Nelson Mandela, a renaissance man, has gone to the far country…. playing out his divine presence, “Madiba” capturesthat uncommunicable part of ourselves… the pasture of God.
II
A moral giant, his odyssey prompted Tom Kean to divest New Jersey investments (1985) , Mandela’s Holy Grail morphing acause célèbre made then Governor of New Jersey, a guru,recognizing “Madiba’s” Walpurgis night, to the tune of 2 billion dollars .
He took on a great hall of reflection where Humanity staggers,thereby putting Plato’s use of banishment for Pretoria’s enemy, condemning evil as apartheid and Tom Kean’s Emancipation Proclamation coming to grips with the inhumanity.
III
The brain’s convolutions wherever. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Trenton New Jersey, Bedford- Stuyvesant, (Brooklyn).However the diminishing returns: disappointment, retribution,violence, revenge. A determinism, that the Emancipator devoid his soul of any bitterness and violence.
An open minded catechism which harpers back to Gandhi and original sin.. Finding a blending in disparate skin pigments.Humans naturally suspicious of anyone who didn’t look likethemselves.. ( B eau Geste and the French Foreign Legion. TheLives of the Bengal Lancers C Aubrey Smith, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant (Archie Leach)
IV
Cyber space and their fiber optics into digital apps, their key padthought to web sites dot.com. But to know is no less to feel.(Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.) The imprisonment onRobbins Island, Tom Brokaw’s capturing the small cell’s reality: the mat, the prison guard who risked his role, presenting“Mandela” with his grand baby. The friend he bonded with during those years….Brokaw out of NBNC Burbank has compassion and empathy , deserving of that moment. Robbins Island caught the breath out of my yesterdays, passing Alcatraz on our Air Force Duty in Northern California, outside San Francisco..
For “Madiba, that cell on Robbins Island (Alcatraz), sleeping on that mat, sledge hammering the rock pile in the sun earlier, washis renaissance. His rebirth.”
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true”, Joseph Faraday, Chemistry Building , UCLA.
V
But who knew that the Franklin Avenue Shuttle on the BMT line would be the missing link to Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Boys and Girls High on Fulton Street in Brooklyn. The Chancellor honoring the school/s metamorphosis yesterday, Nelson Mandela High School The first class of 500 students matriculating in the Nelson Mandela School of Social Justice.
A far cry from the old Boys High on Marcy : Louis Nizer, IrwinZucker, Sy Kaufman, Pearl Washington, Frank Mickens security guard become Principal, Danny Rubin, English teacher prime, Marty Grossman, Social Studies “teach” , and the musicalwunderkid, Aaron Copeland (“Of mice and men” 1939)
VI
A force of nature gives his name to the school he helpedcreate…..Nelson Mandela School of Social Justice.
”The world is a progressively realized community of interpretation.” Josiah Royce, Royce Hall, UCLA
December 7, 2013. The City that never sleeps
