Vacant spaces made to accommodate the everyday are remade, reformed again in durable metal to recall yesterday’s everyday, and to influence tomorrow’s. Between has physical, also predetermined, forms that are intended to protect the vacant spaces, and the work finds itself superimposed on vacant spaces as they once existed in the world, where there exist boxes intended to protect the forms themselves.
Now, they're exposed and vulnerable.
Space conspires with light, memory, and familiar textures to cast the illusion of lightweight transience; and the vacant spaces, the nothings-but-light-and-shadow, think they're safe inside their forms. Just as the first piece of everyday determined the shape of the vacant spaces, the last piece of everyday to separate the forms and vacate the spaces we shaped, shapes us even before we decided to either abuse the forms and toss them aside, or to keep the vacant spaces safe, in case the everyday needs them again. But I suppose it depends on the tenant, and whether we're willing (able?) to reshape the spaces to accommodate some(one)thing different. Lightweight transience notwithstanding.
They called him Colonel Galloway. That’s odd, because during
the War Between the States he was General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s
Aide-de-camp, and I’m not certain his position carried a rank in the
Confederate Army.I can’t prove it, but
I suspect he held the rank of Colonel in one of Memphis’s
home guard militias (Memphis Minute Men perhaps) that was formed between 1857,
when he arrived in Memphis, and late June of
1862 when he left Memphis
to fight the Union invaders on other fronts.
Before and after the war, Galloway
was the editor and part owner of the Avalanche,
a staunch Democrat newspaper that never backed down from defending the cause of
the South long after the war was over.
By mid June of 1862, Federal authorities in Memphis
had suspended the Avalanche and
Galloway was in Grenada,
MS. His wife, Fannie Barker Galloway stayed behind in their house on the northeast corner of Court and Third.
Like another notable Confederate Memphis
wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Mrs. Galloway was expelled from Memphis
by the Union occupiers. Mrs. Meriwether would be exiled by General Sherman in
response to guerrilla activity in and around West Tennessee.
Mrs. Galloway, who was suspected of passing information to the Confederates, was
forced to leave days before Grant issued his infamous Special Order No. 14
(later revised and reissued as Special Order No. 15).
Galloway revived the Avalanche by New Year’s Day of 1866 in
a Memphis that remained under Federal occupation and was overrun not only by
black soldiers, carpetbaggers, and abolitionist teachers, but by thousands of
formerly enslaved people who mostly occupied South Memphis, Presidents Island,
and Fort Pickering (the area south of the Overton Tract and the Mississippi and Tennessee Rail Road depot.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the city itself was in the hands
of Irish Fenians who apparently ran roughshod over a drunken mayor, and most of
the old citizens had been disfranchised as a consequence of their loyalties.
Five months later, the day the last black soldiers in Memphis were mustered out
of the Union Army (and thus disarmed), the Irish cops instigated a three day
massacre that targeted blacks who were beginning to enjoy a measure of economic
success and making remarkable advances in their children’s education.
The role Galloway and the Avalanche played in the atrocities can’t
be ignored. It was the Avalanche that
laid the blame for the atrocities squarely on the heads of the blacks
themselves. When we consider that the investigations revealed that aforementioned abolitionist teachers were on the mobs' (plural) hit lists, it’s more than a little odd that the the Avalanche's
call for restraint marked the end of the violence.
In the course of the (politically motivated) investigations
that followed, it was made clear by the “old citizens” that they deplored the
actions of the low born Irish, but that they were rendered helpless by order of
General Stoneman. What is missing from their denouncements is any effort or
expression of desire to hold the guilty parties accountable after the fact.
Worse was the lack of aid to help South
Memphis recover from the losses.
The massacre of 1866 was followed by the appearance of the
KKK in Memphis in
1867.
In Chapter XXIV of her memoir, Recollections, Elizabeth
Avery Meriwether herself rationalizes the atrocities committed by the KKK (her
husband, Minor, was one of “Supreme Grand Wizard” Forrest’s counselors and
lieutenants), and reveals how Galloway played a role
in obscuring the mere existence of the outlaw organization.
Fast forward ten years.
General Nathan Bedford Forrest died on the twenty-ninth of
October, 1877 and the funerary rites that followed were the topic of National news. The local papers that reported on the proceedings read like
a who’s who of Memphis
and the Mid South, unless you count the absence of the Independent Order of Pole Bearers or
any other notable black people.
The year after that, 1878, yellow fever made its annual appearance
in Memphis, and
it wouldn’t leave until October because it was accompanied by the warm mosquito
friendly winds of El Niño. The old citizens (with notable exceptions, the Mayor
for example) fled the city, and for the first time in our History, Memphis had a
black majority. Who is going to say they didn’t protect and indeed rescue Memphis that year?
Of course, the white families who returned to Memphis properly thanked
them, and then proceeded to send them back to South
Memphis.
I would say that things went back to business as usual, but 1878 was two years after Hayes-Tilden, one year after the death of Gen N B Forrest,
and less than a year before Memphis surrendered her charter.
Eighteen seventy nine was a significant year for our purposes because that was the year that
M C Galloway donated the very first penny for the Forrest monument.
Let’s be careful about how we throw the “white supremacist”
label around, but it is clear that M C Galloway did believe that white
supremacy was a natural, if not God ordained, fact of life (I suspect a number of black people believed it as well).
It would be twenty six years before the monument was
installed, and Memphis's
attitude of white supremacy hardly changed for the better, what with lynch law, the pattern of bartering for and coercing black votes, and the ascendancy of a very young E H Crump that marked the turning
of the century.
More specific to the funding of the statue, I have to wonder
why Bob Church’s support is never mentioned.
You can object to my assertions on the grounds that we are
in no way accountable for the sins of the father, but how can we deny that
the noble symbolism of this particular monument is forever tainted by an image
that was considered appropriate matter for a city newspaper?
One last question: How can Memphis
be expected to embrace her Confederate Heritage, if we can’t bring ourselves to
own our History?
I really put my foot in it, the day before April 4, 2018. The
Hell of the whole situation is that the “it” I put my foot in was my own crap,
and I did it because I violated the standards I believe Memphis is beginning to remember.
Here's the link to the Facebook thread that brought me to this point.
Basically, I threw out a juicy morsel of Confederate statue bait and Christopher Rice set the
hook.
Christopher was right; while my assertion was based on evidence I
personally gathered from sources that include the microfilm files at Benjamin Hooks Library and the Chronicling America website, my statement
was not backed up with readily available facts. Then there’s the further fact that while
I claimed I intended no insult toward anyone’s family, my entire approach
(“imagined History” was a cheap shot) is insulting. And I call myself a teacher…
From where things stood on the third, it appeared I had two Facebook expected choices. I could have stepped up my “game” and turned an opportunity for constructive conversation into a self defeating data-dump sideshow. The other choice was to tuck tail and slink away.
I chose neither.
Sincerely:
I apologize to all Confederate Memphians. I have been painting you in with the alt-right version of white supremacy and that was
nothing but mean. There can be no Memphis
without you.
I apologize to Christopher. Thank you for your regard for your
fellows and for stepping up to the bully.
Most importantly, I apologize to you, Memphis. I broke a rule Jesus doesn’t want us
breaking, and I let you down.
Tactical Retreat
You probably didn’t notice, but I haven’t made my Face Book
rounds since then. If it matters to you at all, my absence is part of what I
hope is a constructive act of penance I set for myself when I found my own words wrapped around my ankles.
I basically demoted my statement to a theory, and banned
myself from Face Book until I:
Reexamined
my own motives
Found
the first penny
Produced
a composition appropriate to the conversation (I have since upped that to
two, this first one being the second one assigned).
Where I Stand
Make no mistake: I’m still convinced that removing the statues
was the right thing to do because of the message (intended or otherwise) they
send, and the oppression they engender.
That being said, I don’t believe that this should mark the
latest victory in an ongoing effort to rewrite Memphis History with a gigantic eraser. I do believe that the statue's removal can, at least in Memphis,
be turned into an opportunity for constructive conversation that honestly
reassesses and even embraces our shared History. When I say honestly, I mean it in
the uncomfortable often painful sense of the word.
Look at it this way, without getting into
the technicalities of what defines a funerary monument just this minute, there is still the
question of what is to become of the graves of General and Mrs. Forrest. Who's looking forward to that conversation? I’ll just ask y'all this: Are we going to gear up for another season of reality show news
featuring the Alt-Right White Boys vs the Antifa Snowflakes, or are we going to
continue to keep family (however dysfunctional) business in the family?
Who’s going to define Memphis?
Fox CNN and the social media news-trolls who are bent on division, or a more mature Memphis bent on reconciliation?
27 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him,
crying out, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!”
29 Then He touched their eyes, saying, "It shall be
done to you according to your faith."
30 And their eyes were opened. NASU
Matt 17:15,18
15 Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic and is
very ill; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.
18 And Jesus rebuked
him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once.
NASU
This next one is one of my favorites:
Matt 15:22-28
22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began
to cry out, saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is
cruelly demon-possessed." 23 But He did not answer her a word. And His
disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away, because she keeps
shouting at us." 24 But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel."25 But she came and began to bow down before
Him, saying, "Lord, help me!" 26 And He answered and said, "It
is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."27 But she said, "Yes, Lord; but even
the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." 28 Then
Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you
as you wish." And her daughter was healed at once.
NASU
This is Easter…Resurrection Sunday…Rites of Spring…another
day, except that it’s the day, this year, on which most of us are remembering what took
place on that particular first day of the week; the manifestation of God’s Mercy
working to satisfy the Justice that Judgment demands.
Here’s a half-rhetorical question for you:
Does Jesus have the relationship between Mercy Judgment and Justice in the wrong order?
Don't we behave as if Mercy, if there is to be any, is supposed to come some time between Judgment and Justice?
Isn't that the time when the convict is supposed to throw himself on the "mercy" of the court?
Jesus shows mercy to people whose pain had nothing to do
with anything he did, or any kind of divine retribution inflicted by God. There
is no question of guilt, no question of future punishment. The only question
is: Why come to him in search of mercy?
The answer is not just that they knew he could bestow whatever mercy
they were seeking, but that they knew he would.
It looks to me like Jesus believes that:
Justice begins with Mercy
before Judgment is even an issue.
I'm not going to argue with him, because well, I believe him, but just in case you do need a little fear-of-God put it you, here’s what James says:
James 2:8-13
8 If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to
the Scripture, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF," you are
doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are
convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and
yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 11 For He who said,
"DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," also said, "DO NOT COMMIT
MURDER." Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have
become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be
judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be merciless to one who has
shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
NASU
But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
In a nutshell, James is saying that if you want to insist on
the rule of law, you should know that the law has to be your advocate.
If, however you choose to live by the royal law, Mercy will be your advocate at the throne of Judgment (pssst...that's the big One that Jesus sits next to).
It's going to take me a while to finish it because I give into the temptation to vet Theoharis's subjects and sources, so I can't give you a comprehensive critique. The point I want to make with this post however can't wait, because this is a movie I bought Wednesday and am watching for the third time today. (It's what I do. I dissect the Historical record (and the Historians) so I can discover the dynamics beneath the story of US)
In case you haven't figured it out yet, I believe Abram was in his forties when the people of the kingdom of Shinar, where the construction site in Babel was abandoned, were being swallowed up by those they sought to rule.
the Bible math says the Exalted Father was forty-three in 340 PD.
"Also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber [Shem's Great-grandson]...children were born." Genesis 10:21(NASB)
Or, put another way:
Also to Name (reputation, memorial), the father of all the children of The Region Beyond...children were born."
Aside from Eber's Grandfather Arphacshad, the Bible mentions four other sons (descendant tribes and kingdoms) of Shem, along with five grandsons, two great grandsons, and 14 great great grandsons.
As much as I'd like to display at least some of the 23 tribes of Shem on the Google Earth Chart, that's a research project all by itself since I never really delved into those branches of the Seed's family tree, and very few of the sources I know of agree with each other.
Maybe as we go along, I can start making educated guesses about some of them, so here's my safest bet:
From what I can gather, after the confusion of Babel the tribes of Shem lived between Cush and Canaan, and on the Sinai Pennisula.
***
Teacher Talk: Working with Tables
I already showed you the chart of the sons of Adam down to Noah. Here's another one that covers the generations from Noah to Jacob.
Don't feel like you have to understand every piece of information before you move on, but if you can compare the next two sentences to the chart, and answer two simple questions, you're in good shape to let the story explain why I'm including it:
Noah was born in the year 1056 AA (Age of Adam); Shem was born 500 years later, and lived to be 600.
Arphacshad was born in the year 1658 AA or 2 PD (Post Diluvium (after the flood)).
Name
Yr Born
Yr Died
Age
Noah
1056 AA
2006AA/350 PD
950
Shem
1556
2156 500
600
Arphacshad
1658 AA / 2 PD
2096 440
438
Shelah
1693 37
2126 470
433
Eber
1723 67
2187 531
464
Peleg
1757 101
1996 340
239
Reu
1787 131
2026 370
239
Serug
1819 163
2049 393
230
Nahor
1849 193
1997 341
148
Terah
1878 222
2083 427
205
Abram
1953 297
2128 472
175
Ishmael
2039 382
no record
???
Isaac
2053 397
2233 577
180
Jacob
2113 457
2260 604
147
AA = Age of Adam PD = Post Diluvium (after the flood)
Now for the questions:
What year AA did the flood hit? [ 1656 ]
How old was Shem at the time? [ 98 ]
You can highlight the space between the brackets to check your answers. If you like, you can share how you arrived at your answers in the comments below.
Enough Teacher Talk, Lets tell a story:
Ur of the Chaldeans, the ancestral home of Noah, was situated on the southwest edge of Shinar (Sumer). There's no way to tell if Ur was part of the kingdom Nimrod started there, but it's hard to imagine that there was no interaction between the two.
The Sumerians were farmers, and looked down on shepherds, but they had to have meat, animal skins, and wine. Ur, the Chaldeans, had all those things.
I don't know about you, but if I wanted to expand my kingdom to the north, I couldn't think of better neighbors to have in the south than my own cousins, as long as they fueled my ambition.
The dangerous thing about ambition is that it's never satisfied. Look how far north the Sumerians extended themselves. The first rule of empire being grow or die, sooner or later it becomes necessary to turn to your neighbors for additional lebensraum, elbow room.
The Four Horsemen ride again...or still.
It took about 300 years from the time the ark landed for the conditions between Shinar and Ur to reach the point of mutual paranoia, and another forty years for paranoia to mature into aggression and rebellion.
"Two sons were born to Eber; the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided..." Gen 10:25 (NASB)
Eber was the father of the Hebrews.*
Peleg (Division), a second generation Hebrew, joined or maybe even mounted the insurgency that swallowed Babel and scattered the peoples. It's just as possible that the infant race of Hebrews didn't want any part of it, but got caught up in it. Either way, the apparent fallout would be the same.
"Peleg lived thirty years, and became the father of Reu; and Peleg lived two hundred and nine years after he became the father of Reu, and he had other sons and daughters." Gen 11:18-19 (NASB)
Peleg only lived for 239 years, making him the first son of Noah to die (Shem lived long enough to see the birth of Jacob). It was the year 340 PD.
Peleg wasn't the only casualty of the events surrounding Babel's fall. Peleg's great-grandson, Nahor died a year later, at the tender age of 148, and conditions must have been too hot for his son, Terah who had lost his own son, Haran.
"Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans."
Gen 10:28 (NASB)
Terah gathered what was left of his family and beat feet to points north, to a place called, coincidentally or not, Haran, in order to prepare another of his sons to turn south and plant the Seed in the land of Canaan.
This is an article from the Commercial Appeal that showed up on my Facebook feed, and my answer's too long for the comment section, so I'm posting it here.
Because we ask, "Why can't we?" The question (intentionally ironic or not) is a roadblock. It sounds like we're already prepared to accept disappointment.
If you'd like to talk about some of the things that are holding us back from the most necessary conversation we've never had (the one W E B Duboise tried to start over a hundred years ago), I might have a few useful insights.
Why we say can't
Because a civilized conversation requires getting personal about our History and Heritage without being swift to defend the past with arguments that are older than the concept of racism itself.
It would mean rewriting our learned memory, and developing a new narrative; one that admits History and owns the burdens of Heritage.
We would have to stop using History to cast and deny blame, and start assuming responsibility for the Heritage that got us to here-we-are-now.
We would have to get over our fear that our not-white neighbors want to put the shoe on the other foot, without expecting written assurances to the contrary, 'cause there's a lot of pissed-off brown people out there.
It would require us to let go of the anger that blooms from the frustration of accepting the fact that we can't go on being Large and in Charge, and nor should we be. Nor should any other classified and cataloged group. This is America dammit, there's more than enough good to go around. Good grows here like fishes and loaves when we share it.
We would have to accept the disparity between forgetting our anger and validating theirs.
We would have to admit that we're part of the problem every time we insist we know the solution.
We would have to stop expecting the government to fix everything, and try to get this whole We the People thing right.
I am sure there are other roadblocks that we've made for ourselves, but maybe there's a way to start removing some of these by asking:
"The Lord said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. and this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech.'" (NASB)
So let me get this straight... Civilization is clicking along, everyone's cooperating, people are speaking the same language, building great monuments and temples, and along comes God. He whammies them, and strikes a dissonant chord in the harmony they had created.
