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Back during the 1930s my grandfather was interviewed for one of these narratives. His name was Elijah Donaldson Merrill. One thing I remember being mentioned in the narrative, which various members of my extended family have copies of, was him telling how his father was the plantation owner and how as a young child, he was allowed to play with the plantation owner's other children who were his half-siblings. (He actually looked like he was white.) This was in Franklin, Tennessee, and he told how, as a young man, he headed up a black brigade who would run off the Klan when its members would stage midnight raids on black neighborhoods. He said this group was so good at doing this that the Klan finally stopped the harassment. He later became a deputy sheriff, assigned to the black section of the town.

Interesting, indeed, how an answer to a question can feed upon itself and expand like a pyamid. Maybe that's why pyramids have a prominence in mysticism. Feynman's dissertation also kind of illlustrates the inadequacy of trying to capture reality in language, which is why the simple phrase "it is what it is" is really profound. When responding to the question "WHY?, one word can be the gateway to infinity. "BECAUSE"...