Not too long ago, this was the mode of trans­porta­tion for many Jamaicans. It was a sim­pler, less pre­ten­tious time, and we now look back with feel­ings of deep nostalgia.

I hope you enjoyed the buses

Growing up in rur­al Jamaica, I was forced to do the hard work asso­ci­at­ed with sub­sis­tence farm­ing. Yup grow­ing up with grand­par­ents and extend­ed fam­i­ly with­out mom or dad is chal­leng­ing but enlight­en­ing; you learn to depend on yourself.
So learn­ing at an ear­ly age how to grow crops because it meant you could eat, feed oth­ers and send your­self to school was a les­son learned early.
I was nev­er full accli­mat­ed to using the machete to clear the land, but I believe I could hold my own on the fork, used to till the soil.
I took agri-sci­ence in high school, so I learned ear­ly on that cash crops were the way to go while my grand­dad, uncles, and many elders toiled plant­i­ng mounds of yam that pro­duced no sig­nif­i­cant return on investment.
Thanks to messers Campbell and Bascoe, my agri­science teach­ers, cab­bage, pep­pers, and pump­kins were my thing. Those crops required lit­tle labor and turned a bet­ter return on investment.
I had fig­ured out a way to finance my way through high school.

Today, I am no longer forced to plant crops out of neces­si­ty. I crave plant­i­ng small veg­etable gar­dens because it gives me great joy to watch the small saplings I plant mature into plants that pro­duce food that peo­ple actu­al­ly eat and enjoy.
Even though I am well aware I have noth­ing to do with their growth, I some­times bask in the unearned glo­ry of their growth; I tell myself, “yea, I did that.”
For the record, no, I did not do that; God did.
Anyway, enough about me, if you have land around your house, one of the ways to cut your food spend­ing, improve your eat­ing, and get some peace and joy is to grow a veg­etable garden.
Even liv­ing in a high-rise apart­ment com­plex, you can grow a few veg­eta­bles in pots on your patio. For Jamaicans like myself, we all know we can grow veg­gies in old tires and all kinds of con­tain­ers. The trick is to fer­til­ize them, use good top­soil, and, where nec­es­sary, give plants lots of water.

In the image above is a lean-to I cob­bled togeth­er at the side of my house. I have more than enough space to grow veg­eta­bles, but I also have more wild ani­mals will­ing to rob me blind. So lean-to it is. Now truth­ful­ly, there are costs asso­ci­at­ed with secur­ing the mesh­ing for pro­tec­tion, seedlings, fer­til­iz­er, and oth­er costs.
This can get expen­sive and, admit­ted­ly, eat away at the ratio­nal­i­ty with­in the cost-ben­e­fit think­ing. Nevertheless, not every­one will have the woods and an open yard, so that may not be a prob­lem for everyone.
The upside for me is that that small space pro­duced more callaloo than my fam­i­ly need­ed so that we could give some to others.

The jury is still out on how much I will pro­duce this go around, and yes, I lost some let­tuce, cab­bage, and broc­coli seedlings that may have been exposed to too much heat. Still, I replant­ed and gave them expo­nen­tial­ly more water, and the image above tells a bet­ter story.
Seeds and seedlings can be a lit­tle pricey, but if you tack­le this project with one or more of your neigh­bors, each one plant­i­ng some­thing dif­fer­ent, this may not only be fun but a worth­while expe­ri­ence, not to men­tion that you get to say “I did that.”
Callaloo and toma­toes are the gifts that keep on giv­ing; callaloo pro­duces seedlings each spring in large quan­ti­ties, allow­ing own­ers to gift seedlings to oth­ers will­ing to grow their own veg­etable gardens.
Tomatoes will pro­duce seedlings next spring, but only if some toma­toes are allowed to ripen on the vine and are left there.

Depending on where you live, com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions may give free seedlings to those who desire them; this reduces cost and gives gar­den­ers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow a wider vari­ety of veg­eta­bles at a low­er cost to themselves.

The expe­ri­ence is sup­posed to relax you, and if you can keep the ani­mals at bay you may pro­duce some­thing for the din­ner table.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Hall of Famer Bill Russell, an icon­ic fig­ure whose impact tran­scends the world of sport, has died. Mister Russell died of nat­ur­al caus­es on Sunday at the age of 88 years, and he was wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the great­est ‘ballers of all time.
Bill Russell, one of the most impor­tant and accom­plished ath­letes in his­to­ry, died on Sunday at 88 with his wife Jeannine by his side, his fam­i­ly announced. Russell won an NBA record 11 NBA cham­pi­onships, includ­ing eight straight, over a 13-year career with the Boston Celtics — the final two of which he served as Boston’s head coach in addi­tion to play­ing. (Adapted from CBS sports)

Rest in peace Legend 

I gen­er­al­ly stay away from pop-cul­ture top­ics, but I was struck by the com­ments of the man­ag­er of Dancehall artiste Merciless after the per­former’s passing.
Leonard Bartley, known to his fans as Merciless, passed away in a Kingston motel recent­ly from what is said to be nat­ur­al caus­es; how­ev­er, his man­ag­er and long­time friend ‘Gadaffi’ act­ing as coro­ner and psy­chol­o­gist, had his own ideas as to the enter­tain­er’s cause of death.

‘The music indus­try failed to appre­ci­ate and acknowl­edge the Olé Gallis dee­jay’s true musi­cal genius, and this ulti­mate­ly led to the entertainer’s untime­ly death’ ”
Seems to me what Merciless need­ed was a real manager!

‘When you’re doing some­thing, and you’re not get­ting the appre­ci­a­tion, it will affect you.”

True, but how is that the fault of any­one but the deceased and his man­age­ment team?

“We anno car­pen­ter boss, we are cre­at­ing music, and so you get reluc­tant to do things, you don’t have no ener­gy any­more, and you turn to drink­ing, the only thing he was resigned to was drinking.”

Not sure what the car­pen­ter quote means. Are car­pen­ters unde­serv­ing of respect?

‘He ran away to America, he came back to Jamaica because he got a lit­tle depor­ta­tion. But he left Jamaica because he was depressed. This is our cul­ture, we work so hard for it and peo­ple don’t appre­ci­ate what we’re doing here, every­thing was a major fight; one time, even artists did­n’t want to voice any dub­plates for Stone Love because dem say Stone Love play too much Merciless.”

Deportation can take a toll on any­one, I would imag­ine.

He want­ed the rat­ings, he want­ed the appre­ci­a­tion, he did all the hard work. He put in the work. He died from a bro­ken heart for the lack of acknowl­edg­ment for all the works he put in, and he turned to drinking.”
“Ah the rum and (an ener­gy drink) mix up do it, is two caf­feine togeth­er, you know how much peo­ple dead from it.”

And there you have it, the dan­ger­ous cock­tail that takes many lives, includ­ing Kevin Samuels Youtube sen­sa­tion who passed recent­ly in the United States.
The cock­tail of strong alco­holic bev­er­ages and ener­gy drinks is dan­ger­ous; health offi­cials con­sis­tent­ly warn about the use of ener­gy drinks that tend to speed up the heart rate.
We hope the pass­ing of Merciless will not be in vain but that we can learn some lessons from these trag­ic events.
Rest In Peace, brother.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

I once had a Ph.D. stu­dent; a female friend told me she liked my writ­ing if only I would stop cussing… My dear friend, a male pub­lic ser­vant, also told me that some of his con­tem­po­raries would read my work on the mer­its, but the cussing offends them.
What do both my friends have in com­mon? They both reside in Jamaica.
Okay, so I will be the first to admit that real writ­ers do not use cuss words; of course not. But I nev­er claimed to be a real writer, and I have always seen myself as an incon­se­quen­tial loud­mouth with an opin­ion and a low tol­er­ance for bullshit…
Here is the thing, get­ting one’s views out to peo­ple does not require a Ph. D it does­n’t even require a col­lege degree as long as the per­son com­mu­ni­cates their views in ways that oth­ers can appre­ci­ate. Social media is a true tes­ta­ment to that fact.

I always mar­veled at these con­tra­dic­tions regard­ing us Jamaicans who insist on prop­er ver­biage and parts of speech on the one hand. At the same time, we con­tin­ue to push a dialect, ‘patios’ and insist that oth­ers adopt it as a true lan­guage even though we have no idea how to write it in a con­sis­tent way that every­one can agree on.
Me, I don’t give a rat’s ass about prop­er writ­ing, prop­er gram­mar, or prop­er anything.
I had nev­er set foot on a col­lege cam­pus except when I took my kids there to reg­is­ter them for class­es. I am old school, home edu­cat­ed, and I do not need a piece of paper to val­i­date me.
Glad I got that off my chest; google algo­rithms have already val­i­dat­ed this poor boy from North East Siant Catherine who nev­er went to col­lege, a poor boy who brought him­self up on his own.…no, not by his boot­straps. I had no boots.
This lit­tle blog is now read around the world.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

WE CAN IMPROVE OUR LIVES WITH SIMPLE THINGS THAT DO NOT REQUIRE WEALTH, GOD PROVIDED THEM AND I AM TAKING FULL ADVANTAGE OF THEM.…HOPE YOU ENJOY THEM AS MUCH AS WE DO.…

I hope you enjoyed view­ing them as much as I enjoyed shar­ing them with you?

Then there is this after a long day at work, me and my best friend; my Lab-mix Bud.

Jack of all trades mas­ter of none.… I usu­al­ly trav­el with my cam­era, which elic­its deri­sion and laugh­ter from my kids, who insist that their I phone cam­eras are far supe­ri­or to my old Kodak Easy Share Z981.
The log­ic being that I should dis­card my cam­era or opt for some­thing more up-to-date, mod­ern, and expensive.
But I don’t think so. I’m old school, even though full dis­clo­sure, I do have an iPhone 7‑plus, oaky that’s old too, but there again is the dilem­ma, do I dis­card my per­fect­ly good iPhone 7‑plus because they have sev­er­al iter­a­tions after my mod­el’s release?

So here is my ques­tion to those of you who heap scorn and deri­sion on my old phone and cam­era. Please tell me this; if Apple made a phone with­out a mod­el num­ber- just an I phone with­out any num­ber or alphanu­mer­ic des­ig­na­tion, would­n’t you try to keep your phone for as many years as pos­si­ble, know­ing that you would only replace your device with anoth­er of what you are replacing?
Sure you would!

Apple and all of the com­pa­nies that man­u­fac­ture your elec­tron­ic devices know that. That is why they include num­bers and alphanu­mer­ic char­ac­ters to get you pro­grammed into the idea that a new­er, bet­ter mod­el is just around the cor­ner. And we all know what hap­pens when we try to get the newest mod­el any­thing; we put our­selves in debt for items that make us no money.
Imagine if we begin to invest the mon­ey we waste on the newest giz­mos and invest in our future, in stocks, bonds, real estate?

We would be able to leave some­thing to our chil­dren the type of wealth the Vanderbilts left, and if not that much wealth, who cares? At least we would have left our chil­dren a start­ing block from which to start the race of life.
Anything that allows them a chance, so they do not begin the race of life flat-footed.

We could do sim­ple things like invest­ing in inex­pen­sive bur­ial insur­ance that in some instances cost less than $30 per month to ward off the need for Gofundme efforts when a loved one dies. Allowing that to come from a check­ing accounts is almost pain­less as you almost don’t notice it; the price of a can of soda per day will result in $30’000 when that loved one dies.
Money enough to give them a decent bur­ial and leave some mon­ey for you who took that proac­tive step to look into the future.

Sounds preachy?
I hope not, but artic­u­lat­ing the best path for­ward is not always palat­able to all of us. I also under­stand that some of us real­ly do not want to be both­ered with plan­ning for the even­tu­al­i­ties that will occur as sure as night fol­lows day.
So if these words of advice offend you, I apol­o­gize for offend­ing you; clear­ly, this is not for you.

Anyway, the advice was free, and so was the scenery. Do enjoy the scenery, even if you did not care about the advice.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

Our Christian Faith is cut, fash­ioned, and shaped from one fact; God the Father sent his son Yeshua the Christ to die for our sins. The idea is that although Yeshua the Christ knew no sin, he would die to offer human­i­ty a sec­ond chance, a chance at redemption.
Man’s dis­obe­di­ence caused him to fall from grace, so we are told (à la Adam and Eve dis­obey­ing God’s express com­mands) and were both sub­se­quent­ly con­demned to eter­nal damna­tion along with all human­i­ty that came out of them.
In His ulti­mate wis­dom and grace, we are told that God devised a plan of sal­va­tion that offered human­i­ty a sec­ond chance. Glory be to God that through his sons shed blood sin­ners like myself has a chance at life eternal.
The Christian Faith was born!
I use the phrase [we are told] because we were not there when any of these events occurred; we are oper­at­ing on writ­ten words passed down through the cen­turies that have been changed and manip­u­lat­ed to suit and enhance diver­gent objectives.
Even if we set aside the fact that the scrip­tures have under­gone cen­turies of change, manip­u­la­tion, and attempts to destroy them, at their best, we would still be left with words passed down for thou­sands of years that ask us to [believe] that which we have not seen.

Nevertheless, we are here today oper­at­ing on that promise that if we who seek a sec­ond chance would accept the idea that we are all sin­ners, that Yeshua is the son of God, that he died for our sins, and that if we con­fess our sins to him and ask for for­give­ness, he will hear our prayers and save us from eter­nal damnation.
Seem like a sweet deal to me.
I was both priv­i­leged and hon­ored to be asked to deliv­er a short address to a few folks awhile back; in that address, I likened that sec­ond chance to a rich man build­ing a big beau­ti­ful house and fur­nish­ing it with the most beau­ti­ful fur­ni­ture, stock­ing the pantry and refrig­er­a­tor with all kinds of del­i­cate and deli­cious foods, but not only that mak­ing arrange­ments for every­thing to be replen­ished to the heart’s con­tent of his guests whom he will leave to live in his house.
The guests ate his food, destroyed his house, turned their backs on him, cursed him, and even claims he does not exist.
In the end, they claimed the house to be theirs and declared that the prop­er­ty own­er nev­er exist­ed at all.…. Some even claim that they are indeed gods; they cre­at­ed the house and fur­nished it.

But wait!

Psalm 24 has some­thing to say about that; vs. (1)The earth is the Lord’s, and the ful­ness there­of; the world, and they that dwell therein.
² For he hath found­ed it upon the seas and estab­lished it upon the floods.
Not only do the scrip­tures tell us who the earth belongs to, note the word “Lord’s”, in verse (1) the apos­tro­phe “s” denotes ownership.
Amazingly, it is not just the Earth that belongs to God; it is also the ful­ness of it and they that dwell/​live therein.
Word of cau­tion to the mini earth­ly [gods], the real God owns you too.

Today I want to talk a lit­tle bit on a sub­ject that has become a sore point in our faith. It is a sub­ject that is impact­ing the way young peo­ple look at Christianity.
Not nec­es­sar­i­ly whol­ly, but even though only par­tial­ly a part of the faith’s chal­lenge today, it is sig­nif­i­cant enough to turn the unsaved away from the faith, speak­ing of [GIVING].
Before I sat down to pen this short arti­cle, I thought long and hard on whether I should broach the sub­ject, know­ing that it may invoke anger and ill feel­ings among the estab­lished orthodoxy.
More impor­tant­ly, I sought God’s guid­ance on exact­ly what I should say (if any­thing), know­ing the risks involved.
Full dis­clo­sure, I have not attend­ed any the­o­log­i­cal sem­i­nary, I have no degrees in the­ol­o­gy or apolo­get­ics, thank God.
I have a direct link to God that was made pos­si­ble the moment Yeshua gave up His life on Calvary cross, there­by remov­ing the mid­dle [man].
Now when we pray, we go through his son Yeshua the Christ, one enti­ty of the God-Head Trinity, not through a Priest that sins like you and me.

What I received from the Lord is what I will write here today, noth­ing less, noth­ing more.
(How did Yeshua Live)?
I thank the Lord God for this guid­ance. I thank him for answer­ing me when I asked him to tell me what to say.
So let us look in sim­ple terms, what Yeshua did while he was here. As I broach the sub­ject, I would like to reit­er­ate what I already said about my lack of for­mal the­o­log­i­cal train­ing. This means that I will not intro­duce any hifa­lutin terms and then seek to explain them because I do not know any. I will seek to be as pre­cise as I can be.
Yeshua lived on earth; we are told for 33 years. During his three-year min­istry, he preached the gospel. Healed the sick. Fed the hun­gry. Comforted the lone­ly. Saved lives and even raised the dead.
My more edu­cat­ed con­tem­po­raries can argue about the nuances of the oth­er things that Yeshua may have done that are not encap­su­lat­ed with­in these afore­men­tioned major sub­ject areas.

Yeshua had no Church, no Synagogue, no tem­ple, no Mosque; he did not even have a tent.
The open space was his cov­er. Everyone who want­ed to hear his word was his congregation.
How iron­ic is it today in the age of evan­gel­i­cal preach­ers demand­ing huge tithes and offer­ings for Gulfstream Jets that when Yeshua want­ed to get into Jerusalem, he bor­rowed a Donkey?
Yeshua han­dled no mon­ey, and he made no demands for any.
That is not to say that mon­ey was not impor­tant for the Church’s func­tion­ing. After all, Yeshua and the twelve Disciples that trav­eled with him through­out his three-year min­istry need­ed mon­ey for food, and I sup­pose oth­er expenses.
We learned that Judas Iscariot han­dled the mon­ey. And we saw how the love of that mon­ey led him to betray Yeshua and led inex­orably to his own demise.
If we jump for­ward after Yeshua was cru­ci­fied, we also learn that Peter and oth­er Apostles lived off the mon­ey donat­ed to the min­istry. Remember, a large part of the ear­ly Church’s func­tion was to spread the Gospel of Yeshua/​Jesus the Christ, which means build­ing out the Infrastructure, lit­er­al­ly build­ing church­es, etc.
However, the Apostle Paul fre­quent­ly per­formed out­side work, not desir­ing to be a finan­cial bur­den to the young Churches he found­ed. (see Acts 4:34 – 37). Paul was also a tent builder; how prac­ti­cal yet symbolic?
Hardly any­one can argue that we need more actu­al church build­ings in most of the world today. The abil­i­ty of the Church to get the good news of Yeshua the Christ out to the world has been great­ly enhanced by the advent of the inter­net infra­struc­ture and social-media plat­forms that dis­sem­i­nates infor­ma­tion across con­ti­nents in nano-seconds.

This is a good thing for the body of Christ. Since preach­ing to the saved is less impor­tant than reach­ing the unsaved, the church has a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to car­ry out Yeshua’s mandate.
And so I ask the Church when you con­tin­ue to ask and [demand] more mon­ey from the very same con­gre­ga­tion that is not grow­ing and is in many ways dwin­dling, as a result of var­i­ous fac­tors includ­ing death and dis­af­fec­tion, are you jus­ti­fied that the mon­ey is being used for the uplift­ment of God’s Kingdom?
Is the mon­ey going to take care of the elder­ly wid­ow whose hus­band died, leav­ing her to sur­vive on his pal­try social secu­ri­ty check? Does the Church seek to find out whether her rental, food, and med­i­cine are paid for?
Does the mon­ey help indi­gent kids whose par­ents are strung out on drugs through no fault of said kids?
Does the mon­ey oper­ate true food pantries that are open dai­ly to feed those who can­not feed themselves?
Is there an effort to help fam­i­lies down and out, hav­ing lost one income or both, and can­not make ends meet?
Is there a real prison min­istry that seeks to help young men and women return to and assim­i­late into soci­ety after being crim­i­nal­ized by a soci­ety that deval­ues their lives?
Where is the church cen­ter that shows what Christians are sup­posed to be, not what we say we are? One that offers day-care for young sin­gle moms and dads who have to work and have no one to take care of their babies?
How remark­able would it be if the Church would cre­ate that envi­ron­ment which would, in turn, employ not only from the church com­mu­ni­ty but the unsaved, so that they will see what Christians mean when we talk about the love of Yeshua?
Imagine if the Church would cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for sum­mer camps that teach sports of all kinds, remov­ing our young men and women from the streets and, by exten­sion, the prison indus­tri­al complex.
We have heard the Church repeat­ed­ly speak to the idea of going to street cor­ners and pray­ing to end gun vio­lence (prayer is always advised); how­ev­er, if we build our own com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters that wel­come our young peo­ple with Godly love, they will be incen­tivized to look to doing oth­er things than killing each other.
It is deceit­ful and disin­gen­u­ous to insist that we should pray with­out ceas­ing when God’s word tells us in his word that we need to pray, but we also need to do for our­selves that which he empow­ers us to do.
(Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Christ who strength­ens me).
( 2 Timothy 1: 7: For God gave us a spir­it not of fear but pow­er and love and self-control).
(Mark 9:23: And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are pos­si­ble for one who believes.).”

It is impor­tant to rec­on­cile that the con­cept of giv­ing to the Church is a free will con­cept that in no way excludes any­one from gain­ing eter­nal life.
It is impor­tant to remem­ber that. We give, not just to the Church, but to those who need our help, not because we are forced, berat­ed, shamed, ridiculed, and con­demned if we do not; we give because Yeshua asked us to.
Even so, while Yeshua walked on earth, he nev­er once demand­ed that a sin­gle per­son give a des­ig­nat­ed por­tion of their earn­ings to the Church, not once.
Even as he told the haughty young lawyer in Matthew 19:21, “If you want to be per­fect, go, sell your pos­ses­sions and give to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heav­en. Then come, fol­low me.”
He nev­er told him to sell his pos­ses­sions and give it to the Church, Yeshua though con­ver­sant of the young Lawyer’s disin­gen­u­ous piety, was laser-focused on the needs of the poor.
As the lead­ers of the church of today con­tin­ue to ask the peo­ple to give and give, even know­ing full well that the major­i­ty of its mem­ber­ship does not pos­sess the means to do so, and even as the Church lead­er­ship con­tin­ue down on that path that turns souls away from Christ instead of to him, is the Church jus­ti­fied before God that [it] is car­ry­ing out the func­tions of Yeshua’s teach­ings itself?
If the Church is con­cerned about indi­vid­u­als stor­ing up trea­sures on earth, is the Church con­fi­dent that it is not tak­ing the peo­ple’s mon­ey and stor­ing it up itself?
Are the pro­ceeds of Church invest­ments being plowed back into the com­mu­ni­ty to do the work that Yeshua asked us to do?
The work of the Lord is far from mere­ly preach­ing the Gospel. The work goes beyond words; it is about actions, not a one-off action either. It is not about any per­son; it is about doing the Lord’s work until he returns.
Some indi­vid­u­als are qui­et­ly and with­out fan­fare doing those works with­out titles, with­out a desire to be seen. They are not doing those works to be rec­og­nized; they are sim­ply try­ing to obey God’s word.
God sees them, and they do not have to give a tenth of their income to the Church to be obe­di­ent to God. That is [not] a commandment.

In a lat­er iter­a­tion of this arti­cle, we will exam­ine the ori­gins of tithing, and its impor­tance, not just to our every­day lives but to our lives in the after­life as artic­u­lat­ed by the word of God.
I can­not wor­ry about what man will think of me; I have a greater call­ing and respon­si­bil­i­ty to speak the truth as God would have me.
Be blessed, all of you.

Sincerely.….… Mike Beckles.

It was a joy­ous Easter Sunday after­noon at the cor­ner of Mansion & Catharine streets on Poughkeepsie’s south side. It was a sun­ny day with a cool light wind remind­ing every­one that we are still in the Hudson Valley, and yes, it was only April 4^th.
The size­able gath­er­ing in atten­dance was not there at the inter­sec­tion, which boasts the impres­sive Beulah Baptist church for wor­ship service.
Easter wor­ship ser­vice was already over on zoom; peo­ple were get­ting ready to show up to receive the food pack­ages the church was giv­ing to needy city residents.
However, that was not all this crowd was there for; in the crowd was State Senator Sue Serino ®, County Executive, Marc Molinaro®, Mayor Rob Rollison®, assem­bly rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and mem­bers of the Beulah Baptist Church.
They were there to hon­or Pastor Jesse Voyd Bottoms, the man who has shep­herd­ed the flock at Beulah for almost 44-years.
In his Honor, the Intersection was named Rev. Dr. Jesse V. Bottoms Jr. Way.
It was a fit­ting trib­ute to a man who has giv­en yeo­man ser­vice, not just to his church, but to the city’s poor and needy community.
No oth­er indi­vid­ual in the city has done more to advance the com­mon good than Dr. Bottoms, whom I am proud to call my pastor.
Well done, Pastor & Mrs. Bottoms, well deserved.
From the Beckles Family.…..

Some folk is too Christian, too Religious to acknowl­edge, much less deal with the events occur­ring in our world.
“It is not my prob­lem; I am a Christian, that fight is for the peo­ple who live in the world, me I will just wait to enjoy my pie in the sky.”
That pie-in-the-sky — the­ol­o­gy came direct­ly from the slave [bible] cre­at­ed to keep our ances­tors enslaved.
Before Yeshua descend­ed into the world, all of the great the­olo­gians, the most reli­gious peo­ple, were, in fact, the most edu­cat­ed, and yes Yeshua sat among them and lis­tened to them, even as he debat­ed them when they were wrong.
Now imag­ine the intel­li­gent word of God being left up to peo­ple who are the least edu­cat­ed to dis­sem­i­nate, or peo­ple with ulte­ri­or motives?

Motives of self-aggran­dize­ment and self-promotion?
I do not claim to be the most for­mal­ly edu­cat­ed; what I thank the lord for is his immea­sur­able grace in allow­ing me the abil­i­ty to study and under­stand so that I do not fall into the clutch­es of the enemy.
Sufficing to say, regard­less of who you are, ‘the­ist, agnos­tic, or athe­ist,’ the world you live in and leave to your chil­dren is total­ly up to you.
All of the great lead­ers that have gone on before us, from the great Jamaican Marcus Garvey to Martin King Snr, to Martin Luther King Jnr, et al., were all great edu­cat­ed men of God who gave their all in the fight to ensure a more just world.
They fought and died so that we may have a bet­ter world than they did.
You fool your­selves if you, for one moment, believe that this is some­one else’s fight.
I know most Christians would rather bury their head because the truth does not com­port with the lies they have been fed and have become accus­tomed to.
Nevertheless, I felt com­pelled to say this today.

Images from New York’s beau­ti­ful and sceinic Hudson Valley region.….