Here I am, another day in the town where I grew up.  I am here for the funeral of my sister, the last of our family to live in Durham, North Carolina.  I will miss my sister.  I feel grief over what we both missed while growing up.  Things were as they were.  The past can only be given a different meaning in the present, and that is how the future is created.  I believe that.  If I did not believe this, I would be tempted to nihilism, that in the long run “nothing-at-all-matters” .

This could be the last time that I will visit Durham.  I hope not.  Many ties bind me to this town.  The neighborhood where I grew up, Bragtown, was idyllic by comparison to the decrepitude into which it has fallen today.  Bragtown has not suffered it’s fate alone, as WalMart and Amazon has savaged retail and small businesses nationwide.  It is obvious is it not?  When grass-roots work is eliminated by technologies of efficiency, and by the expanse of monopoly-like corporations,  — neighborhoods decay.

Some community institutions ought to pass away.  They served their day and are found to be a net negative in public well being.  I am not nostalgic for the old American Tobacco Company and the Leggitt Myers Tobacco Companies where my parents worked their entire careers.  Tobacco is a lethal product and ought to be severely regulated or banned.  The old factories have been repurposed into rental space for small companies, or condo living space.  They remain iconic of the Durham that once was.  Durham remains the “Bull-City.”

I feel sadness as well for the whole nation.  Our people are stunned by the public slaughter that took place a day ago in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.  The mass blood lettings happened too close together to be coincidental.  There are more than a few of us who are suffering dangerously from the trauma of our lives.  Moreover we have more guns of all types within our society than

does any other nation.  Finally, bad news travels at light speed with the impact of video footage, first person accounts of what has just happened.  Is it no wonder these events occur in clusters?

I understand that the President is scheduled to address the nation later today.  What can he possibly say?  He has been adept at cultivating racialized antipathy.  He has proven skill at dividing Americans between those who are loyal to him, and those who recoil from his bullying words.  He is unable to change.

All is not darkness though.

Duke University continues to thrive in Durham as a world-class institution.  Duke Medicine is renowned world wide for it’s research and healing reach.  Yesterday close to the Duke campus I walked along Ninth Street soaking up the youthful vibe of the street and the businesses that cater to students.  We dropped in at the Regulator Bookstore and purchased books as we always do when we visit here.  These are the one’s that I purchased.  I expect that some ideas from the minds represented between these covers will touch my mind, and change my life for the better.

Everyone needs something to hold on to.