Benjamin Maurice Melançon the First, A.D.H.D. variously known as BMM Inc., the Maurice Institute Library, and the godfather of CATSUP, is quite possibly a figment of his own imagination.
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What kind of health care will be universalized? Medicine of the Land and People of Color

On 7/5/07, Jim-NYS wrote to the Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center (of the US Social Forum) list:

> Anyone with info, ideas, thoughts on the key needs of Healthcare in the
> U.S.. as it relates to servicing communities of color, is invited to share
> such information with me.

Read "Deer Hunting with Jesus" by Joe Bageant

It's a book. On paper. Find a copy, and read it.

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Joe Bageant
Copyright © 2007 by Joseph L. Bageant
ISBN 978-0-307-33936-2

(TODO: I have got to get this in a CCK type that formats for some microformat or semantic markup that formats for "book review"— and I guess I should make this into an actual Book review, also.)

While ordering the book (which you can do through his site) you can read the author's blog:
http://www.joebageant.com

Roland G. Fryer Jr. and thoughts on economic injustice, racism, and achievement that are no fault of the fine man

A 2005 article on hot young economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. by Stephen J. Dubner got me thinking about my thesis again.

About all I need to know to want to keep track of his work is that his model is W.E.B. DuBois.

But this statement is disturbing, and the author is an economist himself. Following up on examples of Fryer's willingness and capacity to look at all things that might affect black achievement, including genetics, Dubner wrote:

So here is Fryer's final anomaly: he is a man who revels in his blackness and yet also says he believes, as DuBois believed, that black underachievement cannot entirely be laid at the feet of discrimination.

What sort of fool, let alone a self-described rogue economist, would frame the question as a matter of discrimination? Kidnapping and slavery and no compensation hardly fit neatly under discrimination. Follow history a tad longer and you get to sharecropping, which puts the problem squarely in an economic context.

Make wealth and resources equal, and I bet black people will overcome racism – with great difficulty, but ultimately overcome it – and achieve just about anything professors and bureaucrats care to measure.

In honor of my father

  • I will be on time, I will not be late, for any meeting or appointment.
  • I will not waste anything – water, electricity, fuel, food. This particularly honors my grandmother also.
  • I will work hard.
  • I will treat all people with respect, including family.
  • I will take a little more care in my personal appearance.
  • I will walk, eat, and talk with a little more dignity.
  • I will pay attention when I drive, and do anything else important for that matter.

Restore Habeus

E-mail sent just now:

Apologies for intruding on your inbox. Dad said often that without the writ of habeas corpus (a most basic underpinning of freedom, to prevent arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial), he didn't see what hope we had as a country.

Action: http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/restorehabeas/

And he kept looking for someone - as in someone in the Senate - to stand up and say something.

I wish he'd seen it become the publicity device of a presidential candidate. From Diebold whistleblower Steve Heller:

Prevent Online Content Discrimination and Gridlock

Organization: Common Cause
Petition Link: http://www.commoncause.org/internetfreedom

Regarding Docket 07-52 in the Matter of Broadband Industry Practices

The Federal Communications Commission must act quickly to protect net neutrality – better called online equality or internet freedom – the longstanding principle that prevents discrimination on the Internet and that has allowed it to become an engine of innovation and economic growth.

Stop Smoking

It's impossible to describe the sadness and rage at the world in general with which I write this. I want my Dad back. This cannot be.

The hospital stay killed my father. But he checked himself into the hospital because he didn't have the breath to do things he could do just months ago, even get to the bathroom sometimes, using a container instead.

Emphysema from cigarette smoke is the reason my dad is dead now.

Obituary as published in MetroWest Daily News: John C. Melancon

NATICK - John C. Melancon, 78, of Natick, died Tuesday, May 29, 2007, at MetroWest Medical Center, Leonard Morse campus.

An orphan, Mr. Melancon made his own living, starting from a young age in New Orleans. He never went to school, let alone graduated from high school or college. A lifelong student of life by reading and direct experience, his intelligence and depth and breadth of historical knowledge surpassed that of any university education.

Remembrances

Dad was a great bartender and manager, and proud of it, from bartending in the Boston area or San Francisco to managing the intentional community's wooden toy and educational play equipment factory or the Weston Golf Club.

He was always sought after by women, and proud of that too, and the fact that he was largely educated by intelligent women.

The greatest family memories are mostly all camping. We did camping trips across the whole country. Nearby, he loved Bear Town State Forest.

Mom on camping in Arkansas

Mom tells of her and Dad going to a camping ground in Arkansas:

In Arkansas
Campground with 200 campsites, all of them empty

monster camper drove through the entire campground, parked opposite our site

cat that nearly strangled itself, on a leash, jumped out of

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