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Treason And Dates

It seems incredible to me that Angela Davis is to be honored as an inductee in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Incredible not because it isn’t deserved, but because wasn’t it just yesterday—?

In the late 1960s and early 70s, to say the name Angela Davis meant to picture a beautiful Black woman in a full afro with right arm extended and a closed fist giving the power salute of Black Panthers. She was the powerful voice and vision for activists of feminism and equality during the Civil Rights movement.

If you look up Davis on Google or any other search engine, you will find her described as a former Communist, Activist, and Black Panther supporter. Communist at least until the 1990s when she officially left the Party. In 1970 she purchased guns and supplied them to her own personal security guards. The guards then—as members of the Black Panthers—used those guns in an armed take-over of a courtroom in California. Four people were killed during the takeover and kidnapping, including a judge. The deaths occurred during a chase by government agents.

As a result of the deaths, Angela became a fugitive wanted by the FBI. At that time J. Edgar Hoover listed Davis on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List; she was the third woman and the 309th person to be listed.

She was eventually captured, imprisoned, tried, then found Not Guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping. The question of course became one of prior knowledge and intent, to say nothing of the originating point of the bullets that caused the deaths.

Although she was found not guilty at the trial she was dogged by accusations and negative press for years. California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1969 attempted to have her barred from teaching at any California university, given that she was an avowed Communist. He was not successful then or later when Angela went on to become a professor and scholar at UCLA, California. She was and is a continuing voice for feminism and civil rights, and an author of serious merit.

Others to be inducted to the Hall of Fame include attorney and activist Gloria Allred, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Native American lawyer and professor Sarah Deer, actress and activist Jane Fonda, United States Air Force officer Nicole Malachowski, former member of U.S. Congress Louise Slaughter, composer Laurie Spiegel, biologist Flossie Wong-Staal, and artist/activist Rose O’Neill.

I list the others not just for honors earned, but to note the inclusion of Jane Fonda. Why? She too was accused of treason by an enraged public during the Vietnam war.

A picture of Jane Fonda on a Ho Chi Minh tank. A photo of Angela Davis with the Black Panthers in a power salute and in defense of the Soledad Brothers. Both led and inspired protests for and against themselves. The country was divided and loud then, just as now. Both were accused of treason.

Davis went from an incarceration of over a year—initially in solitary confinement—before she was granted bail. She was America’s Most Wanted criminal. Now she’s a professor emeritus and a Hall of Fame honoree.

It was Cardinal Richelieu who is credited with the saying: Treason is just a matter of dates. Indeed.


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Meanwhile, In Other News

Hearing a word from the wasp, or two or two thousand of the little darlings.

From an article in the HuffPost: In most years, the winter freeze kills off many colonies. But that doesn’t always happen ― and when a colony survives the winter, a super nest can form.

“The queens are the only ones who have an antifreeze compound in their blood,” Charles Ray, an entomologist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, told The New York Times.

He said climate change is one reason for the survival of so many colonies:

So normally, a surviving queen will have to start a colony from scratch in the spring. With our climate becoming warmer, there might be multiple surviving queens producing more than 20,000 eggs each.

  • Posted in HuffPo

Did you know that with each wasp sting you develop more of an allergy to them, not less? Unfortunately many people believe you would be building up an immunity. Not so. Just the opposite.

In the end, maybe it’s the bees that will get us, not the birds—Alfred Hitchcock’s film was close. And what a horror film that could make.

In case you’d like to know more, here’s a site that will tell you how to avoid them once they are spotted. #Wasps#Summer#WaspStings#YellowJackets#Hornets

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Star Crossed Lovers

“I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.”
Anaïs Nin

Posted by Ravenous Butterflies—Evelyn Nesbit, Thisbe, 1900.

Pyramus and Thisbe

Pyramus and Thisbe are young lovers in a Babylonian* story told by the Roman poet Ovid in the Metamorphoses. The lovers, who lived next door to each other, were forbidden by their parents to see or speak to each other. But the two communicated through a hole in the wall between their houses.

Deciding to elope, Pyramus and Thisbe agreed to meet at night under a mulberry tree outside the city. Thisbe arrived first, wearing a veil over her face. When she heard a lion roar, she fled, dropping her veil. The lion, whose jaws were bloody, found the scarf and tore it up. When Pyramus arrived, he saw the stained, tattered veil and assumed that Thisbe was dead. He drew his sword and stabbed himself. Thisbe then returned to find Pyramus dying, and she used his sword to kill herself as well.

It is said that, before this incident, the fruit of the mulberry tree was white. However, the blood from Pyramus and Thisbe turned its fruit deep red, and it has been that color ever since.

The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is the subject of the mechanicals’ play in Shakespeare‘s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Any relationship to Romeo and Juliet? Many others?

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Shaun The Sheep

Just a little note from nature to keep our spirits up.

ShCostasiella kuroshimae (also referred to as “leaf sheep” and “Shaun the sheep”) is a species of sacoglossan sea slug whose beady eyes and flat face make it look like an adorable cartoon sheep. Add some droopy feelers and a phosphorescent, leaf-like body, and this little darling may just be the loveliest slug in the ocean!

Posted by My Modern Met

I continue to be amazed and impressed by Nature Herself. If I were a poet I would certainly be a Romantic. Not only a beauty, but the great works of use to itself and those who feast upon the bounty.

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Robert Thurman

Here we have Robert Thurman—as posted in Tricycle magazine and shown on Facebook with today’s news feed. Thurman is pretty much a mainstay in contemporary Buddhism in the U.S. What many people don’t know however, is that Uma Thurman is his daughter. Yes, the movie star. Once knowing that, I’ve been unable to see or read anything about Uma without thinking of her dad. Pretty sneaky way of keeping Buddhism in your mind, I’d say. (By-the-way, Uma is the name of a goddess.)

  • Robert Thurman

“I am insisting that Buddhism be taken seriously as a knowledge system. The arrogance of Western materialist scientists, that they understand the world and know how to fix it, is ridiculous because they are destroying it, not fixing it.” —Robert A.F. Thurman

Robert Thurman in Ubud, Bali. Photo by Christopher Michel

I met Thurman in Shaker Heights before I went to Colorado, some time back. The above photo does him no justice—he is a handsome and charismatic man. I doubt seriously that he has lost all of his characteristics with time. He has an edge. A twinkle in his eye. And a deep husky voice that speaks with great enthusiasm on the topic at hand—usually Buddhism.

He was the first American to ordain as a Tibetan Buddhist monk before returning to lay life to become Columbia University’s Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies, the co-founder and president of the nonprofit Tibet House US, the president of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, and a prolific author and translator. Did I also mention that he has great stamina? You can feel the energy emanating from him.

And he is quite a character. His original house (if it is still standing) is a hodgepodge of thoughts as they ran through his mind, and some that fell though the cracks. Robert’s design and build has leaked from time to time, had parts of rooms fly off in a storm, and a whole section of roof implode. It doesn’t seem to bother him much, he just carries on.

Thurman House in Woodstock, NY—Irish Times

The NY Times published an article in 2017 titled 50 Years of Marriage and Mindfulness With Nena and Robert Thurman. Nena is of course Robert’s wife. Much more can be said of the Thurmans and many articles have tried to capture it all. It will take many more.