Everett Jenkins Birthday Blog

I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh over this past weekend. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/world/asia/thich-nhat-hanh-dead.html I was deeply saddened, and surprised, because I had planned on visiting his Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California, while I was on my recent MLK celebration/vacation in the San Diego area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_Park_Monastery However, I learned that to visit the monastery you have to schedule the visit in advance and you must commit to spending five hours to begin to learn how to properly meditate ... and how to properly walk.  I had not learned of these requirements in time to schedule a weekend "retreat" so I opted for an alternative spiritual journey to the Self-Realization Fellowship Meditation Garden in Encinitas instead.  But that is another story. In any event, I had wanted to visit the monastery just so I could better understand the spiritual forces that shaped the man.  Each year, I p...

  It was with deep sadness that I heard and read about the passing of Sidney Poitier https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/movies/sidney-poitier-dead.html For me, as an African American coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, the two great role models were Martin Luther King and Sidney Poitier.  Their racial integrationist philosophies were the ones that I adopted as my own, and are the philosophies which continue to guide me to this day. Over the next few days, I am sure that I will remember many of Mr. Poitier's roles.  However, the one that I am most attached to is his portrayal of a teacher in  To Sir with Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Sir,_with_Love Later in life, I learned that this portrayal is based on the real life story of E. R. Braithwaite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._R._Braithwaite However, Poitier's portrayal of a black man who becomes the father figure for a class of predominantly white students was a remarkable statement in 1967, Yesterday, whil...