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A Rooster’s Tale
by Mwalim
Storyteller,
Playwright & Folklorist Many
years after the turtle got his shell; animals began to find
their spirituality was separating from them. Once upon a time,
their spirits were one with the world around them, but as time
went on, things got more complex. Suddenly, the animals could no
longer find their spirits in the grass, trees, rivers, fields
and skies.
The
animals began to look elsewhere for their spirits, not realizing
that their spirits had never left. Some of the animals
maintained a relationship and connection with the spiritual
world and often had visions that they shared with the other
animals. Some times they could “see” the spirits of the
other animals and interpret the spirits message. These animals
became known as “spiritual leaders.”
Some
of these spiritual leaders were legitimate. They would help and
counsel any animal that came to them. They would ask for nothing
in return, and occasionally got just that: nothing. Sometimes, a
thankful animal would make a generous donation of food or goods
to the spiritual leader, but usually the spiritual leaders made
their living doing something else.
Some animals saw this as an
opportunity to make a living. Many of them had no more of a
sense of how to connect with their spirits than the animals who
came to them for advice. One of these spiritual leaders was an
arrogant, loud and rude animal called Rooster. Rooster used to
strut around with his chest sticking out, looking down his
no.... I mean beak at everybody who walked by. He would also
brag about the fact that he had twenty women at his beck and
call, and several children by each of them. Rooster had a suave
and slick manner, which appealed to many of the animals. They
took his smooth ways as a sign that he was the chosen one and
they should follow.
Once
a week, Rooster began holding big meetings where he would help
animals reconnect with their souls. Three or four times
during the meeting, he would have the animals donate food and
other goods for his services. He said that their spirits wanted
this and it was the right thing to do. If they didn’t, then
their spirits would be unhappy and the animals would never see
them again. Sometimes animals would barely have enough food for
themselves, but Rooster told them, “Being hungry is a small
price to pay for being with your own spirit.” So they would
hand it over.
After
a while, Rooster got the animals to build a big meetinghouse for
him to hold meetings in. It was a big fancy room with a
beautiful house attached for Rooster to live in. The meeting
hall was within fifty yards of the coop/shack that his 15 women
and 275 children lived in. Rooster lived very well from the
donations that the animals made to him, he soon grew really fat.
The donations that he couldn’t use, he sold to the animal
store wholesale, or traded it for silk suits and gold pocket
watches. It could be said that Rooster was not conceited, he was
convinced.
Rooster also developed a
hustle where he opened a store that sold trinkets and charms to
help animals find good luck and fortune in their lives. Animals
were buying red yarn to place on their windowsills, wooden
sticks to put under seats and pillows and powders to sprinkle at
the entrances to their homes.
Rooster
prided himself on his singing voice. During meeting, he would
preach and then burst into crowing a song. The chickens in the
front row would all swoon when he did this; the other animals
found it annoying. “That bird’s cackle could wake the
dead!” complained one of the elder spiritual leaders, who did
his work for free. They felt that something needed to be done
about Rooster, because he was making a mockery of a serious and
sacred position in the community. There had to be some way to
teach him a lesson... they thought and thought, until Owl came
along.
Owl’s
hobby was astronomy because he stayed awake all night and flew
around. He knew the position of the stars and planets and the
motion of the earth. He told the spiritual leaders that there
was going to be a full eclipse of the sun in five days. The
eclipse was going to last all day until 4:00 PM. The spiritual
leaders listened to this news, shifting their attention away
from dealing with Rooster. Suddenly, Raccoon, started laughing
and clapping his paws together. The other leaders asked him what
was going on. He stopped laughing long enough to say, “I know
how we can deal with Rooster! Listen to this...” He shared his
idea with the other animals and they agreed that it was a good
one. They agreed that they would meet again the next week and
talk about the plan further.
The next week, the
spiritual leaders went to Rooster's house and knocked on the
door. A young chicken let them in and lead them into Rooster's
den, where they had a seat and were offered cold drinks. Rooster
came out, dressed in a smoking jacket, with an ascot around his
neck and a pipe in his beak. He greeted the leaders in a very
magnanimous fashion and took a seat in his recliner.
Speaking
Turtle was the spokesman; he was the only one who could deal
with Rooster without getting mad. “We have come to tell you
that our spirits tell us that the sun is angry with you. The sun
wants you to greet him every morning with a song, beginning
tomorrow, or he will not rise again.” Rooster’s eyes opened
wide in surprise, he looked around the room, studying the faces
of the animals, and then laughed, “You expect me to believe a
story like that? The sun will rise tomorrow like he always does.
I’m not getting up that early in the morning for anything or
anybody, not even the sun.” The animals tried to reason with
him, but he wasn’t hearing any of it. He excused himself, left
the room and asked the chicken to show them all out.
Rooster
never did like to get up early. His weekly meetings began at two
in the afternoon, which allowed him to sleep in until 1:00. The
next morning, Rooster woke up in complete darkness. He figured
that he had awakened too early until he lay in bed for a while
and his body told him that it was at least 11:30 in the morning.
He got up and found breakfast waiting for him. He looked out the
window and saw the animals going on with their daily business,
like they do every day, except it was dark as night outside.
After a couple of hours,
Rooster began to panic. What if he really had offended the sun?
Would
the sun ever forgive him? He got dressed and went to see Turtle.
Now, Rooster never went to visit anybody, unless he wanted
something. He felt that visiting animals was beneath him. If
they wanted to be social, they knew where his house was. Anyway,
he went to Turtle, who was expecting him. He found turtle
sitting in his den playing chess with his cousin, Lizard.
Rooster asked Speaking Turtle for advice and Turtle sat very
quiet for a few seconds and looked at the ceiling, which was his
way when he thought. Finally, he cleared his throat and said,
“First, you’re going to have to give up all of your
wealth.”
“Are
you crazy?” sputtered Rooster, “I’m not giving it up for
anything!!”
Speaking
Turtle focused his attention back on the chessboard, “It’s
just as well; you’ll need all that grain of yours to store up.
Seeing as how, with no sunlight, no new crops are going to
grow.” Rooster thought for a minute, and then relented,
“Okay. What else?” Turtle stared at the ceiling again.
“You are going to have to sing to him every morning, and
dedicate your weekly meetings to him, from now on.” Rooster
thought for a minute, “Okay. I’ll do it!” Turtle looked at
the ceiling again, “He wants you to prove it and sing to him
right now, from the highest place in the land.” With that,
Rooster got up, ran outside, flew to the top of the tallest tree
and started singing with all of his might. The moon began to
move, and the sunlight flooded the earth in his warm glow.
Rooster
gave up his fancy house and moved back into the coop with his
wives and children, which wasn’t really so bad. There, as the
only rooster for 16 chickens, he was still the man. The days of
his weekly meetings were called Sun-day and every morning, a
rooster will stand on a high perch and sing his greeting to the
sun.
Mwalim is a Historian of performing arts
traditions, folklorist and keeper of the Wampanoag Medicine
clown tradition
mwalim@gmail.com
/ http://www.mwalim.com /
http://www.myspace.com/mwalim7
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A
notable historian of the early republic,
Maier devoted a decade to studying the
immense documentation of the
ratification of the Constitution.
Scholars might approach her book’s
footnotes first, but history fans who
delve into her narrative will meet
delegates to the state conventions whom
most history books, absorbed with the
Founders, have relegated to obscurity.
Yet, prominent in their local counties
and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 16 May 2011
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