome wasn’t built in a day, but our nation is drawing closer to an impasse. The seeds I share point first to the book, the word of God, the unity of souls. Through the armory of knowledge, as a pesticide, we in unity can become Joshua and the walls in “A Colony in a Nation” will crumble. “When there is no enemy within the enemy outside cannot hurt you.”
In 1961 I enlisted in the Navy. I reaffirmed my oath commitment by reenlisting in 1965, committing to a Naval career. But then bloody Sunday happened. In 1967, I picked up a copy of the Stars and Stripes — the official military newspaper — on Page 1, a story about Muhammad Ali and his refusal to be drafted. His words, “I Ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” were astounding. As a black man, mixed emotions abounded me while trying to live up to an oath in a country where I felt third-class citizenship. Then in 1968 came the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. From 1955 to 2012, from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, the helplessness I felt in their killings produced deep anxiety. Reflection on those years made me feel powerless. In the wake of Dr. King’s death and John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, over the years, reflecting on their courage and commitments were the cornerstones in my writing “Guidance Against the Odds. Crystallized by John Lewis’s call to arms. “We must find a way to get in the way.” “Get in Good trouble — necessary trouble.”
“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, was a godsend to read. Ta-Nehisi Coates borrowed the title from a poem by Richard Wright, who wrote a memoir of his life living in rural Mississippi in 1912. Titled “Black Boy,” Between the World and Me takes the form of a book-length letter from the author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, to his son, Samori. In this long letter, Coates relates his personal experiences as a black man in a country built on the oppression of black people. A facsimile in character of “Guidance Against the Odds” to my grandsons.
After living/working in almost every state east of the Mississippi River, including Mississippi, my soul stammered as I envisioned Richard Wright’s pain. In 2015 Ta-Nehisi Coates, a native son of Baltimore, the same as I added another pile for the many bridges that need to be built.
Coates and I grew up in Baltimore, but a generation apart. When Coates sat down to write this letter, his son was fifteen years old. The age range of my grandsons. The year Eric Garner was choked to death, the year innocent twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in a drive-by shooting, the year Michael Brown’s killers went free. Coates doesn’t offer his son platitudes. Instead, he explains that this is his country and that his son will have to learn to bear the weight of this fact, just as Coates himself did. There is a standing reality that there are “African Americans – (with) Many Rivers to Cross.” by Henry Louis Gates. Using our “Instinct – The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive” and “Destiny: Step into Your Purpose,” both by Bishop T. D. Jakes, will stimulate the soul.
For the last five years, I’ve been posting short stories and quotes, etc., attacking no one. My immediate instinct has always been to create a dialogue when there’s a deep divide in opinions. As a society, we are so busy attacking each other; we are not connecting the dots. The most potent democratic country on earth, dying a slow death, as the rule of law, can now be interpreted through fundraising. This post, like all others, was inspired by the quote. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good MEN (WOMEN) to do nothing.”
When I was a child, I learned to play, “Connect the dots.” It was a game presumable created by a graphic artist whose children had trouble in chronological sequence, who invented the dot-to-dot as an amusement. When they began to count correctly and connected a series of numbered dots, a picture would result. I became addicted, and the benefit to me was twofold. Numbers became instinctive, and the curious desire to see the image became a mindset, a vision into the unknown.
Nowadays, in adult discourse, the phrase “connect the dots is the ability (or inability) to associate one idea with another without a picture. Even with a picture, a closed mind is the stepping stone of a blind eye, regardless of the subject. As adults, it all comes down to wanting to listen in the realm relative to one’s self-interest.
When I was a Facilitator (1970s) in Race Relations, the sign above my door read: “A CLOSED MIND has NO relativity HERE.” Intending to plant a seed. I then would begin each class with the statement. “For a want of conversation is the ingredient needed for growth, while anger and hate will be the detriments to a progressive society.” Because it was the military, there was no choice in attendance—a captive audience with textbook body language of racial bias compounded by contemptuous words, sprinkled with silent complicity, as they anointed themselves with the avoidance of any inquiry for understanding. It was virtual training for me, connecting the dots in real time on the analogy of the blind eye.
“I have a dream,” “I may not get there with you,” and “A journey of a thousand miles” are all precursors.
Words that are indelibly written into history and the hearts and minds of the hopeful, the visionary. The preceding phrases to the conscientious mind know who said them, while the intent is subtly absorbed into the unconscious. It has been a decade since I started my journey, journalizing my thoughts and feelings in the public domain. An activity I’ve done meticulously in private for even decades more. Impugned by life’s daily challenges, watching my grandkids mature, uplifted by my daily reading accentuated the need to be a shining star in the eyes of those who may look up to me. Eventually, a habit that developed into an obsession became a … “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” scenario. A quagmire of moments doing a square dance of thoughts on “The seat of my Soul. Culminating in “Guidance Against the Odds.”
Picasso and Alexander Graham Bell both had a vision, and for my worth, Muhammad Ali did the rope-a-dope. All of which required patience in their thinking; as we all know, patience is a virtue. My mindset was further intensified by the reading of Bishop TD Jakes’s books “Destiney” “Instincts,” and “Release your Anointing.” My faith and belief in myself have accumulated an innate moment with unknown intention, not realized for years as my parents had planted the seeds during adolescence. A dad whose work ethic was the pinnacle of determination. A mom who encouraged me to read anything I got my hands on. And a teacher, when prayer was still in school, who gave fertilizer to my mother’s wishes by giving me a lead part in a recital play of the Bible. It had been a subtle message in my evolution of learning and of my supplication unto this day. Philippians 4:6-7.
In today’s cancel culture, I feel justified in sharing “Thoughts from the Seat of My Soul,” and I give homage to those who do likewise. My experience dealing with people as a classroom facilitator, a military leader, and a people manager in a supposedly civilized society validated in logical words. Further personified in context by the e-mails of Jon Gruden. (X coach of the Raiders) Over the last decade, I have sent e-mails, letters, created a web page, and wrote a book, all without the defecation of another human being.
All our experiences in life are the seeds of wisdom or the manifestation of evil. When shared, it can become the bed stones of the Soul. “The idea is to write so that people hear it, and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” Maya Angelou …..
I share this short story to infuse a fact, not oppose those who post their opinions. As human beings by conjecture, we spend more time, in general, not necessarily complaining, but like the idiom “two ships passing in the night.” Therefore, we can go through life with dysfunctional communication. In the early 70s, I was a Facilitator in Race Relations for the US Navy. During one of my classes, a participant called me an ideologue. At the time, in gesture, I acknowledged his assessment as a truth. Defined as one who is taken to whimsical ideas or theories; someone who theorizes and or investigates further. This, I believe, was my nature, instigated through fantasy and wishful thinking. Which was the zenith of what I fed myself through my reading as a child. On the first night of a three-day class, I searched ideologue to give meaning to my Soul as justification for my feelings. The next day I presented this question to the class. What is an ideologue? Only the same individual spoke up with this answer in summary: “Someone who espouses a particular belief, particularly a political one.” Concluding to me, our principles of thought were not on the same page. He invoked politics, like the difference between idealism and realism, which is the essence of cause and effect. We turned the page and started the next paragraph together. He was flabbergasted that I was not analytically defensive. The moral of this story: “First impressions can become the obstacle to graceful communications.” And that “Graceful acceptance of negative opinions will not diminish the integrity of one’s Soul.” It becomes a pathway to gainful communication. When we communicate with others, people we do not like, strangers, even loved ones, with concealed grudges, thoughts tainted with detest, and soiled with gossip, we spoil our chances to grow in the glory of knowledge. We hear abstractly what others say, as we are listening mainly to the impediments instilled in the mind’s eye. Now, Critical Race Theory has entered the same conundrum as Defund the Police. Both have wide implications.
His first speech Reverend as a Senator drew a standing ovation. As a minister, he does not speak in hyperbole, makes exaggerated statements, or use preposterous claims, or derogatory names. He spoke elegantly as a man who cares about his country, ALL Americans, beginning with heartfelt condolences to the Asian community. He also gave appreciation to the people of Georgia for sending him to occupy a seat (as he said) ounce held by Herman Talmadge, a staunch segregationist who served from January 3, 1957 – January 3, 1981.
I speak as a senior citizen and a retired veteran. As a people, we will never make sense of nonsense if we refuse to learn from authentic history. When evil is stimulated by the mouth of authority, words matter and become the validity of an ill-informed mind’s consent. From Obama, born in Kenya, to Ron Johnson insisting he felt safe and not racist after saying MAGA capitol rioters love their country more than BLM. From Patrick Crusius – at Walmart, in Texas, Dylann Roof – at a Black Church, in South Carolina, and Robert Aaron Long – three Message Parlor, in Georgia, all shootings; with Capt. Jay Baker, a spokesman for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, stated, Robert Aaron Long was having “a really bad day.” The hypocrisy of this mindset and the many lives lost through rogue police actions, i.e., George Floyd, but yet Colin Kaepernick’s demise because he non-violently protested the aforesaid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSEBAa17xsQ
It was August 1949, I was five, my body was black, and I did not know it; the third son of migrant parents from Keysville, Virginia, had purchased a home on the east side of Baltimore. At five years of age, my first friend was white, and he didn’t know it. Our friendship came abruptly to an end one year later when we started school; it was segregation before boys in the hood. He suddenly stopped speaking, and his friendly smile went away. I did not know why. It was my first experience with having a discouraged heart.
On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African American, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department over his legal possession of a knife. While transported in a police van, Gray sustained injuries and died on April 19, 2015; his death was ascribed to injuries.
In 1960 I became a high school dropout. Racial taunting at Baltimore City College High School had become a phycological nightmare. Fifty-six years later, in 2016, Dedric Colvin, with a BB gun resembling a firearm, was shot by police in East Baltimore. At the time, the Police Commissioner stated that he could not wrap his head around a child leaving home with a replica of a gun. His statement betokens a total disconnect, ignorance of “Cause and Effect” within the zip codes of Baltimore. Zip codes he vowed to serve and protect. — Zip codes of repression, as written in “A Colony in a Nation” by Chris Hayes.”
Baltimore is not unique in its sins as a city. Nor are we uncommon to many being, as labeled by #45, “a rodent-infested mess.” In a country that subliminally utilizes skin tone to measure equity and cultural beliefs, Baltimore has become a showcase through mythoi. Mythologies sometimes mature into alternative facts. Without a bridge between cultures, unfounded facts produce fears, illuminating anxieties that boldly integrate laws. Sometimes, a law can be unjust as it becomes fixated only on and to the benefactor’s belief. Laws, as platformed in the Residential, Segregation Ordinances of 1910-1913, labeled Apartheid Baltimore Style.
Baltimore’s segregation law was the first such law to be aimed at blacks in the United States, but it was not the last. Various southern cities in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky enacted similar laws. Laws that create circumstances (Cause & Effect) that are never recorded in history books.
As a military veteran, I am not an advocate of weaponry in the hands of the untrained. Nevertheless, in 1960, because of the psychological effect bestowed upon me through the bullhorn of the times, if I had had access to even a replica of a gun, I might have carried one myself. I cannot speak for Dedric Colvin’s mindset, but I have experienced fear and the emotional effect it can bestow upon the mind. Poverty, joblessness, and educational deficiency are the proving grounds for drugs and crime. People judging from afar are clueless about a black male’s mindset born into an environment of scarcity. Black youth spontaneously run from the police, not necessarily because of criminality but because of learned distrust —a foregone conclusion.
In August 2016, “Black Lives Matter,” demonstrated at a police convention in Baltimore. An official from the police union sent to all attendees on a formal department memo stating: “Union members attending the state FOP conference should expect more bad behavior from the THUGS OF BALTIMORE,” referring to protesters. “On the bright side, maybe they will stop killing each other while they are protesting us.
In July 2017, although it seemed to be standard procedure, to “rough people up more” and not worry about injuring suspects during arrests, words from the most powerful voice in America, effectively endorsed the reuse of excessive force by cops. Apartheid reinforcement with a capital A.
Privileged mindsets, sets no boundaries and, if confronted, have no path of aberration, except adversarial, having not a clue of life in “A Colony in a Nation,” by Chris Hayes.
In the prolong era of rapacious fake news, hacking of emails, politicians trolling of each other, suggestion of election tampering, and the banning of a news reporter from the White House, one musttalso wonder about censorship in blogging i.e. “A Tweet for the President of these United States,” posted four years ago, February of 2017 @ https://bookmystorydomain.blog/2017/02/06/a-tweet-for-the-president-of-these-united-states/ I have high regards for the office of the presidency, as a 22-year veteran of the US Navy, honorably served under the banner of free speech. For me, blogging/tweeting the truth is free speech but in America it appears to not be a poor man’s portal. “A Peaceful Tweet to the 45th” in October of 2017 in my opinion was proof positive. https://bookmystorydomain.blog/2017/09/25/a-peaceful-tweet-to-the-45th/ The stats after that blog showed a sharp decline. Go-figure? Thee who has the most money control the minds of many through repetitive media marketing. Henceforth January 6th 2021, circumstanced from chapter four “The Wrecking Crew” by Tomas Frank.
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