View From Here
Do Not be Afraid of Tomorrow
We were in the office of Professor Christopher Boxe, to discuss an upcoming event being produced for the Magnolia Tree Earth Center of Bedford Stuyvesant by Bernice Green of Project Green Global. Dr. Boxe, Deputy Chair of Medgar Evers College of Science and Research was speaking about being “solutions-driven,” and how young people were working on projects confronting pollution and climate change in creative ways, benefitting both the planet and the lives they want to live.
It was Claudette Spence, board member, Magnolia Tree Earth Center of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bernice Green and myself, Magnolia Board Chair, who were struck by the passion of Dr. Boxe as he took the opportunity to give us a deep look into process and the time necessary to bring science programs specifically designed to develop and widen the horizons of the generation in our schools today.
A colleague in the department, Dr. Dereck Skeete, stopped by and they both emphasized the importance of students being exposed to the value of taking the time to learn the enabling tools for self-development. Knowledge that creates the opportunities for personal achievement, also strengthens the village that raises a child to be propelled forward, attitudinally and technologically equipped, to do psychological and economic battle in the most competitive city in an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing world.
And in that fight, they can draw from the reservoir of understanding that they follow in the footsteps of the scholars and business people of Timbuktu in West Africa, and the hundreds of thousands of manuscripts they left from the 12th century, giving evidence to a thriving intellectual state, the Wakanda of its day.
If our young people are to pick up the threads of that legacy, it will be men and women like Drs. Boxe and Skeete and who will be with others leading the way to tomorrow.
A President Furious
Donald Trump is as mad as any Mafiosi would be if his consiglieri’s office was raided. The wheels of justice are inexorably grinding and they have put President Donald J. Trump in a trick bag. In the course of the investigation by the special counsel, other potential crimes have been uncovered and now the career investigators of the Southern District of New York have reviewed the evidence that Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen were involved in a criminal act and no client privilege applies and Trump is naked before the law. This accountability is driving him crazy. He has not yet grasped that because he appoints people to a government position that they are not to be loyal to him but rather to the country.
Trump’s learning that now and he knows where this train is headed, and he knows he’s strapped to the front. If the special counsel continues his investigation, Trump knows what he’s done and is certain he’d be impeached by the House and judged guilty by the Senate. If he fires the special counsel, he probably will be impeached and maybe not found guilty by the Senate. Those are bad options between the rock of Robert Mueller and the hard place of the Constitution, but Trump has put himself there. We can only pray that there is a level of sanity in the chain of command as this emotionally-driven man contemplates using the tools of war.