American ME.

Photographer Vern Jensen captured Aliya Mathiesen 

at Pasadena City Hall, March 2016, rejoicing!

"… White American youth are enjoying their illusion of freedom, and their vindication from past misdeeds done by their people. As recently as the other month, when a young Black man was found hung in a trailer park in Virginia, yesterday became today. The lynchings have not stopped, and the cultural vibe of white people's right to take life to get other people's stuff is as vibrant and enforced as ever before. Their defensive structures are stronger under Trump's administration, and whether liberal, or conservative, the benefits extend to both kind of white people. 

It is an old story. It is the fabric of American life. What Black folks can do is the same, and slightly different from what the Red Nations need to do to do more than survive. The other ethnic groups know how to protect their individuality, their culture's dignity, and we all have access to how we gave up so much to recover from the ravages of white conquest, and not lose more in modern times. 

What did our ancestors have that we need today? 

That is all." 

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 

Feb. 01, 2019

Aunt Betty. She was the slave of Mr. Walker, at Faunsdale, and was the cook for Rev. Mr. Harrison, Rector of St. Michael’s. The picture, taken in Aunt Betty’s home, shows a typical cabin... - Joan Johnson 

the Hope to Break free!!

Black Woman in blue by Ike Slimster

There is a lot of space to be filled with the stories about the essence and the survival of Black African daughters, who have come from a dark past in relation to Europeans. But, there are the centuries before our Dark Centuries with the whites, we do not talk about because we only think of ourselves in terms of enslavement. This dark space in our souls is our history connecting us to Europe after we opened the world-at-large to them. There is no Europe or America without the Blacks from the Land of the Blacks!. . . ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories [August 8, 2018]

Ode to a Paradigm.

The wild sense of being independent, aloof, and 'on my own' became part of the mystique carried by each generation of youth, in the States. It portrayed a yearn incapable of fulfilling itself; yet it was fashionable. . . It is captured in this photograph! - Alowan Chantey Inyan Wichasha, 10/01/18 

Honor Water, Honoring Life.

Water embraces all of Life. White men not understanding this come from within their bowels, as if it is their right to disregard the waters of their mother's wombs as property! Therein lies the debate, and the future. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 

See Within.

Mystique of angst, or separatism, or being alone with one's thoughts is its own introduction to growing, to maturing. The advent of cell phones and gadgets capable of pulling consciousness into vacuous spheres has widened the gulf between conscious awakening and deliberate retreat into unawareness. In youth, this trend is a dangerous form of suicide and/or retreat into insanity in the cultural context of American society. - Gregory E Woods, Keeper of Stories 7/25/18 

The cats purr...

A Penetration

10 perfectly built women. 

Elegant older women have a cause to their sensual overtones that can lean towards restoration. It has a lot to do with maturity developed over time undoing the actions of ignorant youth! Pitifully, aging becomes terrifying in Euro-America for unfortunate and unnatural reasons. Youth is ignorant. In the U.S., the culture operates under the belief the individual can dispel the myth of aging and can somehow defeat it and death. I understand the history of European thought and culture. I am not enough to shift consciousness in a materialistic and misogynist culture. I can only contribute to the awakening. There needs to be a shift in consciousness in the States and a dying to the assumptions of superiority. Without various types of dying and deaths will occur until only our inventions and immorality will be remembered and heralded!

All of these elements should point the collective and the individual towards the children and the unborn. It won't because of the rudiments of Western theology and ideology.


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
August 8, 2018

WORK in the FUTURE

25 Dying Professions You Should Avoid

By Dave Copeland on August 8, 2018

John Pugliano, author of “The Robots are Coming: A Human's Survival Guide to Profiting in the Age of Automation,” sees plenty of white collar jobs that will be threatened by automation.

"Bottom line, any routine job that can easily be defined by a mathematical or logic equation will be at risk," Pugliano said. "Opportunity will be [there] for those that can create new produces/services or solve/fix unexpected problems." 

So your accountant may not have a job in the future, but plastic surgeons and emergency room doctors should do well. And plumbers, Pugliano said, will always have work.

Pugliano and other experts contacted by Work + Money offered professions to avoid (not because they will completely disappear, but because the job market will likely be in a state of decline) while also providing alternatives where skills utilized in those dying professions can be applied for a more secure employment future.

Start HERE

IN Tommorrow, Now.

Angaangaq in front of the tomb of John Paul II who opened the way to reconciliation between the Catholic Church and indigenous peoples worldwide. May 1, 2018. photo by Adelgunde Müller 

Angaangaq met him personally in 1979.

In the years I have been a Sirmiq Aattuq Wisdom Keeper, it has not been lost on me the resistance of Americans to evolve beyond the diametric perceptions of race based philosophies and lifestyles between Blacks and whites, and whites and the other peoples of the world. The Trump administration expresses this determination. Whether it is self-destructive, or not is of no concern to those people, and their president, who is loyal to these ideals, and faithful to what does not serve the common good, doesn't give a hot damn about consequences. He is very much the white American man.

The end of that is nigh. How will you, we and I prepare for this eventuality? 


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 
Alowan Chanteh Inyan Wichasha
9/23/18

Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq March 2018 in Cologne Tajet Garden. 

Melting the ice in the heart of men.

SEAGULLS Belong...

Seagull by the Turkish photographer, Safak Yavuz. (2017).

Seagull problem.

Long after we are gone off the face of the Earth, if that happens, a modicum of Life will remain. Among the remnants will be seagulls, rats, crows and vultures. They will help build life anew with restorative powers. Let's awaken from within before then. . . - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9/28/18

Not Seen by Choice.

"Vulnerable shielded soul of a woman tells deep into the consciousness of a people what ails them. . . " 

- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 

Grieve in Water

IS LUMBEE LOVE DEAD? 

When she is sick and dying, who last shall, vigil keep beside her lonely, lovely waters if not we, those indigenous to the waters of the ole Lumbee fail to protect her in the present? Will we stand up and safeguard her beauty as only we see it or do we discard her as a mere swamp, remiss of our duties owed to her bounty? 

by jojo brooks shifflet, Lumbee nation 




The grief in water doesn't leave us, not in this culture we live living, as if we are distant from cause and effect. The average person does not pay attention, or heed the warnings of scientists, or the obvious evidence on a walk along a stream in a forest, or a park's pool. Women are not respected at the significant levels their creation orders the world's original structures. American, or more specifically, European historic practices have not respected this state of being. This continued practice embedded in thought life and practice does not care for water in a sacred way.

Protesting companies fouling up our waters is different from care for water as a sacred responsibility with prayers, the words and songs of power delivered from the womb daily! This passes as social responsibility, but the custom of separating Life into parts indifferent from each other cannot see the whole when profit is the gauge measuring 'progress'. Measuring is destined to devalue one to gain the other, so water like Earth are in danger of irreversible poisoning. A population dismissive of sacred things, and sacred responsibilities is incapable of exercising compromise, or changing self to save a planet, or grasp how the elements live within our "who we are"!

In layman's terms, we are in a 'clusterfuck'! In respectable verbiage we are in a pickle! In reality, we are killing our grandchildren to feed our children! This is the spirit of a mentality resistant to change, reform and being human.


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
Feb. 9, 2018

Water Carrier.

Sacred Art Work by Le Ah Tiamat titled, Sky Qwake

A history of Times Past.

Jane Birkin was loved by those wishing to be decadent, revered for her lines by artists, and studied for who she discovered within herself in an era seeking to better in their souls! - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 4/1/18

Astrid Kallsen by Todd M. Heilman, a study of contradiction.

This is a good place to comment about a gross contradiction. Khrushchev, in the 1950's, predicted the fall of the United States from within, without a shot fired. At the time it was dimly understood. By the unfolding of the 1990's it was clearer. Today, in the near the end of the second decade of the 21st century it is glaringly obvious. Clarity does not have the talent for changing dire predictions in a people, who think they are the greatest thing in history believing God made them the best country in history!

So, the question is: what do we do in the light of inevitability? Prepare for shit to happen. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/01/18

Jane Birkin was loved by those just out of reach of something special within themselves. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 4/1/18

Girls Just Wanna Talk!

Hilda by Duane Bryers. on the phone.

In the decades preceding now parents complained about girls, their daughters, on the phone constantly talking to their girlfriends. A lot of movies had that theme in their favor. It was such a concern, and disciplines were enforced because parents had to ensure their children's futures, and without discipline or focus they could not go far enough in life to have a good one.

Times are different in respect to the development of the phone over the last 100 years, but not in the sense that would give a recipient of Life today a feel of being better than our yesterday! The difference is simple: parents have given their children into what they do not understand. A whole chapter is being written about how disconnected from the source of Life parents have allowed their children to be led away by a technology unaccompanied by maturation of the emotions, the spirit. For that we will pay dearly. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3/7/18

the Alphas

What a complex subject.

I think Americans believe in war, and resist  the inevitability of consequences with stoic determination. The price of war is the cost of freedom in the vernacular of a mentality that believes constant conquest is business linked to the right of killing and dominating in God's name. I know what 'freedom' means to white Americans. It is different for those conquered. For us freedom is none of the sayings thrown about. The contradictions are glaringly obvious, but speaking against those contradictions falls on deaf years and is heard as heresy, or worse anti-American!...

Peace will never settle here in the U.S.. It is too foreign a concept for a nation, a people used to killing and fighting others... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2/8/18

Terror is the things we fear, the things we know lurk in the dark.

"Should homeless vets receive government housing before refugees?" is like a Tet offensive thrown into the face of the lives of people in deep need. 

It is not a fair question. It is more of a challenge engineered to stir up two divisive elements: burning resentment towards one, and the spirit of dictatorial patriotism in another! The history behind the two are from different dark places in the belief structure of this country! The two have to be studied closely by citizens instead of citizens leaping on angry band wagons to fight each other! The attitudes governing the government's policies upon examination are shameful!

There is a lot of responsibility being a global citizen, and an American citizen. The two are one! None of us can afford to wade into complex issues with glibness and allegiance to being ignorant of what the rest of the world already understands!

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

"and the complexity of the above mention issues requires serious long range grasp of more than one, or two issues!"

flag & the Black woman is a study unto itself.

www.ShadesGifts.com

"I am American as far as my thinking about what patriotism means in the context of being African and American. I am not white and the flag therefore signifies the cross of the Klan, and the killing of my people." this woman seems to be saying without saying! She is telling it like it is! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 9/5/17