Through The Years

On December 11th of this year, my wife and I celebrated 25 years of a union that for me has been transformative and instructional.  The institution of marriage has been caricatured to the point that many couples who have considered entering into its sacred bonds are anxious, if not discouraged.

 I have often stated that the primary challenge with a lot of people that decide to get married shortly after meeting each other is that they enter into it in a chemically-altered state. The avalanche of endorphins and the almost Pollyannish view in which some begin this covenant make the inevitable challenges that will present themselves hostile and seismic in the shaking of their love-engorged foundation. When two hearts beat as one, their lives begin as an amalgamation of different ideologies, world views, expectations and life experiences.

Neither of us had been spouses or parents before yet we were embarking on a lifelong pursuit which by default included one and aspirationally would involve the other.  We began as lovers, friends, confidants and partners in building a home, a micro-economy that would serve as the first society our children would ever be exposed to.  At a very organic level, this union was a demonstration of ex nihilo- we were fashioning a life out of the simple belief that our love was immutable and eternal.

Each year would expand our roles, our responsibilities and our sense of self. Within the first two anniversaries we grew from babe and sweetie to the life-changing title of mommy and daddy. As I watched my wife's body transform into this spectacular repository for our child to grow and be nurtured in the safety of her womb, nothing could have prepared me to witness the second greatest miracle in my life-the birth of our first born ( the first being salvation through Christ). Anniversaries are ostensibly chronological milestones. But as I reflect on the one score and five that my wife and I have shared, they really are moments in time in which you can reflect/pause on just how the events-planned and mostly unplanned-have influenced the tapestry that is your life together.

We met as college students.  My sojourn was an expectation, my wife's a departure from the norm. The two became one flesh and and that merging of soul, body and spirit became the foundation for us to evolve into a plethora of other titles, integration into a variety of professional, community and religious circles and ultimately craft the future that we so eagerly sought to explore. We don't tend to use the term matriculation when it comes to marriage. However, in reflecting, that is essentially what Stacy and I have done. We started as child-less, young professionals who quite frankly had to feel our way through the unique dynamic that was to be the Stallworth household.

Just as you would expect there to be an enormous difference in expertise between a first year teacher and the 25-year school administrator, my wife and I are very different people than the two that stood before God and over 400 witnesses declaring our love for each other in Bethel AME on December of 1993.  The love- the one constant- has been immutable yet at times incredibly tested.  Actually it has intensified in a way I can't quantify. We have changed physically-my gray hairs are aggressively vanquishing the black, intellectually, ideologically, and yes spiritually-a quantum leap in maturity and growth. I don't know if you are consistently aware of the modicum of change that each year brings.  Certainly we can see and feel the physiological, but the more substantive things like the emotional, spiritual, and worldview follow a different rubric. We have become the enormously proud parents of two incredible adult- well our youngest is 17- daughters and been the beneficiary of the immeasurable joy they have brought into our lives.

We also have become aunts and uncles, nephews, nieces, godparents, play-play parents, administrators, business and home owners, and leaders in a variety of different circles. The years have greatly added...but they have also sadly taken away.  This blog is not your normal Hallmarky reminiscing of a union that has been the greatest gift in my life.  I just wanted to share in a more incandescent way how two people love imperfectly by the grace of God for 25 years.

                                                               
                                                                   The Movement

It was intriguing to read an article highlighting the catharsis experienced by the Asian-American journalist who watched the box-office hit "Crazy Rich Asians."  A lot of her sentiment could easily be cross pollinated to the wildly enthusiastic reactions of African Americans to the global box-office sensation Black Panther.

The existential challenge of constantly being seen as other, foreign, or invisible in a dominant culture was not lost on me as she exquisitely articulated her angst and celebration of seeing an all Asian cast highlight the complexity of the diaspora found in Asians who have acculturated in many different parts of the world.  She spoke of how refreshing it was to see people that looked like her not portrayed as cheap facsimiles that were either caricatured martial arts experts or tragic survivors of despotic driven pogroms.

Similar to W.E.B.Dubois' allusion to a divided soul, she anguished over the challenge to cultivate an identity that is virtuous to one's heritage while not falling into a crevasse in between.  She introduced  a pejorative term-banana- that could be the equivalent of the derisive "oreo"  I remember hearing hurled at black folks who were accused of assimilating or acting white.  Banana meant that you were "yellow" on the outside but white on the inside.  The thing that struck me about this article is that my friends whose families hailed from Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, or Southeast Asia were never this transparent in their assessment of the duality of cultures many experience in Eurocentric countries.

The hegemony of one culture is engendered by default of population dominance and tribalism. The ubiquity of all things European does not beset one who is not consciously made aware of its preeminence until social eruptions like integration or immigration that could irretrievably alter the demographics of the nation become a concern.  The axiom of the United States being a "melting pot" always struck me as politically and culturally naive.  At best we are a heterogeneous mix, more like a salad where each individual ingredient maintains its own identity within the amalgamation.

 Cinema has long been the creative portal to illustrate the human tapestry that shows the state of the union. Hollywood's portrayal as liberal and egalitarian has not translated in the number of projects like Crazy Rich Asians or Black Panther green lighted by executives. Movie making by its very nature is collaborative and "inclusive."  The challenge has been that the lens by which projects are deemed profitable and having global appeal has been suffocatingly limited to an archetype that finds very little intrinsic value in hues, stories, and narratives that are outside the safe spectrum of their myopic sensibilities.

The story of America's rich heritage found within its incredible citizens is gaining bandwidth.  This is not growing as subtext or sidebars.  There is an increased awareness that the pattern recognition of what it means to be American is decoupling from a tired, familiar trope.  That is actually a good thing.

It was always (still is) my belief that the truth was immutable, inelastic, intractable and not subject to the court of public opinion or vacillating social mores.  With that as a premise, I find the term "my truth" problematic and highly subjective as it has gained increased bandwidth in the national narrative of social movements.  If we expunge moral absolutes, then the basis of this statement undulates like the popularity of dance moves.  I had an interesting discussion with my enlightened, intelligent sixteen-year old daughter about the growing concern of allegations being tantamount to guilt within the context of the #ME TOO movement.

As a husband, father, brother, nephew, uncle, cousin to incredible women and young ladies, I have a less than zero tolerance for inappropriate or violent behavior-verbal or physical-directed towards women! What has become very troubling is that now the hint, allegation, intimation of boorish, crude or aggressive behavior by a man transmogrifies into something resembling the prolific serial assault of Harvey Weinstein, the catalyst behind the movement.  Let me be clear, our patrician culture has without question fostered the behaviors that not only engendered predatory conduct, but I have personally seen the direct impact to women who have been the recipient of this sadistic "boys will be boys" axiom.

However, there seems to be in this glacial swing of the pendulum, a propensity to look past the same abuse of authority that spawned this national uproar. This movement has ignited a conflagration of which no one seems to be concerned about the possibility of collateral damage.  My daughter began to voice a concern about unsubstantiated claims by women not only gaining traction, but even after losing credibility still being given a shelf life that ultimately proved ruinous to the innocent.  My daughter wasn't giving a Stepford wife response as if the accusation against powerful men was without merit.  Somehow, in this new zeitgeist, improbity can not be attached to the accuser.

It seems that the new script singularly affords truth to be the sole domain of the accuser.  The presumption of innocence, a cornerstone of our legal system, seems to be withering on the judicial vine.  There is an old adage that says, ' the abused tend to become abusers."  Unfortunately, there seems to be a dangerous precedent emerging as the scaffolding for the old construct that devalued and subjugated women to this doleful, sexual misconduct without recourse is being torn down. The cautionary tale is what will this much needed shift yield as the voiceless and the powerless are given a platform to change this troubling trend.

                                                             The New Normal

Years ago I posited the ramifications of people's thoughts being audible.  While we have not developed telepathy, the ubiquity of cellular towers has allowed our digital appendages ((smartphones) to create platforms by which all of our mental meanderings or machinations, no matter how mean-spirited, can spill out like a tsunami as tweets, posts, blogs and hi-def pictures.  Our bandwidth has expanded beyond the daily atrocities of murder, mayhem, and geopolitical tragedies to include a drastic reconfiguration of the now very subjective term normal.

Maybe we have misdiagnosed normal all along.  Greek historian Herodotus wrote,'The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing." The Age of Enlightenment was supposed to be the epiphany, the birth of consciousness of rational men and women in control of their own destinies.  The Age of Science purportedly expunged the reliance on superstition, god(s) and religion.  The Promethean promise of progress as humanity dismantled the shackles of ignorance would usher in a Utopian construct by which the endemic challenges of the human condition would be superseded by new insights and technology.

Well............

Few could have imagined that the pace of technological advances could have accelerated the opening of what is essentially Pandora's Box. We have this strange dichotomy of good and evil, which have always co-mingled, battling for dominance not just in the public square, but in the hyper loops of social media platforms.  Bill Gates is fond of quoting statistics from one of his favorite researchers that empirically demonstrate that things are getting better using the metrics of global poverty, average life span, access to healthcare, clean water and reduction of hunger.  Yet with the calculus that created all of these innovations, we can't create an algorithm that explains the surging spiritual drift in our culture. To what do we attribute this current malaise that seems to be ushering in an apparently rhetorical question: what kind of world do we live in?

If we constrict our focus to the natural at the expense of the spiritual, we limit solutions to merely heritage, biology, sociology, politics and economics. Christ summarized the issue with this simple pronouncement, "It's a heart issue."  Russian philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky said,"Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he can not find anything to depend upon either within or outside of himself."Christ expanded his narrative by saying in Mark 7:1," It is not what goes into your body that defiles you, you are defiled by what comes from your heart." (New Living Translation)

The new narrative of our nation, a hodge podge of moral relativism, New Ageism, secular humanism and atheism is not a reflection of new modalities of enlightenment.  It's just symptomatic of  the heart disease we have suffered with since humanity's fall.  This new normal is neither.

Will We Ever Learn

Sigh............Roseanne Barr, the shock comedienne who mildly resuscitated her moribund career with a revival of her once popular eponymous show has again suffered from the recurring foot-in-mouth disease that seems to have led to her earlier professional demise.  From her "parody" of the national anthem to her dysfunctional relationship with her ex-husband Tom Arnold, she seems to possess an uncanny ability to reverberate controversy at seemingly every turn.  Her latest premeditated stupidity on Twitter, a virtual dumping ground for 280 characters of vitriol followed by the tired apology of I'm sorry in a tweet, has left an indelible digital footprint that garnered a swift and fatal blow to her already toxic bandwidth on network television.

Conservatives will most certainly defend her repugnant comparison of Valerie Jarrett as resembling the progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood and a simian as a bad joke in poor taste conflated to silence the paucity of Hollywood actors that serve as an advocate for their Twitterer-in-Chief.  What will again be lost in the diatribe of cultural wars is a dissonance that allows this kind of rabidly racist banter to still have traction in the new millineum. Racism in pockets of America is so imbued in the fabric of our nation that we can't seem to recognize how it has permeated the policies, practices and perceptions of the people who sacrosanctly declare themselves exceptional because they are American and of European descent. On November 24th, 1859, Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races In the Struggle For Life."   This pseudo-scientific publication is credited with being the foundation for evolutionary biology. What it also birthed are horrific ideological permutations in the form of Social Darwinism and Eugenics and the hegemony of racial superiority-more specifically of the Anglo-Saxon breed commonly known as white supremacy.

This mutant ideation buttressed the savagery that accompanied chattel slavery; the de facto economic engine that ushered this former British colony into a global industrial power.  Everything from the biblical justification for slavery, black codes, eugenics, Jim Crow and the bastardly publication featured in this blog was spawned from the egregious belief that races of color were not just inferior, but genetically and innately subordinate- which by the way is the antithetical view promulgated by the Bible!  Porch monkey, baboon, ape, and other disparaging adjectives have been hurled at black folks probably since the first forced immigrants got here in Jamestown off of a Dutch ship. The implicit bias that still allows centuries-old ideologies to lie dormant in the hearts and minds of its supposedly informed citizens of this decade should not only be a tired trope, but an indictment to the myth that we have ever been a post-racial country.  Any redress of grievances by blacks of the tentacles of this social carcinogen in the form of policies, procedures, and practices of an organization are still summarily dismissed or spun into a hijacked narrative featuring the derisive moniker "playing the race card."

So let's just call a spade a spade.  What has made this country great is its ability for introspection.  The edicts of its sacred parchments and pledges declare liberty and justice for all and the inalienable rights of its citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Yet we are still chronicling Fortune 500 companies having to shut down to have "inclusivity" training and police chiefs walking back the conduct of police officers caught on video engaging in extrajudicial conduct.  We have a sitting President who purposefully engendered an anachronistic tribalism and racist jingoism ( "Go back to Africa") that would have made ol' racist stalwarts like Birmingham, Alabama Sheriff Bull Connor grin from ear to ear.  The problem is that the past is STILL NOT PROLOGUE or PAST.  The question is, how much of that toxin are you willing to settle with today and in the future!

                                         

                                                 Made in the Image and Likeness of God

I have been pondering, more accurately commiserating over the elastic social mores, the undulating morality of our culture in which the ribald, profane and straight up wicked lifestyles can seamlessly intertwine with the sacred.  One of the unintended consequences of “tolerance” or moral relativism is that it pasteurizes, homogenizes and dilutes the sacrality of the righteous standards of the Bible-God’s immutable, inerrant, infallible word. Some of us in the body of Christ are so thirsty for the acceptance of the lost that we continue to create “seeker-friendly” environments that expunge any element that would bring conviction or condemnation to people bound by sin.  Oh yeah, the “s” word!  Despite Romans 3:23 clear declaration that,” all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”, and the Jeremiah 17:9 edict ,”The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it”, we continue to capitulate the myth that man is intrinsically good and in an effort to spare people’s feelings refuse to emphatically articulate the dreaded disease we were all born with….. a SIN nature.

Part of my diatribe is based upon the recent release of a “gospel” album by the west coast rap legend Snoop Dogg. The urban street poet’s offering has been gulped with an enthusiasm that mimics the purple, cyanide-laced Kool-Aid of the Jim Jones followers. Your rebuttal may be that the content was palatable, beats were on point and it was more than a pedestrian effort by a secular artist to do something positive.  You get no argument on any of those points.  However, there is a growing bandwidth of tolerance for duplicitousness or a dichotomy between lifestyle and art. I happen to have the misfortune of being asked to listen to Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr’s( Snoop's government name) response to the egregious tirade of one lost soul known as Kanye West.  The expletives projectile vomited from his mouth reminded me of this strange fire that we have gotten so comfortable with.

“Everybody cusses” is the refrain I often hear or worse; “God knows my heart and I am a work in progress”.  Psalm 84:2 says, “My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”  Psalm 119:11 says, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”  Ephesians 2:10 says,”For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” II Cor 5:17 says, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature : old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”  Gal 5:22-23 says,” But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentles and SELF CONTROL!”

What is being lost in translation is that GOD IS HOLY above all things.  His spirit, the incorruptible seed, that indwells us at the moment of salvation, comes with a promise.  John 15:7 says, “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”  What that DOES NOT means is a laundry list of material acquisitions. Verse 8 of that chapter says, “ This is to my Father’s glory that you bear much fruit.”  That promise declares that He will respond to every longing for personal righteousness; a process like human growth takes time and is gradual. We seem to more and more celebrate people who either have rotting fruit, a twig of a vine or the similitude of godliness( having a form of godliness but denying the power therof).  WE ARE the salt and light.  Jesus said in John 12:32, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.”  The evidence of the power of salvation, the actual indwelling of the spirit of God, is a TRANSFORMED LIFE, not snippets of goodness, accepting an invite to a gospel function or recording with so-called gospel artists.  We have become afraid to demonstrate the immutable characteristics of God, His holiness and His righteousness.  The Great Commission was to go and make disciples- spread His teachings to the nations through the spoken and demonstrated Word.  Catering to secularism, moral relativism and flat out wickedness not only is an exercise in futility, it exacerbates the effort of those who understand that to live for Christ is counter cultural and antithetical to Aleister Crowley’s destructive edict to “ Do what thou wilt.” Run tell that!

The Elephant in the Room (Black Republicans)

                                           
                                            Confessions of a Conservative

   
Three years ago, I was asked by a graduating senior from Florida A&M University's School of Journalism and Graphic Design to participate in a documentary featuring what can best be described as a UFO sighting in the South-a black Republican.  I was intrigued to see how this query would unfold as the enthusiastic and talented journalism students set up their equipment to begin recording the ideations of a black man who had pledged allegiance to a party that had for all intents and purposes-this was well before the jingoistic nationalism that followed Trump-had become the bane of society in the minds of many in the black community.

I was not given any prompts and had no real template to follow other than responding to prepared questions that purportedly would shed light on "turncoats" like me.  The filming was done in a beautiful, downtown park with wonderful vistas of the city.  Unfortunately, our start time was at the precipice of the cool morning air being usurped by the toasty, early afternoon sun that seemed to raise the ambient temperature at least 10-15 degrees.  "All of my life I had to fight"....oops, wrong monologue.  I am the progeny of a college professor and a student of the Bible.  Education, or the intrinsic desire to teach, inform, enlighten has been modeled to me for as long as I can remember. Perris began his question with what felt like a genuine desire to dig beneath the acrimonious veneer ascribed to so many who dared to be identified as conservative and have melanin in their skin.

To give context to my position, I gleaned from the history of the two parties and their duplicitous relationship with the descendants of the Diaspora.  If you actually get a chance to watch the video, I was pleasantly surprised that most of the content is derived from the historical and current information I shared with the journalist in training.  I could see that they were intrigued at the fact that I could talk in detail about not just the history of the Republican party, but articulate why the mass exodus of blacks from a party that assiduously advocated for the right of former slaves to fully engage in the inalienable rights of the venerated Republic.  The political climate today, in the Age of Trump, has denigrated black conservatives to the level of social pariahs or caricatures.  It becomes exhausting trying to extrapolate the difference between being a member of the GOP and supporting the caustic, demagoguery of a political dilettante.

There is a distinct ideological dichotomy between sycophants that blindly support the petulant, digital sophistry of a movement that usurped the party of Lincoln.  I am not a party-at-all-cost type of dude.  I was very verbal about my distaste for the way so-called Conservatives tolerated, condoned, engendered the toxic, nationalistic banter that led to the ascension of this President. He is the antithesis of Barack Obama.  For some, that is all that was needed, independent of the uber-liberal agenda he promulgated.  I am still conservative, just don't for a hot second believe that the putrid ideations attached to this iteration of the Republican party represent me!

                                                                       
                                                                      7:01 P.M.

Yesterday, the nation-in part- paused, reflected with a somewhat reverent solemnity to mark 50 years to the day that an assassin's bullet silenced the arbiter of peace, the drum major for justice whose eloquent, muscular prose and Gandhian inspired non-violent protest called out a nation's hypocrisy when it came to the inalienable rights for all of its citizens espoused in its venerated parchments known as the Constitution.

I couldn't help but reflect on the similitude of 1968 and 2018, a full half century of glacial progress on some issues and tectonic shifts in others.  The nation's report card, the bounced check that Dr. King noted during the tumultuous era of the Civil Rights movement needs to be updated, critiqued, reviewed and digitized.  The algorithm often referenced to denote the progress of blacks in this country is a comparative analysis of their collective socioeconomic position to that of whites.  I have always found that metric inherently flawed and contextually problematic.  The 260 years of arrested development of survivors of the Diaspora make evaluations of economic, social, and political currency difficult to extrapolate.  The collective net worth of all African Americans is still less than two percent of the nation's overall wealth even though we comprise 12 percent of the population.  A microcosm of this wealth inequality is found in a glimpse at the list of American billionaires (563) and the wealth they control ( 2.8 TRILLION). According to Forbes most recent publication, only 3 on that list are black. In fact, the top 3 men on the list's combined net worth exceeds that of all 42 million blacks COMBINED!

The past 50 years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of blacks holding office at the local, state and federal level, including the highest office in the land.  However, this political capital has for the most part only served to enrich the lives of those holding office because the collective socioeconomic status of their constituents has at best seen marginal improvements mostly in the form of services rendered versus material gains in employment and the amassing of wealth. The carceral state-the American prison system-has become a robust private enterprise generating billions in revenue for private shareholders.  It has re-purposed itself from the old Jim Crow era peonage model into a convict labor leasing supply chain producing products consumed globally.  The population driving this business model is disproportionately black men who as products of economically distressed communities ( read-hood) replete with under funded schools and marginal, substantive employment opportunities, represent the de facto raw material for this targeted labor class.

The ascension of a political dilettante effusively spewing race-tinged demagoguery exposed the myth that the state of race relations in the post-millennial age, especially after having Barack Obama as POTUS- dismantled the racist shackles that besmirched this nation's history.  This country has waged  wars on: poverty, crime, and drugs.  The one demographic caught in the cross hairs of ALL three have been primarily people of color with overwhelmingly negative outcomes.  Are blacks in this country better off than the day Dr. King was murdered?  Unequivocally, yes!  We are better off financially, educationally, socially and politically.  But the metrics to evaluate this amelioration is at times fuzzy.  You have to measure the progress of blacks in the aggregate, not just point out that black females are the most well educated group when conversely their average net worth is a micro fraction of white women.  We have a presence in every industrial and economic sector of this great nation but the tribalism that has spawned over the past year is a reminder that in the mind of some "Amuricans"  we will always be seen as visitors, infringers, and parasitic agitators of the anachronistic status quo.

Yet, I still dream!

                                                                    An Epiphany

It has been several weeks since my initial viewing of the cinematic blockbuster known as Black Panther. As a Marvel comics fan since childhood, the robust response to the first superhero film featuring a black man that was not an alien (Hancock), vampire (Blade) or a spawn of Satan (Spawn) was refreshing and revolutionary. (Ranker comics posted a list of 59 black comic superheroes) Although Black Panther had made cameo appearances in the Avengers sequels, this feature film was something transcendent, seismic in its cultural representation. Wakanda is a fictitious east African nation replete with the geographical topography of both the ancient and modern yet bereft of the endemic visage of abject poverty, turmoil and pestilence that seems to be the singular optics of the "Dark Continent" when transcribed through the lens of most European documentarians.

I had a visceral reaction to the magnificent tapestry of brilliant tribal insignia, markings and garments to denote the cultural diversity of the indigenous people of the nation. Even the representative combat was a departure from the wholesale tribal warfare that has decimated regions of the continent. While YouTube is crowded with a plethora of putative "deep" analogies and interpretations of the film ranging from Hoteps to the rabidly racist, many seem to overshoot the organic response of many who have viewed the first billion dollar movie featuring a predominantly black cast and the first ever black director.

Black Panther's commercial success has annihilated the myopic, unsubstantiated implicit bias that has impeded the green lighting of projects with a different pattern recognition. But at a very granular level this film portrayed an image to the survivors of the Diaspora of a place that was the antithesis of what many have been led to believe about the cradle of civilization. I distinctly recall a segment of the movie "Boyz in the Hood" where two young boys were chopping it up verbally before they were about to throw hands. (fight) One of the insults hurled was,"At least I'm not an African booty scratcher". This was a 90s film but that flash point was reflective of the disdain inculcated for anything associated with a connection to African descent. There was actually a proposal made by Wesley Snipes in the 90s to bring Black Panther to the big screen. There is a serendipity in the over two decades delay for the premiere of this industry-disrupting film. Under the tumultuous political climate that has accompanied the demagoguery of a political dilettante and the realized or failed expectations of the first black President of the United States, King T'Challa, the powerful women of his kingdom and yes Eric Killmonger resonated on an unprecedented level with indigenous Africans and their forced immigrant cousins. The push back from some has been why would black people in this country be galvanized by a fictional character and kingdom.

The first part of my answer would be to have them read Donald Bogle's book," Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films." I would then simply get them to consider the paucity of alternatives that celebrate, although a fictional account, the brilliance, power and majesty of people of color in this country. Selah

 

                                               Before You Get Your Iphone40,  Please Read This

                                                   

If I told you I was a millionaire, would my words become instantly credible?  I have been thinking about how we collectively experience the world through the lens of economics.  You can either section your lifetime into thirds or quarters.  For the first 20-25 years of our existence we are essentially consumers (early childhood, adolescence, teens, early 20s) with no real expectation of contributing to the gross domestic product per capita other than stuff being purchased for us.  An unintended consequence of child labor laws introduced during the Industrial Revolution to mitigate or eliminate the egregious working conditions of minors in factories was a virtual suspension of the demand of children, teenagers to contribute in any meaningful way to the growth of our national economy.  Many of us enter adulthood with only a vicarious understanding of substantive employment that requires responsibility and accountability.

The next third or two quarters of our lives are spent in the “real world” of adulthood or initially extended adolescence (college) to prepare ourselves for a career so that this heavily subsidized, acquired skill set will afford us the means and wherewithal to change the trajectory of our lives as professionals hopefully in our chosen field of endeavor.  According to the Pew Economic Mobility Project, forty percent of kids raised in a family in the top income quintile stay there as adults, and 40% of those born into the lowest quintile remain there.  Only 8% of those raised in the top quintile drop to the lowest quintile as adults.  Unfortunately, most of the sixty percent that don’t remain in the lowest quintile are finding themselves in the hinterlands of the middle-class, an amorphous term that seem to vary based on geographical location.  According to a Rutgers survey based on a nationwide sampling, only 51% of those who have graduated college since 2006 are now employed full time (this is a 2012 article).  Twenty percent are in graduate school.  The rest……….

One of the great concerns about those in the second and third quarters of their lives is the growing menace of indebtedness be it consumer loans like credit cards or the incredulous two trillion dollar nationwide debt in the form of student loans. Only 52% of American families say there were able to save anything in 2010, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance.  The median American family’s net worth fell to $77,300 in 2010 from $126,400 in 2007 (due in large part to the housing bubble implosion), according to the same survey.  That erased nearly two decades of accumulated wealth.   Five of every six American families earn more than their respective parents did, according to the Pew Economic Mobility Project, but adjusted for inflation, the median average hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was in 2001.  If the average American household is out earning the previous generation, why does the future look so ominous for so many people in the second tier of their lives?  

Wealth accumulation in this country is arcing in a manner that is hyper concentrating into the hands of what I call the uber class. Please understand that this is not an indictment of the investment class or those who have amassed fortunes in the Internet Age.  According to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, 80% of all income growth from 1980 to 2005 went to the top 1% of wage earners. Although this is a dated statistic, this hyper migration of wealth is continuing at a rapid clip which bodes well for advocates of unfettered capitalism.  However, America is aging, which brings me to my focus on those who find themselves in the third tier or fourth quarter of their lives. Older workers (age 55+) are about to overtake younger workers (age 25-34) for the first time.  We have more people working beyond what used to be the cursory retirement age of 55 because of simple economics.  They don’t have enough saved to transition into what are supposed to be the golden years. That dismal disclosure uncovers an alarming trend that shows that many who started their careers in the second tier or second quarter either never started investing in their retirement or never made enough that consistently placing 5-10% of their income into a retirement account was an option.

According to the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, Americans will inherit 27 trillion dollars over the next four decades.  While that is a staggering amount of wealth/assets to be transferred in the future, a lot of seniors find themselves in dire straits financially after a career of earning less than the national median income.  One of the surging expenses tied to the geriatric community is health care costs.  The U.S. makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, but a third of the world’s spending on pharmaceuticals, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare.  The private sector shift from defined benefit plans (pensions) to defined contribution plans (401ks) has left millions of seniors either underfunded or unfunded (lack of participation) in their putative transition to retirement.  Those 100 dollars a month they might have been encouraged to place in their 401k, 403b or 457 plans seemed to be frivolity at the time it was suggested.  From age 18 to 65 that currency of Ben Franklin could have compounded to become $306,667 assuming a 9% rate of return annually according to an illustration by Schwab.com.  The wealth snowball is inconspicuous, unsexy and flat out boring.  Lotteries have become the fantasy utility for covering the benign neglect that many have engaged in when it comes to planning for their life after a career in the workforce.

I am writing about this because I have witnessed this unfold with a number of colleagues who found their sense of community in the ever shrinking bandwidth known as middle or upper-middle class.  Their lives were anything but pedestrian. They followed the blueprint of college, military or vocational school; raising their families in the suburbs, ascension up the corporate ladder in both the public and private sector and finally peregrinating to the precipice of eligibility for AARP cards.  The dissonance in this journey has been the inordinate amount of unpreparedness for ostensibly 25 or more years of unsubsidized existence.  Certainly their paid for homes and nest eggs mitigate some of the trauma of reduced income.  The Social Security Act of 1935, originally named the Economic Security Act has transubstantiated into something it was never supposed to be.  The vast majority of people reaching age 62, the minimum age eligibility, are blowing through that milestone with almost no resources to sustain them in their post-career life. There is an ominous sign posted in the Capuchin Crypt in Rome.  It says,” As you are, we were.  As we are, you shall be.  It is my hope that the national narrative changes to get millennials to follow a different trajectory before they reach their Iphone40 years.  There is SO MUCH information available in addition to a phalanx of financial tools to get them started in realizing that the future that they want will be shaped by the money habits they embrace or adopt today.

DEAR NFL and NBA

( An open letter to the leagues in light of the pit of financial misery so many players find themselves in after retirement)

I recently watched the Oscar-winning Animated Short executive produced by Kobe Bryant.  It was a brilliant visual rendering of a poem he composed to announce his retirement from the game of basketball. Existentially it gives mere mortals a glimpse at what transcendent athletes meditated on in adolescence before reaching the stratospheric heights of sports superstardom. One line in the film gave me pause and insight into what undergirds the palpable passion of so many who vicariously and actually make a living as a professional athlete.

Kobe said, “From the moment I started rolling my dad’s tube socks; I would shoot an imaginary game winning shot in the Great Western Forum.  I knew one thing was real,… I fell in love with you.  A love so deep I gave you my all; from my mind and body, to my spirit and soul.” This quote more than likely encapsulates the sentiment of the legion of men who have given everything for the mathematically improbable opportunity to catch, throw, run, tackle, kick a football; or dribble, pass, rebound, shoot and dunk a basketball in the two most-watched sports leagues in America.

The average salary during the 2017-2018 NBA season is $5,919,628 with a range of $34,682,550 for Steph Curry to $17,224 for Jerrel Eddie.  If we multiply the average annual salary by the 565 contracts signed during the year, the total compensation for the league’s players comes out to $ 3,344,589,820!!  The actual median salary for the league was $2,441,400 according to the website BasketballReference.com. Statista.com states that the average player’s salary in the NFL was 2.53 million dollars. If we use the metric of a 53 man roster and 32 teams, the total player compensation from the league was $4,290,880,000.

I realize I am grossly oversimplifying the actual income of players that range from undrafted free agents to eminent hall of famers but for the sake of illustration and deconstruction of a widely known trope about athletes and their rags-to-riches back to rags, allow me to not let this devolve into an esoteric legal document with obtuse language. The NFL just recently completed its commodity review- more formerly known as the Combine. These invite-only aspirants of the league showed up for the football underwear Olympics with visions of fame and fortune dancing in their heads.

They were vetted psychologically and physically before the owners begin their backroom negotiations for a futures contract that carries as much inherent risk as any investment available within the free market. The NFL draft day has become must-see television as star college players (still read- commodities) finally get the chance to reap the benefits decoupled from the fraudulent amateurism model that allows college universities and the NCAA to harvest billions of dollars from the exploits of these “student-athletes” – a farcical term when you apply it to the one-and-done model of NCAA basketball prodigies.

This is where my discourse takes a tangential turn.  Bo Diddley said, “You can get ripped off easier by a dude with a pen than you can a dude with a gun.”  NFL contracts are laced with stipulations, clauses, and incentives that make the possibility of earning the full value of a contract sketchy. While first round picks (the golden children) are warranting as much as 50 percent of their contract being guaranteed (the NBA guarantees all of their contracts), after the endorphin rush, family hugs and lifelong realization of a dream, this fairytale seems to disproportionately turn into a Shakespearean tragedy when it comes to the long-term financial future of far too many of these celebrated athletes.

Let’s look at this from a socioeconomic standpoint.  The vast majority of the players drafted into the NBA and NFL have NEVER seen the kind of money they are endowed with in their late teens and early twenties.  I like to refer to sports compensation as the inversion of regular folks.  Sports contracts are front-loaded pensions.  Not only that, the distribution is multiples of what most highly educated professionals will make over a robust career. Herein lies the conundrum in a riddle wrapped in an enigma.  The average 19-22 year old has at best a modicum of understanding about instant riches. Nnamdi Asomugha, an eleven-year veteran of the league, majored in finance at UC Berkeley and still felt he wasn’t prepared to protect his money as a professional athlete.

Dave Ramsey says, “When it comes to money, you will only move at the speed of your understanding.” Even though the league has a mandatory seminar on financial guidance, at a cursory glance their directives, recommendations have been an abysmal failure.  The issue of culpability would be difficult because we are not talking about the guardianship of minors. NFL players’ income is ostensibly a matter of public record. Similar to the reservations some lottery winners have about having their names disclosed; this spectacle of crowning achievement in hoop and gridiron dreams comes with an astonishing dissonance financially. Professional sports have been seen by far too many as the launching pad to change the trajectory of kids who grew up in crime-infested or financially distressed environments.  The NFL and NBA as Beulah land or Canaan has ended up being an oasis in the desert with statistically mass casualties economically.

A Sports Illustrated feature in 2009 cites a terrifying statistic for both sports.  By the time NBA players have been retired for two years, 78 percent have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness and divorce. Within 5 years of retirement, 60 percent are BROKE.  The NFL statistics are just as grim.  Five years after retirement, 78 percent of former players have gone bankrupt or are under financial distress because of joblessness (football has defined their very existence) or divorce.  We can compound this egregious statistic by adding the ominous possibility of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) being a part of their future medical history-a diagnosis tantamount to a progressive diminution of cognition and physical impairment.  A recent article by ESPN chronicles the angst of Chris Bosh, often cited as an erudite player, as he struggles to transition into the unfamiliar tapestry of diminished fame and the cold turkey withdrawals from the opiate of acceptance, recognition and adulation that professional sports brings.  He opines that “I have millions of dollars and I don’t know finance!” Even more transparently he admits that he sees guys spending all of their money trying to capture all of the trappings that went with their time in the league- a never ending search for that feeling that you once had, and it can cost you.”

The question, which seems rhetorical, is how can this well documented cycle of athletes blowing through 100 million dollars in salary get shuttered? Between the parasitic relationships, the egregious financial advice from credible and shady advisors, the pull and expectation of family and friends and the almost expected ostentatious displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption that accompany riches, this dark prologue that follows the Horatio Alger beginning of most of these athletes can no longer just be a cautionary tale.

        A TALE OF OPTICS
         (What Do You See)







At first glance, you may say I see a sprinter and a quarterback.  That perspective unfortunately would be deemed delusional when it comes to the anachronistic culture of the National Football League; the largest commodities broker in the country. The young man on the left is Troy Apke, a fleet-footed safety from Penn State University.  On the right is the electric, Heisman trophy winning, University of Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson.

I am going to regurgitate some of the hyperbole used to describe Lamar: "freakishly athletic, dynamic open field runner, game-breaking speed."  The NFL has stubbornly held on to an archetype of the field general; a position usually deemed to be the face of the franchise.  The so-called standard metrics for this position are: tall ( 6'5" ideally), pocket passer ( read slow) and erudite.  Since I referred to this league as a commodities broker, I will use this analogy to explain the algorithm to support this skewed lens of what a quarterback should be.  A classic pocket passer is going to execute the vast majority of his plays from the putative safety of the protective cocoon the offensive line provides.  From a longevity and efficiency standpoint, the analytics point to a higher rate of pass completions and less bone-jarring hits (sacks) from the defense.

Conversely, athletic, tuck-and-run type quarterbacks who dash at the first sign of turbulence have a shorter shelf-life and statistically seem to be less efficient outside of the pocket in addition to being subjected to potentially season-ending tackles from 250 pound linebackers closing with extreme prejudice.  The quarterbacks for the college football national champs from 2013, 2015 and 2017 all, except maybe Jameis Winston, ( he was also a Heisman trophy winner and the first pick overall in the draft) fall into the specious metrics that have general managers subjugating them into alternative positions-usually wide receivers. The 32 teams in the NFL are replete with dozens of backup quarterbacks who on paper fit the antiquated mold of what a next level passer should be. There seems to be a propensity to "develop" these projects because intrinsic value seems to be ascribed to them predicated on the so-called measurables and intangibles.

While I fully understand that this position carries a weighted measure in the league because of the immediate impact of a credible talent, their is a latent, almost mendacious attitude when it comes to developing college football stars who happen to be a diversion from the hard template that usually looks like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning; the later of which by the way had an egregious rookie season.

Troy Apke made headlines when he ran the fastest time for all the Combine invitees at the position of safety.  His time was so exceptional that football deity Deion Sanders exclaimed, "man, that dude can really run!"  What was really intimated by that statement was " that dude is really fast for a white boy!  In psychology the term used for optics that are familiar to an individual is pattern recognition. Under the divisive, dystopic narrative that has become American politics lies an insidious element of the social cancer that continues to metastasize.  One of its derivatives is eugenics, a byproduct of social Darwinism that also spawned unfortunate forms of prejudice like implicit bias and negative attribution.  Just as Lamar Jackson's freakish athleticism is a common form of prose used by sports commentators, Troy's "exceptional" display of speed fell outside of the norm reference for a white dude playing defense.

The picture of Troy winning a sprint featured in this blog would be seen by some as an anomaly.  In fact, there are so-called schools of thought that believe that fast twitch fibers are the exclusive physical attribute of black athletes therefore Troy Apke's performance is simply an aberration, a hiccup in the natural order.  The mosaic of sports has been a powerful platform to address many of the systemic challenges incongruent with the venerated decrees we promulgate to under gird our democracy.  Yet even within that tapestry, there still exist this benighted notion that only certain types of people possess the capacity to do certain things in the field of play and God knows other professions.  Yeah, even in 2018.

                                                         THE THREE-COMMA CLUB

According to the March release of Forbes magazine, there are now 2,208 billionaires from 72 countries and territories with a combined net worth of 9.1 TRILLION dollars (an average of 4.1 billion). At times, I feel like this list glamorizes a demographic that has been called everything from oligarchs to plutocrats building their fortunes in: pipelines, chemicals, fertilizer, software, textiles, apps, wedding dresses and cryptocurrency to name a few. The 20 richest, headed by the first chronicled centibillionaire-Amazon founder Jeff Bezos- are worth an astonishing 1.2 TRILLION dollars, a sum roughly equivalent to the annual economic output of Mexico.

I have been reading this annual report for at least the past 20 years and have focused on the myriad ways these citizens of Richistan have amassed their fortunes.  Some of the categories seem mundane in that the average person wouldn’t probably conjure up the thought of cement, diapers, Legos, or fasteners as a source of immense wealth. The amazing thing about this compilation of the uber wealthy is that they have built their empires on things that are ubiquitous and a bit arcane.  I have often scanned offices in a corporate setting or a beautifully furnished home and began to inventory the number of industries represented within that space.  The big ballers on this list have established a sizeable market presence in the fabric of our lives.  We, the ordinary people, are the sole source of their fortunes!  Through consumerism, materialism and necessity, global markets have been established by extracting rare minerals from the earth to create the raw materials for everything from wired communities to the building materials for our homes, appliances, cars, boats, clothing and an endless array of technology gadgets.

 This expansive list of the categories in which ushered them into this exclusive financial stratosphere touches virtually every aspect of our lives.  It includes: banking, construction, beverages,(spirits) cleaning products, real estate, pharmaceuticals, oil, biotech, shipping, consumer goods, movies, pig breeding, ( yeah, that’s what’s I said) cruise ships, hotels, retail, seafood, meat processing, software, auto dealers, casinos, medical equipment, paints, airlines, cable television, semiconductors, Campbell soup, flavorings, perfume, luxury goods, restaurants, hair products, tequila, payroll services, furniture, lotteries, tires, prosthetics, used cars, frozen foods,  

prosthetics, U-Haul, drones, package delivery, cheese, healthcare services, mobile payments, trucking, tobacco, fishing, sports apparel, employment agency, bakeries, online retail, drugstores, travel, blinds, chewing gum, TV broadcasting, online games, auto loans, web hosting, security services, dental implants, nutrition and wellness, insurance, printing, shoes, touch screens, auto parts, hygiene products, cosmetics, flooring, orange juice, supermarkets, hardware stores, auto repair, detergents, truck stops, hair care products, and soft drinks,

The basic mantra of a capitalistic, free market business environment is this: find a need and meet it.  The vast majority of individuals that made the list were not those that catered to the wealthy in the form of private equity, hedge funds and luxury goods. They made their fortunes by creating a market for regular folks.  The 80 different categories across 20 industries listed in the previous paragraph represent the bulk of industries in which they created enough market penetration to amass multi-generational wealth.  The interesting thing is that most of the nouveau super rich hit these meteoric heights through innovations in e-commerce, social media and the inertia of technology.  However, traditional industries are still providing opportunities for the creation of passports to the exclusive enclave of Richistan.    

                                                       History is not Black and White


As I write these thoughts, I realize that February has ostensibly become the cursory "celebration" of the contributions of Americans who happen to be black.  At best, knowledge of the legion of inventions and contributions by black scientists, astronauts, military generals, pilots, politicians, Fortune 500 CEOs, musicians, civil rights activists, engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs, attorneys, educators, inventors, writers and the perfunctory athletes and entertainers is a malingering subtext in the minds of the vast majority of Americans.  Ironically, a profound sense of sadness often accompanies this celebration of AMERICAN history because it has been relegated to the dust bins of cultural minutiae or trivia like the vast majority of programming that oozes from cable channels.

The narratives of people of color interwoven into the broader context of the jingoistic version of the shaping of this democracy are dissonant and incongruent with the goose-bumpey versions accompanied with a crescendoing rendition of "America the Beautiful" in the background.  Our place in the American tapestry from 1619 to 1865 soils the pages of the first primers issued to students with the indelible stain, stench and bastardization of the truths held to be self evident.  The Great Sin that irrefutably served as the de facto economic engine to usher in the Industrial Revolution and elevate the fledgling 13 colonies into a global economic power is an inextricable part of the history of black folks whether they choose to be identified as African American or not.

The zeitgeist that germinated the seeds of Trumpism finds the unpacking of this dolorous, multi-century chapter of moral depravity, ambiguity, ambivalence and impropriety unpalatable.  What we are essentially encouraged to do is engage in revisionist renderings of the antebellum South and re-purpose chattel slavery as indentured servitude gone wrong.  The arrested development of the Diaspora, the socioeconomic disparity and the endemic challenges seemingly domiciled within the communities formed as derivatives of Jim Crow, gerrymandering, and redlining are all fake news or more derisively a perennial playing of the race card to elevate the victim culture to an existential state of being.

In the state of Florida, there is a statutory requirement that Black History be taught as part of the schools' history courses.  In the month of February, my 10th grader's school opts to teach on the Jewish Holocaust- a popular theme because it is not a domestic tragedy.  The Native American holocaust ( 10-15 million Native Americans that occupied their indigenous territories were reduced by 90 percent); a byproduct of encroachment, removal, war and disease doesn't manage to warrant a blurb and the 10 or more million Africans that died in the trans-Atlantic slave trade during the middle passage requires a forensic search on Google because it "ain't being taught in "nam" classroom in the capital city.

The largest group of forced immigrants in this country have been loyal, patriotic and incalculably contributory for the entirety of their existence in this great nation.  The great tragedy of the yet unrealized dream of Dr. Carter G. Woodson in instituting the promulgation of black history as more than a subtext of American history is that the vast majority of citizens will never fully understand how much black lives have mattered in the development of this nation's wealth and global stature.

                                                                    Double Standard ?

On the morning of Superbowl 52, Edwin Jackson, a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts, was killed by a drunk drinker who struck the Uber driver's car he had taken.  Unfortunately, outside of the pseudo-celebrity of being a professional football player, this tragedy would not warrant an expanded space in the bandwidth of incessant bad news that seems to clog the airwaves of almost every major network in this country.  However, this story will be re-purposed into a dystopic diatribe rife with xenophobia, nationalism and an unsavory mix of growing anti-immigrant sentiment fueled by an America First mantra that wreaks of a kind of stench directed at far too many people that don't fit the profile of the picture featured in this blog.

Every year tens of thousands of people lose their lives because good ol' American citizens get behind the wheel of a car after drinking well beyond the limits of sobriety.  Our obsession with spirits, brews, and wine has us consuming them by the millions of gallons and despite their capacity to create chemical dependence and absolutely destroy personal health and households, they are marketed with a fervor second to none.  There is nothing intrinsically evil about adult libations. Every beer commercial comes with a disclaimer to "drink responsibly" yet the built in fatality model of alcohol-related deaths associated with car crashes is kind of a given in our culture.

I am highlighting the death of Edwin Jackson by a twice-deported Guatemalan as a flash point that will be toxically politicized at the expense of a far less popular reality-death by flag-waving, stand for the National Anthem, card-carrying NRA member Americans.

James Alexis Fields, whose mugshot I feature, deliberately ran over Heather Hyer at a rally in the polemic gathering of "alt-right and "alt-left' advocates in Charlottesville.  American Naval Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry is credited with the phrase, " We have met the enemy and they are ours." America has a disdainful history of singling out the segment of its population that they believe is the source of all its societal ills.  Yet when mass murders, gross violations of the Geneva Conventions, Wall Street pilfering, industrial-scale fraud in Washington and a smorgasbord of other malfeasance is committed by Opie Taylor, there is no national outcry to form internment camps, deport or ostracize a demographic that occupies every seat of power in this country.  Our hubris, our narcissism, our rank hypocrisy makes these impassioned cries to " get them ( illegal immigrants) outta here" ring hollow.  There is an innate tone deafness when it comes to the face of criminality
in America.

Don't worry, many people are not buying the double standard!

                                                               The Religion of Sports



Two of the world's largest practiced religions have pilgrimages that reflect the sacrality of those that follow them.  For Muslims it's Mecca and for Christians it is Jerusalem.  While the United States markets itself as a Christian nation with everything from megachurches to 5 member storefronts, the single largest religious gathering in this protestant nation occurs ever year in either late January or early February-formally known as the Superbowl.

The cathedrals of this denomination are massive, city funded architectural marvels reminiscent of the temple of Solomon.  Your patronage ( tithes, offerings- read ticket price) determines how close you get to fellowship near the Holy of Holies, the resplendent artificial turf or natural grass in which the church leaders, I mean, football coaches and their disciples gather to sacrifice life and limb for a coveted touchdown followed by ecstatic shouts of glory by the congregation, I mean fans.  This sacrament is broadcast for the world to see and the fervor displayed by the attendees is something reminiscent of the day of Pentecost when the licks of fire appeared over the disciples' heads as evidence of the Holy Spirit's presence.

If you think about it, these secular pilgrims spend about as much time, same day of the week, as the religious folks in their respective places of worship.  If the sacred folks go each weekend for 2 hours( if you live below the Mason-Dixon line and are Pentecostal add at LEAST another hour) that 's approximately 104 hours a year gathered for worship/ fellowship.  NFLism, not to be confused with Pentecostalism or Methodism, is a hybrid of idol worship and pantheism, convenes for four months out of the year, 16 weekends at about four hours per gathering.  If you include the tailgating, a last supper if you will of  grilled beef, chicken and enormous amounts of adult libations before the worship service then the total amount of hours easily jumps to 192! ( 12 hours : 8 tailgating + 4 at the game X 16).

Unlike your conventional church service, the congregation is loud for the entire time they are gathered except for the national anthem ( kneeling is NOT an option). Offering is gathered online with a few industrious members (scalpers) offering "discounts" for those who chose not to render their first fruits the old-fashioned way.  The praise and worship dancers (cheerleaders) for these massive gatherings nix the frumpy stuff and hop around the sidelines, just near the inner courts, shaking what their "mama" or a skilled plastic surgeon gave them.  The fans root for what I like to call the disciples minus one.  Two teams of eleven men ( offense and defense) who themselves are deified through stats, ESPN highlights, jersey sales and for a select few, Hall of Fame induction as they defy the laws of physics with Herculean feats of strength, acrobatic catches and Olympic-caliber speed all the while possibly worrying if the compilation of their collisions will leave them with calcified deposits of plaque in their brain in the future.

You are inclined to hear quite a few congregants speaking in "tongues" ( read cuss) if their team begins to perform poorly and their consumption of spirits has gone beyond the FDA recommendations.  Unlike Mecca and Jerusalem, the Superbowl is transient with the host city feeling like it won a lottery to allow all of the family friendly and adult entertainment that accompany it to engorge its coffers with stacks of cash. You can see an equally commercialized but uncompensated disciple version of this fanfare at the NCAA football national championship which happens to now feature a program that folks in the state of Alabama would struggle to determine if their allegiance to it is greater than their local church!

So, don't get it twisted regarding what you will be watching this Sunday; a day that is a de facto national and religious holiday.  If you don't believe me, monitor the church attendance on Sunday if the Super Bowl happened to be broadcast around noon!  Dilly, dilly!

                                                             The Mystery of "Poverty"

This post is going to be a departure from the social commentary I normal give voice to.  As I write this, world leaders, captains of industry, scientists, celebrities and plain ol" rich people are convening in Davos Switzerland,- the highest city in Europe based on elevation- at the World Economic Forum to talk about their"commitment to improve the world."  In an Age where people can't seem to engage in civil discourse organically or digitally, this decades-old effort to facilitate the meeting of the minds of the people who by some accounts can ostensibly unfracture a global community separated by a smorgasbord of ideologies, theories and customs is noble. In the meantime, billions of people are still living on the margins as trillions of dollars in assets, resources and innovations are rapidly changing the way the average person lives.

Phillip Alston, a United Nations Special Rapporteur who visited several parts of the country recently published a statement on extreme poverty in the United States of America. Part of his information was gathered from the US Census Bureau using a metric called the Official Poverty Measure (OPM).  The report disclosed that in September 2017, more than one in every eight Americans were living in poverty( approx. 40 million) and almost half of them were living in deep poverty with reported income below half of the poverty threshold.  I keep wondering why I can't just flush the image of the walking dead-homeless, destitute- you know, the invisible people that depending on where you live you try not to see, recognize or acknowledge.  I have read the caricatured narratives about the purported "innate" differences between rich and poor that has fueled an almost hatred for people who find themselves outside of the land of Richistan.

The rich are "industrious, entrepreneurial, patriotic and drivers of economic success.  Conversely, the poor are scammers, parasites, and a word our President is often inclined to say disparagingly, losers.  There is no context given to why and how millions of people in the wealthiest nation in the world occupy an almost existential state of crushing privation, destitution and hardship in the looming shadow of urban sprawl and Silicon Valley and Wall Street hyper-affluence.  Maybe the charlatan, televangelist Peter Popoff can do a national tour and give all of the impoverished a tube of his miracle spring water which according to his commercial magically allows people to make requests for envelopes of large, unearned checks to just show up in their mailboxes.  He seems to be a fixture on BET after midnight.  What does poverty look like?  Does it have an aroma, a language, a pathology or a zip code?  I think I have an awareness of this un-American state because far too many people who have followed the manuscript of the American dream are finding themselves a hair's breadth away from Brokeistan--a place void of the amenities we give no thought to until our incomes, lifestyles are disrupted by things like divorce, extended unemployment ( the average American is 3 months away from being destitute without income) catastrophic illness, disability or the untimely death of the primary provider.

By my estimation, regular folks have as many as 15 or more different expenses: Rent/mortgage, groceries, credit cards, ( yeah, they do) utilities, phone, car note or bus passes, car insurance, health insurance, dental, life, *student loans,( nationally at 2 trillion) cable tv, wi-fi, clothing, gas for vehicle, misc-if you have children you understand. John Maxwell said," A budget is simply telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went."  I love this quote but those living on the margins are stuck somewhere between an episode of Survivor and The Great Race in search of the money that they are supposed to be telling where to go.  All of that intellectual property in the form of forward-thinking innovators gathering in Davos seems to be far removed from the staff at the gas station I frequent every other morning to get my $1.82 cup of Chai tea.  A few of them are what I call the invisible poor.  They work at least two jobs, are not federally subsidized and genuinely aspire to partake in the fullness of life this country offers.  I know this because they are not invisible to me.  I know this because my daily routine takes me through the hedges and highways of those who will never have a place at the table of the World Economic Forum.  The 3000 or more invitees to this prestigious gathering won't include those who intimately know the nuances of economic despair and distress.  That is the great tragedy.