God does play dice

man, that Jesus was one crazy motherfu**er.
it's hard to fault the son of god, but it seems to me, the one thing he lacked was a sense of humor.

if you read the account of his final days, it's easy to see where he fu**ed up.
I've made that mistake a few times.
y'know. waiting for god to help you out a little.

i mean, if there's one thing you can say about god,
it's that he don't give a fu**.

the lord will work miracles until the cows come home,
but if all that is required is a little ingenuity or forethought on your part, and you decide that's when you want to "test" god,
then he'll let you fall flat on your face.

“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

god aint at the race track, and if he was, he'd be out back breakin' fools with a hot hand of dice.

The Fugitive Slave Act & The Oberlin-Wellington Rescuers

4,000,000 people enslaved.
cassious clay parker.. john parker's son.

william still. the grandfather of the underground railroad. 1 year and one day of formal education.
reach for the star.

oberlin
fugitive slave act of 1850.
jerry mchenry apprehended in new york
was taken to jail. yelling for a knife to commit suicide. he did not go easily, a mob of 3,000-5,000 people mobbed the jail.
then 1852, uncle tom's cabin was relesed and sold 100,000 copies the first year. it was a political novel that exposed the horrors of slavery.

eliza harris, taken in by the wife of a state senator, barefoot with a baby $1,000fin, $1,000penalty and 6 mos in jail.


anthony burns, 1854 arrested in boston, broke into court house, killed a martial. president pierce intent upon enforcing the slave law, he called the marines. they secured anthony burns. they roped off the court house. thousands in the street. they chained the courthouse, so they had to crawl into the church to work. (the revolution began). the trial was brief. burns unable ot speak in his defence. guilty ordered to returned to slavery.

coffin "here lies liberty"
10,000 people lined the street when he went to the wharf. cost 100,000 to secure his arrest. he was sold for $900... a pivotal movement in the anti-slavery movement

1857, the dred scott case. chief justice taney's decision reduces all slaves to property, "can not be citizens. they have no rights which white men are bound to respect". these words, this decision, secured the inevitibiity of the civil war.

new england had black elected officils.
richard henry dana (the mast) assisted by a black attorney (burn's lawyer).

on a national level, no aid, no assistance for blacks. it upped the ante, and put enormous pressure on the movement. this also effected free blacks.

after dred scott, a fugitive slave, john price, captured on the outskirts of oberlin... the cradle of freedom for 60 plus years.

the oberlin-wellington rescue, 1858. hundred's the whole town stormed the wellington hotel and escaped. rescuers arrested. they expected them to pay bail. they refused (like kiing) fill up the jail. and they issued an arrest warrant for the slaveholder who captured the former slave.

the rescuers became hero's toth ecuase. they set off a chain reaction that went around the world. this motivated one of oberlin's native sons, john brown to escalate. his father was the first conductors on the underground railroad in oberlin.

this lead to harpers ferry.
the ultimate underground railroad. to bring freedom to the blacks in the south. occured 1 year to the day of the oberlin-wellngton rescue. blacks were assisting him. in a sense, he did not care if he was caught. in this there was no "failure" he forced the nation to make hard decisions that they were avoiding.

must be seen in contrast to slave act and dred scott. there was no where else to go, besides armed resistance.

then, the civil war. blacks fought for freedom. not th efirst time they fought for freedom, but the first time,they won it.

the emancipation proclamation 1863.

underground railroad became relief organizations for the legions of af-am's that were not free. the real work had just begun.

nurse, scout, spy harriet tubman. fought for suffrage and black freedom until her death at the age of 93. before she died, she was reunited with many of the slaves she freed. two hours before she died march 10, 1913. ft. hill cemetary new york. with military rights.

if blacks and whites can work together 150 yeras ago with all of the dangers they faced, we have no excuses today.

Irony

As the story goes, as I was told, (and I believe it, seeing as, at least in parable, it's wholly true), somewhere, in an underground bunker in the rocky mountains, there are several of the world's most powerful supercomputers, dozens of assistants and researchers and editors, with live satellite and sensor and probe feeds, with access to the best information, and most classified reports maned, scanned, and deciphered by a cadre of theorist, rocket scientist, historians, doctors, and holy men all in support of 7 of the world's most intelligent people, selected by a committee composed of the top 2000 university administrators and department heads, from the world's top 200 institutions, along with all of the world's surviving Nobel prize winners, and members of the top scientific societies from throughout the world. These 7 super-intelligent beings, have, in fact, solved all, ALL of the world's problems...

Amidst the Ruins of Rome... A Moment of Clarity

Simon Bolivar had been in Italy to witness the coronation of Napoleon as the King of Italy. A few days before, he had been informed by his teacher that he would receive an enormous inheritance when he turned 21. In fact, he would become one of the richest men in all of Venezuela and southern America.

During the coronation, several times, (as Bolivar reports), Napolean looks in his direction as if to inquire, "who is this man?" it is after this, that Bolivar walked a short distance to the ruins of Palantine hill, dropped to his knees with tears in his eyes, sighing heavily and pledged his life to the liberation of Southern America from the grasp of Spanish rule.

When Bolivar was 17, he met the love of his life and his wife. Yet, soon after they married, she died. He was struck with grief and admits that if she had lived, his life would most likely have been quite different.

Bolivar's own parents died when he was 3 (his mother) and 9 (his father). he was raised primarily by a Black slave whom he loved, in fact, he stated that she was his mother, and that he knew no other, and that the bond between him and her was unshakeably, as mother and son.

He was educated in Europe. Travelled through Spain, France, England, Italy, and learned and studied languages.

History is made by individuals... ...Bolivar made History as he liberated 5 individual countries from Spanish rule.

every second, 1,000,000,000,000 beautiful things....

Every second, there are a trillion beautiful things going on around us. literally right in front of our faces. I haven't bothered to count all the things going on behind us, under us, or obscured from our view. Neither have I bothered to count the things going on over the far lands, seas, skies, etc, etc, etc.
[someone/anyone could give you a gift. but if you did not realize that they gave you a gift, then it wouldn't be a gift to you. In this same way, existence is exposing you to a trillion beautiful things specifically for you, but if you don't see them...]
If you are able to see one truly beautiful thing every five minutes, you are doing very well. Of course, you are seeing many more than that. In fact, you are seeing all trillion. So what keeps us from being conscious of the immense cavalcade of beauty all around us? our head space. our awareness. our ability to separate our own bullshit, from the world around us.
It is helpful to remember the trillion things, even when we are feeling especially good, because there are so many beautiful things, we should pay respect to them, by remaining ever aware of them, and their each unique, special gift to us. when we are off our game, and we can at least remember the trillion things, then we must look to see them. a human being, is not just a person, but a living breathing, feeling, thinking repository of everything that makes a human. with trillions, upon trillions of experiences. surely, at least one of the trillion things.
Even if all we can do is acknowledge the beauty. even if we can not experience the beauty, then we have avoided missing. Open your eyes. see. feel. hear. think. we are being bombarded with beauty, possibility, opportunity, love and most notably, life, incessantly, every moment of our experience.
If we are able to become aware of at least one beautiful thing every five minutes, then we are doing very, very well.
one trillion seconds equals 31,546 years