John Aerni-Flessner
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lesothojohn.bsky.social
John Aerni-Flessner
@lesothojohn.bsky.social
Assoc Prof, African History, MSU, RCAH.
Dreams for Lesotho: http://undpress.nd.edu/9780
Historical Dictionary: tinyurl.com/3tyha6jt
Publications here: https://tinyurl.com/ynvwp6c5
Lesotho, Southern Africa, development, borders, running, Michigan
In fact, the phase "pater-rollers" rumbles in my head all too often while scrolling/reading the news these days... (okay, it usually has an expletive in front of it there in my brain as well!)
January 23, 2026 at 8:33 PM
Being asked to dig into the WPA archives for an undergrad history class was a transformational experience.

I can still remember some of those quotations I read and used here some many years later!
January 23, 2026 at 8:31 PM
Thanks for this thread! Great stuff here.
January 23, 2026 at 8:27 PM
Reposted by John Aerni-Flessner
The song exists in the historical record as history of defiance to slave catchers, to family separation, to immoral detention and capture and forced migration.
January 23, 2026 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by John Aerni-Flessner
"My mother, she sing and pray to the Lord to deliver us out of slavery," he said. "She always said she thankful she was never sold from her children."
January 23, 2026 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by John Aerni-Flessner
In 1937, W.L. Bost, at the time 88 years old, then living in Asheville, North Carolina, sang it to a WPA interviewer as an example of "one old song we use to sing when we meet down in the woods back of the barn" when he was enslaved as a child.
January 23, 2026 at 7:39 PM
However, the @semafor.com newsletter claimed (wrongly) that only 1000 people speak #Siphuthi. There are about 1000 in the Daliwe Valley, but many more in Lesotho and in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

It is endangered, but the numbers of speakers are not that low!
January 23, 2026 at 2:25 PM
Might want to ask bsky.app/profile/joan...

(Jo-Ansie Van Wyk) who has written the stuff that it out there on Christie.

I can only hope she is writing a book on him!
bsky.app
January 18, 2026 at 6:52 PM
No book that I know of. Not even many articles. Here is one that talks about the sabotage of Koeberg, but only mentions Christie twice. It focuses on the man who actually planted the bombs.

There is not just a great book waiting here, but a fabulous movie as well!

www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?s...
Nuclear terrorism in Africa: The ANC's Operation Mac and the attack on the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station in South Africa
www.scielo.org.za
January 18, 2026 at 6:48 PM
I was lucky enough to have a dinner with him right after I arrived at my current institution. He was incredibly soft spoken and non-assuming, but he had seen some things.

And done some things.

His memory is a blessing.
January 16, 2026 at 3:42 AM
Yes, you read that correctly. He set out not just to write a PhD, but to do so in a way that would help others #sabotage South Africa's #electrical grid and the facilities needed to make #atomic weapons.

And he succeeded.

What a guy!
January 16, 2026 at 3:42 AM
Reposted by John Aerni-Flessner
2/2 These giant salaries make the jobs too attractive for financial reasons alone and too valuable to loose; they seem to strain the relationship between executive leaders and ordinary faculty and stuff. They likely erode trust within the organization and separate presidents from their communities.
January 15, 2026 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by John Aerni-Flessner
Pres. Mantella (GVSU) points out Michigan's public universities represent 6 percent of Michigan's GDP by themselves.
January 13, 2026 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by John Aerni-Flessner
The four R1 public universities of Michigan have a presence in every one of Michigan's 83 counties, not just turtling up on main campus.
January 13, 2026 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by John Aerni-Flessner
Pres. Guskiewicz (MSU) is talking about the unique economic contribution of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a facility unrivaled anywhere else in the United States and a draw for researchers from around the world.
January 13, 2026 at 3:28 PM