Wednesday, November 30, 2011

BOND GIRL again

actress Judi Dench with Daniel Craig launching new bond movie Skyfall

AFRICAN BUSHMAN CREATION STORY


Tree bought from Florida to Valencia, Spain 500 years ago by Mischa 'Little Bear' Valencia
 The African Bushmen say, “People did not always live on the surface of the Earth. At one time People and animals lived underneath the Earth with Kaang, the Great Master and Lord of Life. The People lived peacefully with animals. No one wanted for anything. It was always light without the Sun. During this time of bliss Kaang began to dream the wonders of the world above.



First, Kaang created a wondrous tree with branches stretching over the entire country. At the base of the tree he dug a hole that reached way down to where the People and the animals lived. He led First Man to the surface. He sat down on the edge of the hole and First Woman came out. All the People came out in awe of the new world. Next Kaang helped the animals out. Some animals excitedly raced out through the roots and branches of the tree. Kaang gathered all the People and animals together, and taught them how to live together in peace. He told the People not to start any fires, or an evil would unleash upon the Earth, then Kaang left them to secretly watch his world.


The People saw the sun set for the first time. It scared them. At night it was black and the People could not see like the animals could, nor did they have fur for the cold. They forgot Kaang’s words and built a fire. The fire scared the animals, and they fled into the caves and mountains. Ever since the two have not been able to communicate with each other. Fear replaced their friendship.


"We Bushmen know animals, plants, rain, Thunder, wind, spring, winter are alive. What we see is only the outside form of body. Inside is a living spirit we cannot see. A woman’s spirit might fly into a leopard, or a man’s spirit fly into a lion’s body!"


Tree with Moon Red Thunder coming into the world. . .


Tuesday, November 29, 2011

CREATION STORY: the Aborigine

... when Great Father of All Spirits gently awakened Sun Mother her opening eyes sent a warm ray of light towards the sleeping Earth.



"Mother, I have work for you. Go to Earth and awaken the sleeping spirits and give them form."


Sun Mother glided to the Earth, which was bare. She began to walk in every direction. In every step plants grew. After returning to where she started Great Father of All Spirits met her and saw her work.


"Good. This is good work, Sun Mother. I want you to continue. Go into the caves and wake the spirits."


She went into the dark caves of the mountains awakening spirits with her light and insects of all kinds flew out of the caves. Sun Mother sat down and watched the insects mingle with the flowers in the light.


Father of All Spirits urged her on. She went into a very dark cave spreading her light. The heat of her light melted the ice and rivers and streams were created. She created fish, small snakes, lizards, frogs... Deep within another cave she awakened the spirits of birds and animals who burst into the sunshine in an array of colors...


Father was happy with Mother’s work. Mother called all the creatures to her telling them to enjoy the wealth of the Earth, and to live peacefully with one another. Then she arose into the sky and became the Sun. The creatures watched Sun Mother in awe as she crept upon the sky towards the West. When she sank into the horizon they panicked. Frozen in terror in their places upon the Earth they thought the end of the world had come. After a long time Sun Mother peeked out from the East. Soon they learned this was her way and ceased being afraid of the night.


At first, the children lived together peacefully until envy came in amongst them. They began to argue. Sun Mother had to come down and mediate. She gave the animal’s power to change form to whatever they wished. She regretted it. Rats turned themselves into bats. There were great lizards and fish with blue tongues and feet. The oddest creature had a duck’s bill, teeth, a beaver’s tail and the ability to lay eggs. He gave himself a name: Platypus!


Sun Mother looked down upon the Earth and thought she must create new creatures lest Father of All Spirits be angry by what he saw. Sun Mother birthed a son and a daughter: Morning Star and Moon. The children borne to them were sent to live upon the Earth and began to have children. Those children became our ancestors. They were superior to animals because they had part of Sun Mother’s mind and would not want to turn into other animals.

asian woman on white sofa in white negligee is a creation story to one, and profane to another. The telling is a telling.

Monday, November 28, 2011

PARENTING: the why of



logo "Birth Your Truth" by Margaret L. Rollins


PARENTING


“We become parents to learn how to prepare and usher children into tomorrow. It is a calling from within; a dangerous calling to birth children who will mirror their parents into the light of their truths, and hopefully give them true relationships with whatever and whomever they need to connect with in Life.” – Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

 
 

 

 

Sunday, November 27, 2011

4 STORIES

Samantha Cole is a powerful woman with a voice

“I confess I chanced upon a photo gallery of her in a bathing suit. Next thing I am asking the most logical question: who is she? Now, I know. She is a singer, a powerful singer who can hold, and dissect a melody. What a gift to the world.” - Gregory E. Woods
LOVERS ON TRAIN TRACK kissing






“Days like this have been rendered invisible by perceptions. They can be found and created. The railroads tracks are fenced in with barbed wire, and these times have introduced a weird kind of apprehension in people's bodies, and new technologies have created an even stranger sense of isolation between women and men who could connect on the soul level if they weren't sensuously impaired by their phones, and gadgets. I see it often; people whose energies match but the people’s senses are dulled and diverted from the vital elements of living and miss the potential friend, business partner, idea person, lover, spouse and confidant. The disconnection dampens the fires of creative living expressed in this photograph.” – Gregory E. Woods


George Washington Carver

SOCIAL ACTIVISM



“Black people are their problem, but I see no merit in waiting for a Messiah to lead us and resolve our problems. That was a solution in times past; say thousands of years ago when the collective consciousness of tribes and nations in divers parts of the world needed that elevation to ascend to the next level of Being. The Messiah approach is lazy, irresponsible, and dangerous. In the most fundamental of relationships — husband and wife— marital problems are never resolved by the coming of a Messiah. Waiting for one to fix a marital problem is tantamount to waiting for the marriage to bitterly dissolve!” – Gregory E. Woods



Native American woman Mary Snavely holding baby



“I am aware of this history. It lives in my bones, but Americans who love sports no matter their education level intellectually reject this type of history. The cults of personality, and entitlement hold precedence over what is right and wrong in the degradation of the Red Nations.


In 2009 on the 9th of August Supreme Court Justice Scalia said it best. Going to the heart of why American sports fans don’t discuss the issue, or pay attention to Native American issues, or volunteer to change the name of the Washington football team he said, “United States policy is revolved around conquest… So, Indian nations are conquered nations, and the treaties have been upheld.”


In general, Americans are governed by this belief. It is always expressed in its dismissiveness in our world relations, women’s issues, the wars we engage in and the dictators we prop up on the world stage…” – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories


parents & sports

 
WASHINGTON FOOTBALL TEAM

Saturday, November 26, 2011

BETWEEN WORLDS


artist Piamaria von Konow amongst her works

"Standing in the midst of your art must be about the connections from you to them and them to this other world you access." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Friday, November 25, 2011

Thursday, November 24, 2011

THANKSGIVING DAY between two friends . . .

“It is a constant thorn within me remembering the first celebration after the early settlers’ gratitude massacred the Pequot nation. Thanksgiving Day originally was the celebration of the murders of Pequot women, men and children that almost wiped them off the Earth and to date, the bloodiest thank you the Pequot ever experienced..


I do get together with my family on this day wrestling with these images, and my emotions. On preceding days I often spend time in the forest listening to the voices of ancestors. So, I leave offerings of prayer, or tobacco, but the painful truth is Americans depend upon time to erase their memories and connections to the histories of the belief-systems that have brought us so much 'progress'. Consequently, we as a nation are fond of giving heart felt, but hollow thanks into the veil of time pulled back on Thanksgiving Day by the ancestors of Turtle Island’s many nations we cannot remember. All the red nations, leaders, and people betrayed in the name of American progress, the Manifest Destiny, the call of the West, etc. have experienced the great betrayals, and the type of gratitude today’s Thanksgiving participants revel in. Thanksgiving is a day the pathos of an era gone by but present in our daily lives, and rituals moves a veil aside through which the Pequot peer out of aghast at our ignorance of why we celebrate this day. The sound of our celebration, and gratitude for the things we have and the families we have alive is disconnected from the soul sickness that the world’s missionaries are coming to America to assist in our healing as a nation.” – Gregory E. Woods



eye above the mountains by Debby King

Gregory... A much deeper understanding of the earliest years after the English came here to stay grows through learning more than road-brush history, whether the familiar kind or the unfamiliar kind. Read the book Mayflower: A Story of ...Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Filbrick (2006).



I post this comment in honor of -- and gratitude to -- both my ancestor Elizabeth Carpenter Southworth and Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoag, who attended her wedding in August 1623 to William Bradford of Plymouth Colony. Bradford's first wife Dorothy had come with him on the Mayflower, insisting their toddler son remain in Holland with family and come later if this unknown land was safe. The ship anchored off the coast of what is now known as Cape Cod on 11 November 1620, after a hellish 2-month journey. Only Bradford and a small group of men left the ship each day; the other passengers, many ill and two already dead, had to stay on the boat. On 7 December, Dorothy either fell or jumped overboard and died. (A number of others died aboard ship that first winter; ultimately only 50 of the original 102 survived.)


William Bradford had wanted to marry Alice Carpenter before the Separatists ever left England for Holland to escape religious persecution, but her parents objected because he was an orphaned farmer’s son and she was born into aristocracy. In 1613, he married Dorothy instead, and Alice married Edward Southworth, a member of the landed gentry who had also fled to Holland, the same year. Alice’s husband died of illness by 1622, after which she accepted Bradford’s proposal. William and Dorothy’s son and Alice and Edwards’ two sons all joined the Bradfords in Plymouth Colony later.


My ancestor work has made this clear: history becomes much more complex when we learn more than one “side,” and when we seek to learn the people instead of just the wars. While detailed histories like the Filbrick book and contemporaneous writing from the early 17th century like Bradford’s journal do indeed take time to read, they also do away with broad-brush understandings.


Do you know about the “memory holes?” I’d never heard of them before Filbrick’s book. That first July, Winslow and Hopkins went with Squanto to visit other villages to seek alliances like that formed with Massasoit. The native trail was marked with round holes wherever some significant event or teaching had occurred, and those using the trail were responsible for maintaining the holes and recounting what had happened there each time they passed.


Here’s Winslow’s 1624 account: “Instead of records and chronicles, they take this course, where any remarkable act is done, in memory of it, either in the place, or by some pathway near adjoining, they make a round hole in the ground about a foot deep, and as much over, which when others passing by behold, they inquire the cause and occasion of the same, which being once known, they are careful to acquaint all men, as occasion serveth therewith. And least such holes should be filled, or grown up by any accident, as men pass by they will oft renew the same: by which means many things of great antiquity are fresh in memory….”


Our centuries of war-based histories have not served any of us, or our ancestors, nearly as well as memory holes would have done. - Worth Cooley-Proust


men gathered together of the Maidu nation

“Worth, your ancestral work is deep and intense. I'd forgotten you were doing that work. Your family story softens me as does your reflective spirit. I was overwhelmed with the English versions of history in school, and independent readings throughout my school and college years... It took awhile to hear the other side, but the memory holes?? No, that is new knowledge for me. I am going to make a note to read up at your suggestion.



But beyond that have a good holiday tomorrow, get some rest, and see if you can make some time to see my father soon.” – Gregory E. Woods


 

Doctor turned serial killer in World War II Paris

FILE - This March 17, 1946 file photo shows Dr. Marcel Petiot in Paris. The doctor, a serial killer who was convicted of 26 murders and guillotined as punishment for his crimes, regularly treated refugees, businessmen and Gestapo agents, but also had a predilection for killing wealthy Jews and burning their bodies in a basement furnace. He was one of the most unusual informers used by one of America's most secretive espionage agencies, known simply as the Pond. (AP Photo, File)


On this day, Thanksgiving, I keep thinking about the murders inflicted upon the Pequot nation in the 1600's. It came from somewhere this penchant for killing...



KELLY WEARSTLER, author & interior designer. . .

Kelly Wearstler on the eve her book launch in 2009 featuring her book HUE.

model Kelly Wearstler in Converse tennis shoes & black dress !!!!

from SOUTH AFRICA: a woman's story

OUR STORY




“The deeper truths of our souls agitate us until we give them expression in our lives through art, our dress, customs, actions, rituals or our words. The animals we come from and connect with tease us with recollections of the agreements we made to come into this world. Those creatures comforted us away from our fears about coming alive in this plane of existence as we prepared to leave the comfort of timelessness for the birth canal of the mothers we chose. Knowing our challenge was to live above mere existence we took comfort in the relationship with the creatures who would accompany us, and teach and challenge us to be whole…” – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories


Freespiritsioux Tessa

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

BEAUTY wiithin a Japanese prayer

I snagged this from Mark Laughing Bear who snagged it from Lynn Manyfires. I think it clearly illustrates just how similar people around the world are. – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (Dawn Wolf)

----------------------------------------

A Japanese Monk Sent this Prayer Request

(Here is a translation of a message/oracle from the Ise Shrine in Japan):



After sunset, we need strong power of prayer.

Please let me deliver the message to as many as possible.

We can stop this earthquake with our prayers,

but right now the nuclear plant is in danger.



Please heal the suffering, sadness, anger, worry about nuclear plants.

Please do not think that this accident will bring justice.



Please care for each other.

The energy toward conflict and fight is also fueling the things happening right now.

Please stop the conflict and stop the fight and change the worrying voice to the power of prayer.

Please pray that as many people as possible can be saved.



We will be O.K.

If our hearts start connecting with each other, the earth will be healed.



There are sounds/vibrations that can release the karma of earth.

Anyone who can make a prayer sound, or Reiki, or long distance healing, please direct your energy to the center of Japan .

The exact location is above the Hachiro gata, Akita Prefecture .



If you can sing, please sing. Humming is fine too. Let the earth listen to the sound.



Please send gratitude to the earth.

If mother earth wakes up, everything will stop.

The word Song/Sing in Japanese is Kanji - small possibilities support a big lack.

Please send your prayers to the Earth to wake up the Spirit.



I will be in meditation after the sunset.

I will pray for the light shining in the sky even in the darkness.

May everyone be safe.

Thank you for supporting my heart at this very difficult time.

Gratitude for our life.

Let Our prayers unite.


Tuesday, November 22, 2011

GRANDMOTHER'S POEM




Red EArth Woman

Red Dawn seeds
Grandmother Moon bleeds
Ancient time intercedes
flowing red Dawn
flowing Spirit reborn
flowing Night is torn
flowing out adorned
with Red Heat
with Red meaning
with Red determination
with Red intentionality
with Red Resistance
with Red forgiveness
with Red Skin
with Red forevers
with Red yesteryears
with Red veins
with Red Hearts
with Red fire
with Red fibres of life.
My Red umbilical cord
is attached to the Red
Sunstorms breathing


Moontides breaking
Sky Hands waking
Earthen feet making
imprints for a today
WE inherit as clay
With our Red beginnings
With our Red endings
With our Red infinity
With our Red eternity


Red eyes are born first
Then Red blood like thirst
gathers our limbs
gathers our flesh
gathers our wholeness
woven and enmeshed
At the moment of conception
there's a holy reception
Spirit and Flesh enjoin
in a holy covenant
Soulbearers journey
is this Red unfoldment.


I AM a Red Dawn rising
each day is surprising
each hour is enterprising
each minute comprising
each moment cherished
as Red prayers
to Red Kin
to Red Ancients
to Red Ancestors
to Red relationships
Celestial and expansive
I gift my Red Womans'

Lifeforce WellBEing
Wahine purotu
Handsome Woman
Wahine Toa
Warrior Womana
Wahine ataahua
BEautiful Woman.


Ma te Wahine, me te whenua
e ora ai te Iwi.
It is because of Women
and Great Mother Earth
that the People are Well.
This is Red Truth.
Kaua e warewaretia
Never forget where
you come from.


(C) Mereana Taki
1.02.10


Monday, November 21, 2011

deeper aspect of EVE'S DAUGHTER


There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.


And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At


night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its


face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language- door and


open the love window. The moon
won't use the door, only the window.


Rumi


 

Sunday, November 20, 2011

sacred story: Black American actresses

Halle Berry

"The spirit of a woman can either be compromised or enhanced by fame, and high achievement. It all depends upon upbringing, training, and insight into her sense of womanhood. Reality stars rarely evolve into fame with these attributes." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

 

Saturday, November 19, 2011

IMPERIAL DYNASTY of the EMERALD SERPENT

African art - a woman with horns of the Imperial Dynasty of the Emerald Serpent

IMPERIAL DYNASTY of the EMERALD SERPENT


“The Priestess-Warrioress dominated the minds of her subjects without oppression because she embodied the elements of Fear as a woman who created and mastered fears. The People thought highly of her abilities, but stayed away from her as a necessity for their survival. The danger of her lineage was at the triangle, the apex of the triangle between her legs where only one Man ever entered, explored and faltered in his movements. He barely regained his sense of Self prior to their sexual explorations. What he did have of value to her was intimate knowledge of her possessed by no one, but sought by many. She was the essence of a sensuality dark with danger, red with resolution, and powerful enough to scale the heights of creativity, and tar the lower caverns of a soul.

If this isn’t her then who is she?"


breasts of a woman from the Imperial Dynasty of the Emerald Serpent


... the only man who had ever entered her making love to her had this image of her imprinted into his memory as a talisman, a healing balm, an energy of divine principles not easily discern without a mind to serve, heal, empower, and trust in the divinity of her will, her essential elements that made Creation possible, and copulation mysterious. Everything he ate of hers tasted good, and elevated the senses he had to perceive the fragrance of her breath, her tantalizing breathe of Life as prayers, and unctions of her spirit. Such was their union: powerful, memorable, and dangerous.

African woman of the Imperial dynasty of the Emerald Serpent
 
No one dared look at her breasts, but every man did. The strength and the invisible delicate flower petals within her countenance was implied, and the physical strength she projected was not perceived. The amount of hair upon her head took up where her physical strength left off taunting masculine prowess, and opened peripheral vision to see the vision she carried within her capacity to kill, and absorb the men who came to her beds.

Creation story from the Imperial Dynasty of the Emerald Serpent

“Every element essential to the rituals shamans and healers employ took on the forms of animals whose bodies hold their Medicines gathered around the concepts of duality and the serpentine fires of healing and restoration…”



Elders ancient of days in the mountains of the Imperial Dynasty of the Emerald Serpent


“... the Elders Ancient of Days did not allow, permit, or know how to stop praying and doing ceremony for the lands they came from, and the people they are responsible for. Their inability to perceive the lines of demarcation is a telling, a testimony of focused energies their descendents absorb into their bodies..." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories


Friday, November 18, 2011

DEAD WOMAN: sacred teaching


Natalie Wood

Today it was announced that actress Natalie Wood's suspicious death in 1981 would be re-examined. She was found in the water her body bruised, but no one aboard the boat she had been on (her husband Robert Wagner, and a friend and fellow actor Christopher Walken) was charged with any misconduct. But these many years since 1981 have been a gory trail and tale of death.


In 1981 my first son, Lemuel, was born as violence grew alongside the introduction and distribution of crack cocaine on streets all across the United States. Gangs of boys and men with guns, and grudges began to kill each other over territory, and whatever sense of gallantry, or responsibility gangsters used to shield people with, as they did for me as a teenager, from a life of crime went up in a proverbial cloud of cocaine smoke, and angel dust. It was a bewildering time that no was prepared for. Black Americans watched and sensed the momentum and the fruits of the Civil Rights movement dissipated into a scramble for the dollar by any means necessary by 13 and 14 year olds who adapted quickly to the game, and became killers by default.

In Washington DC the Southern custom of standing at attention for passing funeral cars succumbed to the emotional and psychological fatigue of watching hundreds into the thousands of funeral processionals careening through the streets to a handful of cemeteries. Adults began to not tell the stories that held each generation against a common foe; slavery and Jim Crow, or the stories that cemented the idea of progress and change into their children's blood. Instead they began to build defenses against the terror of their own children making money from quick drug sales, or using the drugs.

Guns and shed blood flowed into the streets, and blood became a gang, and cribs were birthing Crips, and aspirants to the bloody Los Angeles gang. Haitian, Jamaican, El Salvadorian, Mexican, and Black neighborhoods were becoming the center pieces of their neighborhoods, and prime time television news, and shows. Each ethnic group developed a signature way of bringing death to their foes, and neighborhoods. At the time the Federal government was brokering deals with Islamic fundamentalists, and training soldiers from Central American countries, the Middle East, and other African countries in their countries or in the state of Georgia, and came up with a lame slogan: Just Say No, and a solution to the drug problem in America: increased police forces, and 3-strikes.

Lorton prison in Lorton, Virginia had too many men incarcerated, but kept the population growth swelling above its capacity. Violence grew inside prisons, as did the rise of a new virus, HIV, that terrified us all. HIV had a face and it was white and gay, but suddenly near the middle of the 1980's it was suddenly in Washington DC like black magic and black men in and out of prison were dropping dead, and their relatives were making up causes of death to put in their church programs.

In northeast Washington DC the spirit of death, and in its accompanying gloom looms DC jail. In a brutally drawn circle a hospital, two mortuaries, and the medical examiners office where dead bodies piled up on slabs shapes the mood of the surrounding community the Amory and the Stadium stare at each other. A subway was built there, and around the corner sits Eastern High school, and a few blocks further an elementary school.

DC and the surrounding suburbs were swelling with 13 and 14 year old girls pregnant attending the funerals of their children's fathers. The wise caring counsel of a community did not fill the blank look on their faces. They were judged and ignored, and these young women made deals with the Federal government that permanently distanced fathers from the rearing of children, and developed a mentality that served, not the communities they lived in, but themselves. The selfishness, and their need for self-preservation created a hardness that in later years hurt because these girls became women incapable of being the wives their heart songs told them they could be. Boys reared thus grew into men incapable of bearing the weight of the responsibilities of deepening the codes of manhood beyond a superficial level, and a concept of the ‘absent father’ took root in the cultural.

There were no Elders in the communities anymore just old people. The years recycled myths, and dumb bravado within boys initiated into manhood in youth centers, jails, and prisons. If they lived they became crippled gangsters, or rotting corpses of 40 year old junkies in recovery who used to be something for a minute back in the day. They are the grandchildren of girls who never will birth to who they are; whose children visit their fathers at Lincoln cemetery.

actress Natalie Wood in a scene of 1961 film Splendor in the Grass !!!!
Natalie Wood died with the gifts of society and the esteem of a nation, and the privilege of being a white women during a time when women could not have their own bank account, and were pretty much un-adult in one sense because women were still emerging from the cultural design that regulated them as chattel. This European paradigm was a destructive set of energies for women and children, and Natalie Wood's death, I suspect, reflected the attitudes and beliefs of an upper class of white men who needed to use beautiful women of substance and cast them aside when expedient. Something about that upper class mentality reeks within the police's inability to solve her death. Something about the vagueness and the defensive tone surrounding the perception of the last men to see her alive is related today’s news of Penn States' cover up of the predatorial homosexuality among the upper tiers of their ranks.

A man, such as I, would pose these questions, and come to understand these issues to better protect his children. During these times my children were raised in a sacred manner to the best of our abilities. The insistence on truth, and the capacity of the mothers' of my children to nurture, and their killer instincts required a man of depth to perceive the energies necessary to guide them through the turbulence of those times. The connection between father and Spirit reflects a relationship with Death, and Life, and the principles governing both that intersect and ignite genius, and fire up the emotional side of imagination affected the neighborhood, the gangs surrounding us, and other people's children because, as a man; a Black man, an Absaroka, and Muskogee man, nothing was disconnected from my family. Everything was related, and the how of those relationships, good or evil, operating in my children's lives was dependent upon the covering, and I was the covering!

The Priestcraft of fatherhood, and the ability of the Womb are the unseen parents of my children, and their connection to the Creator was born from this union. This is a Mystery teaching, and a Revelation. – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Natalie Wood at 51st Academy awards show in LA

PHOTOGRAPHER: Chris Warkocki's work

models by photographer Chris Warkocki

models by photographer Chris Warkocki

Thursday, November 17, 2011

deeper of powers of FLOWERS

"... every woman's flower has a different fragrance to savor." – Gregory E. Woods

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

deeper powers of ACHIEVMENT

Jessica Simpson, singer & actress
Jessica Simpson in this gorgeous black shift dress with a floral embellished shoulder highlights a svelte figure, a wholesome face, a feminine muscular agility, and pretty legs characterizes the myth of classic American beauty. If one wants to better see a famous woman one needs to learn to hush the sound of gossips and speculations about her private life, and focus on the image she projects, what she does for a living, and the feelings she conjures up in one's imagination. We are all mythical creatures initially driven by curiosity, and colored by the 'what if' questions that lead us on our journeys.



Famous women are afforded the proper amount of respect and scrutiny from an intelligent place necessary for the students of achievement. Beauty is a gift perhaps from a series of lifetimes, or the sum total of words spoken throughout the span of Earth's life, or a reflection of where we actually come from. But all that said she is a good looking woman made even better to gaze upon because she is achieving her life purpose in this lifetime with an audience of under achievers, and achievers who understand the process of achievement. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (Nov. 1, 2011)

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

deeper powers of a poem

boy & the Falcon from Santee Featherarms
“What a sensual journey the poem led me through. The poem aroused the poetry of sexual and sensual relieve and simultaneously carried me in the wind as a man, and then the Falcon appeared. For an instance I didn't sense his presence until I saw the Falcon and the boy! At this point I relived the supreme moments of my childhood.”

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

The Seed Market


Can you find another market like this?
Where,
with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?
Where,
for one seed
get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath,
a divine wind?

You've been fearful
of being absorbed in the ground,
or drawn up by the air.
Now, your waterbead lets go
and drops into the ocean,
where it came from.
It no longer has the form it had,
but it's still water
The essence is the same.
This giving up is not a repenting.
It's a deep honoring of yourself.
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry at once, quickly,
for God's sake!
Don't postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.

Santee Featherarms

 

the RUNAWAYS, an Indian story

There was once a young man who had journeyed a long way from home in search of adventure. One day he came to a strange village on the border of a great wood, but while yet some distance from the lodges, he happened to glance upward. In the boughs of a tree just above his head he saw a light scaffold, and on the scaffold a maiden sitting at her needlework.



Instead of boldly entering the village, as he had intended, the youth walked on a little way, then turned and again passed under the tree. He did this several times, and each time he looked up, for the girl was the prettiest that he had ever seen.


He did not show himself to the people, but for several days he lingered on the borders of the wood, and at last he ventured to speak with the maiden and to ask her to be his wife. She did not seem to be at all unwilling; however, she said to him: "You must be very careful, for my grandmother does not wish me to marry. She is a very wicked old woman, and has thus far succeeded in killing every one of my suitors."


"In that case, we must run away," the young man replied. "Tonight, when your grandmother is asleep, pull up some of the tent-pins and come out. I shall be waiting for you!"


The girl did as he had said, and that same night they fled together and by morning were far from the village.


However, the maiden kept looking over her shoulder as if fearing pursuit, and at last her lover said to her: "Why do you continue to look behind you? They will not have missed you until daylight, and it is quite certain now that no one can overtake us!"


"Ah," she replied, "my grandmother has powerful magic! She can cover a whole day's journey at one step, and I am convinced that she is on our trail."


"In that case, you shall see that I too know something of magic," returned the young man. Forthwith he threw down one of his mittens, and lo! their trail was changed to the trail of a Buffalo. He threw down the other mitten, and it became the carcass of a Buffalo lying at the end of the trail.


"She will follow this far and no farther," he declared; but the maiden shook her head, and ceased not from time to time to glance over her shoulder as they hastened onward.


In truth it was not long till she saw the old woman in the distance, coming on with great strides and shaking her cane and her gray head at the runaways.


"Now it is my turn!" the girl exclaimed, and threw down her comb, which became a thick forest behind the fleeing ones, so that the angry old woman was held back by the dense underbrush.


When she had come out of the forest at last and was again gaining upon them, the girl threw her awl over her shoulder and it became a chain of mountains with high peaks and sharp precipices, so that the grandmother was kept back longer than before. Nevertheless, her magic was strong, and she still struggled on after the lovers.


In the meantime, they had come to the bank of a river both wide and deep, and here they stood for a while doubting how they should cross, for there was neither boat nor ford. However, there were two Cranes near by, and to these the young man addressed himself.


"My friends," said he, "I beg of you to stand on the opposite banks of this river and stretch your necks across, so that we may cross in safety! Only do this, and I will give to each of you a fine ornament for your breast, and long fringes on your leggings, so that you will hereafter be called the handsomest of birds!"


The Cranes were willing to oblige, and they stood thus with their beaks touching over the stream, so that the lovers crossed on their long necks in safety.


"Now," exclaimed the young man," I must ask of you one more favor! If an old woman should come down to the river and seek your help, place your heads together once more as if to allow her to cross, but when she is half way over you must draw back and let her fall in mid-stream. Do this, and I promise you that you shall never be in want!"


In a little while the old woman came down to the river, quite out of breath, and more angry than before. As soon as she noticed the two Cranes, she began to scold and order them about.


"Come here, you long-necks, you ungainly creatures, come and help me over this river!" she cried.


The two Cranes again stood beak to beak, but when the wicked grandmother had crossed half way they pulled in their necks and into the water she went, screaming out threats and abuse as she whirled through the air. The current swept her quickly away and she was drowned, for there is no magic so strong that it will prevail against true love.


story from an unknown tribe
from Melanie Serttas

Monday, November 14, 2011

famous American beauty: Ali Larter

Ali Larter, actress in Obsessed



BLACK HAWK


Black Hawk, was a Sauk warrior, and later in life became a chief. He lived a long life: 1767-1838. Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak is his name.

http://rfester.tripod.com/bhawk.html 

ANCIENT PROPHECIES ANEW IN BIRTH

arresting beauty of Aurora Meadow Sosa

 “The arresting beauty of Aurora Meadow Sosa spreads horizontally into 8 directions of the world, and plunges inward to maintain the life of her child who will project vertical love to the Giver of Life, and her parents, and horizontally connect with the world-at-large in a way her parents will not and cannot foresee. It is the way of birth, and children's destinies. It is the way of mystery Mothers possess and carry.” – Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 

arresting beauty of Aurora Meadow Sosa's pregnancy



Sunday, November 13, 2011

Native woman arms outstretched

prayers
Seven is the sacred number of the Cherokee. The seven sacred directions are East, South, West, North, all above, all below, and where you now stand in the center. The seven sacred clans are the Deer, Wolf, Paint, Blue, Bird, Wild Potato, and Long Hair (or Twister). Each had an important responsibility within each village.

Wolf-Keepers of the wolf and War Chiefs, wore red,
Bird- Keepers of the birds; had hunting birds they were messengers.
Blue-Keepers of the blue medicine to keep the children well
Paint-Make red paint; used crystals; medicine men and women
Wild Potato (later Bear) - Farmers, made bread from wild potato
Deer-keepers of the deer; fast runners and hunters

I pulled out my Cherokee shield pin and will describe it to you. There is a yellow star shaped flower in the center then circle of blue with leaves etched in gold, then a circle of red within the words "Seal of the Cherokee Nation" in English and in Cherokee then an outer ring of green. In Ireland goddess tradition, three represented the Maiden, Mother and Crone and the other trio was Body, Mind and Spirit. You have chosen the two numbers most sacred to your heritage (I am of course assuming that there is some Cherokee in there somewhere). ~ Pam Tinker, Eastern band Cherokee nation (Wolf Clan), Irish & friend

deep powers: INNOCENCE

"Reminds me of the innocent play within children's hearts we escape from to become adults and lie to ourselves about who we are to 'make it' in this world!!" –Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Saturday, November 12, 2011

INDIAN AFFAIRS

Grandfather says by * Tashunka Witko * [HQ]

Grandfather says this: “In life there is sadness as well as joy, losing as well as winning, falling as well as standing, hunger as well as plenty, bad as well as good. I do not say this to make you despair, but to teach you…that life is a journey sometimes walked in light and sometimes in shadow.” Grandfather says this...


Native American activist Jay Winter Nightwolf

Many tribes owe the Sioux nation debts. It won't ease the extreme poverty, the cultural alienation of their young, or abate the alcoholism ravaging their nation. It won't wipe from anyone's memory, nor will their gang problem go away. But many tribes, thousands of white people seeking to bringing healing to themselves owe the Sioux nation a debt. Somehow despite the relentless campaigns of Americans, and the might of their armies, the duplicity of their missionaries, and the laws written to protect whites interests in land grabbing the Sioux somehow managed to preserve their traditions, and ceremonies. Their language stayed in tact, and despite the laws against us Native folk practicing our religion the Sioux nation surfaced in the 1960's sharing their’ medicines', their Sundance ceremony, the Pipe, and their story-power with the world. They allowed the nations, like the Piscataway whom the whites stripped of identity, and custom, to share the Lakota ways of the Sundance, and their Chanupa ceremonies, and blessed them allowing them to practice these ways.

Jay Winter Nightwolf & grandson Alex

Many people connect with the Indian ways because of this turn of events. Because white anthropologists (love 'em or hate 'em) recorded so much of Sioux life, and because the Sioux fought so hard against the Americans somewhere within the American thought-patterns poverty was allowed to crush this nation into the dirt. Their nobility is often sung about, and held high as an example of the noble Red Man, but the abject poverty, if you ever visit Pine Ridge, for example, will crush your good will. There are people like public radio personality, and activist, Jay Winter Nightwolf, Eastern Band Cherokee, Shoshone, who work to provide the Sioux nation with food, heat, and clothes every winter. It is colder than a witch’s tit in the Dakotas, and people starve and don’t make it through the winter. Many drive to the edge of town to buy liquor from a store a few dozen feet from the border with food money for their families!

There is an enormous cultural and spiritual debt to be paid the Sioux. But they need food, heat, education, housing like so many other nations. They need the treaty money the US government holds from them, and uses as they see fit. These are my words. I am Gregory E. Woods, “Dawn Wolf”, Keeper of Stories.

http://www.facebook.com/jwnightwolf


Native teaching from Indigenouz Fellowzhip