What We Can Do Can Be Done.

Balloon Ark created by my cousin, Marcia Liggett at First Church of God, for Amber's Amazing Balloons. Sept. 9, 2018, which is her daughter's business. Amber, a new college graduate in grad. school right now, has been in business since elementary school. It is a successful business. 

Parenting is an art. In today's climate it isn't acted out this way. With so much of American thought and practice as parents under duress one would logically believe it not possible given the wealth and advantages of this culture. For people whose ancestors are indigenous to this land, and from the Land of the Blacks there are ancient ways of being a parent, and a part of community that is foreign to European thought, belief and practice. This is important to fathom because the fact is white Americans have created chaos where they know order belongs. Why they do this instinctually requires deep study.

I mention this in the context of acknowledging my cousin Maria Liggett, and her husband, Lamont, who have retained and mastered an ancient way of raising and developing their children that outsizes the puny thought process common in American life that develops the lowest impulses within children from suicide to gang warfare and truancy. How a nation underserves its children is based on the belief systems held during the long periods of European life in their Dark Ages.

They raised their children in a white community on purpose in Western Pennsylvania, which is significant because the climate there is seeped in the self-destructive dynamics of racism, as a social construct. The two of them set their standards of expectation high, and humbly influenced a white town towards a higher awareness outside of, and away from the primitive outlines they feel special within as 'superiors'. Their two children had struggles within what is typical of white American resistance to the challenges to their assertions of superiority in terms of intelligence, capacity to learn and exceed. The two children started and developed business in elementary school that have grown. The boy, Rob, has a successful photography business. He is in high school. His sister, Amber's balloon business afforded her opportunities too numerous to mention in the small space of an article.

The point is one of excellence. It is not a target point of the majority. For those on this trajectory there is a special consideration: they will find a way to learn the secrets and the techniques of the best from the best of the best. The rest?

Well. . .


- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
 [September 8, 2018]