NOTE TO JANET (mrs. patmore on Downton Abbey)

I grew up with an inferiority complex a mile high.

at Knox, I felt strongly that when the white kids sat around in their own circle, it meant that I was a second rate person to be excluded.

Lewis Davidson finally came out and asked why they shouldn't stick together with like people.

Good question, but he hadn't educated us about black pride (although in many ways he worked at it around the edges).

Marcus Garvey and black pride was never taught

Were we at the age of 13 or 14 to figure that out for ourselves?

My behavior since then has been a ragged, often shameful accommodation to my butchered sense of self.

Black uprising in the 60's encouraged me.

I went through an extended anti-white period which I subsequently felt ashamed for. It now seems to have been superficial, and often ignorant.

I also went through a pseudo Rasta period that again moves me to shame for lack of being true to myself, and the pretentiousness of getting into other people's business. 

It took a lot of blows about the head and shoulders to get me somewhat to the position I hold today. And I'm still emerging and groping, sometimes shamefully

I've come to an accommodationist position (or perhaps it could be called a transactional position) with forces of higher status than my own. I'm appreciatibve of white people who  claim plantocracy heritage for the sensitivity, knowledge, manners, confidence. 

I give abundant thanks for all black people who have struggled and made gains for dignity and justice before me

We've come a very long way.

I now accept my heritage as being a blend of oppressed slaves and opprerssive slave masters

That is perhaps a simplification. I'm also descended from oppressed oppressors

There was slavery in Africa

Black rulers in Egypt enslaved other black people to build the pyramids

Should I plot and scheme to overthrow the pyramids?

Our black ancestors built the colonial structures with their hands

That should bespeak some level of ownership

"We" worked for free for colonial masters, and now that they have lifted up and gonet, we have every right to take their relics as our own and make what we will of them

These relics bespeak of a culture

Without them, what is our material culture?

We saw that squalid scenario with the mad people a week or so ago

That could be what goes for culture in the future

If we present ourselves as an African nation (as I think we should), what material heritage do we have to show for it?

Many people think that to be African, you must speak an African language and wear African clothes. But African language and African clothes from which of the many nations with the African continent?

Why should we be ashamed to present our material heritage as one won by attrition, involving the sovereign ownership of all that is called colonial heritage, whether from the rich or from the poor?

Without it we come with empty hands and the most shameful ugliness of uncultivated and uneducated pseudo Africanism

BLACKS IN EUROPEAN ART

https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2020/03/black-in-rembrandts-time-a-myth-shattering-exhibition-on-identity-and-truth/?fbclid=IwAR0HvhpBztsOfg-O0EJlOVZqO4YNcasf40YZW_fWv8_ht03Sd4bgvt4rdMM

NOTE TO GINA

Hi Gina,

My thinking in positioning Jamaica within a larger framework is that, more than falling within the African Diaspora, it is in fact a "discovered" (self recognized, self appointed) African nation. And such a nation is part of a provisional African Unity in keeping with Garvey's aspirations. Rastafarians have never thought they belong in "Jamaica." They belonged somehow in "Africa," notably in Ethiopia. They appear to take Africa too literally as being synonymous with the continent of Africa. Instead of changing territory, people need to change their minds. 

I find the concept that Jamaica is an African nation liberating. It gives the Jamaican upper class less psychic space to rule, shame and dominate black Jamaicans. And if we're all Africans together it undermines the petty bickering between ethnic groups. It also means that Jamaica doesn't need to adopt the material heritage of continental Africans, for who's to tell it how to dress or how to speak, and what architecture to value? It can be Africa just the way it is, with all its ethnic and cultural diversity. Moreover, a diverse Jamaica might well become a model for an open, globally tolerant program for the African whole. I say all this in light of how your Indian ancestorr(s) embraced Garveyism, apparently without compromising his Indian heritage.

A NONPROFIT

I'm working on starting a nonprofit, so I can apply for money for Donnette to make a photograph book of St. Ann's Bay. The US Embassy in Jamaica appears to have a preservation grant that centers on Jamaica but that allows for a lot of US-based participation. I don't know how COVID and financial chaos might affect this year's grant cycle, but a grant announcement generally comes out in October and proposals are due by year end.) The main approach to the nonprofit mission is art. Grant money (depending on grant guidelines) will apply to public education regarding  St. Ann's Bay's historic material culture, with a minimum of written reference to US places where I've lived, and worked along similar lines.

Would you consider becoming a founding board member for the nonprofit, "St. Ann Creative"?

Trevor

COMMON IDEAS FOR ALL THE EXCEPTIONAL PLACES WHERE I'VE LIVED--Marginal places that can be seen in biblical terms:

Psalm 118:22-24 King James Version (KJV)                                                                                                                                                                                                                  22 The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner ("the chief cornerstone").

All the places I touch on have been marginalized within a broader regional framework. They have been generally scorned and patronized. They all have important seminal roots that go unappreciated in a time of historical amnesia and the religion of progress.

SOME ISSUES A GRANT MUST ADDRESS

- The criticality of an African perspective to historic preservation centered on colonial architecture

- Issues of affordable housing

- Feminist notions of inclusiveness

- The energy and environmental impacts of preservation

- Envisioning a post Covid future centered on planning and preservation

- Envisioning new public rituals

- Reevaluating ideas of energy 

SPATIAL MAGIC

African ideas of form, spirituality and aesthetics will be essential to embrace.

CROSS FERTILIZATION OF ISSUES

Water catchment on a hillside in St. Ann parish can apply to water management in Madrid, NM

NOTE TO MYSELF: 

tHIS APPLIES TO mla HOLISTIC PLANNING FOR mADRID, AS WELL AS TO RURAL sT. aNN.  Less so to east Palo Alto, which is flat.

d

HOW TO MAKE CARDBOARD BOXES

http://cardboardhelp.com/how-to-start-a-cardboard-box-manufacturing-business/

THE PRINTERY

ousin David is the Gordon Lodge owner. I shared your questions with Daddy tonight and he said they got most of their supplies from England. Paper came in rolls and they had a cutting tool. It was easy to get clients as there was a near monopoly on printing for the parish and in the local area. Those were his initial thoughts, I have to give him these requests in bite sizes

AFRICA AND FEMINISM

This sounds true, although I have done no study on the subject, and don't know what to make of it in the context of Garveyism. I'm trying to think through Africa in an original way. In "Africa" fractal science appears to be developed in a specially advanced way. The same geometry repeats itself infinitely. Rhythm is similarly advanced in Africans, and I argue that it is rhythm more than brute strength that accounts for Africans' exceptional physical achievements. Africa also appears to be exceptional in coexisting (till now) with large wild animals (megafauna). Now I want to propose a feminist ideal for Africa. To make a sweeping generalization, it is feminist to "take in" and absorb, to include. So how do we put together a charter for Africa that makes it all inclusive--globally inclusive-- while at the same time opposing the universal undermining of black skin (and indeed of the feminine).

18x18

The size was recommended by a friend (who has been my main collector). He is very efficient and business oriented, and I decided I'd keep with the format for some time yet. The project allows me to break out of my shell a bit, so I'm thinking, when opportunity arises, to show mostly 18x18 pieces, all to be placed on the cardboard booths I'm making and that can be free standing and displayed anywhere. The booths are also based on a similar look (aesthetic) to the square pieces.