GONE WITH THE ANTEBELLUM WIND; THE LAST DISH PLATED BY PAULA DEAN…

A Formal Event With All-Black Servants

GONE WITH THE ANTEBELLUM WIND; THE LAST DISH PLATED BY PAULA DEAN…

The Clampets And Their Rebel Flag

I prefer to look into and onto an event well after it has occurred in order to get a more aerated perspective especially when the issue is race and racism.  As I have said many times before, the perspective of a Black American man is necessarily different than any other due to the history of racism in America especially with respect to the fact that the image of the Black American male has been so tenaciously resilient to revision and evolution in spite of the many achievements of Black men. 

Al Jolson, A Famous  Comedian, In His Trademark,  Black-Face

Enter Paula Dean, Internationally renowned gastronomist extraordinaire! To say that the racist remark made by Ms. Dean was beneath her would be technically correct but culturally ignorant given the history of racism in America given her heritage as a profoundly southern white woman.   In America one has to begin with objectivity, giving the benefit of doubt but keeping an eye open for the telltale signs of racism. Racism, if it is present, will be veiled beneath an unstable veneer or pastiche of political correctness but will invariably decay with certain volatility to a more, “Al Jolson” like persona.  I say “Al Jolson-Like” because sometimes racism is not just as it appears.  Putting on black-face is not flattery, nor does it try to represent any real comprehension of who black people really are, it is merely a form of defamation intended to degrade Black American people as if their inferiority were matter of fact.  Paula Dean operated within the tradition of white racism in America and ultimately her comfort with using the “N” word was merely a manifestation of the Paula Dean we suspected but never knew off-stage.

Scarlett O'Hara with her black "Mammie" in Gone With The Wind

In twenty-first century America when a Black man refers to another Black male as, “My Nigga” and when a southern white woman celebrity says the word “Nigger” it is a completely different bowl of hominy grits!  The all-Black male butlered and servant wedding Paula Dean romanticized was not an historical recreation of some antebellum couples union of glory it was a cheap, anachronistic essay on the art of white racial coonery in the same tradition of Al Jolson.  Given the evidence, it is quite clear that Paula Dean needs to come out of the closet as a racist and rename her restaurant from “The Lady and Sons” to “Uncle Tom’s and The Lady and Son’s Cabin”!

A Racist Caricature of Black Culture Inspired By the Novel,  Uncle Tom's Cabin

Last weekend I made a road trip on my motorcycle to visit an historic state park only to find a huge confederate memorial and confederate organization of some kind standing as a sentinel to the park.  My first instinct was to turn around, I was absolutely appalled but I kept on.  I would never begrudge the descendants of confederate soldiers the right to pay respects to their ancestors but there was something more afoot there.  It was like a flashback to the Beverly Hillbillies; a 1960’s parody about a rural Appalachian family so isolated in the hinterlands that they did not realize that the south lost the civil war and continued their zany antebellum antics even after becoming wealthy and moving to a mansion in cosmopolitan Beverly Hills.  Well, there you have it!  The story of Paula Dean….

The Reality of Slavery and Racism in America

Written by David Vollin

Promotional Poster for Al Jolson a comedian who became famous for his racist faux-character impersonations of  southern Black men in what he called, "Black-Face"
The effect of "'Black-Face" performance was achieved by painting black paint over his white skin and affecting degraded behavior including exaggerated facial expressions, posture, demeanor and elocution intended to mimic and parodize antebellum Black slave vernacular

AND SUDDENLY THINGS GET CLEAR...

AND SUDDENLY THINGS GET CLEAR…

As intellectuals we must sometimes take things into consideration that are difficult to understand for no other reason than that they represent a position that is unpopular and it is at these times we must play the devil’s advocate.  Assuming the defense of the underdog, especially it is not the opinion we personally hold, is one of the most critical exercises in the evolution of the art of “Free Thinking” because it forces us to see the world from a perspective outside of our comfort zone.

So I was thinking along these lines when challenged to discuss my opinion on transsexuals.  My opponent was a vehement believer that homosexuality can serve to effeminize some men to the point that they falsely believe they are women or at least a very close facsimile.  According to this man the genetic helix known as deoxyribonucleic acid is the primary determinant of sex coupled with the associated sex organ, (penis or vagina), and not the cerebral cortex.  This rigid, clinical comprehension of sexuality lacks the human element known as the affective domain.  Some know-it-all’s who have spent far too much time with their books and hypothesizing rather than getting down to the kitchen to cook with others to see if the recipe really works or if the dish tastes good to anyone like to cling to these kinds of facts and figures because it makes them seem wise.  People who have been properly socialized know that facts and figures, hypotheses and theories are no comfort when people are in pain, in love, or when such amazing wonders occur such as a birth or a death.  We are not automatons, robots, we are sentient beings in every respect…

In this man’s eyes a normal male a male does not wake up in the morning feeling, dressing, talking and thinking like a woman.  Though he is not certain of the disconnect between the empirical genetics and the behavioral characteristics he is nonetheless certain that he is correct in assuming any man who does not act, feel and want to be a man every moment of his existence is the sad victim of some aberrant and I daresay virulent psychological dysfunction.  As a gentleman and as a mature intellectual traveler of life I respected his opinion but sought to challenge him in an intellectual debate to consider his theory in some greater detail adding a human element to the equation.

I challenged his theory because it was merely a theory and not a fact in my own minds eye.  Furthermore I opined that whilst I could not conjure any scientific explanation to erode away the anomaly represented by the dearth of factual data explaining why a male might legitimately feel like a woman yet remain a sane genetic male, I would play the devil’s advocate and imagine what it would be like if I were personally faced with this sexual challenge, that is if I were contemplating a sex change or some permutation due to an inherent feeling of profound femininity.  This was quite a challenge for me because I love being a man in every way imaginable and cannot imagine anything else… since a child it has been a passion to discover the meaning of manhood and so therein I found my latch onto this mindset.  So I imagined a man who’s passion to be a woman matched my passion to be a man.  Bingo!

What I discovered astounded me beyond all of my imaginings as a free-thinking gentleman.  The question was, “at what point does a man’s desire to be a woman transform him into a woman?” So then the question was a very real and nontraditional answer.  I took this question and hypothesized a fictional male following his emotional development from childhood to manhood and found that a male who had felt like and acted as a woman through childhood and adolescence might be a very tenacious person, it was at best only a conjecture, an esoteric, idealised model, but I went with it because it was my rationale for evolving this male with feminine aspirations.  What I saw was a very difficult life that would find sanctuary within the sub-stratification of the gay community which catered to the transgender and transsexual community.  To set the stage for this males difficult life I imagined the most narrow minded bigot you have ever known, combined it with the most ignorant person I have ever known and multiplied it by millions in order to get an idea of the type of continual social backlash a transsexual or transgender person might experience.  The thought was haunting to me.  I think that for this reason even those who do not necessarily understand or agree with transsexuals/transgendered males respect their strength, determination and constitution for self-actualization, it is after all a very hard life to live or so I imagine.  At the final stage, when this hand-crafted persona became a mature male getting into his 40’s and even further in his 60’s the picture suddenly transmogrified, what I saw was alarming, even haunting…  When I was a classroom teacher I used to always warn my students that they should always design for the “What-If’s” of life.  So there I was asking myself, what if this male, after having lived life as a transsexual/transgendered person, a woman, suddenly had a revelation and decided that he wanted to embrace the maleness he had shunned all of his life?  WOW! My jaw dropped, my tongue hung out, my mind sank into an abyss of depression because this what-if was a real deal killer. 

So I had a new question, “Can a man who has lived the greater part of his life as a woman ever hope to be able to reconnect with his manhood again?  Has he forever lost the ability to share in and comprehend the common experiences of most men that have cumulatively shaped their manhood as it has evolved from childhood to maturity?  Straightway I realised that this was an unanswerable question because manhood is not quantifiable merely in terms of shared psychical events, common traditions, there is no universality, no recipe typifying the evolutionary stages of manhood pursuant to an ever ticking biological hormone-clock, or is there? Darn, another difficult question and digression that I cannot include in this discussion.  Nevertheless the question remained and remains as a haunting reminder of the mental element superseding that of the purely genetic.  The politically, ethically and morally correct stance and the stance which I espouse is that freedom of choice allows us to explore whatever realms we choose and as such even though we may not agree or understand a person’s choices we must respect and when appropriate, support them as long as they contribute to the general good of all creation.  The practical and the real ramifications aging as a transgender/transsexual male might represent a far more sober, darker assessment however having very little to do with the ethical questions at all but focused more on the human and emotional ones.  When a man has explored his feminine side as much as he possibly can, assuming that he someday becomes conscious of the possibility that he may have ignored and underdeveloped his own manhood, how does he catch up to decades of neglect and can he ever catch up?  This is a question that every man who claims a closer connexion to his feminine side must ask himself/herself because the potential abandonment of his manhood could potentially leave a void later in life which cannot be crossed, navigated or resolved satisfactorily before death.  Middle aged men begin to take into account the preparation for death even though they seldom discuss it.  Maturity is nothing more than a preparation for death, we attempt to experience and understand all that we can of life so that when it begins to be taken from us there are fewer great truths, questions and challenges before us, having wisely explored these realms in our younger years.  Young men should surely think upon this, “old man’s care” as I did and properly plan for their life leaving ample time to explore every facet of themselves…  It is when we challenge ourselves to think outside the box that we grow intellectually and humanely. The greatest challenge in any attempt to mature is to push ones understanding into rooms we would never have explored.  When we have taught ourselves the discipline of openness we are then able to mature and then magically, suddenly things get clear…

Written by David Vollin

A GARDENING GENTLEMAN’S THOUGHTS ON THE CICADA…

A GARDENING GENTLEMAN’S THOUGHTS ON THE CICADA…

The upcoming mania about the awakening of the “Cicadoidea”, (or Cicada in the vulgar tongue), is a worthy concern for our gardening gentlemen.  To cut to the chase, Cicada’s feed on the sap of deciduous trees including their trunks, branches and roots but are altogether uninterested in coniferous plants.  Unlike other pests they are not focused on foliage, rather they suck xylem or sap from such trees as oak cypress, willow ash and maple, typically causing no harm whatsoever.  However, if you are cultivating young saplings and want to forego the whole /cicada initiation you might consider placing a light wire mesh frame over the saplings encompassing them from their crown to the ground and then sheathing it with a thin transparent mesh to allow for photosynthesis.  But know that eventually, as the tree matures, it will become defenseless against these insects as you will not be able to sheath a fully mature tree.  Cicadas visit us every 13 to 17 years depending upon the species,  so yours will be a long if not punctuated relationship with this most curious of organisms.  By the time the sapling has reached full maturity these Cicadas will be of no harm.  In the wild every deciduous organism would be compelled to undergo this crucible as one of nature’s fateful tests but in our gardens we have the ability to cheat nature in effect to maintain the artificial order of our beautiful domestic parterres.

Abandoned Exoskeleton Husks left by Cicada Newborn Nymphs before they burrow deep for the next 17 years

Over the next few months the presence of our returned visitors, the Cicadas, might attract predating insects and animals.  Many scientists believe that the strange 17 year cycle of these insects is largely designed to manage predation by other organisms, if so it is a truly ancient artifice.  Female Cicada’s will lay their eggs deep in the branches of deciduous trees using their proboscis, the same long, tube-like appendage used to draw sap.  When the eggs hatch the newly minted nymphs will fall to the ground where they must quickly burrow deep for the next 17 years.  It is at this time they are most vulnerable and most likely to become a meal.

Newborn Cicada Nymph escaping his exoskeleton

Other than superficial protection for young saplings there is really no other concern that a gentleman gardener should have with the Cicada.  There are many sustainable ways he might utilise them to his advantage such as composting the dry but protein rich husks left by these morphing organisms.  After the first weeks of the Cicada invasion these husks will be left lying around everywhere like dead automobiles in a junk yard.  An enterprising gentleman might spend a few hours’ online collecting recipes and attempt adding roasted, fried, grilled, or casseroled Cicada to his repertoire of cuisines.  But for my part, I have determined to catch all the Cicada I can so that I can feed them to my six, ever-hungry turtles aptly named; Rampage, Muse, Dingo, Rumble, Base and Carto…  respectively…

Holes left by burrowing Cicada Nymphs

Written by David Vollin

DOES ETIQUETTE HAVE A PRACTICAL PURPOSE?

Whenever someone mentions etiquette I get the image of a long opulently appointed banquet table where gentle folk are deliciously seated equally elegant in both appearance and demeanor enjoying the wittiest conversation.  But there is much more to this fairy tale than mere elegance and eloquence; there is a wonderfully practical side to all this “ haute reverie”; people of diverse backgrounds, using the dining table as a political folly, are coming together in order to execute one of the most important features of human civilisation… “Communication”!

The true purpose of etiquette is to facilitate interpersonal relations.  Every echelon of culture has some form of etiquette from the roughest ghetto to the most affluent communities including specific types of institutional communities such as religions, professions and social organizations.  The most practical purpose of etiquette is aimed at getting everyone on the same page so that the simplest of rituals such as entering and exiting a room, or greeting and receiving familiar and unfamiliar guests, clients etc., does not become burdensome.  One must admit that some of the strange customs that have become adopted as standards of etiquette were doubtless invented by the idle rich who had no other thing to do but squander time.  It is my sincere opinion that these practices will not endure the test of time but that the most basic and essential rules of etiquette designed around facilitating a seamless flow of human interaction will ultimately be the ones that survive. 

Finally etiquette serves the purpose of crystallizing social standards which have evolved over millennia of human evolution such as the rituals of respect youths show to their elders; as such etiquette is a codex of human social superlatives.  During the twentieth century, with the advent of the Sexual and Cultural revolutions established traditions such as etiquette were rightfully challenged.  Etiquette was wrongfully passed off as obsolete but as the tide of anarchy begins to sweep the globe we now begin to recognize that some of its most basic tenets must be preserved if humans are to survive as a species.  For those who have grandiose ideas of reverting to a socioeconomic world that no longer exists etiquette is a bad elitist tool meant to divide rather than unify but for those who understand the necessity for humans to develop universal norms for proper social interaction with no racial, sexual or ethnic, economic or other barriers, etiquette is a useful tool with a practical purpose.

Written by David Vollin

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And visit: The Ebony Room: A Gentleman’s Lounge at:  www.ebonyroomgentlemansclub.blogspot.com  

GETTING OUR INTELLIGENCE BACK: A Candid Look At The Role Evolution Could Play In Human Memory Capacity And Intelligence

EXPLORE THIS REVOLUTIONARY THEORY ON THE HISTORY OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE COINED BY MR. DAVID VOLLIN...

Follow This Link:  http://ebonyroomgentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2013/04/getting-our-intelligence-back-candid.html   

ON MANAGING THREATS TO OUR BELOVED COUNTRY…

ON MANAGING THREATS TO OUR BELOVED COUNTRY…

Every time there is a treat to our beloved United States of America it serves to engender a greater sense it solidarity within its diverse peoples who love and cherish this land.  Not that we do not  cherish these great United States of America already, it is just that we are so seldom challenged to evaluate how truly blessed we are as a country that sordid and cowardly acts like the recent Boston Bombing literally force us to come face to face with what we stand to lose if we allow ourselves to become degraded to the type of government, (or lack thereof), that those who hate our beloved America would ultimately reduce us to, should they ever rise to power; we would live in a state of perpetual fear!

I was sitting at home relaxed, sitting back with a cigar and  cognac when I wondered, what can the average American do to prevent such random violence?  Almost as soon as the question entered my mind so did its answer, “Virtually Nothing”.  A determined sociopath hell bent on injuring dozens, hundreds or even thousands of innocent people is more than likely way off the average person’s radar if only because while these crazed criminals  are dreaming of unbridled chaos we and those like us are striving to make a better world for ourselves and others.  It’s just the twisted way of the world these days it seems.  

Americans have to come down from their ivory towers, their manicured lawns, gated communities and ghetto fabulous realities so they can begin to see with the eyes that were given them.  Yes America has played a role in some unsettling and even unfair global events in its otherwise glorious past but that does not mean that we are now going to just lay down and allow any garden variety dissident to blow our lives to bits.  Nor does it mean we are going to organize our own anti-terrorist militia aimed at every man woman and child that our vivid imagination conceives to be plotting against our beloved country.  We are bigger than that, we are bigger than the angry coward who loses hope on humanity and chooses to punish it rather than to help it grow...

It simply means that we are going to take greater care to ensure that America adopts responsible and humane foreign policies in the future; we cannot undo what has already been done!  The tangible aspect of this recent bombing is that it could have easily affected each and every one of us personally; our mother, father, sister, brother, colleague, best friend could have been injured or killed on that day.  So in order to prevent this from happening we have to soul search to discover what acceptable role we can play in preventing bombings like this from ever getting off the ground in the future. 

Of course this is some pretty bold and adventurous language coming from a comfortable man sipping cognac and smoking a cigar on his balcony in  the heart of Washington, D.C.  Behind the scenes our armed forces, secret service and hosts of other unnamed U.S. Government Agencies are doing the tough, dangerous work of really preventing and managing terrorist threats.  One night whilst biking on the U.S. Mall in my backyard I happened upon the WWII Memorial just after it had been consecrated and read one of the most powerful things I have read in quite some time, the inscription above a fountain emblazoned with stars representing all of the men who had died in WWII  said simply, “FREEDOM IS NOT FREE”!

Written by David Vollin

PATENT PENDING...

Mark Dean Invented the 1 Gigahertz Chip patented for IBM

America’s ability to ride the economic tides of the twenty-first century are largely dependent on our ability to create new products that generate an international demand.  By products I do not just mean record sales or the next great American novel, I mean new technology!  Right now there are several wide open markets just waiting for new innovative products to be designed, patented, marketed and distributed across the globe, one of them is the new realm of green products another is innovative means of generating energy. 

George Crum Invented the Potato Chip in 1853

But in order for someone to be able to brainstorm and market a new technology they would have to have several skill sets under their belt and a large amount of capital as well as lots of free time to research, experiment and refine their concept design.  Another unavoidable dynamic of this scenario is that they will have to team up with other people with specialized technical expertise in order to pull the dream off.  Pulling together a unified team is one thing but maintaining quality control and focus is another, nevertheless these are challenges that other inventors have successfully overcome for many thousands of years of human history.  Pulling it off is not only highly, “Doable” but it is also highly desirable in order to gain some measure of economic and occupational freedom in a world that is still largely driven by megabusinesses.

Jan Ernst Maltzaliger Invented the Shoe Lasting Machine in  1882

The best teams might be formed by persons who are already working full time jobs but are able to devote a certain predetermined hours of work daily as part of a working product development plan.  Breaking these tasks up into smaller teams of two or more would even ensure a greater level of productivity.  I envisage these design teams as “Think Tanks” initially organised to develop research teams which focus on diverse and perhaps unrelated areas identified as potentially untapped or substantially open markets for innovation.  Eventually the teams would either produce substantive data leading to the exploration of a product design or digress to other areas driven by their research.  All information would be valuable and perhaps might end up leading to some unforeseen breakthrough further down the line.  The purpose of the teams is to prove that two, three, four or more heads are always better than one. 

In 1912 Garrett Morgan Invented and patented a  Gas Mask

Technology is what ultimately drives civilisation, it creates culture and the lack of technological advances stagnates and eventually kills human civilisation. 

Garrett Morgan

Creating new and innovative technologies should be on the front burner of all American businesses.  Due to the evolution of American culture one individual may no longer have sufficient time, money and resources to conceptualize, research, experiment, develop and market a new product alone so a team of like-minded persons working as a think tank is the next best alternative.

Elijiah McCoy

 Those who make the quantum leap to experiment with this method of product development might find themselves on the cusp of one of the greatest innovations of the twenty-first century, they might though hard work and cooperation find one day that something they imagined has come to fruition and has a new patent pending.

In 1872 Elijiah McCoy invented the Self-Dripping  Oil Cup for  Trains,  hence the origin
of the saying "The Real McCoy".

Written by David Vollin