Hey James,

Inbox

Wed, Mar 13, 3:32 PM (1 day ago)

Ever Notice,

Baltimore was once a very Catholic town, right? Ever notice any Lenten drop off in meat purchases around this time of year? Any trend over the years?

Also, I thought of you while reading a blog post on the four sins that cry out to heaven —one of which was/is oppressing widows and the fatherless. I thought, LaFond writes about fatherless guys —working with them, around them, supervising them, etc. So I think, amen to you for not abusing those guys but treating them fairly, whether it was talking them in a certain way for best effect or whatever.

-Charp Christian

Sir, thank you for reminding me how lucky I am.

I was just feeling sorry for my self last night and your email came through like the morning light.

My father felt I was a curse.

I thought he was a puss.

But I had him—as different as we were, as horrified as he was by my violence and as bitter as I was about his disapproval, the man was a worker, worked three full-time jobs if necessary, did that for 3 years straight. I aped him by working six jobs for two years straight. And when I look at my life, the only thing that distinguishes me is my work rate. I only won 7 of 21 fist fights, so I made sure that I had so many stick fights that the 172 losses would look like a drop in the 670 bout aggregate.

I couldn't pass a GED test or make it through the first round in a second grade spelling bee but I've written more books than almost anybody who ever lived. In the end if I hadn't had Ted to set an example for me I'd be nothing.

I remember him taking us on a church retreat with this little black kid that had no daddy, how much me and that kid were alike, how well we got on together and how different our circumstances were when we dropped him off and the neighborhood kids began chimping out and threatening us—that that kid was a prisoner in a violent situation that my father had literally worked his way out of—because that was old Pimlico where that kid lived, the area my dad grew up in and got out of.

I think that's why I had a soft spot for my employees when I was the axe-wielding boss and why I can't let go of the Plantation America project, because my father's grandfathers, both of them, were Home Children. Widows and the fatherless were the prey of the ruling class of merchants and aristocrats, the reason why the working class man has always been hated by the elite, for he stands between their hungering perversity and those soft bodies and vulnerable minds. This is why the System still makes war on the working man, so that it might dine on the manless woman and the fatherless child.

Check out the link from Dennis Dale below.

White Servitude

Thinking of your "Lies That Bind" here

-Dennis Dale

Here is a portion of the text:

"That's effectively where the accountability for aid organizations ended, says Bob Huggins, an Ottawa-based filmmaker whose father was a home child. Little was done to check in on kids' living conditions, he said, which ran the gamut from his own father's experience of being lovingly integrated as a member of the family to darker stories of exclusion and abuse.

"Records from across Canada tell stories of children forced to sleep in barns or forbidden from eating with their employers' families. Oschefski's organization estimates roughly 65 per cent were abused. Her own aunt, Mary, was whipped, beaten and moved 20 times in less than eight years. She was 14 when she gave birth to a stillborn baby."

And whose baby was that, her owner's, her owner's son, her owner's brother? African American slave narratives are dominated by the fact that female servants were leant as sex objects to male visitors or used by their male owner, a circumstance which guarantees that the owner's wife, who controls food and usually discipline for female servants, would be exceptionally cruel to the raped girl.

This home children practice began officially in 1869, the very same period when historical societies in the U.S. were reprinting primary sources and deleting sections that treated with the subject of same-race slavery.

As for Lent sales, in the late 1970s, through the 1980s and into the 90s, we sold 4 times the frozen fish products during Lent. Once the clientele became predominantly African American that went down to 2 times the Lent fish sales, with many of the Southern Baptist colored folk observing the catholic European tradition simply out of neighborly habit and the habit born of retail pricing, that made lent "Fish price season" for these people who are generally more fond of seafood than their paleface counterparts.

Comparatively, Passover sales are the same as ever, showing that certain economic advantages accrue to the people who retain rather than discard their culture.