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A Series – Part ONE: Racism, Sexism and more…. – the structurally divided system we call the United States of America! But, it could also be called the World in Which We Live! This series will cover what maintains it in such an evil way with individual examples!

Friday, June 17th, 2022

We write and talk a lot about the bigotry of racism, sexism and so much more. We keep that talk on an institutional level. Very seldom do we write and talk with individual, real -true-to-life examples. That would interfere with our ability to deny – which is the foundation of what allows those structures to continue to exist. Start to talk about your real, true-to-life example of having experienced racism, sexism and all the rest and denial will immediately pop-up to explain away your real life experience. It is the most potent way we have of continuing bigotry’s existence. Raw, unwashed, in-your-face bigotry, maintained, continued, developed through denial.

We see denial being institutionalized in our educational system. Florida and the laws it is passing is an example. Those laws parallel the laws of old which made it a crime to teach slaves to read and write. Why criminalize something so seemingly harmless as teaching reading, writing and arithmetic? Because that was the beginnings of an effective way out of slavery. Today, we are trying to re-instituionalize a modernization of those criminal laws. Why? To maintain the “better than” in this society of white male northern-europeans peoples. And even to make a difference within that group of those who believe one way as against those who believe another. Bringing culture, religious beliefs and more into that “better than” equation.

Our world was rocked when we saw and got to know many of the victims of the bigotry against the elderly. We had seen bits and pieces of it pop-up, but to really experience the bigotry the elderly must live with, ignore and end their lives living in the most humiliating and vicious way – usually very broke after everything they worked all their lives to acquire – is an earth-shattering experience.

Society is structuring itself to maintain the elderly totally apart from the rest of world. That allows grifting, theft, physical – mental – medical – legal abuse to come to the forefront and happen with everyone looking on while denying what they are seeing and turning it into something positive. What is most annoying is that those doing this as the leaders of this pact are just like you and me. They look normal, talk normal, participate in their part of the world just like you and me with no one the wiser. They, however, begin to acquire wealth we don’t even give a thought as to from whence it has come.

We have published several articles on what happened to Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett and Marceline Donaldson. African Americans – Elderly – with fairly substantial assets. Mostly, what we published has been ignored except by those who experienced the same thing. We were surprised at how many elderly are experiencing this “putting the elderly into poverty” and then, let us use a small percentage of what is taken to keep them barely surviving and right under the nose of and with the approval of their families. Or, I should say because of the neglect of their families who are very, very busy. That is one real-life example which has uncovered many more. What we saw is that you don’t know when something like that will hit you. As a society we are taught “denial”. I am not my brother or sisters keeper – let them work it out on their own. That is our attitude towards bigotry of all kind. That is why it is so prevalent, long lasting and horrific in this society and in this world.

Guardianship is one evil in this society which has been practiced mostly against Jews, but is beginning to spread to other minorities as the wealth of different groups increases.

Murder of the youngest generation of minorities is happening because the numbers of minorities in this society are increasing and those who we refer to today as minorities are predicted to be the largest functioning group within a decade or so. How to cope and reverse that? Kill the children of these minorities. Well, you will get a few children of the majority group, but then Hitler targeted and killed Jews, but also included non-Jews to be most efficient and effective in his goal to remove Jews from the world. And the result of this killing of the children? When the oldest working group of minorities retires or dies there will be far fewer minorities to replace them, effectively re-establishing the inequality that currently exists. Those who would replace them have been murdered by the hundreds.

Corporate America has long had a very high wall, to protect those at the top, which they have built over time and are now re-enforcing so that wall will last many more generations. The wealthiest people in this society are those who have developed businesses, new ideas, etc. Those are all white-male-mostly Northern European types who are the world’s billionaires – or working very hard to become such with support of their cultural, racial, ethnic brothers.

How has that happened and how has that line been kept so free of minorities crossing into the land of entrepreneurial opportunity? From our perch, we have seen the ideas and hard work and success of minorities and women in the entrepreneurial area stolen by this group of white male, etc. There has been a re-definition of things like “theft” and more so this group of white males have a smoother road as they cruise down to reach that billionaire status on someone else’s back. Take a look at the history of Silicon Valley – only don’t leave out the minority businesses stolen; the women-owned businesses stolen; the refusal of investors to support and invest only in business brought to them by their “own kind”. Don’t leave out the young white males who raced through Cambridge and places like MIT, Harvard and more to see who was doing what that they could steal and take to investors who would look at the ideas with a cover to induce blindness against those from whom those businesses were stolen.

What has most disturbed us, because it is going unnoticed, supported by the extremely wealthy few, and within this group “theft” re-defined to make the actual theft going on constantly a non-event. If you break into my house and steal one of my artifacts, jewelry, furniture – even food, you are subject to arrest and jail for that theft. If you break into my computer and or corporate location, steal my business plan, take all of the ideas, structure, customers, experience I acquired while building a substantial business, etc. and at the same time do everything you can to destroy my business so I will be busy just trying to survive while you develop the model you coveted, that is not considered theft and subjects you to no criminal action. It also does not disqualify you from being considered for funding for the ideas and businesses you stole from others.

Every day, we come across people who have been crushed by such theft after 20 to 30 years of working to build a business with ideas all their own and have been successful in the process as they introduced to society a new way of doing something or a new product or something not out there before. We also see the people who crushed them and tried to leave them and their business by the wayside because they decided to set in place a copy of their business and because the people so crushed tend to be minorities and/or women the white males used to succeed. They have access to capital to grow their business, which the minorities and women don’t have; they have access to partners, those who have worked at the top of large white-male owned businesses which take an interest and the kind of theft and destruction which took down the business they copied is ignored. Unfortunately for all of us the ethics of such businesses are in the gutter, however, most of us go along with the growth of this stolen business as it becomes an intrinsic part of this society with which the rest of us have to live.

Real Estate is a biggy! The structure, wealth, schools in the geographic location of where you live depends upon your culture, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual choice, etc. and that institutionally racist structure was put in place eons ago. It began in slavery and was intensified when we changed our economic structures from “in your face” slavery to a more modified form with which we live today.

The importance of the geographic location where you live and work and have your being increased dramatically and became entrenched and unchangeable during separate and unequal days and today is becoming even more bigoted than it was generations ago. It is now easier to discriminate on such a level without anyone noticing or those who notice and complain being crushed and blamed for their plight after that drastic crushing.

As the world moved forward, that structure moved with it and has been kept in place by realtors, the real estate industry and its cousins. They maintain geographical bigotry in your living accommodations very effectively and much easier than a few generations ago, which in turn maintains racially divided schools which maintains racially divided businesses which occupy the retail spaces in those racially divided neighborhoods with the result that some of such businesses thrive and become very successful and some, in the minority neighborhoods, hang on by their fingernails for a lifetime.

These are some of the areas we will research and write about going forward with actual examples.

We have lots out there in the literature which talks about structural racism and how society separates unequally, but individual examples seem to be the most threatening and the least written about – especially in books used in schools of higher learning where to examine such things might cause a great disruption in this society. It is the area that many will read about and immediately engage in denial and denigration of those doing the writing.

We, at Bettina’s, have lived long enough that such denigration will not deter us. You are encouraged to join us with your stories. After all, we must all experience denial to understand how vicious it is.

In Scripture you will read: “Do you think I come to bring peace on earth. No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other; three against two and two against three”…….Luke 12:51-52.

We talk and sing a lot about “peace”. We knock those who we claim bring “divisiveness’. But when we do that what happens to such passages in Scripture? We think there is nothing wrong with “divisiveness”. We need to look at good and evil and separate those concepts instead of making divisiveness substitute for evil and coming together substitute for good.

………An Elegant Historical House for Sale!

Saturday, April 2nd, 2022
Every corner of this home bespeaks elegance, history, beauty and invites you to stay awhile. Across the street is a park; two door down on the same side of the street is another park and look out the windows, you will see the Charles River!

49 Hawthorn Street – Cambridge, MA. 02138 – $5,800,000.

What follows, under “House for Sale” describes a house which we would like to bring to your attention.  We hope you will consider buying the house – either for yourself, your family or for one of your favorite institutions and/or charities.

A kitchen for those who actually cook with room for everything – your utensils, pots, spices and so much more. Many fantastic meals have come out of this kitchen.

     The house we are describing was designed and built by an MIT graduate in 1900.  She was one of MIT’s  first female architectural students..  Her papers are in the MIT Library.  She is Lois Lily Howe with her own architectural firm and all the architects working with her were women.  Such a history in today’s climate makes quite a statement.

This particular house – at 49 Hawthorn Street – is the only Howe designed house in this area in which the interior has not been stripped and re-built taking away all of the historical design. The only room that needs to be brought back to its original design is the kitchen. It is wonderful as it is, however, to bring it back to Ms. Howe’s design would be special.

A fantastic welcome as the front door is opened to you and/or your guests. It speaks of the elegance which shows up all around the house – from French to Spanish to English to African to South American touches making it an escapee from Old New Orleans.

Marceline and Robert have lived in this house for 40 years and love every corner.  Being people who love history (Near Eastern History was the subject of Robert’s Harvard Doctoral thesis) and with Marceline’s educational background in the School of Architecture under Ralph Rapson, they have totally enjoyed living in this house and discovered much in the process. Selling it under duress they want to know it is in the hands of people who would continue in that design preservation route. The area has a penchant for taking beautiful culturally diverse homes and turning them all into a Northern European Scandinavian aesthetic. They look as though they were all designed in the Ikea Showrooms. So sad! There is nothing wrong with the Ikea Designs, however, what is wrong is making them the ultimate, cultural, design touch stone. This house escaped that “remodel”.

Ms. Howe built the house for William Augustus Maynadier – a Harvard Professor who taught “Arthurian Legend.”- the story of King Arthur and the Round Table.  It was a required course for all Harvard men. There were no Harvard women in those days.

Being very strong feminists, the Donaldson/Bennetts found that Harvard/MIT combination quite special.  While “feminist” was not a term in her day, Ms. Howe clearly was a feminist as we know the term today, stepping out into the world of Architecture the way she did.  Prof. Maynadier would be known as an extreme sexist today. He was teaching a class which laid the ground work for the very horrible sexism which most 20th century women have had to deal.  And yet, he hired Ms. Lois Lily Howe to build his house.

Arthurian Legend – King Arthur and the Round Table – was a way of teaching men how to treat women in that “on the pedestal and out of the equality” area.  The necessity of opening doors and standing on the side as she entered the room and etc. for this weaker sex is what was being taught, although not so specifically – it was wrapped in the Arthurian Legend.  All the things women have fought to have removed for decades so they could be treated as equals is what Prof. Maynadier’s class was about.  It was totally accepted at the time. Most people don’t know that this originated at Harvard.  It was in the general world population at the time, but not to the extent that it became entrenched with Prof. Maynadier at 49 Hawthorn Street.

It was interesting to us that Prof. Maynadier chose Ms. Howe to design and build his home. – which he used to live in and invite paying guests to stay with him.  The house has had that use throughout its 100 plus years of existence.  It hosted seminars, class sessions, teas and many famous and not so famous people, still while serving as a very private home.  

One of four bathrooms in this home – designed with jacuzzi, steam/shower room and separate enclosed toilet. The plumber calls it a “no bad smells” bathroom.

The Donaldson-Bennetts used their home to have what today are called bed & breakfast guests and to build the first network of such private homes working their way across the country and turning a national and an international network of bed and breakfast homes into a commonly known and accepted concept. This house was the beacon.  Besides this house, they had homes also in Thailand, England, France and more.

The guys who founded Airbnb stayed with them before those three even thought of such a company.  They were sent by Venture Capitalists – particularly the Capital Network in Cambridge – who wanted to fund such a venture, but not one designed, created and being grown by African Americans.  So they helped themselves to the Bettina Network, Inc’s business plan and everything else they could find to help them get the same kind of venture off the ground.  They sent people to offer their homes to join the Bettina Network, inc. but were really only interested in the process of how that was done – just as they hacked into and used Craig’s List to get their initial clients. The Donaldsons’ believe that when their web site was stolen, locked and offered back to them for enormous sums of money – it had to do with the genesis of Airbnb, although that was not known at the time as Airbnb was just forming.

While the Donaldson/Bennett’s lived and are living in the Lois Lily Howe house, Harvard sent many guests to stay with them, as did MIT, Tufts, Boston University, Boston College and more.  Several admin people called regularly to make reservations for guests visiting Harvard and other Universities in the area as well as private corporations calling for guests to whom they wanted to give privacy.. Everyone who stayed loved their time in the house and totally were taken by its history stories and general feeling.

Many institutions and corporations used the house when guests were visiting who they wanted to have privacy without being worried that their guests would be stalked in the lobby of the hotels to pick up information that could be used for media articles. They also liked the fact that guests wouldn’t need so many levels of security when they came to Boston.  Guests included such as Ambassador Victor Israelian, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, top management from the State Department, many of the USA’s top families, many scientists – mostly physicists – who loved the quiet and privacy of the house where they could enjoy the patio where squirrels and birds would visit them as they worked on the back porch.

If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to call.  If you or someone you recommend would like to see the house, we are available at their or your convenience.

Call Marceline Donaldson – 617 497 9166 or email bettinanetwork@comcast.net putting 49 Hawthorn St in the subject line.

What follows is a fuller description of the house as it appears in different publications.

                              HOUSE FOR SALE – Cambridge, MA. 02138

“Marceline and Robert are selling their home.  If you don’t want to buy it, please pass this along to those you know who might be interested and/or know someone who would love to step into their shoes.  As a private home or as a home with a bit of  income so you can live there and do other things.  Income can be in the neighborhood of $1,080.00/night, not including income from events, etc..  

Marceline and Robert did a wonderful job and are now moving to New Orleans – which is where Marceline grew up.  They have not been able to survive the onslaught against them of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the way they treat minority elderly in what was and is an apparent attempt of a group within the state to relieve Jews, African Americans, Latinx and others of any wealth that could be passed on to the next generation. This is the new racism/bigotry that is replacing the separatism that followed slavery.

The house has been newly painted with, among other improvements, a new 75 gallon commercial water heater with a 20 year rating and lots of other elegant restorations which keep the historical design of the house as much as possible..  

It is one of the few homes in Cambridge, which gives you views of the Charles River from many of the bedroom windows and it overlooks the Riverbend Park on one side  with no other building blocking your view.  There is also a second park (the historical Longfellow Park) just two houses down on the same block and the same side of the street as Marceline and Robert’s house.  Fantastic and very unusually elegant to have so many parks within the same block the home in which one lives.  One of the only homes in the area with such and with a spectacular view.

You would have 9,000 square feet of living space in this house over five floors.  5,400 (apx.) finished into three floors of elegant historical living and 3,500 square feet (apx) of attic and basement which can be finished into fantastic living space.   

For a possible future use of the basement take a look at the basement of Harvard University’s Memorial Chapel’s basement.  

The attic could be refinished into an exquisite ballroom for entertaining with its 16 foot height (apx) at its apex with no beams going across to obstruct the wonderful height of this room.  The architect – Lois Lily Howe, in 1900 was one of the first, (she is credited with being the first), to be able to build such an attic.  Most attics are so clogged with structures to keep the roof from falling in on itself you do not have the breathtaking space one finds here.  This attic is a full floor.  Its footprint is that of the entire length and width of the house.  Just think of the elegant entertaining you could do in that attic.

Historically, guests came to events in such houses and went to the second floor living room to leave their coats, etc. and freshen up and then went up another floor or two to the tea, dinner, dance or etc. on the upper floors.  Today, we don’t have attics large enough for such events, especially not one replicating the footprint of the other floors of the house.

Lois Lily Howe was the architect.  Designed and built in approximately 1900, she was one of MIT’s first female graduates.  She established her own architectural firm and the architects she hired were women. 

In the process of designing and building this home,  Ms. Howe scrounged the area for homes being torn down which had historical touches and she brought that actual history into this house.  The mouldings are exquisite and are some 100 years older than the house. 

The history of this house includes a psychiatric history – Dr. Lydia Dawes, a well known psychiatrist of yore, was an owner for some 40 plus years before the Donaldson-Bennetts arrived and the house frequently  embraced many of her friends who were also famous guests.  Sigmund Freud’s daughter stayed often and worked with Dr. Dawes.  Together they produced one of the first psychiatric journals in the area from this house.  Many local psychiatrists remember a part of their training that happened on the couch by the living room window overlooking the magnolia tree.  So much history goes with this house both  within its structure and with the people who have passed through.  

Marceline and Robert have spent decades trying to preserve and create a garden worthy of Lois Lily Howe who ended her career and life as a landscape architect.

You may have heard of  the many outstanding and famous people who stayed under the Donaldson-Bennett’s roof during their time in the house because you were probably one of them.  You can now own this magnificent property so beautifully located. 

Want more information – call Marceline – 617 497 9166 or email us bettinanetwork@comcast.net

FACEBOOK, AirBNB and all the other startups turned billion dollar corporations!

Monday, October 4th, 2021

There are some things we know, but do not talk about. We flesh out our knowing with hypocrisy, lies, reasons which we know are false and more.

For example, we know there are minuscule amounts of minorities who receive investment money for their startups and lets include women in that group. We don’t really stop to analyze what, why, how to change things.

At Bettina’s we became involved in all of this when – and you know the story by now – the Capital Network, a group funded by and involved with the City of Cambridge – sent three white males to one of the homes in the Bettina Network, inc. – to see what they were doing and to steal the idea and anything else they could in the process.

It was Cambridge working its structural racism making sure a black-owned business, with great potential, did not succeed in its territory. It was Cambridge pulling on its structural racism, solidly in place today, to force blacks who were moving too far too fast to back down and/or move out.

Out of that came AirBnB. A company whose founders used several stealth ways to steal from Bettina’s. The Business Plan; by sending people in to steal as much more as possible; whenever they ran into something they couldn’t fathom, more calls to Bettina’s without identifying who or what to keep their business idea looking as though it was really theirs….and on and on. A prototype for business development in this society.

At the time, Bettina people were going to the Thursday afternoon meetings of the Capital Network, inc. trying to understand and apply for and get better acquainted with the “investor class.”

That was a waste of time.

After the visit of the three guys who had never before been to a bed & breakfast, talked about not even knowing private homes could be put together in a Network, etc. etc. Bettina people went to the next Thursday afternoon gathering of the Capital Network and were surprised to see their company name had been taken down and they were held at the door because they were no longer listed as part of the group.

Someone who knew Bettina’s appeared and re-entered Bettina’s as a part of this group with their name appearing on the board letting people know they were “in the space”. An “oversight” they said. Even though Bettina’s was at the Thursday meeting the previous week and the one before that, etc. they were ‘unintentionally’ dropped.

As we discovered a few years later, substantial investment money was given to the three white guys forming AirBnB and the black folks – male and female – developing Bettina’s were totally cut out and had to fight for their continued existence, fighting one swipe across the bow after another, rather than continuing to move ahead with their business, which was growing substantially.

Friends began to appear talking about their problems, not knowing that Bettina’s was going through the same thing. These friends start-ups, which were right on the verge of expanding exponentially, but without the funds to do so and able to expanding only on current income, which we all know doesn’t work – caught our attention and time to research asking the question what do we have in common?

“This” – was and is the way this society maintains itself as northern european-ancestry white males.

Seeing and following that bit of structural racism, we tried everything but the system was tight, immovable and carefully constructed to eliminate and destroy anyone trying to do something different. Something different is and was to attempt to build a new business idea into a billion dollar plus business. Anything which looked as though it had that potential was stolen and the minority and female founders were put through horrendous experiences to handicap their following through with what looked to everyone as fantastic. Not only was their business handicapped with few to no investors of substances, but their daily lives were destroyed in as vile and ugly a way as possible to keep them from being able to wind up being competition.

At the same time we noticed a parallel occurrence. There were white males treated the same way. Not as crudely, but there were similarities. For example, Facebook – was founded on an ethical fault line. Like AirBnB this was not Zuckerberg’s idea, it was one he stole from others and promoted as his own. When all of this became public, it was ignored and had little to no affect on the growth of Facebook. It certainly did not slow down or dampen investor enthusiasm.

Given its unethical beginnings where was it supposed to go and how was it supposed to get that unethical mess out of its structure? That does not happen, it just grows with the business and that is what has happened.

These were not just “thefts” by people on the outside looking in who saw something, picked up the core idea and went on their own to fill in the rest. This was “theft” in the crudest way which screamed to all who could hear the very unethical way it was done. This spoke volumes about the ethics of those involved.

What we saw was that unethical base of those doing the stealing was what the “investors” – conscious of it or not – were looking for in an entrepreneur they would fund. Take a look around and see the history.

Today we have people speaking out loud and clear with proof about the highly unethical way of Facebook. What we don’t understand is why the surprise? That has been known for quite some time and has been pointed out to the many. The result – you could almost hear the cheers as Zuckerberg was embraced as one of our own. He could be “trusted” to be someone who develops and developed a company which could almost be called the Devil’s Spawn.

We are a society which has developed “big” businesses on the most evil platforms. That seems to be what the West Coast investor class looks for as do all the rest. That is not done above board, but the choices made show clearly the ethical base of those doing the choosing.

We are watching and experiencing horribleness because of those beginnings – and – the history is carefully ignored with claims that this history is irrelevant as the company has grown. And yes, it has grown but its beginnings are structured into the company because that willingness to do whatever it took is a foul beginning which takes on a life of its own within the corporate structure. We seem to be programmed to blot that out and try to achieve a good result from that kind of beginning. Is that our laziness or our evil side.

In the Christian Scripture there is a story of Satan tempting Jesus with all kinds of earthly delights. He takes none of them but sticks to the business about which he has come. It seems that from this story there has come a long line of people who called out to Satan asking to be given the same choices. They were and this is the result.

There is an unwritten, not talked about agreement amongst investors who get such companies off the ground that monies will be spent developing businesses which have structured bigotry into their corporate forms, boardrooms, etc. and which have structured – anything goes if it gets us where we want to go let the ethics of what we are doing be damned. We are smart enough to give back an intellectualized reason which sounds good to deflect, at least as long as we need to deflect, those who would hold up to the general universe what we are doing which is and will continue to hurt our world, our galaxy and put our human species in jeopardy of extermination by itself.

May God’s judgment be swift and sure.


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