White Boy Email 37th Edition

White Boy Email 37th Edition
Benchmarks of Manhood 1 of 7

I. Quote of the Week
II. Ebonics Lesson of the Week
III. Catch 22
IV. Mama’s Korner (being taken over by maya angelou for a couple weeks)
V. You Speak
VI. Announcements

Quote of the Week:
“Be careful when a naked man offers you a shirt”
-African Proverb (really think about this)

Ebonics lesson of the week:
“Snaps”:
Something that you can say when someone does something good or well
“No Snaps”:
When someone does something wrong or is messed up, you give them no snaps

Catch 22
A man is known for the company he keeps
I love the Lord of the Rings. If you were to look at Frodo’s inner circle of friends, you would find that Merry, Pippin and Sam are Frodo’s closest comrades. They are nosey, but it is because of their love. They make a lot of mistakes, but this is because they are hobbits (human). Frodo is not cognizant of his own shortcomings. He has a hard time accepting friends devotions when the burden of the Ring was given to him. (loyalty is a mark of true friendship.) This is because Frodo is an orphan and deals with feelings of being abandoned. After 12 years of carrying the ring and the constant temptation of evil it attracts; he doesn’t consider himself worthy of such friends as would die for him. “when friendship gets in the way of our own aspirations, it is easy to find reasons for stopping short of a full commitment. It requires a servant’s heart like Sam’s, to lay aside our own plans, simple as they may be, and follow a friend into danger and exile, but that is precisely what true friends do” (Tolkens Ordinary Virtues 27). So true friendship is about sacrifice and being a servant. It is not about what you get, it is about what you give!!!

Maya’s Korner:
"The Lesson"
by Maya Angelou
I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
Memory of old tombs,
Rotting flesh and worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep in
Lines along my face.
They dull my eyes, yet
I keep on dying,
Because I love to live.


You Speak:

All I ever needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery school.

These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday.

Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are like that.

And then remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK! Everything you need to know is there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology, and politics and the sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
--- Robert Fulghum