Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Deep Expressions


Powerful Portraits Spotlight Black and Brown Women of New York

painting of a Black woman's strength by Tim Okamura. He is a storyteller.


The Creator's Project 



Negro women


A Black American woman in a simple black long skirt peered with a tank top
and accessorized with a simple slim belt and sandals took
all my breath away save one which simply say, Damn!


Be Active to Change



Defining Culture
www.afropunk.com 


"This country's economic power was built & solidified through free labor and White supremacy. Every single Black person who has ever lived has encountered the residual fragments of this legacy. Every social, economic and political foundation in this country is based at least in part on the history of slavery. How are we supposed to shut the fuck up about it?" - NegusWhoRead (Nov. 30, 2016)




Charlize Theron was Esquire Magazine's Sexiest Woman of the Year choice for 2007.


"When Esquire named the sexiest woman in the world in 2007, they knew what they were up to. When they then decided to pay someone to take photos of her wearing nothing but an undershirt and a pair of panties, they must have had a stroke of genius. Showing off her fantastic figure in almost all of its glory, this image is definitely one that epitomizes everything that makes Charlize so sexy. Look at those glorious legs, that supple skin, her beautiful hair, and how striking the one eye we can make out is. This is the type of woman who served as the inspiration for the tales of yore. This is the type of woman men went to war for and woman wanted to be with. This is the type of woman that we knew we could no longer ignore and completely deserved to have a list like this one focused on her. Finally, that is the type of photo that absolutely demands to be placed in the top spot on a list like this one." ~ Matthew Thomas for Entertainment



Botswanan photographers capture the female form in nature ‘Women, Basadi’ photo series:



A Brilliant Mind Looks Into Marriage



Hedy Lamarr was married and divorced six times.


"Perhaps my problem in marriage — and it is the problem of many women--was to want both intimacy and independence. It is a difficult line to walk, yet both needs are important to a marriage."Hedy Lamarr, actress  and inventor (1913-2000)



Hedy Lamarr was an actress who was a contract star of MGM's "Golden Age."



"Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living.

They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." ~ Kurt Vonnegut




Tuesday, November 29, 2016

As a Woman,


Fetysz Dama
"The intellectual with implied sensuality has two forces to deal with: judgment and speculation."
- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories Nov. 29, 2016 




Spanish airline stewardess for Air Comet


Spanish airline Air Comet boasts some very beautiful (and very tough) flight attendants. But many of the women employed by Air Comet were understandably frustrated when they were owed up to nine months work by their grounded airline in 2010. So they took the natural next step- they made a nude calendar! All of the photos are of the female flight attendants posing provocatively in or outside of the aircraft. It was an act meant to draw attention to their plight, but instead it gained them worldwide notoriety. It remains unknown if in the end, their little plan worked out, but Air Comet is definitely no longer in business. anon


It needs to be said again. . .





Debra Gibson, composer & singer Nov. 19, 2012


"The classical soft distinction between exquisite and elegance never asks to be argued about. The two characteristics need only be held gently in awe as if the sunrise of morning is as important as the sunset in the evening." - Gregory E. Woods, (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories November 29, 2012 at 8:36am




Debra Gibson by Brian Kowald Photography
 
It needs to be said again, "Light changes the dark. Darkness shies from light and enlightenment expands the universe similar to the way choice changes life forces. The truth pushes lies into the dark and shadows we all have can become foes or allies. Death can become an ally. Ideals can be simplified by living the words, and truth can be embodied by anyone seeking their truths. Our authentic selves sought the way a child reaches against all odds for an unreachable toy on a table is the deepest commitment.  

It needs to be said again, "The power of Life and Death is in the tongue. It is not what goes into a man that defiles him, it is what comes out that defiles the man!"

When women like, Celeste Morgan, say, "There is an unnatural force feeding on fear and hate." we are in the times to reflect and not think like men of war, but feel what Women of the Womb have to say about Life and Death and the continuation of Life upon the Earth, our Mother. ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories November 13, 2015




Amorea Singleton Rocha, spiritual woman.


"You can't achieve everything you believe in if you sit back idly as time passes by"......Inner Revolution

 "We are powerful beyond our imagination.! If we knew we couldn't fail...what would we do?..." - Aubrey Buchanan March 12, 2013
 

Devotion to ART as theory




lovely woman by danial gowans (2013)


naked Black woman in heels



naked serenity of Jolee Blon' by Joe Hill (2012)



"Art of the naked body beyond lust into understanding the scope and depth of what it meant to create in the likeness of God is without peer in the mere observation of a woman's body. It is not the chance of a longing look at a naked woman reclining that evokes reverence. A man comes to a woman with reverence. That is the mere difference between brute and a Sacred Man." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.29.15


Elena in bed.



 

Monday, November 28, 2016

Don't Think, feel this!



African fashion - Ankara, kitenge, West African 
Horus' eye tattoo.





Alternative beauty of a woman isn't necessary a description depicting a vast difference. It is a requirement of the eye to see different. - Gregory E. Woods, (Dawn Wolf) Keeper of Stories 11.28.16


Glimpse into a History




Black women think differently about their bodies in large part because they know their influence over Western influence is the influence at deep levels. Whether others understand it is of little interest to the truth. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 10.24.16


Differences from Time to Time

Lisa Ann




vintage picture of a white woman with dark features
1920's 




petite woman's enticements 7
2010



Sunday, November 27, 2016

Betwix and Between


There is a cartoon I saw of a Black man saying his prayers over Thanksgiving dinner. The next day he is rushing through a store shopping with anger on Black Friday yelling at others, "Get outa my way!"

Hypocrisy? No. It is something else. Americans come across as a kind of caricature of some type of creature that can be pulled anyway at anytime and any shape can be made out of them. It is strange.

Black Friday?

Americans don't seem to have the maturity, or wealth of knowing to be embarrassed about their clownish behavior. Who marketed this idea was a genius. They studied the vapidness of the collective thought life, and realized there is a continual supply of reactionaries who will always be pulled in directions with little thought outside themselves. It is weird. But, Americans live in a strange type of shell unmindful of the ripple affects of action, and detached from the social and spiritual components that keep community and nation's current in the flow of need and supply.

Then the profound truth beneath this is the average citizen does not know the dark bloody history of what is now known as Thanksgiving Day. Roots of what ails the soul of this nation is in the origin story of this holiday and this nation's spiritual tides are not from the sacredness of the moon but the key elements of this story between the Pilgrims and the Pequot, the Wampanoag and the Narragansett nations, to name three.


Start from there to understand why the black days for First Nations peoples and those from Africa are red with blood and white people's wealth is from those horrors that shaped their gratitude from killing thousands of people to the appearance of benevolence.

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

November 27, 2016 



flag Red Black & Green

He, and we would be even more proud if there was substance behind the Red, Black & Green within the soul of Black Americans, and less showing up on the other side of the spectrum of economic development, and deep African spirituality, not opposed to being aligned with one's ancestors. The truth is we show up as regular consumers.

A flag. That Black liberation flag was meant for more substance than occasional appearances. Timidly, that symbol comes up, but really it has no power and is not acknowledged by any government. When such acknowledgement comes then that flag will make us proud. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories





People have asked me over the years why and how I work with young Black youth who are in the gang and street life? It is an easy answer because boys will rarely attack the spirit of a father they long for, or never had. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.27.16

Saturday, November 26, 2016

WHEN AMERICA WAS GREAT: Negro woman's story.


“We Are Literally Slaves”: An Early Twentieth-Century Black Nanny Sets the Record Straight

In folklore the black nursemaid was seen as a dutiful, self-sacrificing black woman who loved her white family and its children every bit as much as her own. Yet the popular images of the loyal, contented black nursemaid, or “mammy,” were unfortunately far from the reality for the Negro women who worked in these homes. In 1912 the Independent printed this quasi-autobiographical account of servant life, as related by an Negro domestic worker, which dispelled the comforting “mammy” myth.





I am a negro woman, and I was born and reared in the South. I am now past forty years of age and am the mother of three children. My husband died nearly fifteen years ago, after we had been married about five years. For more than thirty years—or since I was ten years old—I have been a servant in one capacity or another in white families in a thriving Southern city, which has at present a population of more than 50,000. In my early years I was at first what might be called a “house-girl, "or, better, a “house-boy.” I used to answer the doorbell, sweep the yard, go on errands and do odd jobs. Later on I became a chambermaid and performed the usual duties of such a servant in a home. Still later I was graduated into a cook, in which position I served at different times for nearly eight years in all. During the last ten years I have been a nurse. I have worked for only four different families during all these thirty years. But, belonging to the servant class, which is the majority class among my race at the South, and associating only with servants, I have been able to become intimately acquainted not only with the lives of hundreds of household servants, but also with the lives of their employers. I can, therefore, speak with authority on the so-called servant question; and what I say is said out of an experience which covers many years.


To begin with, then, I should say that more than two-thirds of the negroes of the town where I live are menial servants of one kind or another, and besides that more than two-thirds of the negro women here, whether married or single, are compelled to work for a living, — as nurses, cooks, washerwomen, chambermaids, seamstresses, hucksters, janitresses, and the like. I will say, also, that the condition of this vast host of poor colored people is just as bad as, if not worse than, it was during the days of slavery. Tho today we are enjoying nominal freedom, we are literally slaves. And, not to generalize, I will give you a sketch of the work I have to do—and I’m only one of many.


I frequently work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. I am compelled by my contract, which is oral only, to sleep in the house. I am allowed to go home to my own children, the oldest of whom is a girl of 18 years, only once in two weeks, every other Sunday afternoon—even then I’m not permitted to stay all night. I not only have to nurse a little white child, now eleven months old, but I have to act as playmate or “handy-andy,” not to say governess, to three other children in the home, the oldest of whom is only nine years of age. I wash and dress the baby two or three times each day, I give it its meals, mainly from a bottle; I have to put it to bed each night; and, in addition, I have to get up and attend to its every call between midnight and morning. If the baby falls to sleep during the day, as it has been trained to do every day about eleven o’clock, I am not permitted to rest. It’s “Mammy, do this, ”or "Mammy, do that,” or “Mammy, do the other,” from my mistress, all the time. So it is not strange to see “Mammy” watering the lawn in front with the garden hose, sweeping the sidewalk, mopping the porch and halls, dusting around the house, helping the cook, or darning stockings. Not only so, but I have to put the other three children to bed each night as well as the baby, and I have to wash them and dress them each morning. I don’t know what it is to go to church; I don’t know what it is to go to a lecture or entertainment or anything of the kind. I live a treadmill life; and I see my own children only when they happen to see me on the streets when I am out with the children, or when my children come to the “yard” to see me, which isn’t often, because my white folks don’t like to see their servants' children hanging around their premises. You might as well say that I’m on duty all the time—from sunrise to sunrise, every day in the week I am the slave, body and soul, of this family. And what do I get for this work—this lifetime bondage? The pitiful sum of ten dollars a month! And what am I expected to do with these ten dollars? With this money I’m expected to pay my house rent, which is four dollars per month, for a little house of two rooms, just big enough to turn round in; and I’m expected, also, to feed and clothe myself and three children. For two years my oldest child, it is true, has helped a little toward our support by taking in a little washing at home. She does the washing and ironing of two white families, with a total of five persons; one of these families pays her $1.00 per week, and the other 75 cents per week, and my daughter has to furnish her own soap and starch and wood For six months my youngest child, a girl about thirteen years old, has been nursing, and she receives $1.50 per week but has no night work. When I think of the low rate of wages we poor colored people receive, and when I hear so much said about our unreliability, our untrustworthiness, and even our vices, I recall the story of the private soldier in a certain army who, once upon a time, being upbraided by the commanding officer because the heels of his shoes were not polished, is said to have replied “Captain, do you expect all the virtues for $13 per month?”


Of course, nothing is being done to increase our wages, and the way things are going at present it would seem that nothing could be done to cause an increase of wages. We have no labor unions or organizations of any kind that could demand for us a uniform scale of wages for cooks, washerwomen, nurses, and the like; and, for another thing, if some negroes did here and there refuse to work for seven and eight and ten dollars a month, there would be hundreds of other negroes right on the spot ready to take their places and do the same work, or more, for the low wages that had been refused So that, the truth is, we have to work for little or nothing or become vagrants! And that, of course, in this State would mean that we would be arrested, tried, and despatched to the "State Farm,” where we would surely have to work for nothing or be beaten with many stripes!


Nor does this low rate of pay tend to make us efficient servants. The most that can be said of us negro household servants in the South—and I speak as one of them—is that we are to the extent of our ability willing and faithful slaves. We do not cook according to scientific principles because we do not know anything about scientific principles. Most of our cooking is done by guesswork or by memory. We cook well when our “hand” is in, as we say, and when anything about the dinner goes wrong, we simply say, “I lost my hand today!” We don’t know anything about scientific food for babies, nor anything about what science says must be done for infants at certain periods of their growth or when certain symptoms of disease appear, but somehow we “raise” more of the children than we kill, and, for the most part, they are lusty chaps—all of them. But the point is, we do not go to cooking-schools nor to nurse-training schools and so it can not be expected that we should make as efficient servants without such training as we should make were such training provided And yet with our cooking and nursing, such as it is, the white folks seem to be satisfied—perfectly satisfied. I sometimes wonder if this satisfaction is the outgrowth of the knowledge that more highly trained servants would be able to demand better pay!


Perhaps some might say, if the poor pay is the only thing about which we have to complain, then the slavery in which we daily toil and struggle is not so bad after all. But the poor pay isn’t all—not by any means! I remember very well the first and last place from which I was dismissed. I lost my place because I refused to let the madam’s husband kiss me. He must have been accustomed to undue familiarity with his servants, or else he took it as a matter of course, because without any love-making at all, soon after I was installed as cook, he walked up to me, threw his arms around me, and was in the act of kissing me, when I demanded to know what he meant, and shoved him away. I was young then, and newly married, and didn’t know then what has been a burden to my mind and heart ever since: that a colored woman’s virtue in this part of the country has no protection. I at once went home, and told my husband about it. When my husband went to the man who had insulted me, the man cursed him, and slapped him, and—had him arrested! The police judge fined my husband $25. I was present at the hearing, and testified on oath to the insult offered me. The white man, of course, denied the charge. The old judge looked up and said “This court will never take the word of a nigger against the word of a white man.”


Many and many a time since I have heard similar stories repeated again and again by my friends. I believe nearly all white men take, and expect to take, undue liberties with their colored female servants—not only the fathers, but in many cases the sons also. Those servants who rebel against such familiarity must either leave or expect a mighty hard time, if they stay. By comparison, those who tamely submit to these improper relations live in clover. They always have a little "spending change,” wear better clothes, and are able to get off from work at least once a week—and sometimes oftener. This moral debasement is not at all times unknown to the white women in these homes. I know of more than one colored woman who was openly importuned by white women to become the mistresses of their white husbands, on the ground that they, the white wives, were afraid that, if their husbands did not associate with colored women, they would certainly do so with outside white women, and the white wives, for reasons which ought to be perfectly obvious, preferred to have their husbands do wrong with colored women in order to keep their husbands straight! And again, I know at least fifty places in my small town where white men are positively raising two families—a white family in the "Big House” in front, and a colored family in a “Little House” in the backyard. In most cases, to be sure, the colored women involved are the cooks or chambermaids or seamstresses, but it cannot be true that their real connection with the white men of the families is unknown to the white women of the families. The results of this concubinage can be seen in all of our colored churches and in all of our colored public schools in the South, for in most of our churches and schools the majority of the young men and women and boys and girls are light-skinned mulattoes. The real, Simon-pure, blue-gum, thick-lip, coal black negro is passing away—certainly in the cities; and the fathers of the new generation of negroes are white men, while their mothers are unmarried colored women.


Another thing—it’s a small indignity, it may be, but an indignity just the same. No white person, not even the little children just learning to talk, no white person at the South ever thinks of addressing any negro man or woman as Mr., or Mrs., or Miss. The women are called, “Cook,” or “Nurse,” or “Mammy,” or “Mary Jane,” or “Lou,” or “Dilcey,” as the case might be, and the men are called “Bob,” or “Boy, "or “Old Man,” or “Uncle Bill,” or “Pate.” In many cases our white employers refer to us, and in our presence, too, as their “niggers.” No matter what they call us—no matter what they teach their children to call us—we must tamely submit, and answer when we are called; we must enter no protest; if we did object, we should be driven out without the least ceremony, and, in applying for work at other places, we should find it very hard to procure another situation. In almost every case, when our intending employers would be looking up our record, the information would be give by telephone or otherwise that we were “impudent,” "saucy,“ "dishonest, "and “generally unreliable.” In our town we have no such thing as an employment agency or intelligence bureau, and, therefore, when we want work, we have to get out on the street and go from place to place, always with hat in hand, hunting for it.


Another thing. Sometimes I have gone on the street cars or the railroad trains with the white children, and, so long as I was in charge of the children, I could sit anywhere I desired, front or back. If a white man happened to ask some other white man, “What is that nigger doing in here?” and was told, “Oh, she’s the nurse of those white children in front of her!” immediately there was the hush of peace. Everything was all right, so long as I was in the white man’s part of the street car or in the white man’s coach as a servant—a slave—but as soon as I did not present myself as a menial, and the relationship of master and servant was abolished by my not having the white children with me, I would be forthwith assigned to the “nigger” seats or the “colored people’s coach. "Then, too, any day in my city, and I understand that it is so in every town in the South, you can see some “great big black burly” negro coachman or carriage driver huddled up beside some aristocratic Southern white woman, and nothing is said about it, nothing is done about it, nobody resents the familiar contact. But let that same colored man take off his brass buttons and his high hat, and put on the plain livery of an average American citizen, and drive one block down any thoroughfare in any town in the South with that same white woman, as her equal or companion or friend, and he’d be shot on the spot!


You hear a good deal nowadays about the “service pan.” The “service pan” is the general term applied to “left-over” food, which in many a Southern home is freely placed at the disposal of the cook or, whether so placed or not, it is usually disposed of by the cook. In my town, I know, and I guess in many other towns also, every night when the cook starts for her home she takes with her a pan or a plate of cold victuals. The same thing is true on Sunday afternoons after dinner—and most cooks have nearly every Sunday afternoon off. Well, I’ll be frank with you, if it were not for the service pan, I don’t know what the majority of our Southern colored families would do. The service pan is the mainstay in many a home. Good cooks in the South receive on an average $8 per month. Porters, butlers, coachmen, janitors, “office boys” and the like receive on an average $16 per month. Few and far between are the colored men in the South who receive $1 or more per day. Some mechanics do; as for example, carpenters, brick masons, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, and the like. The vast majority of negroes in my town are serving in menial capacities in homes, stores and offices.


Now taking it for granted, for the sake of illustration, that the husband receives $16 per month and the wife $8. That would be $24 between the two. The chances are that they will have anywhere from five to thirteen children between them. Now, how far will $24 go toward housing and feeding and clothing ten or twelve persons for thirty days? And, I tell you, with all of us poor people the service pan is a great institution; it is a great help to us, as we wag along the weary way of life. And then most of the white folks expect their cooks to avail themselves of these perquisites; they allow it; they expect it. I do not deny that the cooks find opportunity to hide away at times, along with the cold “grub,”a little sugar, a little flour, a little meal, or a little piece of soap; but I indignantly deny that we are thieves. We don’t steal; we just “take” things—they are a part of the oral contract, exprest or implied. We understand it, and most of the white folks understand it. Others may denounce the service pan, and say that it is used only to support idle negroes, but many a time, when I was a cook, and had the responsibility of rearing my three children upon my lone shoulders, many a time I have had occasion to bless the Lord for the service pan!


I have already told you that my youngest girl was a nurse. With scores of other colored girls who are nurses, she can be seen almost any afternoon, when the weather is fair, rolling the baby carriage or lolling about on some one of the chief boulevards of our town. The very first week that she started out on her work she was insulted by a white man, and many times since has been improperly approached by other white men. It is a favorite practice of young white sports about town—and they are not always young, either—to stop some colored nurse, inquire the name of the “sweet little baby,” talk baby talk to the child, fondle it, kiss it, make love to it, etc., etc., and in nine of ten cases every such white man will wind up by making love to the colored nurse and seeking an appointment with her.


I confess that I believe it to be true that many of our colored girls are as eager as the white men are to encourage and maintain these improper relations; but where the girl is not willing, she has only herself to depend upon for protection. If their fathers, brothers or husbands seek to redress their wrongs, under our peculiar conditions, the guiltless negroes will be severely punished, if not killed, and the white blackleg will go scot-free!


Ah, we poor colored women wage earners in the South are fighting a terrible battle, and because of our weakness, our ignorance, our poverty, and our temptations we deserve the sympathies of mankind. Perhaps a million of us are introduced daily to the privacy of a million chambers thruout the South, and hold in our arms a million white children, thousands of whom, as infants, are suckled at our breasts—during my lifetime I myself have served as “wet nurse” to more than a dozen white children. On the one hand, we are assailed by white men, and on the other hand, we are assailed by black men, who should be our natural protectors; and, whether in the cook kitchen, at the washtub, over the sewing machine, behind the baby carriage, or at the ironing board, we are but little more than pack horses, beasts of burden, slaves!


In the distant future, it may be, centuries and centuries hence, a monument of brass or stone will be erected to the Old Black Mammies of the South, but what we need is present help, present sympathy, better wages, better hours, more protection, and a chance to breathe for once while alive as free women. If none others will help us, it would seem that the Southern white women themselves might do so in their own defense, because we are rearing their children—we feed them, we bathe them, we teach them to speak the English language, and in numberless instances we sleep with them—and it is inevitable that the lives of their children will in some measure be pure or impure according as they are affected by contact with their colored nurses.



Source: "More Slavery at the South," by a Negro Nurse, Independent, 25 January 1912, 196–200.



Friday, November 25, 2016

Hell NO!


Should Drug Money Seized By The Gov’t Be Used To Pay For Trump’s Wall?



No. The wall should come down and not go up. We should not pay the cost of what is due to come back to white American's view of the world south of the border. Must we languish in the mess created by the assumptions of whites those many decades ago? The inability to build community and a propensity for violence, and foreign policies geared to taking over have exhausted their stay in the background of the government process we pretend is patriotism.

My answer is no for all the questions looking for defense against the indefensible. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.25.16



Proud



Tibetan man  


Native woman with her fan.



mature exquisite beauty of Hana Morgan, a Maori elder

Native woman, Laura Grizzlypaws, wearing Bear at Kamloopa Powwow 2013



After Thought, After Turkey Day




The day after Thanksgiving, I am looking at a somber photograph of an American soldier's casket carried by soldiers in uniform to his resting place. The flag draped over the casket symbolic of service rendered to the nation is an honor each in attendance feels in their bones. Each man is solemn, alone in his thoughts, together in their task honoring a fallen comrade with his casket interlocking their emotions. It doesn't matter how he died that hurts. It is that he died the way he did, and being young enough to believe in the conflict he died for is its own reward, and demise as war thickens understanding of one's nation's true spirit for a soldier under fire, and the indoctrination of governmental policies that sacrificed another man's life for a cause masked as patriotic!

In battle life changes. Intent becomes clear. Government policy becomes what it is, a reflection of a culture's sense of self in relation to others. Seeing the futility of the propaganda of how a soldier got there and why it was important to be ignorant enough to be molded into a combat solider for the sake of freedom is a bitter taste in the mouth when intelligence reaches the soul. On the sidelines white American citizens are rallying around at ball games and state functions making heartfelt cries from their hearts. Their fists are clinched around flags clamoring for attention above reason fervently believing in their insistence that the American way is the way of God!

In that doctrine lie their children-soldiers dead, dying or crippled for life in their uniforms on a foreign battlefield in a part of the world their Christian religious texts say was the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of Adam and Eve from the Hebrew creation story many whites believe is theirs. On the ground one can easily speculate, or listen carefully when the boys come home as men what they say about what settles hard within their guts about the American propensity for conquest by any twist of logic!

I have listened. It is heartbreaking.


Anyway. Back to my first illustration the caption of the photograph I was painfully studying with a father's eye teared by the boy's loss to his family, and the ideal he thought he died for read:

"This is why we stand up for the American flag." type Respect.

I gagged. My response was thus:


"This is why we stand up for the American flag." Respect? I am not a white man. That fact alone separates me from the vagueness, the assumptions of such a declaration, and the untenable affirmation following. The implication of the declarative, and the association of the American flag a person is to assume is a declaration that we as American citizens have the military right to forge ahead on any cause without rebuttal, or consequences is supposed to be patriotism, allegiance to the American way of life? It is all wrapped in the flag with conflicting interpretations, and means different things to people other than white Americans. 

If I were to put a word down, and I will, it would be recondite.


Respect?  

Respect is something earned, not assumed or qualified by some virtue that doesn't understand the difference domination molds into a conquered nation. There are changes in people's spirit stuck outside of human decency between taking and casting into oblivion ideals of purpose, commonality, right to life, and respect for life that changes conquering people from being respected to being feared. Terrorism is a technique employed during military aggressions in defense of nation, and the invasion of nations. If one doesn't understand the people defending themselves against aggressive forces as relatives how much respect does the invading force believe they deserve? What they do get is fear based, and that isn't fear. That is a cloak of deception with a plan to retaliate.

"This is why we stand up for the American flag." Respect? I am not a white man. That fact alone separates me from the vagueness of such a declaration because what they are doing to the Arab world they did to my Red and African ancestors. I am a grandson remembering my grandparent's stories of recovery.

The association of the American flag with irreconcilable differences in a person whose people were marked for extermination on one side of the family, and for eternal slavery on the other side of my family made the eight year old me go to my mother and tell her I had no intention of ever saluting the flag again! She smiled down at me and said, "That's OK, Gregory. I was 8 years old, too when I stopped saying the pledge!"  


Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
November 25, 2016



First Nations horse packers in the 1890’s working for Hudson Bay Co. as trappers, cooks, packers, guides, postal carriers. They were Stólo, Nlaka pamux, and Similkameen



former slaves at reunion in DC met Cosmopolitan Baptist Church, 921 N St. NW  Lewis Martin, age 100, Martha Elizabeth Banks, age 104, Amy Ware, age 103. The man on the far right is Rev. Simon P. Drew, he was born free.


French fighter jets dropped bombs on a Syrian hospital.
This baby was killed also. (June 2016)

flag embracing a concept.


GREAT AMERICAN PASTIME






The American flag does not mean to Indians & other ethnic groups what it means to white Americans, who cannot see beyond being conquerors & the alpha predator. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 5.12.16



This nigger voted! Make America Great Again!



FROM PYLMOUTH ROCK to STANDING ROCK: an observation.



If the focus went off the NDN's and focused on the path of the water and how the oil spills to come will affect white communities the outrage of the country will boil. Nothing in this country is a crisis until white people fall victim to something! A crisis in Indian Country, in the Black community, or the farming crisis of Brown and Black farmers are not thrust into the scrutiny of the American population until it creeps in white consciousness by some social force that the major news outlets can sniff out a profit-in-motion.  

That is the way it is here. Indian lives are still under the estimation of value from the Pilgrims' time of bloodletting and taking away from us. Indian people are a conquered people and treated thus until white folk submit to transformation.


- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
November 25, 2016


Thursday, November 24, 2016

Do whites support black businesses like we support theirs?



Hello, I hope you're doing well. 
 
As Black Friday approaches, we'd like to remind you of the importance of supporting black owned businesses.  The truth is that no one else buys from African American companies, so when black people abandon them too, they have nothing to support the families of their employees. 
 
This economic imbalance and unfair trading habit has cost us trillions and it's only going to stop when we decide to put it to an end.  When you shop over the holidays, please take the time to support black-owned companies and let's not be so determined to give all of our wealth away. 
 
If you'd like to know what we're offering during the Black Friday Holiday, it's The Black Friday Bundle Pack, consisting of a long list of films and other products from black directors and producers that will entertain and enlighten your family over the Christmas holidays. 
 
The bundle's price has been dropped by over 35% for this week only.  The sale ends in 48 hours. 
 
You can take advantage of this offer by visiting this link. 
 
Please take care and have a wonderful weekend, and remember the importance of buying black, wherever you go.  Our businesses are counting on it. 
 
Sincerely,
 
Dr Boyce Watkins



To Men: a question.






"What man is ready to lose his own soul for a woman unprepared to restore, and give life in the ways of old when the sacredness of the punany was revered, and the Old Wise Women were teaching the young women the sacred ways?" - Gregory E. Woods, Sirmiq Aattuq Wisdom Keeper

THANKSGIVING DAY: day of gratitude



First Nations horse packers in the 1890’s working for Hudson Bay Co. as trappers, cooks, packers, guides, postal carriers. They were Stólo, Nlaka'pamux, and Similkameen.


Making a point. photo by blackeyeimagez.com 


“Thanksgiving’ did not begin as a great loving relationship between the pilgrims and the Wampanoag, Pequot and Narragansett people.

In fact, in October of 1621 when the pilgrim survivors of their first winter in Turtle Island sat down to share the first unofficial ‘Thanksgiving’ meal, the Indians who were there were not even invited!  There was no turkey, squash, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie.  A few days before this alleged feast took place, a company of ‘pilgrims’ led by Miles Standish actively sought the head of a local Indian chief, and an 11 foot high wall was erected around the entire Plymouth settlement for the very purpose of keeping Indians out!”

It is much more likely that Chief Massasoit either crashed the party, or brought enough men to ensure that he was not kidnapped or harmed by the Pilgrims. Dr. Tingba Apidta, in his “Black Folks’ Guide to Understanding Thanksgiving [6],” surmises that the settlers “brandished their weaponry” early and got drunk soon thereafter. He notes “each Pilgrim drank at least a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to water. This daily inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to comment on his people’s ‘notorious sin,’ which included their ‘drunkenness and uncleanliness’ and rampant ‘sodomy.’”

Soon after the feast the brutish Miles Standish “got his bloody prize,” Dr. Apidta writes:

“He went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to Gary B. Nash, ‘as a symbol of white power.’ Standish had the Indian man’s young brother hanged from the rafters for good measure. From that time on, the whites were known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name ‘Wotowquenange,’ which in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers.”

What is certain is that the first feast was not called a “Thanksgiving” at the time; no further integrated dining occasions were scheduled; and the first, official all-Pilgrim “Thanksgiving” had to wait until 1637, when the whites of New England celebrated the massacre of the Wampanoag’s southern neighbors, the Pequots.

The real Thanksgiving Day Massacre

The Pequots today own the Foxwood Casino and Hotel, in Ledyard, Connecticut, with gross gaming revenues of over $9 billion in 2000. This is truly a (very belated) miracle, since the real first Pilgrim Thanksgiving was intended as the Pequot’s epitaph. Sixteen years after the problematical Plymouth feast, the English tried mightily to erase the Pequots from the face of the Earth, and thanked God for the blessing.

Having subdued, intimidated or made mercenaries of most of the tribes of Massachusetts, the English turned their growing force southward, toward the rich Connecticut valley, the Pequot’s sphere of influence. At the point where the Mystic River meets the sea, the combined force of English and allied Indians bypassed the Pequot fort to attack and set ablaze a town full of women, children and old people.

William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre of 1637:

“Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire…horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”

The rest of the white folks thought so, too. “This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots,” read Governor John Winthrop’s proclamation. The authentic Thanksgiving Day was born.
Most historians believe about 700 Pequots were slaughtered at Mystic. Many prisoners were executed, and surviving women and children sold into slavery in the West Indies.

Pequot prisoners that escaped execution were parceled out to Indian tribes allied with the English. The Pequot were thought to have been extinguished as a people. According to IndyMedia [8], “The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot ‘War’ killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe.”

But there were still too many Indians around to suit the whites of New England, who bided their time while their own numbers increased to critical, murderous mass...


excerpt from a very in-depth article written by Glen Ford in the Black Agenda Report