MEMBERS & VISITORS

Mr. Bug

Hoppity the Grasshopper, after a period spent away, returns to an American city (Manhattan, New York). He finds that all is not as he left it, and his insect friends (who live in the “Lowlands” just outside of the garden of a cute bungalow belonging to down-on-his-luck songwriter Dick Dickens and his wife Mary) are now under threat from the “human ones,” who are trampling through the broken-down fence, using it as a shortcut.

Insect houses are being flattened and burned by cast away cigar butts. Old Mr. Bumble and his beautiful daughter Honey (Hoppity’s sweetheart) are in grave danger of losing their Honey Shop to this threat. To compound their problems, devious insect “property magnate” C. Bagley Beetle has romantic designs on Honey Bee himself, and, with the help of his henchmen Swat the Fly and Smack the Mosquito, Honey is tricked into marrying the Beetle for the good of the insect community.

Hoppity discovers that the Songwriter and his wife are waiting for a “check thing” from the Famous Music publishing company for the songwriter’s composition, “We’re the Couple in the Castle.” With this money they can save the whole bug community. But C. Bagley Beetle and his henchmen “steal” the check, and the Dickens house is foreclosed. Days pass and with nothing improved nearly everyone in the lowlands loses faith in Hoppity’s claim. To make matters worse the Dickenses lose their home when a skyscraper is built on the site. Mr. Beetle can force everyone to pay his exorbitant prices — until he finds out that the building will be on his property too. Realizing that Hoppity was nearby and overheard him, he seals Hoppity inside the envelope that the Dickens’ check came in, hiding it in a crack in a wall.

Construction begins while everyone is at the wedding of Beetle and Honey; a weight from a surveyor’s level that rips through the chapel causes the terrified bugs to flee back to the Lowlands (not realizing the whole parcel is endangered by the construction crew). Hoppity escapes when the construction crew demolishes the wall, freeing the envelope. Hoppity comes to Honey’s rescue, battles Beetle and his henchmen, and wins.

Hoppity tells everyone what happened and manages to get the check to Mr. Dickens. “We’re the Couple in the Castle” becomes a massive hit. Meanwhile, Hoppity leads an exodus from the Lowlands to the top of the skyscraper, where he believes the Dickens’ have built a new home and invited the bugs to live there. They get to the top, which at first appears to be barren, but the young bugs discover the Dickens have built a new penthouse with a “Garden of Paradise” just as Hoppity had described. Honey and the rest of the Lowlanders live there happily ever after in their new home. And as Ambrose looks over the edge, he remarks, “Look at all the human ones down there. They look just like a lot of little bugs!”

INVENTION SCHOOL’S SIGNATURE SERIES

The technological progress of Africa and its diasporans was dramatically broken beginning with slavery and later through its colonization by European powers. With the arrival of the 21st century, a new era of an awakened Africa has dawned. In the graphic novel series “Invention School”, curious young African students explore their creative potential for solving everyday problems through a subset of engineering skills under the watchful and loving guidance of an expatriate African American engineering professor. Watch this uplifting graphic novel series. If you find the series and its content useful, please share widely.

GORGING YOUR LEARNING APPETITE

Powerful media giants continue feeding us steady diets of stories, games, music, and images of exploitation, mayhem, helplessness, victimization, sexism, murder, adultery, preposterous wealth, torture, drugs, deceit, vampires, zombies, thuggery, glorified gangsterism, demonic spirits, horror, war, despair, brutality, crime, vengeance, sex, addiction, psychic disorders, occultism, savagery, lust, hate, prejudicial beauty/virtue standards, and stale mind-numbing escapism. Never underestimate the power of the subliminal messaging in this media content to accustom your subconscious to your further takeover and control. The groundwork is being laid and we are being deliberately manipulated for easier subjugation. The “collusion” between Hollywood and complicit agencies like the CIA is clear. Hollywood has played a little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus for many years. Carefully look at the proportion (you’ll be shocked) of currently available movie fare that embodies these themes rather than embodying themes that uplift, transform, and inspire. “Just coincidence”, you say? After a steady diet of this psychic fare (garbage in, garbage out), what normal person would ever be in a position or mindset to connect and collaboratively formulate creative solutions and healing to man-made problems that beset humanity, earth lifeforms, and Mother Earth herself? These incapacitating but profitable offerings by these media giants stifle any visions of progress and action we might otherwise take to deliver ourselves out of the quagmires our modern societies have created that affect the entire world. Why do these companies market and sell so much of this awful, depraved content?? Could it be: