KeeperofStories

CARE FOR THE WOMB: deep powers

2012-02-15T02:42:00.000-08:00

pregnant Black woman

GENERATIONAL CURSES

I learned over the years that removing generational curses is work. It is a process that begins with recognition, becomes a longer process of unlearning, and the frightening part of facing the 'demons' from within is best conducted with the help of family, so inclined to help, and people who know and understand the process. It is such a far cry from merely speaking it into existence. – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Remembering the Deer: A More Authentic Education

2012-02-15T02:06:00.000-08:00

A More Authentic Education

I am proud to be an educator.

I feel privileged to work in the field of education on a daily basis. It's very challenging and demanding work. Yet it is often joyful, rewarding and, at times, positively miraculous.

Educators are profound cultural workers. We communicate, transmute and, if we have a critical and holistic vision, transform culture through our work. In formal educational settings, we teach the skills and concepts necessary to engage meaningfully in the world through literacy, numeracy, scientific inquiry, athletics and the arts. We assess, cajole, praise, and deliver consequences when necessary. In addition to this, our role is to create an emotionally secure environment so that learning can happen without fear, intimidation and threats to the integrity of our students.

This year, our school has committed to running a weekly whole school circle. Based on traditional indigenous ways of being in community, the circle is where we sit as equals. This initiative started in September, and we have all (teachers and students alike) noticed how our strong sense of community has been enhanced by this weekly one hour commitment. Passing around the talking stick and offering each person within the school a chance to express themselves and be heard has been profound. Tears, laughter, silence and wise-beyond-their-years insights have woven us closer together and made us all more real to one another. Bullying at our school is at a true low.

This circle, backed by a strong anti-bullying policy and commitment to emotional safety that has been in place since the school's inception, has become the place where we make authentic communication and respect a living, integrated reality. It is sacred time during the week because it is the space where we:

....are seen
....are heard
....are different
....are similar
....agree
....see things from diverse perspectives

Through the powerful simplicity of the circle, we remember that we are interconnected

© Maria Vamvalis
(January 11, 2012)
http://rememberingtheancientdeer.blogspot.com/2012/01/authentic-education.html

EYES

2012-02-15T01:10:00.000-08:00

art by Tony R. March - mystery of male female relationship

SACRED WHORE SERIES: Zahia Dehar

2012-02-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

Zahia Dehar, former French prostitute

Creations by French designer Zahia Dehar for her Spring/Summer 2012 lingerie collection show held at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.

http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Zahia+Dehar

Zahia Dehar

"... after prostitution is there acceptance, reliable income, and a renewed name?"
- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories
1/28/12

CRUDE

2012-02-14T08:12:00.000-08:00

Trudie Styler & husband Sting founded Rainforest Foundation Fund in 1989

Trudie Styler talks about Oil in Ecuador:

http://www.treehugger.com/culture/trudie-styler-talks-crude-about-oil-in-ecuador.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/22/trudie-styler-environmentalist

CRUDE, the movie’s press kit:
http://crudethemovie.com/data/CRUDE_Press_Kit_042309.pdf
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=19313

MARRIED: husbands

2012-02-14T02:38:00.000-08:00

married woman - MoriYah Eshet Ruben 3

Ten commandments for husbands

1. Thou shalt not take thy wife for granted, but will honour and respect her as thy equal. (1 Pet 3:7)

2. Thy highest allegiance, except God, shall be to thy wife, not thy relatives or friends. (Gen 2:24)

3. Thou shalt frequently tell thy wife how important & valuable she is to thee. (Phil 2:3; Prov... 31:10-11)

4. Thou shalt hold thy wife's love by the same means that thou won it. (Sos 5:10-16)

5. Thou shalt actively establish family discipline with thy wife's help. (Eph 6:4)

6. Remember to do all the little things for thy wife when you say you will. (Mt 5:37)

7. Keep thine eyes on thy own wife, not thy neighbors. (Prov 5:15-20; Job 31:1; Jer 5:8)

8. Thou shalt make every effort to see things from thy wife's point of view. (Gen 21:12)

9. Thou shalt not fail to kiss thy wife every morning. (Sos 8:1)

10. Thou shalt not be stingy with thy wife when it comes to money. (Esther 5:3)

from Adeniyi Adeniran Henry Taju

VALENTINE'S DAY

2012-02-14T02:28:00.000-08:00

Anonymity is mystery

Arianny Celeste’s 2012 Complex Magazine photoshoot 2

The Pagan Origins of Valentine’s Day

By Rabbi Yehudah ben Shomeyr

Each pagan holiday has a Christian religious front, Valentine’s Day, now called Saint Valentine’s Day is no different. In short it is said to commemorate Saint Valentine who secretly married couples during a time when the powers that be denied marriage to certain people, or without the bride first consummating with the king prior to her husband. Other legends surround this day and this so called Saint.

“The sad fact is that most people never question the origin of the customs that they involve themselves with. Most people do not ask questions but do what everybody else does, never stopping to consider how the Almighty G-d of Heaven feels about their activities. When we consider that Valentine’s Day is a day of preoccupation with the heart, it is essential that we listen to the following words spoken by the Almighty, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his wages, and according to the fruit of his doings.” Jeremiah 17:9-10

Christians (and Torah Observant Jewish believers) should be known by their discernment and should be asking questions regarding Valentine’s Day. What is the origin of this unusual day? Why is there a preoccupation with the color red? Where did the heart shape come from, and what does it mean? These and other questions will now be answered, as we examine the roots and pagan origin of this popular day.

In the days of the Roman Empire, the month of February was the last and shortest month of the year. February originally had 30 days, but when Julius Caesar named the month of July after himself, he decided to make that month longer and shortened February to 29 days while making July a month of 31 days. Later when Octavius Caesar, also known as Augustus, came to power, he named the month of August after himself, and not be outdone he also subtracted a day from February and gave the month of August 31 days. To this very day it remains that way. The ancient Romans believed that every month had a spirit that gained in strength and reached its peak or apex of power in the middle or ides of the month. This was usually the 15th day, and it was a day when witches and augurs, or soothsayers worked their magic. An augur was a person filled with a spirit of divination, and from the word augur we get the word “inaugurate”, which means to “take omens”. Since February had been robbed by Caesars and had only 28 days, the ides of February became the 14th day of that month.

Since the Ides of a month was celebrated on the preceding eve, the month of February was unique, because it was the 13th day that became the eve of the Ides that month, and it became a very important pagan holiday in the Empire of Rome. The sacred day of February 14th was called “Lupercalia” or “day of the wolf.” This was a day that was sacred to the sexual frenzy of the goddess Juno. This day also honored the Roman gods, Lupercus and Faunus, as well as the legendary twin brothers, who supposedly founded Rome, Remus and Romulus. These two are said to have been suckled by wolves in a cave on Palatine Hill in Rome. The cave was called Lupercal and was the center of the celebrating on the eve of Lupercalia or February 14th. On this day, Lupercalia, which was later named Valentine’s Day, the Luperci or priests of Lupercus dressed in goatskins for a bloody ceremony. The priests of Lupercus, the wolf god, would sacrifice goats and a dog and then smear themselves with blood. These priests, made red with sacrificial blood, would run around Palatine Hill in a wild frenzy while carving a goatskin thong called a “februa.” Women would sit all around the hill, as the bloody priests would strike them with the goatskin thongs to make them fertile. The young women would then gather in the city and their names were put in boxes. These “love notes” were called “billets.” The men of Rome would draw a billet, and the woman whose name was on it became his sexual lust partner with whom he would fornicate until the next Lupercalia or February 14th.

Thus, February 14th became a day of unbridled sexual lust. The color “red” was sacred to that day because of the blood and the “heart shape” that is popular to this day. The heart-shape was not a representation of the human heart, which looks nothing like it. This shape represents the human female matrix or opening to the chamber of sacred copulation.

When the Gnostic Catholic Church began to get a foothold in Rome around the 3rd century A.D., they became known as Valentinians. The Catholic Valentinians retained the sexual license of the festival in what they called “angels in a nuptial chamber”, which was also called the “sacrament of copulation.” This was said to be an reenactment of the marriage of “Sophia and the Redeemer.” As the participants of the February 14th ritual began their sexual sacrament, presided over and watched by the priests known as Valentinians, the following literary was spoken: “Let the seed of light descend into thy bridal chamber, receive the bridegroom… open thine arms to embrace him. Behold, grace has descended upon thee.”

As time went on, the Orthodox Church suppressed the Gnostic Catholics and manufactured “St. Valentine”, whose day continues to be celebrated in these modern times.

It should be without saying that the Christians should avoid Valentine’s Day like a plague. In G-d’s eyes, it is still “Lupercalia”, the “Day Of The Wolf.” Men become wolves, as they carry on the Satanic rituals of fornication, which means sexual intercourse without marriage. We have heard of the “wolf whistle”, and we all know that wolves do not whistle. It is lustful men and women, who carry on Satan’s blasphemy to this very day. ” -- http://www.triumphpro.com/valentine_s_day.htm

VALENTINE'S DAY

2012-02-14T02:00:00.000-08:00

Arianny Celeste’s 2012 Complex Magazine photoshoot

VALENTINE’S DAY has since childhood revolted me. I didn’t know why. It just didn’t feel right. I wrote out the cards and gave little girls heart shaped candies saying, “Will you be my Valentine?” Stupid. It was stupid and meaningless to me then, and as an adult the vibe, the feeling was awkward, and vaguely inappropriate. Because it was not something I dwelt upon often I never researched the questions of the day until a few years ago. The historical fact of the ritual explains my initial revolutions and renders the yearly pandering for unauthentic love more comical and tragic... - Gregory E. Woods

Arianny Celeste’s 2012 Complex Magazine photoshoot

LIGHT OF FAME

2012-02-14T01:25:00.000-08:00

“One year ago Swedish actress Noomi Rapace was astounding the international scene in London. A lot happens in a year, and the spotlights on the famous and accomplished actors, and singers and musicians, fashionistas, directors and such turns people away from the light and glories of their own wonderful and amazing lives. Most people are not and never were meant to be measured by the world, or be famous. They are not to be measured by the world, but the world is changed, and affected by their presence in the world subtly by the ever-widening circles of the people they've met and expanded. It is the lot of a few to be celebrities that is baffling in some cases, and others make perfect sense..." - Gregory E. Woods

actress Noomi Rapace in green mini skirt on red carpet in London 2.14.11 by Pacific Coast News !!!!

Swedish actress Noomi Rapace attends 2011 Orange British Academy Film awards feb 13, 2011 by Ian Gavan

BLACK ACHIEVEMENT: excellence is no simple matter

2012-02-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

Monica Bellucci & Spike Lee

GRANDDAUGHTER OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN

2012-02-13T02:57:00.000-08:00

Carmen Chaplin attends the 'La Femme Du Cinquieme' premiere during the 6th Rome Film Festival in Rome, Italy by Vittorio Celotta

Carmen Chaplin by Cindy Marley tattooed body & face

EYES

2012-02-13T01:04:00.000-08:00

art by Tony R. March

the DEEPER MYSTERIES

2012-02-12T01:54:00.000-08:00

For theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking the biggest mystery in the universe perplexing one of the world's best known scientists is -- women. When New Scientist magazine asked "Brief History of Time" author Stephen Hawking what he thinks about most, the Cambridge University professor renowned for unravelling some of the most complex questions in modern physics answered: "Women. They are a complete mystery."

African woman's power stance

WHITNEY HOUSTON'S life ended after 48 years

2012-02-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

Whitney Houston standing strong

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side. http://www.perfectpeople.net/photos-pictures-images/966/whitney-houston.htm

CRUDE, the real price of Oil, 2009

2012-02-11T02:31:00.000-08:00

“In the United States we used to say, ‘How much pollution can we clean up?” and now what we ask ourselves is, “how much pollution do we need to clean up for things to be safe for human health, and so the public may tend to think, “Oh, if you see something in the environment it must mean that it’s very bad.” When in fact people are exposed to hydrocarbons on a daily basis. The asphalt that is on our roads outside the window here are made from hydrocarbons, and made from crude oil, the gasoline we put in our tank. People encounter hydrocarbons on a daily basis that doesn’t mean those hydrocarbons are going to make you sick, and I note that‘s very difficult to explain because of the science behind it, but there is very proven science behind human health risk assessment approved by the US EPA and that what Chevron’s been doing to try to access whether these health allegations are true or not.” – Sara McMillan, Chevron chief environmental scientist after analyzing the damage to the rainforest in Ecuador in the aftermath of Chevron leaving Ecuador

Trudie Styler, film producer & wife of the musician Sting by Antonio Olmos

“Men, women, and children of the Cofán people I come from England and on behalf of my country, and my foundation and my husband I greet you all most humbly. You are our teachers. Your connection to the most precious resource that we have: the rain forest of the world, which we call the Lungs of the Earth; we have learned that you have much important knowledge that must not be destroyed. When you lose your way, when you lose your rights to be able to fish, to hunt and to uphold the rituals that your ancestors passed down to you then we all lose our way. I want you all to know that I stand in solidarity with you and that I will take your message back to my country and back to the United States of America because I considerate it our fight as well.”

– Trude Styler, co-founder Rainforest Foundation Fund & wife of Sting speaking to the Cofán people in Ecuador in 2009 who are fighting Texaco for compensation and land restoration after destroying their lands, and displacing them to extract oil from their jungles.

http://www.cofan.org/

Cofán children

And when we no longer walk the circle of life
maybe other life will still feed on our skeleton remains
and know that in our struggle
those tears that we dropped into the oceans
and those echoes we left on the mountains
and those footprints that fade on the paths
someone has acknowledged our creation
and thanked us for still following our ways.
The traditional ways,
the spiritual ways,
the earth ways,
the ways our ancestors
in humility and gratefulness
sought to honor the sacredness of the
Earth Mother
for it is She who gives birth
and it is her breasts which give us life
and we are taking care of her,
because we care.

From "The Earth Way" by ssipsis, Penobscot Elder

mysterious feline woman in black

2012-02-10T02:35:00.000-08:00

Bert Christensen's creations http://bertc.com/index.html

2012: end of the world?

2012-02-09T01:26:00.000-08:00

I suspect that the end time prophecies are not the end but the end of collective states of "consciousness."

~ Dawn Wolf

fingers touching by Kefa Ab Menaunghk Maat

Elders' Talk

2012-02-08T01:37:00.000-08:00

Angaangaq, Elder, Sirmiq Aattuq Wisdom Keeper teaches that ‘the greatest distance in the existence of man is not from here to there nor from there to here. Nay, the greatest distance in the existence of man is from his mind to his heart. Unless he conquers this distance he can never learn to soar like an eagle, and realize the immensity within.’

The true Thanksgiving story should be the starting point for a deeper telling of the spirit of a people who have kept the spirit of the first Thanksgiving alive, active, and engaged in the taking of, and the killing of my People. This spirit is woven into the fabric of American consciousness with such incredible skill today millions upon millions of Americans challenged cannot see it. It was in Vietnam. It snaked through American foreign policy in Central America during the 1980’s, America’s opium trade in Afganistan, and the uranium mines on native lands in the southwest United States. The laws of the land sing its testimony, and last but not least the invasion of Iraq holds this dark energy as its core value. We cannot escape this truth. We live with it.

How boycotting Thanksgiving will help raise the awareness upon an indifferent, affluent, and fat satisfied populace is beyond me. Myth, and legend are primal needs within the souls of people and nations, and the soul of this nation feeds from its mother’s breast. Her milk stirs loyalty, and contentment. White Americans, and Black Americans are rubbing their bellies, and picking their teeth after dinners across the land. Their eyes roll into the back of their heads. Sleep dulls the senses around a table of well-fed people laughing, and shouting at television sets with either movies, CNN, or a football game on. Mothers, and daughters talk excitedly about getting up at three o’clock in the morning to stand in long lines to catch Black Friday specials. Their children run off to listen to their Ipods, play video games, or talk on their $3oo cellphones, or Twitter mindlessly with the typical dumb look acquired from long hours on phones.

Information runs non-stop today. Most don’t hear my ancestors cries, teachings, or sense their presence. Our songs are in the air but today’s America hears airplanes, and the pop music of Lady GaGa, or Beyoncé Knowles is in the air, and in their ears. Barely stopping for long deep reflection people tend to do as they were taught: look, pause, and move on; get it done, do it now, work, work, work. Americans are trained to concentrate thought into seven minute intervals interrupted with three to four minutes of mental playtime while TV commercials run their course. As musicians we notice and talk about how audiences behave as the end of a show approaches. A noticable, and distracting movement ripples through audiences as people get up and leave while we are deep into our music.

“Where are they going? The music hasn’t even stopped!”

They are leaving to be first in line to get ahead of the crowd going home. Onstage we have advantage looking into people’s eyes, and watching their energies shifting within them and around the club, the stadium, or whatever stage we are on. There is often a sudden and internal cutting off and quick robotic turns for the exit doors as the last notes run into the chambers of the soul, and fly upward into the heavens past the airplanes. It’s weird but we try to get us it. I have not gotten use to it because it means something. An insight lives below the surface and it has everything to do with the questions raised by the whole question of boycotting Thanksgiving Day in solidarity with Native Americans. –Gregory E. Woods

ETERNAL LIFE

2012-02-07T01:54:00.000-08:00

Apology for slavery

2012-02-06T01:27:00.000-08:00

A people can only see as far ahead as they can see behind. A future of a people is always to be found somewhere in the internalized image of its past. When the mirror is shattered or warped, when a race of people is stripped of a long-term story of itself, that races’ prospects for success over the long-term are damaged, if not crushed altogether.

This is what European and North American slaveholder societies did to millions of Africans for more than 400 years. This is why America owes African-Americans an apology — and more…

During the Middle Passage alone more than 30 million Blacks were killed. Millions of families were destroyed… Over the brutal centuries, our people lost the value of their labor and their lives, but, even more consequentially, they lost all historical memory — the psychological, health sustaining apparatus of our ancient cultures: languages, religions, mores, names, our very identities as human beings.

History has shown the economic poverty we suffer as a result of slavery can be recovered from far more quickly than the psychological poverty resulting from the organized obliteration of our cultural memory.

… The act of slavery has long since ended, yes, but its time-release social toxins are deep inside us now, killing our unsheltered souls with greater lethality than ever before…

One of every eight prisoners in the world today is an African-American. This is still another discrimination-driven consequence of slavery that threatens the very existence of Blacks in America. Few Blacks speak of this stunning fact — for we, as a people, are now all but wholly outer-directed…

Others less damaged — Jews and Japanese-Americans — who were abused over much shorter periods of time, and survived with their cultures intact, demanded and received the reparations they deserved. The case for reparations is infinitely stronger for African-Americans — heirs, as we are, to a past greatness we have been caused to remember little, if anything, about. – Randal Robinson, EBONY magazine excerpt August 2007

White America has already paid the Bill

2012-02-05T01:10:00.000-08:00

In matters of race, it is the one itch we cannot scratch; the stone in our shoe that does not go away, no matter how much we shake it.

Slavery. And the debt it brings Black people from white people. I’m not one of those who shrugs off the value of apologies — even for social injustice…

Anyone who has betrayed a loved one knows why. No one can really move on until the betrayal is admitted, explained and atoned for. It’s why a jilted girlfriend or cuckolded husband insists on hearing the reason why — even when they already know.

But when it comes to slavery, I think white America has already paid that bill as much as it ever will. And insisting on more seems less about healing a progress and more about Black people basking in white folks’ guilt and shame.

Will a slavery apology pull more young Black men from prison, or get more of them through high school and college? Will it curb the alarming tide of AIDS in Black communities or bring Black fathers back into their children’s lives?

Will it pull an ounce of trash from a rundown Black neighborhood or create a single, well paying, working class job?

We have seen institutions apologize for past inequities connected to slavery and Jim Crow…

Did any of these apologies bring new initiatives for covering people of color or insuring underinsured Black neighborhoods? Of course not. Because in America action often stops at apology.

… I suggest we simply look at some institutions that have already apologized for their part in the centuries-long enslavement of Black people.

… No doubt these apology initiatives were undertaken with the best of intentions. But these apologies, passed without a substantial discussion of the White privilege or Black poverty they enabled, were incomplete — like a thief apologizing for stealing your wallet while using your cash to buy his next meal.

Unless an apology for slavery comes with a comprehensive agenda of initiatives aimed at erasing the historic inequities it created, White America can keep it. As any cuckolded husband will tell you, an apology doesn’t mean much if you don’t right the wrong you caused in the first place. ~ Eric Deggans, excerpt from EBONY magazine august 2007

TRIBUTE TO ANCESTORS: Viola Davis

2012-02-04T02:20:00.000-08:00

Viola Davis, actress DOUBT

Viola Davis Biography

Viola Davis was born on August 11, 1965 in St. Matthews, South Carolina. When she was just a child, her family moved from South Carolina to Central Falls, Rhode Island. As a teenager, Viola’s talent was recognized by Bernard Masterson when, as director of Young People’s School for the Performing Arts in Rhode Island, he awarded Viola a scholarship into that program. Viola, then, majored in theatre at Rhode Island College, graduating in 1988; in 2002 she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the college. She also attended the Juilliard School for four years.

Known primarily as a stage actress, Viola won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play and a Drama Desk Award for her role in ‘King Hedley II’ in 2001. She won a second Drama Desk Award for ‘Intimate Apparel’ in 2004. She has also done occasional guest appearances on TV shows over the years like ‘Law and Order.’

Viola has done exceptional work in films as well. They include ‘Traffic’ in 2000, ‘Antwone Fisher’ in 2002 and ‘Solaris’ with George Clooney in 2002. But it is her amazing performance in the movie ‘Doubt’ in 2008, with Meryl Streep that has brought her widespread recognition. She was nominated for several awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.

Viola Davis has been married to actor Julius Tennon since 2003 and they have two children.

Viola Davis presented with best actress award for The Help by Robin Wright at 2012 Critic's Choice awards

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: MANHOOD

2012-02-04T01:45:00.000-08:00

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. flanked by Rev. Ralph Abernathy (r) & Bishop Julian Smith (l) marching on Memphis, Tenn. in support of black sanitary public workers on March 28, 1968

MANHOOD 1968

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Bishop Julian Smith marched on Memphis, Tenn. in support of black sanitary public workers on March 28, 1968 with the race music of Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf filling the energetic assertions of Black manhood, and the strong wild feminine powers of the Mahalia Jackson’s of the time, and the deep blues sung by sharecroppers in the deep South. Music fueled passions and strengthened convictions in the face of white hatreds and resistances to the cold inevitable changes circulating in the center of the torrential rains of Black pain and activism. Central to the calls for freedom and desegregation was manhood, Black Manhood.

African Manhood is complex stories present day youth are unaware of. If our children are aware often there is no emotional connection to stories of men not allowed to be men. What it is like to be unable by law to protect your family is an insurmountable hurdle in life. It evokes a rage without a voice. It is very close to the hollow rage and impotence today’s child support system creates within fathers declared to be absent parents who are attached to their children’s spirits and well being. ©Gregory E. Woods

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's Poor People's Campaign

2012-02-03T03:16:00.000-08:00

In 1968, King organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. The campaign's aim was to get Congress to sign a bill allowing economic aid to be given to the poorest communities of the United States. In 1968 I wasn’t old enough to be poor or become rich, but on my own I was struck by how little I knew about money. The voices in my head about money astounded me and riddled me with fears unrecognizable to me. Many mornings when I was a young husband I awoke with dread and deep gnawing feelings of losing everything and living in abject poverty. It was a daily battle. Despite the comforts of my privileged upbringing I’d picked up a proverb from a story that copulated with the times and the feelings of under served people lumped together in dead in jobs. Assemblies like this created a force in perpetual motion, a dark energy form over generations a simple white candle and a prayer will not diminish.

Financial literacy is not the gift of American public schools. That being said I think all the efforts of ending poverty are pantomime. Very slowly after one agonizing year after another my ignorance of finance realized the wars against poverty were baseless absurd assertions. If financial illiteracy is the staple of public education the strategies needed to arise out of poverty will never well up within the collective and individual genius of poor people. They will always be bound by ignorant maxims, and hear, in their heads, the same stories that dictate behavior around money that keeps them poor and frustrated with their lot.

Millions and millions of dollars were allocated for the war on poverty. Where did that money go? If it didn’t go into education it made someone rich and others remained poor by design... ©Gregory E. Woods

MAN AMONG MEN: my father

2012-02-03T01:02:00.000-08:00

Herbert L. Woods, civil rights activists, diplomat in 2010

Pussy & Sports

2012-02-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

The Pussycat Dolls in 2012

Lingerie football is a game I enjoy watching. It is the only professional sport I can watch on televsion longer than three to five minutes without stirring from restless disinterest or falling asleep. Watching a show on TV last year my wife walked in and turned the channel to a lingerie football game. Before I could protest I was hooked for an hour and a half watching the games. The games didn’t drag on and on and my head didn’t go numb like in men’s football having to listen to whatever is annoying about the broadcasters. The women’s outfits are fantastic and they are tough as all. The first fifteen minutes of the first game I saw a woman’s arm broke and another was hurt so bad she had to be carried off the field.

I don’t know most of the rules in football. As a kid when I was interested in it I knew a lot of the rules. I loved sitting with my father on Saturdays or Sundays watching the Cleveland Browns play anybody. Back then the Washington DC football team was all white and refused to hire any coloreds, but Jim Brown, back then, sparked race pride much deeper than Jackie Robinson because Jim Brown didn’t have mercy and he didn’t need to play ‘the game’ he controlled the game and the image of himself was the image he put on the screen. Negroes back then got it, and we wuz closer to the emancipation of slaves than we is now, and could feel these things in the subtle ways of our grandparents even if white folks had another language for Jim Brown’s speed and fierceness. We were proud of Jackie Robinson. He was elegant and a class act, and that was important. Wasn’t no child didn’t hear his or her parents or some other grown folk say, “Chile, you gotta be better than the whites. You need to be better and smarter than the dumbest white man and the smarter than any man… White folks’ll hire the dumbest white to be your boss, but you and they gots ta know you’se smarther than they...” - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

My Encounter with Black Bear by Elkhorn Vaughan

2012-02-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

As we drove up the steep winding road that leads to the top of the Smoky Mountains, I couldn’t help but think that we were lost. My family and I had drove all the way from Maryland to Tennessee and Missouri to visit family, and had decided to return home by way of Cherokee, NC so we could pay a quick visit to our distant but unknown relatives at the reservation. We had to go through the Smoky Mountains to get there.

I drove on, but made a mental note that the directions we had retrieved from the Google web site had not adequately prepared us for this experience. We were traveling around 35 mph on a thin winding road that seemed to gradually climb up the mountains into the sky, until we could no longer see the mountain floor below us. We were amongst the clouds, and it seemed as if we had entered into another world; Sky World to be exact.

My wife and children were getting frightened, or at least pretended they were. At each twist and turn in the road, we could see through the mountains from an over hang that seemed to drop down into nothingness. Oh but it was so beautiful, yet difficult to comprehend. We found it hard to believe that we were on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina driving on a precarious mountain road that leads to heaven. Mountain upon mountain vista appeared, allowing us to witness this majesty of the Creator’s creation, only to quickly disappear as we continued to drive around yet another twist in the road. My family forgot their fear, and started taking pictures with their cell phone cameras.

My thoughts began to go back in time. Visions of my Cherokee ancestors and others struggling to survive in their ancestral land began to rise and fall in my head. President Andrew Jackson had ordered U. S. soldiers to remove the so-called ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ west of the Mississippi, and they had hid in these mountains in an effort to escape removal. I imagined Indian men hunting the wildlife in these mountains for food, although we had not seen much wildlife along the road. I saw Indian women washing clothes near humble wooden shacks that offered minimal shelter. I began to understand why they would fight or die rather than leave the tranquility of these mountains that they had known for thousands of years. I wondered if even now there were indigenous people living high up in these mountains that nobody knew anything about.

Finally, we reached the top of the mountain we had been climbing. I navigated an extremely tight curve in the road and headed up a steep incline. A large clearing appeared through the trees that cover these mountains, and suddenly, we could see it all. Mountain upon mountain stretched before us as the setting Sun struggled to shine through misty clouds resting on every mountaintop. We could see all the way down the steep mountainsides to the forest floor below. It was overwhelmingly beautiful, and we could not help but feel the Presence of the Great Spirit as the road widened to invite us to stop at one of the observation decks that are spaced periodically along the road.

I heard my wife yell “Stop! We have to get out and thank the Creator here.” I agreed. The Creator had brought us to witness this miraculous place, and it only seemed appropriate that we take time to pray and thank him for this blessing. I slowly pulled over to the observation site that seemed to hang in the air off the side of the mountain, and my wife and I got out of the van. I was completely moved and overwhelmed by the awesome majesty of the place, and began to give heartfelt thanks as we moved closer to the edge. From where we now stood, it seemed as if the mountainside dropped straight down to the forest floor, and my wife was afraid to get too close to the ledge. “This is far enough,” she said, but I wanted to get close enough to look down. Carefully, I took a step, and then another, until I was right at the edge of a 3 ft. brick wall that had been erected so no one would fall into the abyss below.

Slowly, I leaned over the wall and looked down. Something large and black moved, and then looked up at me. I hesitated just long enough to realize that a fairly large black bear was sitting about 3 ft. directly below the wall! My instincts took over. I quickly moved back while keeping an eye on the wall to see if the bear was climbing up. “Get in the car!” I snapped. “A bear is there!” Before I even knew it, I was at the driver’s side of our van, but waited to get in until my wife was safely inside (she still maintains that I left her!). We got into the van and then just sat in suspense as we waited to see if the bear would climb over the wall. He didn’t. Suddenly, some tourists from Arizona drove up and got out of their van to look out over the ledge. “A black bear is there!” I blurted quickly out the van window. The tourist kept coming. I got out of our van. “A black bear is there just below the ledge!” I emphatically stated again, but one of the men jumped up on the ledge and began to take pictures with his digital camera. “Have you ever seen wild bears before” he calmly asked, to which I replied “No. At least not this close!” The man laughed and continued to take pictures while standing on the wall. I slowly moved closer. “Do you see him?” I asked. “Yeah. He’s moving off into the brush.” I moved close enough to look over the ledge, but all I could see were bushes moving further down the mountainside. “Wow!” I exclaimed. “He was just here under the wall a minute ago.” “Where are you from?” the man still taking pictures said. “New York originally” I found myself saying, “but now we live in Maryland, and we’re traveling back home from Tennessee through the mountains. Where are you from?” “Arizona” he calmly stated while looking at the bear making tracks through the brush. “Oh, I see” I said somewhat meekly, not knowing why his being from Arizona seemed to account for his being unafraid of bears. I stood looking at the disappearing bear for a while until it became apparent that the sacredness of the moment had been irrecoverably interrupted. I turned and started back to our van.

Bear in the mountains North of Spain
“Have a safe trip home,” I said to the man from Arizona over my shoulder. “You too” he said as others from his van began to join him at the wall. I got in behind the driver's seat and slowly pulled back onto the road. My family began to poke fun at me for being so afraid of the bear. I laughed with them. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have moved away,” I thought. “Perhaps I should have let happen whatever was going to happen,” I second-guessed myself. Perhaps. But I couldn’t help feeling as I drove further up the road through the mountains, that those tourist from Arizona had not shown sufficient reverence and respect for the nature of this place, or for the black bear.

Sadness came over me as I realized that what was a sacred experience to me, had been intruded upon by others who merely saw it as an opportunity for more pictures and sightseeing. It dawned on me that I had just experienced in microcosm what my ancestors must have felt when others who did not feel the way they felt about the land began to encroach upon them, belittle their world view and way of life, and ultimately move them out of the way so they could use the land as they saw fit. A tear rolled down my check, and I said a silent prayer as we reached the mountaintop and began heading down the winding road. A few feet away, I could see a small sign on the side of the road that read: “Cherokee Reservation – 20 miles.”

by Elkhorn Vaughan January 26, 2011

Elkhorn Vaughn in his regalia decembre 2010

MAN AMONG MEN: Elkhorn Vaughan

2012-02-01T01:16:00.000-08:00

Riccaree 'Elkhorn' Vaughan (Cherokee/Mohawk) was born in Brooklyn, NY. His family is originally from Virginia and North Carolina, and he was raised in the ancestral beliefs of his people.

Elkhorn has given talks and lectures about Native history and culture at various universities, government institutions, and churches, and has supported the 'Beyond Coal' and 'Save the Mattawoman' campaigns sponsored by the Sierra Club.

He is also a Native American Storyteller, has told traditional stories at universities, public schools and pow wows, and recently presented stories at the Gathering of Nations Grand Pow Wow in Albuquerque, NM.

Elkhorn is a strong advocate for preservation of Native culture, and presently teaches a Cherokee (Tsalagi) Language class in this regard.

He has served as Vice-President of the American Indian Society of Washington, DC, is a member of several environmental organizations, and strives to support and protect the rights of Native Americans throughout the country.

It is Elkhorn's profound desire that Native and non-Native peoples work together to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle that reflects the beliefs and practices of the original inhabitants of this land we call 'Turtle Island'.

http://facebook.com/elkhorn

Elkhorn Vaughn

CITIZENSHIP: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

2012-02-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala on April 29, 1966 encouraging voting amongst Negroes

"... Freedom is a varied thing in the United States... The right to vote, and the ability and right to read at 16 years of age meant more to me than obtaining a drivers license or owning a car. As soon as I was of age I proudly placed my voting card and library card in my wallet. I felt that emotion deep in my soul...." ©Gregory E. Woods

CREATURE OF LIGHT

2012-01-31T01:57:00.000-08:00

Elkhorn Vaughan, your words, "We are all microcosms of our Mother the Earth, and whatever happens to her happens to us; and whatever we do to her, we do to ourselves." are strong and deep as if they grew from a seed within you. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Katya Zharkova

2012-01-30T02:42:00.000-08:00

"There is a deep disconnection between modern women and their wombs." - Gregory E. Woods (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories.

BOYS TO MEN: Killers

2012-01-29T08:37:00.000-08:00

Hugo Jaeger and his Führer

http://benatlas.com/2009/09/hugo-jaeger-and-his-fuhrer/

"Hitler is on the extreme left of the image the third boy from the bottom standing & looks to have a buzz hair cut probably in Fischlham, Austria in 1895. It is an inescapable fact that something went wrong in his development. From a cute boy to a terror in five decades is a feat repeated in far less time in the 21st century. The United States went to war to topple Adolph Hitler and in the aftermath developed an education and religious system and a social structure that graduates tens of thousands of criminals into the general population, and amongst that number are killers and amongst those killers are heartless ones. It seems more killers with causes around the world are gaining a strangle hold on people’s lives and governments are under duress trying to contain an element feed by the atmosphere..." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

BLACK PRIDE: Paula Patton

2012-01-29T02:24:00.000-08:00

Paula Patton at premier of her movie Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol in Munich, Germany 4 !!!!

Fashion industry hit: models meet anorexia definition, mag says.

2012-01-29T01:04:00.000-08:00

Fashion industry hit: models meet anorexia definition, mag says

Katya Zharkova, Russian model

Katya Zharkova, a plus-size model, and a magazine dedicated to them, have launched a new campaign critical of the fashion industry’s demand for ultra-thin models. “Twenty years ago the average fashion model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23 percent less,” the pair claim.

Plus Model magazine demonstrates the difference by posing a plus-size model with a thin model more typical of the industry. It’s calling on consumers to pressure retailers to stop promoting thinness and start catering to average size women. Most models in fashion are anorexic, according to a widely accepted Body Mass Index (BMI), it says.

“Ten years ago plus-size models averaged between size 12 and 18. Today the need for size diversity within the plus-size modeling industry continues to be questioned. The majority of plus-size models on agency boards are between a size 6 and 14, while the customers continue to express their dissatisfaction,” the magazine says.

Women who wear size 14 or larger make up half the female population, yet the clothing industry only caters to women size 14 or smaller, says the magazine’s editor-in-chief,Madeline Figueroa-Jones, in an editorial note.

“We are bombarded with weight-loss ads every single day, multiple times a day because it’s a multi-billion dollar industry that preys on the fear of being fat,” she writes. “Not everyone is meant to be skinny, our bodies are beautiful and we are not talking about health here because not every skinny person is healthy.”

The fashion industry has grappled with the problem of too-thin models for sometime now. Last year, The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) began a campaign to convince the industry to be more responsible when dealing with young, vulnerable models, she said.

Right now, most sample dresses shipped by designers for photo shoots and fashionshows are size “zero.” Groups are calling on the industry to raise sample dresses to a size “four.”

“The CFDA has reached out to designers, stylists and casting directors not to work with underage models, girls that are too thin and to be more ethnically aware. And I think designers are listening,” said Victoria Beckham in a television interview.

“I had a casting last week and had some terribly thin girls come in, and it wouldn’t have worked. The campaign the CFDA has launched is called ‘Health is Beauty’ and they are definitely encouraging designers to work with healthier sized models,” she said. by Keith Girard, NY Culture & Events Examiner

Natalie LaRon elegant in jeans

Natalie LaRon in black leather !!!!

Natalie LaRon in fur coat !!!!

FATHER SEES BIRTH

2012-01-28T02:15:00.000-08:00

“Beyoncé Knowles' pregnancy sparked great interest in people who are encouraging and inspired by principled people. True to the style of her purpose she made pregnancy elegant, and the dignity she carried in the shadow of a miscarriage touched many of us who have lost children and know how long it takes to carry the pain of a child's death with a measure of dignity for our public. Everyone has a public, and our public measures us by the way we treat others. It is within the concepts of love and higher learning we accept our faults, ponder our loss, and its pain that helps young people forage in the forests they need to find nourishment, and the deserts they need to learn to find water, and the mountains they need to appreciate and scale to better rest within the comfort of valleys and oasises.

Pregnancy teaches mother and child, and fathers teach themselves to be taught by the mothers of their children and the children of their loins. Birth dancing between Life and Death the way it does sharpens and deepens a father's intuition, clasps him with a patience that surpasses his understanding of himself because a father has no command during a delivery save the effect and intent of his prayers, and the ceremonies he creates for his family in his dreams…”

©Gregory E. Woods January 11, 2012

Nia Long, actress

a DAUGHTER to MOTHERS

2012-01-27T02:11:00.000-08:00

Megan Fox, actress Transformers

MENTORSHIP

“If you want your girls to feel strong and be outspoken and fight for what they think is right, then I want to be that type of role model.” – Megan Fox, actress

SACRED WHORE SERIES: Wages of sin in question

2012-01-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

One year ago French Moroccan prostitute Zahia Dehar made headlines after it was claimed she had been paid for sex while underage by three French football stars. While their lives were shattered by the allegations, 19-year-old Zahia's fortunes were transformed entirely.

And now, her metamorphosis from call girl turned catwalk queen is complete, as Zahia debuted her lingerie line at Palais Brongniart - the former Paris Stock Exchange - as part of Couture Fashion Week. Taking to the runway the buxom model showcased some of her own designs, including a petal gown which left little to the imagination. The lookbook for the range was photographed by one of the world's top designers, Chanel's maestro Karl Lagerfeld..

For a girl who just a year ago was selling her body for cash, the transformation has been dramatic. Prostitution is legal in France where the accused men lived, but women selling sexual services must be 18 years old or over. Zahia was just 16 when she met French footballer Franck Ribery, 28, and 17 when Karim Benzema, 23, and Sidney Govou, 31, were accused of paying an underage vice girl thousands of pounds for sex. The men involved in the allegations faced up to three years in prison and fines of up to £40,000.

by Deborah Arthurs (1/26/12)

Zahia Dehar

A MEDITATION on November 1, 2011

2012-01-26T01:50:00.000-08:00

Kim Kardashian

“Kim Kardashian’s wedding generated money. Kim Kardashian reportedly made $17 million from the wedding, $15 million in the deal with the television cable company, E! that produced the four hour show, and $2 million Kim made selling her wedding photos to People magazine. On her show, THE VIEW, Barbara Walters added to the discussion about the brevity of Kim’s marriage the amount of money Kim Kardashian, the ideal, the corporation, made per day: $236,111, from the whole process! Barbara Walters reading the numbers to her co-hosts reminded me about the contractual relationship made with the state by couples when they wed. That contractual agreement is acknowledged during the bliss but it bites, like the proverbial scorpion who beseeched a man to ride him across the river promising not to bite him. Safely on the other side the scorpion bit the man.

“Why did you bite me? I helped you. You promised not to bite me.”

Scorpion looked up amused at the man going into shock and deeper fears and said, “You knew I was a scorpion.”

Yet people keep walking into marriage illuminated by the promises in the stories told in their lifetime feeling refreshed by the dreams of everlasting, of communion, and companionship into the sunset years. They find the communal work the soul requires of them is the construction of the spiritual aspect of the feminine energies and the masculine energies and how it exceeds the simple mathematics of romantic love when the work of merging commences. But in the human marketplace dreams land hard into the backs of wagons carrying commodities to market. It changes the structure of holiness into a frivolous notion easily overwhelmed by the business of the market place, image, and domination of one over the other. Ego finds comradeship with Harshness and it isn’t long before the truth of most marriages comes to the forefront and all parties with vested interest in a marriage admit they all base relationships upon conflict. Marriage in its original form has descended into a deep depression. The She and He of the original Marriage are always called upon being a part of Creation and the creative process of being alive, but made subservient to base emotions and needs many modern marriages succumb to divorce and evoke the mechanics of the State’s part of the marriage contract. The very crudeness of its make up finds nuptials best suited for the market place.

Fortunately, the need for marriage, for union and companionship, keeps marriage current and necessary, but within Western societies enormous amounts of money are traditionally made by the businesses that make marriage ceremonies possible, and for the knowledgeable and amongst the rich the money flows both ways. It is incredible a revelation to the naïve and the uninitiated.” ©Gregory E. Woods

a MEDITATION

2012-01-25T02:52:00.000-08:00

Freespiritsioux Tessa

BEAUTY SECRETS: contrast & illusion

2012-01-25T02:37:00.000-08:00

Kim Kardashian in natural light

Kim Kardashian

FALSE MANHOOD: Terrell Owens

2012-01-24T15:44:00.000-08:00

Terrell Owens

WOMEN:

"If there's anything I'm sorry about, it's getting involved with all that." He never actually dated any of the women, he says. One was a one-night stand, the others "repeat offenders." Owens, who has never been married, concedes he is "not a very good judge of character." Still, he "never suspected they were the types to do what they done in the past year." - Terrell Owens

FATHER

Now he is in court with all four women, whom he lumps together like one big bloodsucking blob. None of them are being fair, he says: "They know I'm not working; they know the deal." Although he never established regular visitation with any of the children through the courts, he says he sees the eldest three as much as he can when their mothers allow it. So bitter is his relationship with the mother of the youngest child, a son, that he has never met the boy.

FALSE PRAISE

"To say I regret anything would be a slap to my grandmother's face," Owens says, referring to the woman who raised him

FRIENDSHIP

He never had many friends—teammates never called him to party, he says, wrongly assuming that he was "too big" to socialize—and now, "I don't have no friends. I don't want no friends. That's how I feel."

WEALTH

Owens said financial advisers recommended by agent Drew Rosenhaus lost much of his money in highly leveraged ventures, then houses and apartments he thought he could rent out in a worst case scenario became dead weight in a housing market collapse (none of the properties are particularly excessive, but total a yearly mortgage of about $750,000), and $2 million was lost in an Alabama entertainment complex investment. That venture turned out to be illegal, and also claimed former Redskins running back Clinton Portis as a victim. "I hate myself for letting this happen," Owens told GQ. "I believed that they had my back when they said, 'You take care of the football, and we'll do the rest.' And in the end, they just basically stole from me."

Terrell Owens has always been an island of sorts. His brash personality and self-absorption routinely alienated his teammates during an NFL career that teetered between terrific and toxic, leaving him to fend for himself.
- Jeff Arnold

STEWARDSHIP

Owens earned around $80 million during his NFL career, but has found himself in deep financial trouble, despite never spending lavishly. - Jeff Arnold, journalist

a FATHER'S SONG

TERRELL OWENS

“I don't pay much attention to pro football players, but this cat, Terrell Owens, I have vague recollection of. I remember his eyes and the hurt distance in them when he was at press conferences. I knew a lot of cats like him on the streets so deep in old wounds they come to believe their shields and masks are living breathing creatures that say: ‘This is me! This is who I am!’ By his own words he wrote his story and foretold his future in his past. He followed his path of hurt to a path of distrust and the comfort of distance and distrust fed him and closed his eyes losing him in denials. He is still asleep and wounded and distant from himself and the truth: his truth.

I ask Spirit to send me a few more men like this I can help become themselves to prepare them to enter into the deeper mysteries and states of being Life has to offer. This is my word-song.” – Gregory E. Woods

Terrell Owens

Women's songs welcome the light of the sun & embrace the moon cycles

2012-01-24T12:02:00.000-08:00

“I truly love touching and uplifting your hearts; your spirits. And I am so genuinely grateful when you all can touch and uplift mine. Let us not let go of the Joy, the Togetherness, the Compassion and the Laughter of the holidays. Let us keep our Circles close and our Hearts full! Aho and Many Blessings!” - Lynn Many Fires

"This is Great Spirit Moon, and it is manifested through the Northern Lights. This is a time to honour the silence and realize our place within all of Great Mystery’s creatures. Nokomis may the healing colors of the Star People bring much love and peace to all." - Kim Knutson

BRAZILIAN MODEL

2012-01-24T01:20:00.000-08:00

Camila Alves, Brazilian model & TV personality

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

2012-01-23T02:47:00.000-08:00

actress Halle Berry

obituary of a great man: JOE PATERNO

2012-01-22T19:22:00.000-08:00

Joe Paterno

Paterno legacy damaged by scandal, but not erased

Joe Paterno lived 85 years and I never heard of him until the homosexual rapes on Penn State campus hit the news a few months ago. As the darkness of the broadcasts echoed from one station to another his life and legacy went front and center stage. I had to shut the clamoring voices of critics, lawyers, fans, students, and reporters out to listen and later read a bit about his principles and gaze into the eyes of the people he had shaped and influenced with his deep commitments to excellence, intellectual curiosity, joy of life, perserverance, and discipline. Everybody should have men like this in their lives to ground them, and teach their spirits and mind when they are young and impressionable.

I was angered listening to the people who ripped him apart and spit on him for not doing more about what he knew about the rapes. I was angry because nothing was done about the rapes after it was reported. How do you let something like that go? I stopped myself. I knew. I knew the answers. I know the culture that protects its own at that level of financial profitability, and I understand the social stucture that supports the large institutions of male priviledge, white male priviledge, sports, and university image. Sodomy is a dark part of prison, war, and sports. It is a hidden reality and one of the main reasons I avoid sharing sports euthusiam with a lot of fraternity brothers, and have done everything possible to stay out of jail. There is a comradery in those places that frightens me because in those enviorments if certain defenses are lowered a man or a boy could easily be sodomized and no one would stop it or report it. But, Joe Paterno had a value system and a father’s connection to the lives of boys that could not stomach the violations of rape upon a boy’s spirit. Paterno's comment that he had never heard of "rape and a man" was interpreted as being out of touch. I disagree because not everyone’s lives are shaped by atrocities, and unless it was part of his life homosexual rape would remain outside of his peripheral of life.

I sensed his confusion and his compounded feelings, and his inability to ‘properly’ handle what was reported to him. What is proper? In retrospect many his age would be at a loss for words because homosexuality and rape and the combination of the two were not part of the lexicon of his era, and to make it worse the dark aspects of homosexuality were not addressed in public forums most of his life, and to add to the pain it is not addressed outside of the neat little scripts handed to people who need to learn how to speak about homosexuality in a politically correct way. It is sad, dishonest, and unfair, but that is the way it is, and that is what faced the old man. I don’t know if anyone else in his capacity would have done much different because it was a homosexual act of terror, and people today are held hostage to a mode of behavior and scripts regarding homosexuality that does not embrace whole truths. I heard this in his words when Mr. Paterno said, “I didn’t exactly know how to handle it … I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way…”

Fear. Fear and grief. Those two emotions will fuddle anyone’s thoughts and limit his or her actions. Whatever you practice in rehearsal comes out onstage.

A well written tribute by Dan Wetzel spoke to the heart of the man’s integrity which is stronger than his faults and shortcomings: “Truly great leaders are measured by the lives they reached, the people they motivated and the legacy of their lesson that can extend for years to come, like ripples from a skipped stone across an endless lake.

For Joe Paterno, the impact is incalculable, the people he connected with extending far beyond the players he coached for 62 years at Penn State the last 46 as head football coach. Paterno always tried to be the giant who walked among the everyman both in the school’s greatest moments and, it turns out, in its worst. Paterno died Sunday at a State College, Pa., hospital, suffering in his final days from lung cancer, broken bones and the fallout of a horrific scandal that not only cost him his job, but also his trademark vigor and a portion of his good name. He was 85 years old.”

All I can add is that we all need to get acquainted with Truth and learn to speak truthfully to each other and ourselves. ©Gregory E. Woods

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-wetzel_joe_paterno_obituary_012212

Joe Paterno in 1965

Joe Paterno: ‘I just did what I thought was best’

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/joe-paterno-hindsight-wish-had-done-more-235419915.html

Joe Paterno played quarterback at Brown University in 1948 & '49

Dorothy Dandridge

2012-01-22T02:31:00.000-08:00

RELATIONSHIPS: Dolly Parton, country singer

2012-01-21T02:04:00.000-08:00

Dolly Parton as a younger woman

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton in London in May of 1977 from the Hulton archives

The light of Dolly Parton's soul transcended the dichotomy that thrived in the 1970's between white country musicians and singers and Black artists, composers, fans, and musicians. The feat was and is a tribute to the attraction of honesty and genuine interest in Life and other people's place in it. Dolly Parton's light could only grow over time and grow it did. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Dolly Parton, at 66, by Jason Meritt !!!!
DOLLY PARTON gallery
http://www.cmt.com/pictures/dolly-parton/photo-gallery/150197/6408164/artist_photo.jhtml

SPEAK UP LIFE IN OTHERS

2012-01-20T13:42:00.000-08:00

"our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

AFRICA 2012

2012-01-20T01:14:00.000-08:00

from Mereana Taki's archives

African beauty of Adeola Ariyo of Nigeria

AFRICA, the question the answer

You ask, "Where is the Original/African/Black/Kemetic/Nubian/Alkebulan/ Plans for the future?" It's in two places: within our Being, and within our children. Birthing it is as difficult as it is to center and discover the African of our ancestry... I am taken aback. The question was unexpected. In the years since I lived in Africa I learned the hard way not to speak about Africa in African American communities. I wish times and Black America was changing at the level of this question. – Gregory E. Woods

African woman be praised !!!!

“The blueprint of our future was laid down in the beginning. It’s just been buried and long forgotten by those of the unsound mind and since we are the draftsmen of today we must retrace the stepping stones and the building blocks of those who left them behind for us to grasp and synchronize and then we can follow the blueprint for tomorrow because it was already pre-planned. We were given the contract of contact information and Unification, Solidarity and all out Re-evolution is the only solution.

Black Power, love, peace, and soul!!! - Huey Newton, 2012

African Man creating

“Huey Newton, your words resonate with the truth of sacred stories that are being told around fires and during ceremonies around the world today by Peace Keepers, Wisdom Keepers and Shamans and thousands of people who are awakening and awakened by the memory and the presence of their ancestor's words buried within them preceding their births. The prophecies of the four (4) races are saying the same things. These are the times of coming together.” – Gregory E. Woods

AMERCIAN STORY: Intelligent grief isn’t part of dictatorial patriotism

2012-01-19T02:15:00.000-08:00

Bond girl Ursula Andress played Honey Ryder !!!!

2012 Primaries: Let The Games Begin

http://justblowingsmoke.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-primaries-let-games-begin.html

The United States spends more on its military than the rest of the top 15 nations with the highest military expenditure. The rest of the list includes China ($119 billion), UK ($59.6 billion), France ($59.3 billion), Russia and so on… The military industrial complex has strained democracy thin, drained our coffers, and altered the essence of right and wrong in apparent and imperceptible ways as we spread terror in creative and crude ways around the globe. Minimizing the fundamental needs of American citizens created a baffling mentality that accepts irrational justification of policies that do not benefit Life. Our worship of, and relationship with the military industrial complex has borne a curious standard social consciousness engineers have cultivated within US citizens. It is best illustrated in our entertainment.

For example, Bond girl Honey Ryder, played by Ursula Andress, and Kim Kardashian’s wedding evoked more spirited scrutiny than the dismantling of environmental protections, or the dismantling of women’s rights around the globe overwhelmed by conservative political movements and fundamental religious clerics and fanatics. Our social consciousness is suspect because the sense of spiritual responsibility isn’t part of our national conversation. Our spiritual responsibilities are suspicious creatures our maturity level is incapable of seeing. A sense of a spiritual responsibility isn’t part of our national conversation. What passes for a sense of global responsibility fanatically purchases trinkets in Wal-Mart, and camps on streets to buy a pair of tennis shoes, and shops at 4AM the day after Thanksgiving with a fiery spirit of purpose while in cities across the nation Wall Street protestors up in arms about the industries, the ideologies, and policies that created the conditions the American consumer is responding to like puppets on a string shiver in the cold uncertain about the future and the durability of being alone, defiant, in a sea of conformity. ©Gregory E. Woods

Kim Kardashian

WHAT STORIES WILL CHANGE CONDITIONS 6

2012-01-18T02:25:00.000-08:00

Michelle Sujai & Miccusukee Indians in 2010

Michelle ‘Sujai’ Harvey, on Manhood

“It seems to me that Young girls are the conversationalist. I have found woman must train men to speak to things that stimulate women. Players are the men who take the time to learn the art of seduction through words & they get most of the women. Most men try to impress women with things not words. Women take the things but they desire the words. Since words are far and few between we settle for things. Train the boys to talk. That is what is missing from most relationships. Women can seduce men with words or stimulate them. The problem is few men inspire us to make the effort.” –Michelle Harvey

DARK MYSTERIES: spiritual women

2012-01-17T06:20:00.000-08:00

Amanda Seyfried, actress, nailed a role in the movie Red Riding Hood. I went to see it in the theatre, and I've seen it a few times on cable because the storyteller draws an intense storyline about the closeness of women's intuition in a man's world, and her deep spiritual connections to elements that terrified European men... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Motherfucker 2

2012-01-17T02:47:00.000-08:00

TORTURE

this is a phenomenon i cannot grasp at any level. Yet there are women who submit to it with pleasure climaxing between pain, fear, their own death and sexual stimulation. Where does this come from? What elements call out and speak for a soul willing to submit to sexual torture? How does divinity merge into something as dark as this? - dawn wolf, keeper of stories

bondage & torture 4

bondage & torture 5

SEXUAL ENERGIES: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

2012-01-16T12:33:00.000-08:00

August 28, 1963

"Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

black actress Nia Long pregnant walking with her husband 4

"... Dr. King had side women in his life, but by the time it became public knowledge it was of no importance to Black Americans because the axiom in African traditional thought places value on relationships above all, and the efforts of white Americans to present the evidence and shame were unsuccessful. The same thing years later perplexed white Americans trying to bring down Washington DC mayor, Marion Barry during his productive four terms, about African-Americans loyalty to their leaders. I studied these things hard as a father, but as a young man the Moroccan landscape, Moroccan women, and Gibran’s words were developing and opening a discipline within me, and creating enormous sexual tension, and powerful music within my being trying to get out of me as expressions of sound and movement..." ©Gregory E. Woods

Dorothy Dandridge

"Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. King, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, addressed marchers during his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. My father was there and I was too young to travel so Mommy, my sister Cynthia and I watched it on TV and searched the newspapers the next day for pictures of the event to see if we could see Daddy in the crowd. We found him, or so we thought. All of the parallels of that world and the aftermath of that moment were non-existent to me then. But here in the future I am and my father who later became the Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality in Washington DC is a great-grandfather and aging. Many things have changed since 1963..." ©Gregory E. Woods, excerpt Songs of a Father

The Centre of the Wheel

2012-01-16T03:03:00.000-08:00

Moving the Assemblage Point

with Leo Rutherford, Howard G. Charing & Dawn Russell

The Level of Energy of all beings depends on three fundamental factors;
· The amount of energy with which they were conceived,
· The manner in which the energy has been utilised since birth,
· And the way in which it is being used at the present time. - Carlos Castaneda

There is a teaching that 80% of our energy is locked into habit, rigid patterns from generational & social conditioning and our personal history. The remaining 20% constitutes our true free will. The great teaching of the Medicine Wheel is to light a path to guide us towards release of these rigid habit patterns and addictions which, when unlocked, generates a reservoir of energy which can be used cognitively and with conscious intent. This is true free will and freedom - no longer living parental and cultural dreams but truly living our own.

The ultimate purpose of this body of practices is freedom. Freedom has powerful implications. Among these is that people must purposely seek and embrace change. It is no easy task to embrace change and thereby unlock the rigid structures which we have inherited, but we have innate magical qualities within ourselves to help us on the path to freedom.

Black powerful woman in control !!!!

In heightened awareness there is no objective world, but a universe consisting of flowing fields of energy where there is no subjective linear time. The particular alignment that we perceive as ‘the world’ is a product of ourselves. This alignment is within our own personal field of energy is called the ‘Assemblage Point’. On this course we work with the non-cardinal directions of the Medicine Wheel, the ‘movers and changers’.

The first movement, we begin the course at the South East, at our very beginning on the Earth, our conception and womb time when we have already started to absorb generational patterns, and emotional responses. By increasing our knowledge of what these are, we gain the ability to release and start the realignment of our assemblage point and thereby our terms of reference to the world. This part will include an overnight burial ceremony.

The second movement, is to the Southwest to examine our ‘Dream of Life’ - that which our soul has brought us into incarnation to experience and learn from. The objective is to ‘see’ this dream and apply our focussed will and intent to recreate and update this dream to one that meets with our soul’s needs now.

This is literally a step on the road to reinventing our-Self. The focus of this meeting will be the Circle of Mirrors ceremony which we have experienced as part of the South course. This time we will revisit this powerful ceremony from a whole different perspective. Includes the moving of the Assemblage Point with the aid of a crystal

The Third movement, is to the Northwest to look at pattern vs freewill (change and chaos) in our lives, to seek to strengthen our will to challenge patterns, habits and especially addictions. Ceremonies will include Trance-Dance, Trance postures and other pattern awareness shaking activities. This part may well be seriously challenging and is likely to involve some home-projects of a possibly challenging nature!

The fourth movement, is to the northeast and is about looking at the design and choreography of our lives and how we make our choices - and therefore how to actively make new and freer choices with consciousness and will. In a nutshell, to shift the assemblage point thus enabling seeing the world from other perspectives from which choices for freedom can more naturally be made.

This can shake up lives and worlds and assist greatly in the quest for ultimate freedom. Subtle energy dreaming exercises, painting, creating images, communing with nature energies will be part of this movement.

In the final meeting we will each sit in the Centre Of Our Wheel Of Life and face the directions our lives have taken us that have brought us here and the directions we now choose for our life to take us. The ultimate object of the course is to shift from being a person governed by the cross of the four cardinal directions to a person living in flowing movement and change in touch with and guided by the powers of the four non-cardinals - the movers and shakers.

Sword Lady

PURITY

2012-01-16T02:49:00.000-08:00

Foundation

Unity

Cooperation

Kindness

pussy flower - the Yoni from Ghana

PURITY 2

2012-01-16T02:11:00.000-08:00

Rihanna

TRIBUTE TO DR. KING through a life lived. . .

2012-01-16T00:39:00.000-08:00

Halle Berry, a testament to the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Native recipes

2012-01-15T16:16:00.000-08:00

RECIPES OF OUR ANCESTORS

Blue Corn

There are several colors of corn including red, blue, pink and black

kernels. Some kernels have bands, spots, or stripes on them as

well. Corn is central to the religions of many Indian tribes and is

especially important for Navajos.

Blue corn is most highly favored by the Navajo’s, Hopi’s and the

Indians of the pueblos. The flavor is considered superior to white

and yellow corn. Its nutritional value is also considered to be

greater as well. Navajos feel that blue corn is important in the diets

of pregnant and nursing women from the onset of labor to the end

of lactation.

“Corn is not simply food to the

Indians. To many groups it is the

basis of religion and the symbol of

fertility and beneficence. “Seeds of

Seeds”, “Sacred Mother”, “Blessed

Daughter” and “Giver of Life” are

all appellations by which the sacred

corn food is addressed. Long tales

of how corn came to the Indians

and stories of times when the corn

maidens visited the ancients were

told when the people sat around

the fires at night.”

Helen Walker,

Arikara

Banaha (Corn Shuck Bread)

Ingredients:

2 cups cornmeal 1 tsp baking soda

1 ½ cups hot water 1 tsp salt

corn shucks (boil 10 minutes before using)

Mix the cornmeal, baking soda and salt. Add water until mixture

is stiff enough to handle easily. Form small oblong balls and wrap

in corn shucks. Tie in the middle with corn shuck string. Drop

covered balls into a deep pot of boiling water. Cover and cook 40

minutes. Remove the shucks before serving.

Servings: 4

Tribe: Choctaw (Oklahoma)

Serving suggestions: Serve with gravy and sausage; butter, honey

or syrup; with cooked greens and other vegetables and meats such

as salt meat, pork chops.

History of recipe: This is traditionally served on special occasions:

church meetings, weddings, funerals, Choctaw festivities.

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 252 Total fat: 1 g

Carbohydrate: 54 g. Saturated fat: 0 g

Protein: 6 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g

Sodium: 564 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg.

Bannock

Ingredients:

2 C. cornmeal ½ C. berries

3/4 C. water 1/4 C. oil for frying

5 T. oil

Blend cornmeal water and 5 T. oil. Add the berries.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Drop the batter by small spoonfuls

into oil. Fry until golden brown and then turn, about 5 minutes per

side. Drain.

Servings: 6

Tribe: Chippewa

Note: traditionally eaten either hot or cold.

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 256 Total fat: 13 g

Carbohydrate: 33 g Saturated fat: 2 g

Protein: 3 g Polyunsaturated fat: 7 g

Sodium: 14 mg Cholesterol: 0 mg.

Blue Bread

Ingredients:

1 cup juniper ash and 1 cup boiling water

2 C. water

3 ½ cups boiling water

6 cups cornmeal

½ tsp. salt

Mix juniper ash with 1 cup boiling water. Put 3 ½ cups water in a

pot and boil. Strain juniper water into a pot. Add 6 cups blue

cornmeal. Knead until dough is soft but firm. Shape into 30 small

patties. Put on hot skillet. Cook until brown on each side.

Mix salt and 2 C. water. Dip the breads in the salt water.

Servings: 30

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Note on serving: Commonly served with coffee and mutton stew.

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 53 Total fat: 1 g.

Carbohydrate: 19 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.

Protein: 2 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.

Sodium: 48 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg.

Blue Corn Bread (Loaf)

Ingredients:

1 cup juniper ash and 1 cup boiling water

3 ½ cups boiling water

6 cups cornmeal

Mix 1 cup juniper ash with 1 cup boiling water. Put 3 ½ cups

water in a pot and boil. Strain juniper water into the boiling water.

Add the blue cornmeal. Remove. Knead until dough is soft but

firm. Shape into 2 or 3 loaves. Bake in hot ashes for 1 hour.

Brush off ashes and serve warm.

Servings: 30 pieces

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 86 Total fat: <1 g.

Carbohydrate: 19 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.

Protein: 2 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.

Sodium: 10 mg.Cholesterol: 0 mg.

Blue Cornmeal Dumplings

Ingredients:

1 cup juniper ash and 1 cup boiling water

3 ½ cups boiling water

6 cups ground blue cornmeal

3 cups water in separate pot

Mix juniper ash and 1 cup boiling water. Boil water in a large pot.

Strain juniper ashes into the water and stir. Add blue cornmeal and

remove from heat. Knead until dough is soft but firm. Shape the

dough into small thumb size balls.

Put 3 cups water in a big pot and boil. Add dough to boiling water

and stir. Dough will make its own gravy. Serve hot.

Servings: 30 dumplings

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Nutrients per dumpling:

Calories: 101 Total fat: 1 g.

Carbohydrate: 21 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.

Protein: 2 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.

Sodium: 3 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg

Blue Corn Mush (Taa’niil, Tanaashgiizh)

Ingredients:

1 cup juniper ash prepared with 1 cup water

3 cups boiling water

4 cups blue cornmeal

Mix 1 cup juniper ash with 1 cup boiling water. Strain ashes into

the boiling water and stir. Add 4 cups of blue cornmeal and stir.

Boil for 30 minutes, stirring constantly. Take off heat and stir.

Servings: 16

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Note: Commonly eaten with fried bread.

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 110 Total fat: 1 g.

Carbohydrate: 23 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.

Protein: 2 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.

Sodium: 12 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg.

Cornmeal Mush/Porridge (Taa’niil)

Ingredients:

4 cups cornmeal 3 cups boiling water

½ cup wheat sprouts 1 cup juniper ash with

1 cup boiling water

Mix cornmeal into 3 cups boiling water. Stir and mix well,

removing all lumps. Add small amounts of wheat sprouts until

sweetened. Add 1 tbsp of juniper ash at a time until mush /

porridge thickens. The mush is then set outside to chill overnight.

The mush is ready when the mush/porridge turns into a frozen

jello- like pudding.

Servings: 15

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Note: This mush is only made during the winter months when

temperatures are very cold.

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 142 Total fat: 1 g

Carbohydrate: 30 g. Saturated fat: 0 g

Protein: 3 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g

Sodium: 4 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg

Corn Bread or Johnny Cakes

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1 1/4 cup water or 1 cup water + ½ cup dry milk

3 tbsp sugar

3 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 cup cornmeal

1 egg

1/4 cup melted shortening

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add egg and

cornmeal. Combine water and melted shortening. Pour into flour

mixture and stir just enough to moisten dry ingredients. Do not

beat. Pour into well-greased 8x8x2 inch baking pan. Bake at 425

degrees F for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Servings: 9

Tribe: Maliseet

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 175 Total fat: 7 g.

Carbohydrate: 26 g. Saturated fat: 2 g.

Protein: 3 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 2 g.

Sodium: 460 mg. Cholesterol: 21 mg

Ground Cake

Ingredients:

50 lb. stone ground yellow cornmeal

50 lb. stone ground whole wheat flour

12 lb. coarsely strong ground sprouted wheat

1 large pail of simmering water

10 lb. brown sugar

5 lb. raisins

1 basketful of corn husks

Mix the cornmeal and wheat flour. Add the water, handfuls at a

time, stirring constantly. Stir the cornmeal mixture with stirring

sticks (‘adistsiin), removing all lumps. Add the sugar sparingly,

until all the cornmeal is used. Add the wheat sprouts and raisins.

Soak the corn husks.

Dig a pit in the ground about 1 yard across and 10 inches deep.

Build a fire in the pit. When the pit is thoroughly heated, remove

the hot coals. Line the pit with several layers of pre-soaked corn

husks. Pour the mush into the layers of corn husks and cover the

mush with the remaining corn husks. Cover with moist dirt and

then cover with the coals. Build a fire over the pit. Keep the fire

going for 8 hours until the cake is cooked.

‘Adistsiin (stirring sticks) is made from sticks of sage or

geasewood tied in the middle. It is used by Navajo women to stir

mush and as a strainer to catch pieces of ashes as the as the water

in which the ash has been soaking is poured into the cornmeal.

Servings: Unable to determine

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Nutrients per serving: Unable to determine

Nutrients for entire recipe:

Calories: 201,885 Total fat: 1 g.

Carbohydrate: 42,341 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.

Protein: 5644 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.

Sodium: 3706 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg.

Kneeldow Bread (Nitsidigo’i)

Ingredients:

12 ears of fresh corn softened corn husks

Scrape the kernels from 12 ears of fresh corn. Grind the kernels on

a metate* into a mush. Make small packages of the mush by

wrapping them in corn husks.

Dig a pit in the ground about one yard across and 10 inches deep.

Build a fire in the pit. When the pit is thoroughly heated, take the

hot coals out and place the packages in the ground and cover with

some fresh leaves and slightly moist dirt, cover with coals. Build a

fire over it and bake at least one hour.

*Metate is a stone with a concave upper surface used as the nether

millstone for grinding grains and especially maize (Indian corn).

Serves: 12

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Use of recipe: After cooking packages are removed from the pit

and served hot with mutton stew, or dried and preserved for the

winter.

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 83 Total fat: 1 g.

Carbohydrate: 19 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.

Protein: 3 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.

Sodium: 13 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg

Navajo Blue Corn Noodles

Ingredients:

6 C. blue corn meal ½ C. juniper ash

4 C. boiling water

Mix juniper ash with boiling water in a large bowl. Add the blue

corn meal, a small amount at a time until a soft dough is formed.

Form dough into small balls about 1 ½ inches in diameter. Drop

into boiling water. Boil for about 45 minutes.

Servings: 20

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Contributor: Gladys Begay and Marieta Topaha

Use of recipe: Commonly served with roasted or stewed mutton

and outdoor cooked tortillas.

Nutrients per serving:

Calories: 156 Total fat: 2 g.

Carbohydrate: 30 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.

Protein: 3 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.

Sodium: 1 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg

Navajo Cake

Ingredients:

6 C. water

½ C. raisins

4 C. pre-cooked blue cornmeal

½ C. wheat sprouts

2 C. pre-cooked yellow cornmeal

½ C. brown sugar

Add the two cornmeals to the water. Add the raisins, wheat

sprouts and brown sugar. Blend well dissolving all lumps. Pour

into a 9" X 9" baking pan and cover with foil. Bake at 250 degrees

for 4 hours.

Servings: 10

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Notes: Navajo cake is identical to ground cake except for the
method used to bake the cakes.
Nutrients per serving:
Calories: 380 Total fat: 1 g.
Carbohydrate: 84 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.
Protein: 8 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.
Sodium: 13 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg.

Navajo Roasted Corn (Neeshjizhii)

To prepare Navajo roasted corn, one must build a fire in an adobe
oven and keep it going all day. Clean out all the ashes and put in
the ears of corn, including the husk, and keep it going all day.
Clean out all the ashes and put in the ears of corn and ½ bucket of
water. Seal the oven with a rock and mud. Let the corn bake all
night. In the morning, scrape the kernels off the ear and dry in the
sun.
Dried corn can be used in many different dishes once it is prepared.
The most popular dish is hominy stew.

Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Sweet Tamales (Nijilo’i)

Ingredients:
25 lbs of white cornmeal
1 cup white sugar
2 cups raisins
1/4 cup ground wheat sprouts
1 basketful of corn husks
l large pot of simmering water

Mix white cornmeal in handfuls into a large pot of simmering
water. Stir the cornmeal with stirring sticks, removing all lumps.
Add the sugar. Add the raisins. Stir. Stir in the wheat sprouts.
In a separate pan soak corn husks in simmering water. Make small
packages of the cornmeal by wrapping them in soaked corn husks
and tie with strips of corn husks. Put the wrapped packages in a
pot and boil for 1 hour, adding water as needed. Cool.

Servings: approximately 300
Tribe: The Navajo Nation

Note: Commonly served with coffee and mutton stew.
Nutrients per serving:
Calories: 144 Total fat: 1 g.
Carbohydrate: 31 g. Saturated fat: 0 g.
Protein: 3 g. Polyunsaturated fat: 0 g.
Sodium: 2 mg. Cholesterol: 0 mg

PARENTING: from conception on. . .

2012-01-15T01:37:00.000-08:00

black mother, Monica Y. Miles by Phelan Marc

“Great sense of humor is honesty. In the end and at the end of every day how we love is our measuring stick and how we are remembered.” – Gregory E. Woods

WHAT STORIES WILL CHANGE CONDITIONS 5

2012-01-15T01:07:00.000-08:00

Kim Kardashian Photo shoot by Nick Saglimbeni !!!!

MANHOOD TEACHING
PART 72

Perception

http://www.gotceleb.com/kim-kardashian/kim-kardashian-photoshoot-by-nick-saglimbeni/attachment/kim-kardashian-hot-photoshoot-by-nick-saglimbeni-02/

“It is frightening how beautiful and how deep her Armenian heritage shapes and redefines the other bloodline within her. It is remarkable, as all Beauty is, to behold and discuss within one's inner Self how Beauty unfolds. The words can only be intelligent insights into daily revelations about divinity, growth, maturation, evolution, and plunge into the deeper aspects of a woman’s spirituality. It is a natural detour from the more crass, but inevitable subject most men will embrace looking at Kim Kardashian’s body. She exudes confidence, inaccessibility, and a demure sensuality that is intoxicating.

She is fine, but the measure of a man rests in the ability of his mind’s spirit, and his spirit to rise, like a scented mist, above this sensory level, from time to time, to explore what Beauty is and what lives within Kim Kardashian. It is how I learned to see and appreciate Beauty. It is how Beauty introduced herself to me. She unraveled mysterious things for me, as I became a mist above my lust, and needs. It was a strange and different drink for me as a young man, but I drank because many before me had been transformed by Beauty and I didn’t want to remain in the stagnant pools of lust. In one dimension of Mystery are things to experience, but if there are dimensions to explore, rooms to peer into, and landscapes to discover, gawk at, and wander through why wouldn’t I learn to become a mist and float above my head to see Beauty?” – Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

BEAR, WOLVERENE, AND WOLF STORY: Yukaghir / Lamut

2012-01-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

Bear, Wolverine, and Wolf, being brothers, lived side by side. The youngest brother paid suit to the daughter of the middle one. "No," said the middle one, "How is it that you ask me for my daughter? We cannot join. You are born from the snow, and I am born from the earth." 1 Wolf grew angry and made complaint to Bear. Bear bore judgment and ordered, "If that is so, you must part." He said to Wolf, "Your temper is worst of all, you shall bring forth not more than two or three children." Wolf departed sorrowfully. Bear said to Wolverine, "You have a daughter, and refuse her to suitors, so you must not bring forth more than one, child." He blamed Wolverine, and said, "If you had given your daughter in marriage, our people would be more numerous, so you must meet your fate in the wooden thing." 2

Wolverine also grew angry, and retorted, "And you must meet your fate underground." 3 Wolverine laid a curse upon Bear: "You must sleep throughout the winter, and your fate will come to you while you are insensible to it."

So the Bear's word caused young wolves to be born by two's and three's, and wolverines singly. The Wolverine’s word caused the Bear to sleep throughout the winter, so that hunters kill him in his sleep.

Told by Ulashkan, a Lamut man, on the Molonda River, in the Kolyma country, summer of 1895.

Footnotes
34:1 The polar wolf is of light gray color, sometimes almost dirty white. The wolverine is brown.
34:2 Deadfall made of logs.
34:3 In the bear-lair when sleeping in winter, and tracked by the hunters
Tales of Yukaghir, Lamut, and Russianized Natives of Eastern Siberia
by Waldemar Bogoras
[1918]

AFRICAN SPIRITUALITY through the elements

2012-01-14T01:16:00.000-08:00

Bob Marley

African conjuer woman

FEAR: 13 States Introduce Useless Bills to Ban Sharia Law

2012-01-13T03:04:00.000-08:00

by Jamilla King
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/02/13_states_introduce_bills_to_ban_sharia_law.html

Are you ever afraid that fundamentalist Muslim extremists will take over your state court house? That’s the idea behind the radical right’s peddling of the myth that the Islamic legal code Sharia law will somehow make its way to the United States. The code is usually represented in the West as one mandating that rape victims or battered wives be stoned to death, and more broadly pointed to as evidence Islam’s mythical barbarism. Those sorts of ideas have formed the undercurrent of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. for decades.

Now, over a dozen states are taking the same misguided road traveled by voters in Oklahoma who passed a bill to guard against the non-existent threat of Sharia law on America’s shores. The attempt was largely criticized for unfairly targeting and blaming Muslims, a reason cited by Federal Court Judge Vicki Miles-LeGrange in the decision to issue a federal injunction. But that hasn’t stopped more than a dozen other states from forging ahead. Think Progress has this round-up:

Sharia Law

AFRICAN HISTORY: elegance & achievment

2012-01-13T01:49:00.000-08:00

black actress Thandie Newton at RocknRolla premiere

Billy Holiday aka Lady Day

SHARIA LAW, TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY & the CONSTITUTION

2012-01-12T05:57:00.000-08:00

Frederick Douglass

"Oklahoma residents' lack of understanding international law will be to their detriment. There is a lot of pride in ignorance, in not knowing or understanding in the United States. It has hampered growth, and relationships among other things and is a far cry from the appropriate thinking a citizen of a major global power should have... These are my words." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

http://www.stwnewspress.com/local/x2145131342/Oklahoma-Sharia-ban-falls-short-in-federal-court-appeal

altar of actress Shima Sikander

"A federal appeals court has upheld an injunction blocking a state constitution amendment to ban judicial consideration of Sharia or other international law.

The “Save Our State Amendment” was approved by 70 percent of voters in the November 2010 election. Shortly afterward, Oklahoma resident Muneer Awad — executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the state — sued to block the State Election Board from certifying the results, a step necessary for the amendment to go into effect.

Among the claims in the lawsuit, Awad said the amendment would stigmatize Muslims, foster excessive entanglement between the government and his religion and prevent a court from being able to probate his last will and testament, which contains references to Sharia law..."

The second half of the amendment “forbids courts from considering or using international law,” which was defined in the ballot question as including “countries, states and tribes” and coming from “international agreements, as well as treaties.”

Williams said the vague wording could interfere with the state’s agreements with Oklahoma tribes that are considered sovereign states, or it could impede agreements between Oklahoma and international companies. He cited Devon Energy’s announcement earlier this week that it had sold energy plays to a Chinese company for $2.2 billion.

“I’m sure international law was involved in that, and a lot of it benefited a remarkable Oklahoma company,” Williams said." - By Ricky O'Bannon

Standing Bear - Ponca in 1877

BLACK ACTRESS: Valarie Pettiford

2012-01-12T02:26:00.000-08:00

black actress Valarie Pettiford

GOOD MORNING from New Zealand

2012-01-11T02:19:00.000-08:00

Ata marie ~ peaceful Morning Loving Kin ...it's another Sweetheart South Pacific morning chirping into joyful and triumphant miracles in expansion. Softly Birdsong lifted the veil of Night and opened a new horizon as Grandfather Sun lifted his Smile straight into our thirsty Spirits and grateful Heart songs. May your day be as radiantly renewing as Grandfather is reliable ...rising each day in faithful ascent ...showing us all The Way of Balance ...rise above into the Sky infinity of ourselves Sacred Kin ...mauriora! Lifeforce WellBEing. - Ngaronoa Taki (Jan. 9, 2012)

BLACK ACTRESS: Nia Long

2012-01-11T02:04:00.000-08:00

black actress Nia Long pregnant in black dress

BLACK ACTOR:Will Smith

2012-01-10T02:38:00.000-08:00

black actor Will Smith

FATHER BY DESIGN; a style

2012-01-09T13:38:00.000-08:00

Snoop Dogg as seen at his Official Concert Afterparty at Gallery Nightclub in Las Vegas on November 26, 2011

Snoop Dogg’s cannabis possession

http://www.exposay.com/v/53642/snoop-dogg-arrested-cannabis-possession

... Snoop has previously admitted he is honest with his three children about his troubled past, as he would rather tell them himself than let them learn from other places.

He said: "My kids know who I am, I explained it to them, the things I've done, the time I spent in jail, the reason why I went to jail, when I sold drugs.

"I told them everything so they could know from me first, as opposed to going on the internet or hearing about it from somebody else. They can make up their own minds and say, 'Well my dad told me this, I know how my dad gets down so I believe him."

Snoop Dogg photo album

http://photos.exposay.com/Snoop_Dogg/

BLACK ACTOR: Jeffrey Wright

2012-01-09T02:29:00.000-08:00

black actor Jeffrey Wright by Charley Gallay

MOTHER of BLUE IVY

2012-01-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

Beyoncé Knowles & husband enjoying each other

Beyoncé Knowles pregnant in Halloween costume !!!!

By Cesarean birth Beyoncé Knowles gave birth to a girl today. Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z named the child Blue Ivy Carter for reasons that reflect the uniqueness of their union and the emergence of the triangle from their loving circle. The word from GMA is that the couple chose the name Ivy because of the significance of the number 4 (IV) in their lives. Beyoncé was born September 4^th and her husband the 4^th of December. They were married the 4^th of April 2008 and Beyoncé’s latest album is entitled 4. The name Carter is Jay-Z’s family name.

SERENA WILLIAMS' musings

2012-01-08T02:21:00.000-08:00

After winning her opening match of the 2012 tennis season, Serena Williams told reporters she doesn't love the sport in which she excels.

"I don't love tennis today but I'm here," she said after beating Chanelle Scheepers, 6-2, 6-3, in the first round of the Brisbane International. "I can't live without it -- there's a difference between not loving something and not being able to live without it. I have never liked sports and could never understand how I became an athlete."

Serena went on to say that she doesn't like working out or training and that her 2012 schedule will be scaled back in order to provide her rest for big tournaments. The lighter slate also is intended to keep her motivated.

Serena Williams in Australia jan 1, 2012

Archie Panjabi

2012-01-07T04:41:00.000-08:00

Archie Panjabi

WHAT STORIES WILL CHANGE CONDITIONS 4

2012-01-07T00:44:00.000-08:00

WHY INDIANS KEEP THEIR HAIR LONG

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/234783-The-Truth-About-Hair-and-Why-Indians-Would-Keep-Their-Hair-Long

“Quite an insight into old teachings and old ways. I never heard of this government program. If it is true, and I lean towards believing it, they conjured up a deep connection in a linear fashion, and unable to capture the essence it escapes them and the public because of the separations engineered by an approach to life and a distance from walks around and within various Medicine Wheel teachings Hair Medicine opens one up to... Dig what I'm saying?” – Dawn Wolf

FAMILY LOVE

2012-01-06T00:13:00.000-08:00

family love - actress Katherne Heigl & Josh Kelley hold their daughter Nancy Leigh - Naleigh Septembre 12, 2009

“Love always rises to the surface of every challenge.”

– Dawn Wolf,

Keeper of Stories

WHAT STORIES WILL CHANGE CONDITIONS 3

2012-01-05T02:33:00.000-08:00

PASTOR LARRY’S DESK

http://js-pastor.blogspot.com/?expref=next-blog

Heather Mandy Levy holding son with the blue sky behind

It was only theory
http://js-pastor.blogspot.com/2011/12/it-was-only-theory.html

A young child psychologist set up his practice and developed a theory and lecture for parents that he called the "Ten Commandments for Parents."

Later he married and had children of his own. He changed the title to "Ten Hints for Parents."
The first child reached the age of two and the title was changed to, "Ten Suggestions for Parent."
His children became teenagers and he stopped lecturing on the subject all together. - Pastor Larry

Dawn Wolf on porch of a house in across from Anacostia Museum

STORY OF TIME: African women stories

2012-01-04T11:31:00.000-08:00

Vanessa Williams laughing with abandon

African woman in an old picture from Ngaronoa Taki

WHAT STORIES WILL CHANGE CONDITIONS 2

2012-01-04T02:56:00.001-08:00

FAIR WEATHER LOVER

An ardent young man away in college wrote his sweetheart a letter. In this love letter he said, "I would swim the deepest river for you, I would climb the highest mountain for you. I would dash through fire and fight wild beasts for you.

He closed with a PS: If it doesn't rain I will drive home this week-end to see you.

This reminds me of the way some Christians profess their love of Jesus and nod in agreement when the preacher tells them that Jesus said to love one another and love our enemies and take care of the poor among us, but then do nothing about it.

When we say the words but do not do the actions is that a sign that we do not really believe?

http://js-pastor.blogspot.com/2011/12/fair-weather-lover.html

Great Walker and the Anishinabe Witches - Winnebago

2012-01-03T02:25:00.000-08:00

There was a man of the Anishinabeg nation and he was a seer. He was very

holy and had great powers of witchcraft. When he visited people at night, he
would do so by flying through the air. He had three friends, and they too
were witches with the same ability to fly through the air. People greatly
feared them because of their powers. One night the four of them agreed that
they would have a contest to see who could fly best at night.

Among the Hotcâgara there was also a great seer. His name was Mânîxedega
("Great Walker"). He had gained knowledge of what these men were going to
do. On the night of the contest, Mânîxedega used his own night powers to get
there and there he waited for them with great patience. Finally, the four
Anishinabeg arrived at their rendezvous point. Each took off into the night
in turn, and of the first three, Mânîxedega used his powers to ensure they
would be lost. The fourth witch dove down from high in the air and landed on
a strip of land. As he stood there, unexpectedly, he had deer horns on
his head. These Mânîxedega seized and held onto tightly.

The other Anishinabeg materialized, and asked Mânîxedega to pay them a
visit. This he agreed to do. Finally, Mânîxedega came to where the witches
lived. They tried to persuade him to let them give him their powers, but he
refused, asking instead that they might give him the plants and potions that
they used to gain these powers. But they pretended that they did not know
anything about these matters. Finally, he asked them for their
life-engendering greeting and the all power inherent within it. This they
granted him, and it is this greeting that is used to this day in the
Medicine Rite. It is spoken in the language in which it was given.

Paul Radin, The Road of Life and Death: A Ritual Drama of the American
Indians. Bollingen Series V (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973
[1945]) 138-139.

Bridget Moynahan, actress BLUE BLOOD

2012-01-02T03:19:00.000-08:00

Bridget Moynahan has a profound beauty !!!!

Anishinabe history lesson

2012-01-02T02:19:00.000-08:00

WHO ARE THE ANISHINABEG?

The common religion of the Ojibway was “Medawewin” [pronounced Me-Day-Wee-Win]. The Medawe even had their own written language, as evidenced by preserved birch bark scrolls and rock formations. The Medawewin religion consisted of four degrees or levels wherein initiates learned to use their spiritual abilities for spiritual healing. Herbalists and surgeons also belonged to the Medawewin. This may have been the origin of the term “medicine man”, since “Medawewin” sounds very similar to the English words “medicine man”.

The “Megis” was one of the primary symbols that represents the Medawewin religion. The Megis is a little shell called a cowry shell. The word “cowry” was derived from a Hindu word and is defined as “Any of various tropical marine mollusks of the family Cypraeidae, having glossy, often brightly marked shells, some of which are used as money in the South Pacific and Africa.”

* What is not mentioned in the foregoing megis definition is that megis shells were also used as money, or “wampum,” in North America before the European invasion of this continent.

What is most intriguing about the cowry shells used by the Anishinabeg is that these particular shells were not indigenous to America. “The money-cowry (Cypraea moneta) is, and has been for centuries, a sacred object among the Ojibwa and Menomini Indians of North America, and is employed in initiation ceremonies of the Grand Medicine Society [Medawewin]. The use of this particular cowry by these Indians is of peculiar interest; in the first place; owing to it being alien to the American continent, and in the second place, in view of its intimate association with so many remarkable and fantastic beliefs and practices in different parts of the Old World.”

* Cypraea moneta shells come from the South Pacific. Other shells which are native only to Asian and South Pacific seas have been found in pre-Columbian North American aboriginal sites, indicating that trans-oceanic trade was occurring prior to the European invasion.

http://www.healthfreedom.info/who_are_the_anishinabeg.htm

Anishinaabek Medicine Wheel

2012-01-01T01:53:00.000-08:00

Anishinaabek Medicine Wheel

http://www.anishinaabemdaa.com/medicinewheel.htm

Medicine Wheel of the Anishinaabemowin

WHAT STORIES WILL CHANGE CONDITIONS

2011-12-31T02:30:00.000-08:00

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots. Each hung on the ends of a pole, which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house."

The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?"

"That's because I have always known about your flaw so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."

Each of us has our own unique flaw, but it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them. ~anon

an EPITAPH: Benjamin Franklin

2011-12-30T02:23:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Franklin's epithaph reads: The Body of/ B. Franklin, Printer/ Like the Cover of an old Book/ Its Contents torn out/ And Stript of its Lettering & Gilding/ Lies here, Food for Worms/ But the Work shall not be lost/ For it will as he believ'd/ appear once more/ In a new and more elegent Edition

NOTE TO A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN

2011-12-30T00:27:00.000-08:00

“You need not take your own picture. It isn't your perception of yourself that attracts. It is what you exude. It is the intangible something that says look over here there is mystery, promise and something that might surprise me. You should discover it first before anyone else otherwise you run the risk of never seeing it well enough to claim and classify as your own. There is no need to prolong the process of self-discovery. Let it happen.” - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

black woman taking her own picture

http://www.blackplanet.com/photos/view.html?photo_id=30361869

SONGS OF FREEDOM Redemption song. . .

2011-12-29T03:59:00.000-08:00

Freedom

“… one of the challenges of being a thinking and socially conscious American citizen is the reality of being spied on by the Federal government. It has been my experience as a young man, and today it is part of everyday life. It has only been a few years since Internet providers in the name of dictatorial patriotism gave our privacy away to President Bush and his Homeland Security, and it changed us, or did it? How much thinking goes into our liberty that doesn’t polarize us I wonder? The new technology comes with evasive components that tracks and follows us wherever we go, and we behave as if we have no voice of dissent. It is strange how luxury and convenience have been allowed to compromise our concepts of freedom.” ©Gregory E. Woods

Children Hispanic in Alabama

2011-12-29T02:32:00.000-08:00

Judi Dench elegant in 2011

Judi Dench in My Week with Marilyn

JUDI DENCH, actress

http://www.poptower.com/judi-dench.htm

CATHY HUGHES

2011-12-28T01:11:00.000-08:00

TEMIKA MOORE

“What an impressive woman to stand next to. Cathy Hughes, since she and her husband partnered in business at 1450 WOL Am radio in the 1970's, has been a beacon of light and worthy of study. The least I can say describes how fine she is.

My father and I marched in front of the White House with Cathy Hughes and others in the 1990's. I was struck and startled by the reflection of sunlight upon her aura which shone from within. Her walk was sexy and powerful with purpose made clear when she spoke, or looked into your eyes.

Both times spaced by 20 years burned my flesh and instilled renewed purpose within me.” - Gregory E. Woods

Cathy Hughes (r) & singer Temika Moore at the Conversation on Wealth event in Washington DC

https://www.facebook.com/#!/temikamoore