Subtle, but forceful.

Louise Griffiths, an English actress who works a lot out of Hollywood is

here attending the 2nd Annual Golden Globes in an simple,

but forceful compliment to her figure.

Korean sophistication in this floral lace mock neck ribbed tee

lends an air to the popular perception of Korean women.

Taraji P. Henson pose.

It is good to ponder. . .

Korean model, Hwang Ji Young captured by Anamboy.

"A wife who cannot cook cannot cook. At some point how will a wife feed her husband,

or he serve her from the subtle basis of his role?" - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 5.17.17

A woman in the kitchen has deep meanings if she knows.

~ Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories

Korean model, Bang Eun Young

“Size and elaboration were often mistaken for importance.”
― Stephen L. Carter, Back Channel

A BLACK LIFE THAT DIDN'T MATTER

A tale untold and not known by many. American Aborigine, 15 year old Latasha was shot in the head by a Korean store owner who thought she was stealing. After killing her she found the money in her hand. She served no prison time... Tupac used to speak about this :( "Cuz here on earth, tell me what's a black life worth, a bottle of juice is no excuse. The truth hurts" -2pac R.I.P. Latasha Harlins.

FROM A DISTANCE: Thoughts from Women

DAMN !!!!

Delicate Asian woman's beauty simply expressed in this flattering cut out Khaki dress against the eyes, the position of the hands. Her delicateness is a soft touch. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 5.13.17

"Soft delicate women can recondition a man's harsh disposition for a time, but that is unnecessary work. Women should simply prepare for the mate." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Sophisticated Black woman in green off shoulder frill sleeves midi dress makes pause thought and speculation in ways white women cannot. It's something ain't it the way ladyship beckons the soul. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 5.13.17

Sunrise Sunset

Korean beauty 8

Gabrielle Union 2

Gabrielle Union is in the divine order of things !!!!

PLAY ANYWHERE

Seesaw, Korea - Photograph by W. Robert Moore, National Geographic

This picture is up for me, and me only. I need to stare into it imagining what it sounds like, what it feels like for those children playing together. What was their yesterday? What was the culture like and so on because the riff created by Koreans in the United States is a deep chasm between them and Black Americans. Koreans and Black Americans are polarized by the racial cue cards white Americans handed us. Koreans and Blacks read from it and it informs each succeeding generation.

Reconciliation, for me, is an individual task built person to person as the number of Koreans I interact with, admire and get to know grows. Slowly I've begun a thinking process that, at some point, has to melt down to the children's level of play. It is how I came to develop better relationships with white folks. I altered my perceptions deliberately and created rituals to facilitate the process. It worked but it took at least 2 decades before whites became my relative, and I am only four years into this process with the Koreans! © Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories  1.9.13

fine lines

Excellent Girl
June 19, 2013

I've learned Koreans have major problems with Africans, and with women. Over the last five years I've been in a growing relationship with a Korean church committed to being in service to the communities surrounding their world. It is an impressive leap for Koreans to make from their world, and their view of African peoples to develop a practical use of the teachings of Jesus, a Black African man, to coincide with their Christianity as they learn how to be in relationship with the Black youth at our center. I respect that. It is an act of power. 

Me? I've long  had problems with Koreans, and Korean-Americans. Traditionally, I do not do business with them unless it cannot be helped because they exude contempt as much as the Chinese do towards African-Americans. But, a time came I could no longer stomach my attitude, and sought ways to reconcile with a people who lived across a gap I could not cross. When the opportunity to cross that bridge presented itself I jumped into the situation, and understanding grew within me over the simplest of things we share every year we meet: food, play, sharing, and camping. 

Now I am in a position. I have a young Korean-American man whose misunderstandings about Black Americans, and his internal dismal of women from his mind are coming to the forefront of his awareness. He is supervising a small work crew of four, and they are not happy with his projections into their understanding! I don't think the young man is malicious. He is learning new things. I have a lot of respect for his ability and courage to step into unfamiliar terrain, and his teachable spirit, and the willingness, and ability of the young teens to reciprocate. 

These young interns are Black, and being primed for college, or whatever high achievement they need to make of their lives. This work crew is a stepping stone for them. I am mentoring these young people, and as can happen under my watch people can get very comfortable, and feeling safe say inappropriate things. I am responsible for the space I create. I expect people's truth to come out in that space. In this case I am in need of counsel on how to facilitate the misunderstanding between the young young man, and the crew of four.

I am not a light weight when it comes to crossing thresholds of pain. It is part of my Medicine. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 7.16.13

Yasmine Richard, FUSE host

Yasmine Richard is the host of TRENDING 10, a video show on FUSE
that focus on the youth culture through music, their music.

MESSIAH

OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF DEATH

Someday I too will die too. When we are young we do not think too much about death. But as we get older, we worry more and more about death. This is because it is a door that are inevitably destined to cross. But what happens to us after death? Do you know why I'm talking about death? To better teach the meaning of life. Who truly understands the value of life? There 

are people who cling to life by all means. The person who really knows life is one that goes into the valley of death. Is the person giving testimony of the sense of life desperately crying out to Heaven at the crossroads of life and death. Why do people fear death? Because they do not know the purpose for which they were born. If you do not know why you are born, will not know the reason for the death. For this reason, the first questions that philosophers do is: what is life? Why are we born? 

If we think about it deeply, we will realize that death makes us reborn within the love of God. In the world people lamented, "Oh no, I'm dying!, What I can do?" in the midst of a major scandal. Does God laughs when we die? Or think God laments also sunk with grief? The truth is that he is happy, and this is because the time of death of the physical body is when we experience the joy of abandoning a finite dimension of love to get into an infinite dimension of love. It is time for our second birth. So when God feels happier, the day we are born in the physical world or the day that we left off? That's the moment we are born for the second time in a dimension where love expands infinitely. We become His new children through death. Therefore, God is happy with our second birth. I say all this because they need to know they can not have a relationship with God unless we overcome the fear of death.

Sun Myung Moon, the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humanity

Korean Girl Guitar Funk Jam

KOREAN BEAUTY

Korean actress Eon-jeong Lee, That Girl by The Sartorialist

GODDESS IN THE FORM OF. . .

"Perceive the Goddess rising from the Earth and her medicines?"

-from Dawn Wolf's medicine

classic beauty of Celine

classic beauty of Keeani's asian beauty 11

"Here is a story from the times before living spirits leave the open spaces of space and vastness to enter the small dark waters of their mother's wombs..." -from Dawn Wolf's medicine

SVETLANA KIM, author

Svetlana Kim
I am a third generation of Soviet-Korean born and raised in the former Soviet Union. http://www.svetlanakim.com/

Author of “White Pearl and I”
2009 Indie Excellence National Book Award; Speaker,&Community Activist.

2010 Global Citizen Award,
VP of the Board of Directors of Asian Division Friends Society, the Library of Congress; East Coast President of NCAABA.

KOREAN CREATION MYTH by James A. Crites

The English word "myth" comes from the Greek word "mythos" which means word or story. Humans have used myths to describe or explain things that they couldn't have comprehended otherwise. Questions like: why do the seasons change?, where did the first human beings come from? or why does the sun travel across the sky?. Myths served as the basis for rituals by which the ways of humanity and those of nature could be psychologically reconciled. Myths are an important part of every society, including our own. Without at least a basic understanding of a cultures myths it's impossible to fully understand that culture because myths express a societies beliefs and justify it's institutions, customs and values.


In this paper I am going to present the Korean Myth of "Dan-Gun, First King of Korea" and see how this myth may have answered some of the questions that early Koreans may have had.


There was once a Heavenly Prince who asked his father, the Heavenly King, to give him the beautiful peninsula of Korea to govern. The King granted his wish and he went down to Korea with three Heavenly seals and 3000 followers. He landed in Korea under a now sacred sandalwood tree. Here he established a sacred city with three ministers to carry out his orders. The ministers were (in English) : Earl Wind, Chancellor Rain and Chancellor Cloud. These ministers were in charge of about three hundred and sixty officials who controlled things like grain, life, sickness and the determination of good and evil.


A bear and a tiger who shared a cave near the sacred sandalwood tree wanted very much to become human beings. Everyday they prayed so earnestly before the tree that the Heavenly Prince decided to give them a chance to become human. The Heavenly Prince gave the bear and the tiger a bundle of mugwort and twenty bulbs of garlic and told them that if they ate only these and stayed in the cave for one hundred days that they would become human.


So the bear and the tiger took the garlic and the mugwort and went into the cave. After a short time the tiger ran away because it could not stand the long days of sitting the cave and eating only garlic and mugwort, but the bear endured the boredom and the hunger, and after only twenty one days the bear was transformed into a beautiful woman.


The woman was overjoyed, visiting the sandalwood tree again and again she prayed that she may have a child. She became Queen before long and soon gave birth to Dan-Gun the Sandalwood King. Dan-Gun later reigned as the first human King of Korea.


When he became King he moved the capital to pyongyang and named the country Zoson (Choson), Land of Morning Calm. Later he moved the capital to Mt. Asadal(Mt. Guwol in Huang-He province) where there is now a shrine called Samsong (the Shrine of the Three Saints) dedicated to the Heavenly King, the Heavenly Prince and Don-Gun. It is said that when Dan-Gun abdicated his throne to the next king that he became a San-sin (Mountain God).


In the beginning of the myth the Heavenly Prince asks his father for the "beautiful" peninsula of Korea. To me this seems like something that would make Koreans proud to be here because being a Heavenly Prince he obviously could have picked any land in the world to govern and rather than pick any other place in the world, the prince chose Korea. This makes Korea a special place from the beginning of the myth. The three ministers he brought with him had the names of Rain, Cloud and Wind. To me this would give the people a way to account for some of the meteorological activity that occurs on a daily basis. The approximately three hundred and sixty officials that worked for them were in charge of grain, life, sickness and the determination of good and evil among other things. These seem to be the basic concerns in life, the things that you need to get a society started. Life, for the creatures that will inhabit the peninsula. Grain along with Chancellor Rain, to provide food for those creatures. Sickness is possibly regulated by the officials so that it would not get out of control and also to give the early people someone to blame or vent their frustrations against when a loved one became ill. The officials in charge of the determination of good and evil might possibly be credited with the moral standard that these people would live by.


Later in the myth the bear and the tiger prayed so hard and long to become human that eventually the Heavenly Prince gave them a chance to do so. This seems to me to reenforce the belief that if you are reverent and pray to your deity that your prayers may come true. I mean HEY!,... if it worked for a bear and a tiger.........After a short time in the cave the tiger ran away and thus was not allowed to become human. The bear on the other hand was transformed into a beautiful woman after only twenty one days. The simple lesson to this part of the myth is that perseverance, patience and sacrifice (only eating garlic and mugwort!!) are rewarded while impatience is not. Also the fact that these two animals wanted to become human in the first place communicates to me that it is better to be human than an animal, for example a bear or a tiger.


When the bear turned into a woman she was soon asking that she may have a baby. I think that this motherly instinct shows just how ultimately human that she had become because she was now feeling the same need for a child that most all women feel. Her son, Dan-Gun, is ultimately crowned the first human King of Korea. This in a sense gives to Korea their "George Washington" of rulers.


To conclude this myth interpretation, it is said that when Dan-Gun passed on his throne to the next King he became what is known in Korea as a San-Sin or Mountain God which is interesting because many religious rites are still performed today to Mountain Gods.


This short myth answered many question for early and possibly some present day Koreans: The founding of Korea, the origins of wind, rain and clouds; The regulators of grain, life, sickness, good and evil; The benefits of prayer, perseverance, patience and sacrifice; The negative outcome of impatience; The origin of the first human King. Quite a bit of information for such a short myth!



BIBLIOGRAPHY
David Adams Leeming, The world of myth, New York, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1990, p. 3 Ibid., p. 4 Richard Cavendish, Mythology an Illustrated Encyclopedia, New York, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1980, p. 11 Zong In-Sob, Folk Tales From Korea, Seoul, Hollym Corporation: Publishers, 1970, p. 3-4 Sheila Savill, Pears Encyclopaedia of Myths and Legends, The Orient, London, 1977, p. 191