This post is from my son, Chuck, I ask that my followers interested, in education, the mental health field, and concerned citizens; visit his site and give him the support he and other educators needs during this time of crisis. This is not a sympathy plea, but one of support and caring for human sacrifice. Chuck is an educator, mental health activist/speaker and publish young adult author. Thank you for your support. E.
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Month: July 2020
Donald Trump – Joe Biden…#224
Donald Trump – Joe Biden
I have to vote, but I am not sure that there is any candidate that will live up to my principles. I am not certain how I feel about Joe Biden and his potential choice of a “running mate”, I do know that I do not want Donald Trump another four years.
First, being female and having a disable child, I have a problem with Trump’s verbal communication about women, his making fun of the disabled. He has to be the most vile, evil individual and in his running of America he is no better than Hitler’s Germany. He believes in concentration camps in China, he caged Hispanic children at the border; many have yet to get back to their parents. What more must he do to have people see who he really is?
His largest follow bases are Christians. Are they lost children of God, to follow an individual who actions is that of an anti-Christ, the Devil! What is a Christian? Billy Graham said, “A Christian is a man, woman, or child who has experienced a spiritual new birth through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. I believe good Christians are kind and decent people. Good Christians are compassionate. Donald Trump does not fit into this category.
In all my research I find that a great number of Christians worship Donald Trump. He has been called “The Great White Hope”. That statement alone frightens me, the reference to “white” leaves out a great number of races and colors. It is a term that would be used by the KKK.
It is said by his followers that Trump is “Number one, He is white, He is of God”. Humans have created images of Jesus-God as white, when in all reality he was a dark skin man, would Trump or his followers, feel as they do if they accepted the truth? When I hear words praising Trump, I see them as KKK. Other terms I have heard are “A modern King David”, “God’s Candidate”. I feel that Donald Trump has created a Cult, and as it is said, his rallies are his churches and he is the “Gospel”.
The only way to stop this madness is to “Vote”!
Then there is Joe Biden, I am concerned about his choice of a running mate. The individual must have the experience and strength to possibly be the president if something should happen to Biden. He has committed to choosing a woman; I am Leary of this as well. Oh, don’t get me wrong, women can run this country and do an excellent job, but will she be allowed to do so? Look what Washington did to Obama; he had to fight every step of the way, eight years. Now, we must wait to see if he in fact chooses a woman, and a woman of color.
The only way to stop Trumps madness is to “Vote”!
These are trying times, I am a Christian, and I have been here before, and survived. There are a great number of wonderful Christians who do great things in life. We should be careful not to judge anyone, but also be careful of whom we trust. America will survive. With the Virus turning our world upside down, we need to stay safe; and believe that America was great before Trump became president, it is great and we will become stronger. This is my hope, my dream, my prayer.
2020©elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
Rubble of Yesterday…#223
Promises of the mind set aside in
the days of youth; visions stored
in a hopeful place to become dim
memories and fade away.
A glimpse into the window of twilight
One finds the tombstones of yesterdays
promises; rubble covered with reminiscent
vine.
Embers burn within the soul, no peace;
there are fewer tomorrows, weep for the
uncertainty of the future and of dreams
left behind.
If you could turn back time would you
relive your life. Would you accept the future
whatever it may be, would you disregard truth
and trust what your eyes see? Yesterdays
promises are hidden dreams, find new
excitement in your life rid yourself of turmoil and strife.
Wake up your conscious your journey is not yet
over, there are new mountains to climb, forget
the rubble of yesterday, and wisely use your time.
©2020.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
Author’s books at Barnes & Nobel.com and Amazon.com
Brianna’s Pond…#222
Current working draft of a new book…scene set in the Deep South, love does not have any boundaries, race or age. Brianna Youngblood is dying and Jesse her niece has come home to care for her.
Brianna’s Pond…
Jesse Brianna Youngblood walked into the lobby of the Ayers Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama; her body went ridged, childhood fears returned as she stopped in front of the elevator doors. The doors opened, she shut her eyes tight and walked quickly through them, she did not need to look to know that the tarnished brass rail was next to her; feeling ashamed that after more than thirty years she still associated the old elevator with a tragic time in her life.
An elderly man walked in behind her, waited for a few moments then began clearing his Throat.
“Young lady are you going to just stand there with your eyes closed or do you intend to select a floor?” The voice dripped of southern politeness laced with attitude.
“I’m sorry sir, the tenth floor please.” Her voice apologetic Jesse could feel his irritability, but she kept her eyes closed.
She was not going to surrender her hold on the railing, he reached out selected his floor and pushed the button for the top floor as well. The antiquated elevator cables creaked and groaned as Jesse counted each floor that passed, then it stopped on the ninth floor; the old man grumbled under his breath as he got off, she was going to see the old woman. Then the intimidating climb continued but Jesse was excited to be back, it had been five years since her aunt made the decision to change the building from the old hotel to apartments; of course, her Aunt Biana still occupied the entire top floor or penthouse as some tenants refers to it.
Finally, the doors opened and so did her eyes, she stepped quickly into the entrance hall where nothing had changed. Her aunt, owner of the hotel decided five years earlier to have it renovated into apartments; but the tenth floor was like stepping back into time. Mirrors in gilded frames, drawings of known and unknown artists lined the walls; colossal vases filled with multicolored plumes stood tall like sentries at the entrance door. Time had left its mark on everything, the building, maybe the life beyond the door. Jesse did not know what she was going to find on the other side, but she was home.
©elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
Author’s books at Barnes & Nobel.com and Amazon.com
What the Voices Took from Me…#221
You left the world to early, free from a life that always
Left you filled with doubt. You lived the lives of
Many, the voices, always hoping just to be
You.
I now waited for that glow from heaven, I willed
You not to go, God did not agree. Was your life
Fulfilled in such a short time, will I ever know?
You had beginnings, disappointments, new starts,
You worried about tomorrow, unable to feel
Happiness in what you accomplished today.
I suffer your being gone, sadness wretches my days,
The glow died there was no hope. It seems like one
Long unhappy dream.
Roaming within my mind, I walk the fields of your
Life. A time of clouded joy, then time was blown
Away.
Born in innocence, fresh, life clear, before the voices
Took over, bringing fear. I could not help you in your
Solitude while you nursed your unconquerable fears.
As the moonlight pales, I yearn for lost years, before
The mental strife. Before the voices took over your life.
It was after sunset that you died, a void that cannot
Be filled, you will never grow old. I miss your smiles,
Your red tresses flowing down your back, your light will
Always shine; your radiance will never fade.
Sleep my darling in eternal rest…
Poetry – Streets of Wickedness…#220
Harlots cry into the night, wandering through the streets, offering themselves. They are hungry and their stomach rumbles with the deafening sounds of the city, some cry and wail, needing to eat.
They peddle their wares and another owns their soul. The misery they endure leaves their hearts cold.
On this night many of the harlots feel they are cursed, others that did not survive will take their last ride, in the undertaker’s hearse.
©2020.elizabethannjohnsonmurphree
a cONvERsATIoN wITh dEpReSSion aNd aNXIETy
Depression is rampart, especially during this World Wide Virus. CR Murphree is an educator, Young Adult Novelist, and passionate about helping people with depression and anxiety by sharing his own insights and experiences. Enjoy the post. E.
Trump Supports Chinese Concentrations Camps…#219
Trump supports Chinese concentrations camps.
It was bought to my attention yesterday that the Uighur Muslims were being sent to Chinese concentration camps. When I researched this horrific situation I could not get it out of my mind. I understand that international concern has been growing about what China is doing to its Uighur Muslim population, a minority community in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province. Reports have emerged of China ‘homogenizing’ the Uighur’s, segregation, reassignment of mind and loyalty. These people claim closer ethnic ties to Turkey and other central Asian countries than to China. Around a million Uyghur’s, Kazakhs and other Muslims have been bundled into internment camps, where they are allegedly being schooled into giving up their identity, and assimilate better in the communist country dominated by the Han Chinese. Most horrific of all is that our president Donald Trump agrees that the concentration camps are a good idea. That is beyond frightening, his method is clearly fear-provoking.
This news, information is frightening, why? Because this is what our President Trump is wanting and /or is doing to those who want to come across our American/Mexican border.
Those of you who live in our bordering countries, and America; does this sound familiar to you? In China, children have been separated from their parents, families torn apart; an entire population kept under surveillance and cut off from the rest of the world. The few survivors who have managed to escape the country have been reported physical, mental and sexual torture at these camps.
In the United States, border authorities are detaining children in large groups, and for longer periods of time, increases their severe health risks and the likelihood of human rights violations. Shelters are found diluted soap in the bathrooms, large groups of children crowded in a room for their legal screenings and no evidence of sanitizing the room before or after. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic — none of this is acceptable.
Trump in the midst of an intense election campaign that may determine whether democracy survives, he is employing his expertise to try and divert and deflect attention. It appears that he still has the gift if you call it that; to psychological manipulate a person or a group, covertly sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive discord and other changes including low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, to threaten his victim and delegitimize his victim’s beliefs. His daily strategy, to Soviet-style change the facts surrounding the Corona Virus and his utter incompetence in destroying our pandemic prevention and treatment program because it was formed by Barack Obama.
However, we would be inhumane if we ignored what has been largely forgotten amidst the election year and the arrival of the Corona Virus in the United States, with a bumbling and two-faced response by the Trump administration. We would be inhumane to forget that the lives of migrant children and parents from Mexico and Central America are on the line as Trump is apparently taking no precautions to prevent the transmission of the virus in the overcrowded detention centers. They are ripe for the rapid spread of a highly contagious, potentially deadly virus.
Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, but can we only fight one battle at a time? We need to unite as one Nation. We need to prioritize our battles. Instead of “Marching in the Streets” destroying America, we should be marching on these cages that our neighbor Mexico’s children are kept in like dogs. We need a leader who can take care of America. We use to be a country that fought for freedom, for everyone; have so many died in vain defending the honor of people everywhere of different race, color, and regelious beliefs. When did we lose our honor to defend…
Migrants initially detained in the United States in cages and cramped for-profit detention centers are often treated with cruelty, hostility, and abuse – because cruelty is the point of the Trump administration, and carried out under the watchful eye of racist. Trump has carefully put in place his own concentration camps without us lifting a finger to stop him. Like Hitler, he has his followers and are we going to have our camps and ovens in this country?
Congressional delegations who have been able to enter some of the “concentration camps”, a valid name because of crushed confinement have noted horrifying scenes of blood from female periods, feces, filthy clothes, and inadequate meals, all amidst the smell of urine.
A Southern Poverty Law Center article noted that child separation was taking place as early as 2018, when in one two-month period 2000 children were separated from their parents. An SPLC story described one wretched “detention center” in McAllen, Texas:
In 2018, Journalists and human rights advocates toured an old warehouse in McAllen, Texas, where hundreds of children are being kept in a series of cages made of mental fencing. Journalist reported that overhead lighting stays on around the clock, children are sleeping under “large foil sheets,” older children are forced to change the diapers of toddlers and that children have no books or toys. One toddler is seen crying uncontrollably and pounding her fists on a mat.
The Trump administration under a federal court order is supposed to have stopped separating children from their parents, but in October 2019 a headlined read, “The [US] Government Has Taken At Least 1,100 Children from Their Parents since Family Separations Officially Ended.” The story notes that more separations have taken place, because the Department of Homeland Security Record keeping is so bad, and even the location of many children is unknown.
According it is said that, “new government data shows the United States detained a staggering 69,550 migrant children in 2019.” Sometimes 13,000 or more children were detained at a time. There have been several deaths of children in the detention centers, communicable diseases and untreated illnesses.
In bigoted, racist, incompetent and incoherent remarks, Donald Trump suggested at his Charleston, SC campaign rally that he may close off the Mexican border because the Corona Virus might be transmitted by Mexicans and Central Americans crossing into the US, as if his dream of a wall could prevent a virus from infecting people in the US. His knowledge of disease transmission is that of an idiot…no Donald Trump is lower than pond scum.
Trump knows how to use racism to incite his base, so now he is even implying a pandemic virus may be associated with non-whites. However, and in unfortunate circumstances, unlike the servile DC press corps Trump transcriptionists, the Corona Virus is indifferent to Trump’s posturing, threaten deception. It infects regardless of Trump’s derangement and self-aggrandizement.
Furthermore, there are tent and shanty town cities just over the Mexican border as part of Trump “Remain in Mexico” asylum Mexico program that are also prime targets for a contagion that thrives in concentrated environments of people. That too is being done in our name, and we remain quiet at the peril of our consciences being marred by our silent consent to the policies of Trump . Meanwhile, the children and adults in inhumane detention conditions are at high risk for the Corona Virus, and there remains little news or concern about their plight.
China targeting the Uyghur’s, Xinjiang is technically an autonomous region within China — its largest region, rich in minerals, and sharing borders with eight countries, including India, Pakistan, Russia and Afghanistan. The Uyghur’s are Muslim; they don’t speak Mandarin as their native language, and have ethnicity and culture that is different from that of mainland China. Over the past few decades, as economic prosperity has come to Xinjiang, it has brought with it in large numbers the majority Han Chinese, who have cornered the better jobs, and left the Uyghur’s feeling their livelihoods and identity were under threat. This led to sporadic violence, in 2009 culminating in a riot that killed 200 people, mostly Han Chinese, in the region’s capital Urumqi.
People could be sent to the government’s “radicalization camps” for showing any signs of extremism, with the government deciding what was “extremism” — sporting beards, fasting during Ramzan, dressing differently from the majority, sending greetings, praying “too often”, giving up smoking and drinking, or not knowing Mandarin. The brighter of the Uighur children are sent to boarding schools and colleges so they could be honed into civil servants loyal to China.
Yes, this is a communist country, is China going the way of the Jewish holocaust? In three years, the government is estimated to have put one million people in the “re-education” camps, making them leave behind their jobs, property — and their children.
A former inmate said that, “They wouldn’t let me sleep, they would hang me up for hours, and they would beat me. They had thick wooden and rubber batons, whips made from twisted wire, needles to pierce the skin, pliers for pulling out the nails. All these tools were displayed on the table in front of me, ready to use at any time. And I could hear other people screaming as well.”
People are told they should be grateful the government is taking pains to reform their relatives “infected by the radicalism”. Those who still persist with questions are told there is a credit system in place to decide when the inmates can leave the camps, and their behavior will impact their relatives’ credit. Because the inmates have not been charged for any crime, there is no question of a legal fight against their detention. But even those who are not in the camps are not quite free. The government has put in place a surveillance system that includes face recognition cameras, software to monitor Uyghur’s’ phone activities, QR codes on homes that tell authorities how many members are inside the house, QR codes on any domestic tool that can be used as a weapon, such as a knife.
Trump supports the concentration camps. China has maintained it is only de-radicalizing some of its errant citizenry, and has asked the world to “respect its sovereignty” in dealing with its internal matters. Trump told China’s President that building concentration camps for millions of Uighur Muslims was ‘exactly the right thing to do,’ President Donald Trump expressed approval of a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China during a private meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to former national security adviser John Bolton’s upcoming memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.”
Is Trump smarter than we think he is, has he slowing made changes that appear to be more communist every day, does his support of concentration camps give you reason to doubt where he is leading this country?
EAJM
Authors Books:
Hiram Ulysses Grant owned one slave, his wife’s father owned many…#218
During this country Black Lives Matter and other National events as you know I have given thought to what truly happen in those years and the past in general. I believe that the Presidents and Blacks that owned Slaves did not end with the Civil War, as it has been within us like a volcano in the earth, waiting to erupt. The intent of Slavery for both the white and black man was money, the number of acreage and slaves meant wealth. Some political. The problems with America lies within the confined lives of many Americans today, this current series follows the lives of many who denied their part in slavery or today’s BLM, violence, death and destruction throughout America.
Hiram Ulysses Grant eighteenth President was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, in 1822. His ancestors Matthew and Priscilla Grant arrived aboard the ship Mary and John at Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Grant’s great-grandfather fought in the French and Indian War, and his grandfather, Noah, served in the American Revolution at Bunker Hill. A history of “fighters”.
Grant graduated West Point in 1843, ranked 21st out of 39 in his class and was promoted the next day to the rank brevet second lieutenant. Grant planned to resign his commission after his four-year term of duty. He would later write to a friend that among the happiest days of his life were the day he left the presidency and the day he left the academy. The man, who made history, hated it!
Grant became engaged to, Julia Boggs Dent, in 1844. Four years later, they were married at Julia’s home in St. Louis. Grant’s abolitionist father disapproved of the Dents owning slaves and neither of Grant’s parents attended the wedding. After the wedding, Grant obtained a two-month extension to his leave and returned to St. Louis when he decided, with a wife to support, that he would remain in the army.
Julia Boggs Dent was born in 1826 at White Haven plantation west of St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents were Frederick Dent, a slaveholding planter and merchant, and Ellen Wrenshall Dent. Frederick enslaved about 30 Africans and refused to consider freeing them on moral grounds, doing so only when compelled by law of emancipation. Julia was distantly related to confederate General James Longstreet.
U.S. Grant married into a family that owned slaves. Love is blind, so they say, in fact, slaves constructed his home near his father-in-law’s plantation, and there came a time when he supervised those slaves on his wife’s familial plantation. Grant disapproved of slavery, yet, instead of building his home using hired labor, he used slaves. He disapproved of slavery, yet, he took a job supervising slaves on his father-in-law’s plantation.
Promoted to a Union Captain in 1853, Grant was assigned to command at the newly constructed Fort Humboldt in California. Separated from his wife and family, Grant began to drink. Grant was ask to resign in 1854.
At age 32, with no civilian vocation, Grant needed work to support his growing family. It was the beginning of seven years of financial struggles, poverty, and instability. Grant’s father offered him a place in the Galena, Illinois, branch of the family’s leather business, but demanded Julia and the children stay in Missouri, with the Dents, or with the Grants in Kentucky. Grant and Julia declined the offer. In 1855, Grant farmed, using Julia’s slave Dan, on his brother-in-law’s property. The farm was not successful and to earn a living he sold firewood on St. Louis street corners.
The next year, the Grants moved to land on Julia’s father’s farm, and built a home called “Hardscrabble”. Julia described the rustic house as an “unattractive cabin”, but made the dwelling as homelike as possible with the family’s keepsakes and other belongings. Grant’s family lacked money, clothes, and furniture, but always had enough food. Finally, he moved his family to his father-in-laws 850 acre plantation. He did not believe in slavery, but he lived on land they worked and suffered. Grant owned one slave, he freed him by a manumission deed, in 1857.
The same year, Grant acquired a slave from his father-in-law, a thirty-five-year-old man named William Jones. Although Grant was not an abolitionist, he was not considered a “slavery man”, and could not bring himself to force a slave to do work.
In 1860, Grant and his family moved north to Galena, Illinois, accepting a position in his father’s leather goods business run by his younger brothers Simpson and Orvil. In a few months, Grant paid off his debts. When the American Civil War began Grant re-enlisted as a Captain when Lincoln called for 75.000 volunteers.
So the killing of father against father, brother against brother begins. In the end, Grant ordered a general assault on Lee’s entrenched forces. Union troops captured Richmond. Grant was in communication with Lee before he entrusted his aide Orville Babcock to carry his last dispatch to Lee requesting his surrender with instructions to escort him to a meeting place of Lee’s choosing. Grant immediately rode west, bypassing Lee’s army, to join Sheridan who had captured Appomattox Station, blocking Lee’s escape route. On his way, Grant received a letter sent by Lee informing him that he was ready to surrender.
Grant campaigned for the office of president. The Democrats and their Klan supporters focused mainly on ending Reconstruction intimidating Blacks, and returning control of the South to the white Democrats and the planter class, alienating War Democrats in the North. Grant won the popular vote by 300,000 votes out of 5,716,082 votes cast, receiving an Electoral College landslide of 214 votes to Seymour’s 80. Seymour received a majority of white votes, but Grant was aided by 500,000 votes cast by blacks, winning him the popular vote. At the age of 46, Grant was the youngest president yet elected, and the first president after the nation had outlawed slavery.
On March 4, 1869, Grant was sworn in as the eighteenth President of the United States by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. In his inaugural address, Grant urged the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, while large numbers of African Americans attended his inauguration.
Grant was considered an effective civil rights president, concerned about the plight of African Americans. On March 18, 1869, Grant signed into law equal rights for blacks, to serve on juries and hold office, in Washington D.C., and in 1870 he signed into law the Naturalization Act that gave foreign blacks citizenship.
During his first term, Reconstruction took precedence. Republicans controlled most Southern states, propped up by Republican controlled Congress, northern money, and southern military occupation. Grant advocated the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment that said states could not disenfranchise African Americans.
The Union freed the slaves, but then fought to enslave the Native Americans.
When Grant took office in 1869, the nation’s policy towards Native Americans was in chaos, affecting more than 250,000 Native Americans being governed by 370 treaties. In 1871, Grant ended the sovereign tribal treaty system; by law individual Native Americans were deemed wards of the federal government.
After gold was discovered and trespassing occurred on Sioux protected lands, Sioux chiefs readied for war. On November 3, 1875, Grant held a meeting at the White House and, under advice from Sheridan, Grant agreed not to enforce keeping out miners from the Black Hills, and to force “hostile” Native Americans onto the Sioux reservation.
In October 1876, Grant convinced the tribes to relinquish the Black Hills to miners. Congress ratified the agreement three days before Grant left office in 1877. Relinquish the Black Hills, no; the U.S. government stole the Black Hills from the Native American, who would free the Indians?
When Grant left office he was nearly broke and worried constantly about leaving his wife a suitable amount of money to live on. Century magazine offered Grant a book contract with a royalty, but Grant’s friend Mark Twain, understanding how bad Grant’s financial condition was, made him an offer for his memoirs which paid Grant three-quarters royalty.
To provide for his family, Grant worked intensely on his memoirs at his home in New York City. Because of the summer heat and humidity, his doctors recommended that he move upstate to a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor, offered by a family friend. Grant finished his memoir and died only a few days later.
President Grover Cleveland ordered a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning. After private services, the honor guard placed Grant’s body on a special funeral train, which traveled to West Point and New York City. A quarter of a million people viewed it in the two days before the funeral. Tens of thousands of men, many of them veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic, marched with Grant’s casket drawn by two dozen black stallions to Riverside Park in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. His pallbearers included Union generals Sherman and Sheridan, Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Joseph E. Johnston, Admiral David Dixon Porter, and Senator John A. Logan, the head of the GAR
Attendance at the New York funeral topped 1.5 million. Ceremonies were held in other major cities around the country, while Grant was eulogized in the press and likened to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Grant’s body was laid to rest in Riverside Park, first in a temporary tomb, and then—twelve years later, on April 17, 1897—in the General Grant National Memorial, also known as “Grant’s Tomb”, the largest mausoleum in North America.
EAJM
Authors Books:
In Memory of Charlotte Jean Murphree 7-13-1958 – 7-21 – 2010
“To have faith is to believe unconditionally”. – Don Miguel Ruiz
The Last Chapter 