Today's Quote
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Professional Fellow of Institute Of Information Management Africa, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Registered Freight Forwarder and Editorial Adviser at News Updates.
More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
Toyin Falola
By “your”, are you referring to Nigerians?
If so, political systems do not work like this anywhere in the world.
32And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.”
That passage refers to Jesus Christ. The citizens could not prevent Herod from killing him.
Here is a parody:
I am Chidi the Poet, my boys at the Motor Park, rise, go and kill Tinubu.
Alas! they will kill you first!
TF
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cornelius...@gmail.com
“Oh, when the rain fall, fall, fall now
It don't fall on one man's housetop. Remember that:
It don't fall on one man's housetop
when the rain falls, it falls on one and all”
Remember now, “ Faith comes through hear-ing”
and that's exactly the problem with Chidi:
The problem with Chidi is that he has been listen-ing
too much, to the Gospel according to Fela Kuti :
“Suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer
In what sense is Chidi’s
“your problem is yourself”
Radically different from Kuti’s
“Na your fault be that “?
Not even radically different from the message from the Buddha,
the difference of course is that the Buddha’s message embodies
The Solution (Liberation) - as indeed does Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey’s
In synchronicity with Chidi, Mahatma Gandhi said,
“ Be the change you want to see in others”
Benjamin Netanyahu of course, wasn’t listening
Do you expect him to listen to Gandhiji when he
doesn’t even listen to the Hebrew Prophets?
Or maybe he was listening but didn’t hear.
Anyway, this much is clear: If only he could grasp
the meaning of freedom, then he would gladly
and speedily, beginning with Marwan Barghouti
want to set all the Palestinian People, FREE
Also in synchronicity with Chidi's Prudence is the envious Cassius, egging Brutus on, here:
“Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Yesterday, about an hour into the Sabbath I got a phone call from a dear friend and this is what I heard him say: “ Wallner is dead and please please please, I would like you to accompany me right now to the demonstration outside the Russian Embassy!”
Is he out of his fcking mind, he got me to blaspheme that Sabbath evening. Wallner is dead so we must trot over to demonstrate outside the Russian Embassy this Sabbath evening? And who the fkkk is this Wallner anyway? The only demonstration I’m going to any time of day is against the ongoing Sabbath genocide that’s going on in Gaza where they are killing thousands of God’s Palestinian People right now, I let him know.
It was hours later that I got to understand that he was crying about Navalny and that it was his Swedish accent that made me hear “Wallner” ( Na-Wall-ny
Real bad, and too fcking cold over there in the Siberian Gulag.
Ogedi Ohajekwe
When people say “all of us are responsible”, some ask “who should fix it”?
I hear some others say “all of us”.
Still some others ask “how”?
By mandate, change of heart/mind set or luck?
The R word? No one destination is assured.
? Round table discussion-usually difficult for the person at the helm of affairs to accept and the table may not contain “all of us”.
OO
On Feb 17, 2024, at 9:42 AM, cornelius...@gmail.com <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
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cornelius...@gmail.com
“People to see, even me
Man with a little got more of a plea
He's cryin', I don't know…”
( Sly and the Family Stone – I Don't Know (Satisfaction)... from their epic album FRESH )
“All of us" implies total inclusivity, as in this sentence: “The boogeyman US wants to colonise all of the Middle East” - without exception.
Another problem is that some people mistakenly think that the US means “us” - includes us the powerless plebeians, some of the newly arrived inflating the grammar from little (like Malcolm Little) to big ( grammar) and because he doesn’t have anything else to say, consider some other people "below" him to be vermin, nonentities, in no possession of nuclear bombs, military satellites in space, and of course - unlike Saddam, without any kinds of weapons of mass destruction with which to cause fear and trembling.
Just as The Last Poets put it ( I nearly wrote “Putin”):
“They ain't fucking for love and appreciation
Just fucking to be fucking.”
# There’s a lesson to be learnt from the story of a holy man who gave two of his disciples a chicken each with the order, “Go kill the chicken where no one can see you.”
Concerning the subject matter we are discussing, with Nigeria in focus, for starters, there’s always the possibility of the great summit where we could all be represented, stand up and be counted, to iron things out: The National Conference in which it is possible to have everything on the agenda except that which is anathema: the dissolution of Nigeria, a non-starter
I have been chewing on this for a while:
“ I can’t quite imagine how another person could be empowered to represent my interests without my having chosen that person. Otherwise, we go back to the days when men represented their wives, when owners represented their servants or slaves, etc.” ( Professor Kenneth Harrow)
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
"Here is a parody:
I am Chidi the Poet, my boys at the Motor Park, rise, go and kill Tinubu.
Alas! they will kill you first!
TF"
Oga TF,
The boys are very loyal!
-CAO.
By “your”, are you referring to Nigerians?
If so, political systems do not work like this anywhere in the world.
32And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.”
That passage refers to Jesus Christ. The citizens could not prevent Herod from killing him.
Here is a parody:
I am Chidi the Poet, my boys at the Motor Park, rise, go and kill Tinubu.
Alas! they will kill you first!
TF
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, February 17, 2024 at 6:12 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteYour problem is not the Tinubu, Buhari, Jonathan, Obasanjo and/or any other administrations, your problem is yourself. You have accepted and helps to nurture a system that throws up only scoundrels in governance. The consequence is your constant economic and social problems.
-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO).
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Professional Fellow of Institute Of Information Management Africa, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Registered Freight Forwarder and Editorial Adviser at News Updates.More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
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cornelius...@gmail.com
Indeed, I have been chewing on this for a while, imagining in a very religious sense, Professor Kenneth Harrow wearing the toga and speaking in that awesome voice of the Almighty :
“ I can’t quite imagine how another person could be empowered to represent my interests without my having chosen that person."
Jibrin Ibrahim
"Here is a parody:
I am Chidi the Poet, my boys at the Motor Park, rise, go and kill Tinubu.
Alas! they will kill you first!
TF"
Oga TF,
The boys are very loyal!
-CAO.
On Saturday 17 February 2024, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
By “your”, are you referring to Nigerians?
If so, political systems do not work like this anywhere in the world.
32And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.”
That passage refers to Jesus Christ. The citizens could not prevent Herod from killing him.
Here is a parody:
I am Chidi the Poet, my boys at the Motor Park, rise, go and kill Tinubu.
Alas! they will kill you first!
TF
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, February 17, 2024 at 6:12 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteYour problem is not the Tinubu, Buhari, Jonathan, Obasanjo and/or any other administrations, your problem is yourself. You have accepted and helps to nurture a system that throws up only scoundrels in governance. The consequence is your constant economic and social problems.
-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO).
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Professional Fellow of Institute Of Information Management Africa, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Registered Freight Forwarder and Editorial Adviser at News Updates.More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Professional Fellow of Institute Of Information Management Africa, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Registered Freight Forwarder and Editorial Adviser at News Updates.More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi,
“Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”
Well, here goes: “A friend in need is a friend indeed”, and as you know, “one good turn deserves another”.
Of course, as a licensed freight forwarder, you must know what you’re talking about when you lament “the great number of trucks and boats that leave this country (Nigeria) every night with goods to neighbouring countries where these goods attract higher prices.”
Are you sure that these trucks and boats only leave Nigeria under cover of darkness?
“You wait until it’s dark when no one can see you… and then you introduce yourself!”
(Malcolm X: 1963 Harlem Black Unity Rally)
I suppose that like Fearless Fang they leave Nigeria every night and in broad daylight too, by land, sea, and air, maybe, even through underground tunnels, in which case you only have yourself to blame if you don’t have unbribable border control or the borders are so porous that they are beyond control. Otherwise, it’s a brother's keeper mentality in operation, with profit in mind. Surely, the entrepreneurial class of Igbos know that it’s capitalism pure and simple and it’s the market that decides
So, some Ijaw bros syphon off some crude, ship it downriver and offload on some boats, waiting to set sail further down the coast where oil could fetch a good price from the oil-thirsty, cash-strapped people of Sierra Leone, for example. Isn’t that a lot more kosher & halal than kidnapping Nigerian citizens and shipping them downriver and then off to North America, these days, also known as the brain drain?
BTW, did you know that - to quote Ojogbon, “Corruption sabotages privileges and rights of citizenship”?
If only you and some of the loudmouths you refer to had turned up for Ojogbon’s lecture on CITIZENSHIP this afternoon, you would have learned a thing or two about the implications of citizens' rights and privileges. Rights to education, clean water, etc. Everybody’s angry.
Rights that in Nigeria, mostly exist only on paper.
Concrete words such as IDENTITY, protection ( without which the tourists won’t come)
Freedom - what you were supposedly born into if you were born in Freetown
You would have heard some more about Values…( no sermonising) and the still unanswered question: ” Who owns Lagos?” Certainly not the squatters under the Lagos bridge who like the rag-tag settlers in the West Bank are currently squatting in their alleged “No man’s land” in accord with the fabrication about “ A land without a people for people without a land”.
The squatters under the Lagos bridge must sincerely believe in This Land is Your Land unlike this other fairytale declassified: "Exodus is a Myth" Something You Might Not Know About The Bible
And where does that leave you, Watson?
But back to Ojogbon’s lecture, where you would have pondered on “Do we have a “social contract ?", considered and reconsidered the implications of Federalism and ”restructuring”
It was profound, and I hope that it was recorded and we all deserve a transcript, but at the point where Ojogbon asked the question,” Why can’t a Fulani man become a Chief of Ibadan?”, I must confess that although he had laid the foundations for asking such a question - after all, on the international stage, Barack Obama became Prezo of the USA, Ahmed Aboutaleb is the Mayor of Rotterdam, and Rishi Sunak is still going strong as PM of the UK - in my heart of hearts, there was a twinge of uncertainty and I began to suspect Ojogbon of insincerity, just a speck, and I would also - God forbid - suspect you and Ogugua Anunoby of insincerity too ( and not of “ethnic baiting”) if you and e.g. Peter Obi too was to ask, rhetorically (not mischievously or malevolently, ) “Why can’t a Hausa man be elected President of the Owerri Motor Park ?”
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
cornelius...@gmail.com
Some celebrities are greater than others.
Chidi, do you agree?
And what about this piece of Shakespeare:
“ Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
In your opinion, Shakespeare and Soyinka, who is greater?
What about Sheikh Spear and Achebe?
Like comparing oranges with bananas, eh?
By the way, I think that it’s high time you responded to this kind of statement :
It is a fact that many Nigerians are born stupid, some have stupidity bestowed on them, and some acquired stupidity by association. Or, how best to explain why thousands are still trooping to Oyedepo's church despite the fact. Like I noted last time, hardly anything comes to Nigeria without being bastardized.
© Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi
February 24, 2024
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
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cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi,
An honest answer please: Can you do THIS?
Googled ( without citation marks) :
This is not a time for rehashing your submission: “The problem is that we do not even realize it when we start being intolerant of divergent viewpoints and when we start applying subtle gag methods.”
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi,
Many thanks.
Great answers. You didn’t lose your cool
(especially about the purported stupidity
as part of the national DNA) you took the
questions in your stride thereby confirming
“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness”
- I should say, “You poets”, then ask, can
Poetry stop the madness
in GAZA?
Re - “The Mother of Karl Marx ''
I hadn’t heard that one before, not even as capitalist vituperation.
One would have thought that as always, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder
and when it comes to a Jewish Mother - well, as you know, Mary thought that her son was “the son of God”, and Jesus of course thought that his mother was a holy virgin.
For your august attention ( if you have the time for it) :
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
I forgot to ask, who do you think is greater, Shakespeare or Strindberg?
Cornelius Ignoramus asks, because a bonafide Englishman (Anthony Swerling a word-o-grapher I became friends with in 1985, soon after I returned to Sweden from Nigeria) made the spurious claim that Strindberg was “ greater” and of course can be charged with either heresy or bias, since he nursed this view while living in Sweden, and in my view, he was thereby only trying to cosy up to the Swedes. In an earlier era he would have probably been summarily executed in London for high treason, and today, probably resurrected and executed/ sent to the gallows once again for defaming one of the Greatest Englishmen that ever lived.
I wonder what Professor Bernard Porter would have to say about such a retrospective view of historical probability. I wonder, because, not viewing himself as gullible (like Gulliver in “ Gulliver’s Travels”) he seems to have some doubts about the possibility of “divine intervention” - something I would like to see happen in Gaza. I would like to see DIVINE INTERVENTION put the IDF to flight with their tails between their legs. I would love to see the IDF scared and running back to base in haste, in their tanks, by land, sea and air, all of them running back to base at Dimona, their tails tucked safely between their legs.
I’d like to read all about this, not in anyone’s “holy” or genocidal or deicidal Bible, but as reported by e.g. George Galloway in his Youtube channel MOATS - The Mother of all Talk Shows
Lastly, dear Chidi, regarding - your idea: “If some people didn't flock to Oyedepo's church, it means that there are no more gullible people …” I think that you and Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi the wannabe theologian have got it all wrong about “gullibility” - a much-misused word which as per your definition could be applied to the inerrant Pope Francis, to St.Paul especially, and at least eleven of Jesus’ disciples, but not to the hungry 5, 000 that he fed according to the miracle of the five loaves and two fish which defies ( I almost wrote “deifies” ) rational analysis.
Since, not least of all, in Nigeria too, we live in an age of religion, ritual, and superstition, to both you and Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi, and Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, I forward a principle coined by Charles Fort and known as Fort’s principle:
“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.”
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cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi;
Kudos!
You didn’t lose your equanimity
About the purported stupidity!
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cornelius...@gmail.com
“Mary thought that her son was “the son of God”, and Jesus of course thought that his mother was a holy virgin.”?
Correction : Mary thought that her son was GOD, and Jesus of course thought that his mother was a virgin.
Recently, have been listening to Jordan Maxwell
Lastly to his The Watchers | ELOhiM
Hence the “ correction”
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi,
The problems are
(1) Time is limited
(2) There are so many good writers.
and (3) a problem that may arise such as, “ When is a good writer, not a good writer?” as in
When is A GENOCIDE NOT A GENOCIDE?
Today, I finally checked out Teju Cole’s Tremor
“ alter”?
According to Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 - which my tutor (1964 - 65) Bankole Thompson used to read with a shmile on his lips)
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.”
Minds….
About the time element , well I either read or listened to an interview in which Aminatta Forna ( another good writer) said that once she gets it into her head that’s she gonna write a book, she more or less locks herself up - away from her husband - more or less puts a “ do not disturb” sign on her door…(poor hubby - involuntary isolation,
“Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;”
A Saro Bro tells me that if you wanna
live as long as Methuselah
then you’ve gotta
be faithful to a diet of Moringa
If you truly seek and then ye shall surely find:
The Miraculous Black Seed Oil: The Cure to All Diseases Except Death
But if you insist that you don't wanna quit because it’s eternal life and everlasting youth that you seek so that you can get on with your career of writing forever, well, as the holy hype goes, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
So, to be or not to be,
To believe or not to believe,
The choice is yours .
If you choose wisely
Then death will not be able to alter you if you are a good writer
As John Donne boasted deploying at least one of his conceits / metaphysical conceits
“ Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
Here's some more ungodly gossip about our Literature Laureate. I was thinking about the gossip in connection with what you were saying in your thought for today, about marriage
cornelius...@gmail.com
Even for those who sing Gaia,
“Turn away from your animal kind
Try to leave your body just to live in your mind
Leave your cold cruel mother earth behind”,
this statement by Faulkner ( since pre-university days my favourite novelist) needs to be examined more closely: ”The only thing that can alter a good writer is death”
As Chidi would or ought to exclaim, what the heck did he or does he mean by that?
That after they die some writers are quickly forgotten - are read no more ( that their newspaper columns cannot continue posthumously could be one meaning.
When he made such an atrocious statement, he wasn’t necessarily talking about Chidi’s impressive digital output of course, because Ma & Pa Opara had not yet got together to in love and devotion produce such as prodigious wonder, nor could Nobel Laureate Faulkner who delicately diagnosed and analysed race relations in his America, issue any prophecy or forebodings about the new ice age of illiteracy - a thought that I thought when the de-friending rabbi was teaching a passage from the Shulchan Aruch and telling his awe-filled students ( assorted boys and girls, men and women, some of them pregnant, all of them ambitious wannabes ) that in the name of modesty when in bed to begin the begin, they must un-dress under the blanket so that Hashem wouldn’t catch a glimpse of their nakedness. At which point I had to suppress the urge to inform him that there’s no place to hide from Hashem, because Hashem can see through the blankets anyway, and even more than that, Hashem can also see some of the racism and arrogance that may be concealed within the pious teacher’s heart) and as I was saying, unlike Jeremiah, nor did dear William Faulkner publish any prophecies about the oncoming non-reading generation, the age of leisure, the internet and AI looming on the horizon, and very finally, nor did he prophetically foresee the veritable jungle that publishing was going to be.
In the third form of secondary school at a point when I wasn’t paying 100% attention, I heard Vidal Godwin our chemistry teacher proclaiming as if from the pulpit, “matter can neither be created nor destroyed” - and of course, he wasn’t talking about book-burning or the resurrection, nor was Faulkner refuting or asserting the doctrine of transubstantiation when he said “ The only thing that can alter a good writer is death” because we all know that
after rigor mortis sets in that’s definitely the end of the writing or prophetic career, just as we all know dead men don’t shmoke marijuana…
Chidi is aware of the bard’s Sonnet 55 which goes,
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
Literally speaking, there are many cases of writers who became famous after their death.
Lastly, about the second part of Faulkner’s statement, “Those who are good don't worry about being successful or getting rich”, the question is, how does he know that?
Wouldn’t Chidi, for example, like to make a lot of money through writing?
Wouldn’t he prefer to make infinitely more money than he does currently, through freight-forwarding?
In the case of Dostoevsky - it’s a well-known fact that at some point he was economically pressed to write in order to survive.
That’s how it is for some people
They have to learn the skill
By which to pay the bills
Stephen Stills: “I play the music for the music you see
Very lastly, “being successful or getting rich” to some extent implies the desire for some praise and fame
James Taylor :
Fortune and fame such a curious game.
Perfect strangers can call you by name
cornelius...@gmail.com
Those who sing Gaia,
“ As if you were your own creation
As if you were the chosen nation
And the world around you just a rude and
Dangerous invasion”
and those who sing the complete Kaya
do not doubt what Faulkner meant when he said ( the full statement):
“The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand.”
I’m sure that Efa ( Samuel Archer-Davies) would agree with me that the second part of that statement does not sound like a Hemingway wannabe and even less like Henry Miller
Fuller Still :
William Faulkner > Quotes > Quotable Quote
Today, if Paul Auster or Teju Cole, or Wole Soyinka, or Ojogbon Falola -God forbid - were to get up and write or say that “Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand.” - an equivalent of the all-purpose backhand Irish expletive - to a woman - “keep your mouth shut and your legs open”, then we would be sure to see the likes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (“ We Should All Be Feminists”) and the likes of Joyce Carol Oates ganging up to denounce whoever it was that said such a thing, screaming at the top of their voice “Male Chauvinist pig” maybe even initiating legal proceedings for “ hate speech”
The first part of the statement (The only thing that can alter the good writer is death) only translates into “Once a good writer, always a good writer “ ( like, once a good husband, always a good husband / once a good president, always a good president / once a saint, never a sinner, .etc…
But writers - even good writers are liable to go through some bullshit changes, experimental or involuntary processes which the Buddha referred to as change/ impermanence - just as Shakespeare observed, in his most popular sonnet, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
“And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed”
Or, as the The Last Poets put it, so colourfully, people change
Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsys: Changes
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Professional Fellow of Institute Of Information Management Africa, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Registered Freight Forwarder and Editorial Adviser at News Updates.
More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
Chidi Anthony Opara on Twitter(X): https://twitter.com/ChidiAOpara
cornelius...@gmail.com
Chidi,
Achebe is a pioneer with "Things Fall Apart". You can’t reverse that.
It’s like Jollof Rice - nothing like the original : Wollof Rice
Pardon me for reacting and responding.
If Jesus had been born in today’s Bethlehem ( under Israeli, not Roman occupation) he would have probably been vilified as an “ antisemite” and crucified or liquidated ( by the Pharisees) as a Palestinian or a Palestinian zealot .
And, Chidi, you would have heard the Igbo Jews over there at the Owerri Motor Park also chirping about “anti-Semitism”
Needless to say, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 King James Version notwithstanding, that
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works”,
if the New Testament had been written in the twenty-first century, the Nigerian Pentecostal Pastors would have been very happy, but, modern Biblical Criticism aside ( not to mention the modern sceptics, the Modern Unbelieving Thomases, theologians, atheists, philosophers, scientists, Christopher Hitchens etc would have been questioning the virgin birth and the resurrection ad nauseam. Jesus would have been interviewed on Al-Jazeera, vigorously interrogated on CNN, BBC, Sky News, concerning any claims about being the only begotten son of God - begotten not created and - possibly he would have also been featured in Israel National News or completely ignored in favour of the one who is now trending : The Yanuka Rav Shlomo Yehuda
Miracles or no miracles, if the Gospels, the Letters of Paul, The Book of Revelation etc had been written today just as you say, “they probably wouldn't have been as acclaimed as they are.”
Ditto if the so called “Old “ Testament had been written today. If in doubt , follow this discussion and it will erase any of your doubts, forever : Rabbi Mizrachi Debates with Secular Jews
Toyin Falola
I am curious. Why did you make this point?
From:
usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 7:15 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
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Ibrahim Abdullah
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
I am curious. Why did you make this point?
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 7:15 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteIf "Things Fall Apart" and other creative works produced in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were written in the 1990s and 2020s, they probably wouldn't have been as acclaimed as they are.
-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)
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Toyin Falola
So, you understand context!
Things Fall Apart could this be written to a greater acclaim but it won’t be about Okonkwo. It can be about Lumumba or Sankara or Achebe. A Man of the People be Peter Obi!
From:
usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 10:03
AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Oga TF,
I am of the opinion that the popularity of literary productions are somehow dependent on the time they appear on the scene. A literary production about apartheid now for example, may not receive as much attention as it would have done in the 1970s and 1980s, inspite of how qualitative such productions are.
-CAO.
On Sunday 17 March 2024, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
I am curious. Why did you make this point?
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 7:15 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteIf "Things Fall Apart" and other creative works produced in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were written in the 1990s and 2020s, they probably wouldn't have been as acclaimed as they are.
-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Professional Fellow of Institute Of Information Management Africa, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Registered Freight Forwarder and Editorial Adviser at News Updates.More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
Chidi Anthony Opara on Twitter(X): https://twitter.com/ChidiAOpara
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Michael Afolayan
Harrow, Kenneth
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2024 11:06:50 AM
Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA
So, you understand context!
Things Fall Apart could this be written to a greater acclaim but it won’t be about Okonkwo. It can be about Lumumba or Sankara or Achebe. A Man of the People be Peter Obi!
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 10:03 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteOga TF,
I am of the opinion that the popularity of literary productions are somehow dependent on the time they appear on the scene. A literary production about apartheid now for example, may not receive as much attention as it would have done in the 1970s and 1980s, inspite of how qualitative such productions are.
-CAO.
On Sunday 17 March 2024, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
I am curious. Why did you make this point?
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 7:15 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's QuoteIf "Things Fall Apart" and other creative works produced in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were written in the 1990s and 2020s, they probably wouldn't have been as acclaimed as they are.
-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Professional Fellow of Institute Of Information Management Africa, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador, Registered Freight Forwarder and Editorial Adviser at News Updates.More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
Chidi Anthony Opara on Twitter(X): https://twitter.com/ChidiAOpara
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cornelius...@gmail.com
With pioneers, it’s always the first time
even for those ordinary sinners and virgins
who look upon their books and their
literally output/s as babies.
Seriously ,not facetiously
does Michael Afolayan mean
that as children of their time
Amos Tutuola who delivered
Camara Laye’s The African Child &
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
and Arrow of God
Cyprian Ekwensi ‘s Jagua Nana,
Sembene Ousmane’s God's Bits of Wood
Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala
Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy &
David Diop and Birago Diop &
Tchicaya U Tam'si ‘s poetry
Elechi Amadi’s seminal The Concubine
and The Great Ponds
Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are Not yet Born
“could have been laughed to scorn” if they appeared in print, for the very first time today, as the very first literary flowering from colonial Africa ?
The Last Poets : Bird's Word
Coleman Hawkins : (with Kenny Burrell ): Monotono Blues