Which Kind of Uncle Tom Are You?

Posted on 23/06/2014 by Grumpa Joe

After years of hearing blacks make derogatory remarks about fellow blacks calling them “Uncle Toms,” I decided to learn just who Uncle Tom really is. I can’t believe it took me so long to read a classic like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Ms Stowe is white, yet she did a very skilful job of describing the lives of slaves. Her use of slave dialect is the hardest part of the book. Let’s face it, if one did not talk daily with a slave, understanding their speech is difficult. I made it through those chapters by phonetically sounding out the words spoken by the slave characters, and even that is hard to understand what they said. It just reinforced for me that learning a new language in a foreign country is not easy if you don’t get any help other than a whip.

uncle tom's cabin

I concluded that anyone who uses the term Uncle Tom as a derogatory term is either 1. Stupid, 2. Never read the book, or 3. professes the Black Power movement. Ms Stowe’s character is not a sellout to his race. He is the exact opposite, but his method ingratiated him with his owners. Uncle Tom believed in doing what his master asked of him and in doing it well. The result was he found favor with his owners until bought by one Simon Legree. Tom also believed in God and his faith kept him strong. He had a positive attitude which also cheered the people around him.

When Legree bought Tom at the New Orléans Slave Market he learned of Tom’s easy-going way and trustworthiness. Legree vowed to break him and have Tom bowing before him. Legree ordered Tom to whip a fellow slave. Tom refused to inflict punishment upon his fellow slave or anyone for that matter. Legree had him brutally whipped. Tom held out, believing being whipped to death would reward him with Heaven.

Eventually, Legree punishes Tom to the point of death, and still Tom holds on to his faith. Legree does not understand, nor does he care to.

In my opinion, blacks who try to degrade others by calling them Uncle Tom’s are ignorant of the true story behind Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Instead they choose to believe one of the distortions invented by various authors who rewrote the story for political, or racist reasons. The distorted definition of Uncle Tom became a black who will do anything to stay in the good of a white, including betray a fellow black. In 1852 when Stowe wrote the story, there were no copyright laws to protect content, and many authors and playwrights plagiarized the work rewriting sections to please audiences. The result is that Uncle Tom, as created by author Stowe is the exact opposite of the distortions.  The real Uncle Tom did not do things to stay in the good of whites, he did them because he believed in doing the best he could no matter what. As far as betrayal, he lived the opposite having died protecting his fellow slaves.

Harriet-Beecher-Stowe

 

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I’m Not Buyin’ It

Posted on 11/03/2014 by Grumpa Joe

Today, Peg and I watched a very powerful film “12 Years A Slave.” We now understand why it received the Best Picture Award. The reason it is so good is because it is a true story, and is the personal account of a man who experienced slavery in the good old USA. We weren’t shocked by the content, nor the cruelty because both of us watched movies like “Roots,” and “Amistad.” We also paid attention in school when studying history. I admit, however, that the cruelty aspect in 12 Years is much more graphic and convincing than that in Roots.

Last week we saw “Son of God” and the cruelty shown to Jesus was similar if not more so. One difference is that Jesus experienced one scourging in his life, slave-owners whipped their property often. There is no doubt in my mind that slavery is evil. It is finally illegal to own slaves in any country of the world, yet there are purportedly twenty-nine million slaves in existence worldwide today.

What made this film more interesting is that main character Solomon Northrup was born a free man in Saratoga, New York. That made him a citizen of the USA. He didn’t get captured by mercenary traders in a foreign country and shipped across an ocean to a strange new land and sold. Kidnappers took Solomon and sold him into slavery in Washington D.C. He learned quickly not to ever mention his background to anyone for fear of a brutal beating.

Most white slave owners were evil. There is no better way to describe them, they acted like the devil. Even those who were compassionate were evil because they believed that owning  human beings as property was their legal right. Many saw slaves as animals not humans. I salute the millions of slaves who have endured the loss of liberty and cruel treatment they received. This is the point where I will infuriate all blacks living in America. I’m not buying into the storyline that I should feel sorry for every living American black because his great, great, great, grandfather uncle aunt, etc. was a slave. The slaves were the ones who paid the price, not you. You are free since 1865 and since 1970’s the US government has spent trillions to end poverty and for discrimination you have suffered under whitey. If you divide the money spent by every black in America since the Emancipation Proclamation you would all be very wealthy.

Obama-Lincoln-slavery-jpg

What have you done to make your slave ancestors proud? What is their legacy? How do you honor the cruelty and indignity they suffered? Is it they who have made you more dependent on Uncle Sam? Did Solomon Northrup and his friends organize you into gangs? Did he also corrupt your morals to commit genocide on your own progeny? What have you done for yourselves to convince us to drop the need to discriminate against you? Forgive me, but I do discriminate against gang-thugs, and people who play the welfare system to the max. I welcome my neighbors, and friends who share in the goodness of America.

It pleases me if Hollywood made this film to entertain. It pleases me if  they made it to educate us about the life of an extraordinary man. If they made it to send a message that you are a victim of a government gone wild, it is okay. If Hollywood produced this story to eradicate world slavery through awareness, I am pleased.

The problem is that I don’t think Hollywood made the film for those reasons.  I think they made it because they are pushing the political agenda of equal outcomes for all policy of communism, and I am not buying it.

Instead of Hollywood producers, directors, actors, and American Blacks converting America into a socialist state, where everyone belongs to the government, they should focus their efforts on freeing the twenty-nine million slaves in the world who still endure the cruelty, hardship, and loss of liberty.

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Starving Artists

Posted on 07/02/2014 by Grumpa Joe

In my recent post “Horn Man” I went into an overly long essay on how I went about creating an original piece of art. I’m positive I could have done a better job on a photo essay with clever captions. During the sixteen week period during which I made four Intarsia pieces I thought a lot about the business of selling art. Could I make a living doing this? Could I even make any money at all doing this?

I thought about Michelangelo and Da Vinci  and the remarkable work they did. How did they survive? The simple answer is they had patrons who supported them in return for their work. Michelangelo’s sculpture of David took him two years or more to complete. It is not easy chiseling a larger than life-size man from a single block of marble. I wonder if he had any “oops” moments during that time. I had many “oops” moments during the making of Horn Man, but glue and more wood made it easy to either fix the “oops” or to remake the part. Da Vinci had a list of patrons as well. He lived with them while he learned the trade and then worked for them afterwards. When a patron lost his place in society, and could no longer afford to patronize an artist both Michelangelo and Da Vinci found themselves new patrons. While unpatronized they took part-time work by doing commissions for the wealthy.

Getting back to my thoughts about selling Intarsia art I pondered the value of my work. Would I charge by the hour and if so, what is the value of one of my hours? I know what I made while working as an engineer, would I use that value? If  not charging by the hour, then charging by the piece would be the next way to sell. I have seen Intarsia artwork at craft fairs but never at art fairs. The pieces I see are very simple and flat in form indicating that the crafter did not put much effort into the work. I have never been satisfied with the flat style of Intarsia. My pieces become three-dimensional and sculpted. That is why they take me so long to make. If you look at my bass, or the Blue Jay you will see that these pieces are more lifelike than a flat work. The value I see on Intarsia pieces at fairs ranges from twenty dollars to one hundred dollars, unless the picture has hundreds of discrete parts. In cases where a customer commissions a complicated work the value  can jump to thousands of dollars.

StrippedBass-1780845_10201407376251910_722702533_n

Stripped Bass

Blue Jay

Blue Jay On Apple Blossoms

Largemouthbass

Large Mouth Bass About to Eat

When I completed Horn Man I had logged one hundred and five hours on the project. At the current minimum wage of $9.80 per hour I would have to charge  $1039.00 for the Horn Man. If I use my hourly rate as an Engineer the price is $6300.00.

Horn Man

Horn Man

Let me assume I sold each of these four pieces at one fair, and I charged the minimum wage; I would have netted twenty-seven hundred dollars. Divide that by sixteen weeks of time and my gross salary is $169.13/week which extrapolates into a whopping $8794.50/year. No wonder people would rather be on welfare.

The reality of doing something I like loses to what I have to do to make a living wage.  Some of the latest spin by Liberals about why we need the Un-Affordable Care Act is that a person would be free to pursue his dreams if he didn’t have to worry about paying for health care. I recommend reading two recent articles, the first by Avik Roy who wrote a piece published by Forbes and a quote by Nancy Pelosi on Redstate.com

The idea of forcing me to pay for someone else’s dream smacks of slavery. It is different if I choose to patronize that person. Neither Michelangelo nor Da Vinci had healthcare benefits but they followed their heart’s desire to become experts in their field of art and invention by getting a job working for a patron.

Obama is transforming America into a socialist Utopia(Utopia is a place where pigs fly), and to do that he has to make the middle class worker like you and me into a tax-slaves who pay for those who follow dreams without a job. I don’t know about you, but I sure as heck would rather be free to work my ass off as I see fit, and to spend my wages the way I want to.

Filed under: Biography, Conservative, Education, family, Government, health care, liberals | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

In Pursuit of Reason

Posted on 08/05/2011 by Grumpa Joe

The signature of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd Preside...

Image via Wikipedia

During a recent vacation trip, Grandma Peggy and I visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. The visit is on my list of things to do and see sometimes called a “bucket list.”

We enjoyed every moment of our time there. I love touring mansions, and this house is definitely a mansion. Jefferson spent a lot of his energy and time designing and building Monticello. His ideas for the layout are definitely unique. The level of detail within the rooms is amazing. Jefferson loved science and incorporated many slick little features to make his dream house work for him. For example, the twin doors separating the living area from the main entry hall  has a unique feature. One has only to open a single door, and the matching unit swings open automatically. The right hand door is independently actuated by the one on the left. The mechanism is completely hidden from view. The door opens as if by magic. As we walked up the stairs to the entry, I noticed a dial on the ceiling rotating to and fro. The letters N,S,E,W encircled the dial. Above the porch, on the roof  a weather vane danced with the wind. The dial on the porch ceiling danced in unison. All the man had to do is to look out at his porch ceiling to find which direction the wind came from. Useful? Perhaps, but certainly novel.

During the tour of the house, A peculiar device jumped out at me. We were in his office. There, placed on his writing desk sat a pantograph. The guide explained that Jefferson wrote many letters and made a copy of everything he wrote. The pantograph was his copy machine. SInce he saved copies of his writings, Historians have a trove of material to research.

While in the museum bookstore, search the racks for a biography. Another item on my bucket list is to read the biographies of the presidents. I had started with Jefferson years ago, but the book wasn’t readable. It was one of few I never completed. There were many biographies on the rack. Choosing the right one seemed impossible. Grandma Peggy pulled one down, looked at the price and said, “how about this one?” I took it from her without examining the jacket. The book titled “The pursuit of Reason, The Life of Thomas Jefferson,” by Noble E. Cunningham, Jr. turned into one of my best historical reads.

Cunningham’s style and my reading taste coincided completely. I found reading easy and entertaining. The one negative is that the print is small. Even though the book is three-hundred and fifty pages it took me as long to read as a five-hundred page novel. One of the biggest impressions Cunningham left on me was the parallel between Jefferson’s problems, during his two terms in office as President, with those of current affairs. He served as the third president. Only Washington and Adams served before him, yet one of his major concerns was the effort by the Federalist party to disregard the Constitution. In fact, Jefferson himself had problems adhering rigidly to the Constitution. During his negotiations to buy Louisiana from France, he realized the need for an amendment.  At the same time, he knew an amendment would need two or more years to realize. He feared losing the deal, and took it upon himself  to use the executive power of the office to buy the land extending to the Mississippi.

Jefferson wrestled the slavery issue from the time he authored the Declaration throughout his political career, but in his personal life he owned slaves and did not emancipate them. His daughter inherited the slaves upon his death. He spoke of emancipation often, but always pushed the problem to a younger generation. In other words, he kicked the can down the road. Where have we heard that before?

I am glad I read this book. My respect for Thomas Jefferson increased by one-hundred fold. He is a bigger man than I imagined.

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The Ugly Faces of Reform

Posted on 29/07/2010 by Grumpa Joe

Did I leave anything out? I’m sure I did. Let me know what bothers you about these reforms.

These bandits now have a .666 batting average, are we going to let them make it three out of three?

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