Passing ideas

I've been remiss in updating...failed miserably really, so now this blog should be used more often now. But more so as a means of musing on some random ideas in head. No real attempt at quality or depth, just a schizophrenic sounding board that'll hold my random thoughts.

To Look Deeper Into:

Solar cell efficiency- It is becoming more and more obvious to anyone with a smattering of gray matter that we have to start looking more seriously at renewable sources of energy. Biodiesel, it turns out, is fairly wasteful, environmentally and financially, and has turned into yet another source of easy subsidies for the massive agricultural industry. Solar energy is one way. There's a massive amount of energy being unused, the question is how to effectively gather and store it. There have been some pretty amazing advances in material and chemical engineering the past couple of years that promise to increase solar cell efficiency by over 100%. How can we profit from this? Where can we lay solar cells? Once the technology makes efficiency less of an issue, there will (or should) be a greater demand for these cells.

Wind Turbine- Wind energy is growing and demand for turbines has well outstripped supply. The custom nature and backroom shop nature of some of these smaller turbine manufacturers means orders take a lot of time. There should be potential not only in design but in the manufacture of these newer designs Flowind Design.

With a long backlog of manufacturing orders and continued design improvements, there is room for massive growth in the industry. Design is important, but actually getting the product built and to market is where the money and results will be. NC has a strong machining history and good machinists. This a potential area for people to move into, not to mention an area the state should look investing into.

Note: Check and see if there are any wind turbine manufacturing or design firms in NC.

When did you discover you were black?

I ran into an interesting and heartbreaking article at aunt jemima's revenge, a blog I read sometimes. The post can be found here.

It reminded me of some of the more traumatic events in my life that reminded me I was black and that wasn't ok. The one that most stands out to me, though, is from the 8th grade. For background, I was the only black male in a relatively small class in a predominately white private school. Most of the black males that were in my class had moved on to other schools by the 8th grade, and I was getting ready to transfer to another school for high school, it was just the way it was, my school's high school program wasn't that good. But this did isolate me, in a way, and I developed some pretty low opinions of black people and, by extension, myself. I suffered from some classic symptoms of self-hatred and shame at my skin color. It's almost amusing looking back on it now at how much I couldn't stand myself, but it was a very real and emotionally trying time for me.

Anyways, it was the spring of my 8th grade year and my class was outside for gym class. We were all playing basketball and dodgeball on the blacktops behind the school. As class was winding down one of my classmates, James, came up to me and we started talking. In the midst of our conversation, talking about next year, summer plans and the like, James stopped and complimented me on how I wasn't like the "other" black kids at the school. Unbeknownst to him, I went out of my way to not associate with the other black kids and tried to make myself invisible to most everybody around me. But it was at that moment when everything kind of broke apart for me. I just silently nodded and walked away from James, went inside the locker room, and bawled like a baby. All of the shame and embarassment that I had held for the past couple of years came pouring out of me as I wept, snotty nosed and all, on a cold bench in a dark locker room.

I look back on it now, and if I could, I might even thank James for his prejudice and his racist remarks, because he showed me how foolish I was. But it does always make me wonder how many other kids who are classified as "other" battle with self-hatred and low self-esteem, and how many of them ever get out of it?

Finally Back...

It has been more than five months since I have even looked at this blog...Unsurprisingly, a lot has happened since then.

The details aren't important just yet but I will be using this space as an exercise in discipline. I am trying to rededicate myself to a few things for this upcoming year. It is fortuitous, I guess, that this desire corresponds with the new year, but these are not just new year's resolutions that are easily forgotten or ignored.

So, my simplest goal will be to faithfully post to this blog and work more on my writing. It is frustrating to see my writing get worse since leaving high school so I will be using this blog as a means of stretching out and practicing writing again. This means that there will be a lot of random stuff that will be thrown up here, but I hope that anyone who happens to stumble upon this space will be able to take something from it. That's it for now. Should have something up later today, I hope.

Nea onnim no sua a, ohu

In celebrating my return back to the blogoshpere, I decided to take some time and space to explain what my blog's name means.

"Nea onnim no sua a, ohu" is a saying of the Akan people of Ghana which translates to something like,"He who does not know can know from learning". I am an ardent supporter of those who pursue knowledge for the sake of having knowledge, so I try to devour any new information that comes before me. I wanted my blog to reflect this about me and I will try to remain loyal to this central concept by exploring ideas and experiences, and maybe even coming up with an answer or two in the process.

Have no fear, I harbor no illusions about my intelligence or education levels. I don
t mean to come off as a pretentious asshole nor do I plan on assaulting my readers with dense, esoteric nonsense that is designed more to confuse than to enlighten. My goal is to try and explore ideas and issues that can be interesting, challenging, and, sometimes, very fun.

I don't want to take up any more valuable space attempting to describe what this blog will be (hopefully). So, I shall let it speak for itself. Until the next time.

The Lost South

Faulkner is a master of describing the broken south. His characters are often the bitter and broken inheritors of a twisted and mythologic history. His white characters are invariably trapped in their own memories of a past that never was, unable to accept a present vastly different than anything they could ever imagine. His black characters go beyond the simple sambo character, but they are still stereotypical, the faithful servants that require a benevolent white hand, or faceless laborers. Underneath these characters, there is always some sordid, filthy secret that could destroy a family or personage. I enjoy the flipping of the southern mythos and Faulkner's love of exposing the hypocrisy of the former landed gentry or the moneyed "town" people. There is this constant tension between the land, the love of land, the people of the land, and those of the town. And even within the people of the land, Faulkner differentiates between those with money who own land and those who work the land. His disdain for the wealthy of the south is palpable, and yet, he has a definite love of the south. The land, the people, the common people, are filled with nobility and magic.

This story focuses mainly on the sordid history of the moneyed class, but it also looks at the land and the fruit of the land and its connection with memory. The jasmine is the only connection left t the family from their wing in Carolina, that and a piece of old stained glass. The jasmine has grown thick and helathy, its scent flowing into the house, almost overpowering. It covers everything with its sweet, obliterating anything before it. Like memory, the jasmine grows over time, exerts more influence, eventually pushing everything away, until there is nothing but the memory left.

Chesnutt and despair

"The Wife of His Youth" saddens me. Chesnutt, in the works we've read, have all brought strong and conflicting emotions out of me. But the most common emotion is an everpresent sadness, bordering on despair, an undercurrent I feel throughout the works we've read. But "The Wife of His Youth" affects me the most. First of all, the "Blue Vein" society is a rather sad organization. It is a society of outsiders. They know enough that they won't want to be black. That's not a mystery or too surprising.

What is most sad and frustrating is their intense shame and unfulfilled desire to be accepted by white people. The result is that mulattoes, and really most people of mixed racial heritage that live in a post-slavery or post-colonial society, live in a zone between the world of the black and the white. They are living spaces of liminality. Their very ambiguity and in-betweenness leaves them room for creativity and adaptation. This may be part of a reason why so many very influential artists of the late 19th and early 20th century were mulatto. But this very in betweenness is also what alienates them so totally. And this alienation is incredibly sad to me. Either, as a mulatto, you are trying to "pass" or you are "choosing" to ally yourself with blacks. It's an incredibly frustrating state that combines all of the greatest psycho-emotional problems that arise in a racist society: self hatred, alienation, isolation, and despair. Chesnutt captures these feelings wonderfully in the "Wife of His Youth". Especially the final scene where Mr. Ryder's wife first approaches him and tells her story. It is a searingly painful scene, and it ends on such an ambiguous and sad note. It is an awful reminder of the strength of so many black people who survived the horror that was slavery and of their devotion and strength after slavery to try and make something of their hard lives. Even the ending of the story where Ryder acknowledges his wife and introduces her to the Blue Veins, I can feel nothing but sadness that it took so long for her to find him and that she had to live so hard for so long.

A Flawed Boy

Twain clearly uses Huck's tale to showcase the flaws that lie within American society. But I believe that one could make an argument that Huck is a metaphor for America, also. He is a growing boy, an adolescent, in a hostile world, trying to find a way to define himself. This is a great description of the US during the early and mid-19th century. America was still very much a young country. It was still expanding westward and had yet to fully form its identity, as is evident by the intense conflicts over slavery. In essence, America was still a child, a growing child, but a child nonetheless, unsure of its place in the world and what it was about. This is Huck. A child growing into maturity, challenged by the world around him.

Twain takes this character and follows him down a path of growth; this is a path that is just as challenging, conflicting, and confusing as the path that America was on in her adolescence. The slow realization of Jim's humanity mirrors America's slow realization of the evils and hypocrisy that slavery embodies. Just like the call of abolition in the early 19th century, Huck comes to this realization slowly and with much resistance, but as the truth becomes more evident and damning, his realization growns at a greater rate until he is almost completely transformed. But even with this vast transformation, Twain shows that Huck still has a long way to go before he is a fully formed adult. Huck's choice to go off with Tom in order to "rescue" Jim still shows a very great amount of immaturity. His intentions are fine, but he goes about fulfilling them in an improper way.

Finally, Twain leaves Huck in his imperfect state so as to keep the reader wondering how exactly he will end up. Twain does not really resolve this question because he does not know what will happen to Huck. All Twain has is a strong sense of optimism and faith that Huck's goodness and ability to grow will lead him to become a strong, responsible, moral man. And this is the hope that one can only hold for his country.