Can We Defend the Indefensible?

"Ignorance is a gravitational stronghold that will always keep you grounded." - Dr. Sinclair Grey III

This Black woman has the strength of character I associate with Black women.
Lioness Daiba Sala
 nov. 26, 2013

walking away - Fabiola 

Blessed Because You're An OvercomerRev. Dr. Sinclair Grey III

Always encourage yourself. No matter how the situation appears or what you feel like, never allow discouragement to have the final word. You're too blessed to not walk in your victory. You'll face trials and obstacles, but you have the power to overcome. Remember, you're a child of God. 
The apostle Paul declared, "I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength." Please don't miss this. Don't depend on others to lift you up because God has given you the power and anointing to do it for yourself.

Sinclair, it is interesting to note how our culture believes it cannot look for community support. Your last sentence, "Don't depend on others to lift you up because God has given you the power and anointing to do it for yourself." brings this point home. The tenet is linked to the notion of pulling one's self up by his/her own boot straps. It is very much a part of our thinking, and I believe contributes a helluva a lot of the fuel, or the ingredients for weak minds that become demented minds in this imposed cultural isolation of ours! I believe this subtly contributes to depression. Nevertheless, this presence in American social and intellectual consciousness is more than enough reason to study our beliefs, and eventually be transformed by a renewing of our minds! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.27.13



Sinclair said, "Education, intelligence, common sense, morals, ethics, confidence, humility, personality, and spirituality are excellent qualities to have and exhibit." and I add "... and a healthy sexual appetite to co-manage it all with some degree of impeccability." - Gregory

A STORY

a woman of dark colors sitting in the dark forest unafraid, or disturbed by anything sitting on the ground.
from gallery of art work of Lioness Daiba Sala
Nov. 26, 2013

"I came upon her in a late night stalk in the forest years ago. I stood transfixed unable to change positions, or figure out what was an acceptable posture. But, the better part of me was prepared to fight and I was ready. She, whoever she was, did not move or flinch. She could have hid in the dark foliage, but didn't and that told me a lot. . ."  - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 11.27.13

Deep the feel

artistic rendition of an African child
Sorry. I don't know the artist's name. This is one of my pet peeves with cyberspace: the lack of respect for crediting artists works. I found this on Lioness Daiba Sala's page back in October of 2013. - Gregory
 



African woman's perfect reflection of self

 

Negro Science = a state of mind

FOR CONSIDERATION: "Black man and black woman shouldn't have to wait till death to find freedom in this world." posed by Lioness Daiba Sala



No.

What is bound on earth is bound above. What is released below is mirrored above. That being said is freedom of spirit guaranteed on the other side if one's spirit is not free in this plane? Now, I say that in the context of the North American continent. Let me be specific and clear, and further I hear Blacks here say, "Black People can only expect to pay taxes and die." or "The white man's foot is always on my neck. I can't get anywhere..." The same meaning different ways of saying, "The Black man and Black woman shouldn't have to wait 'til death to find freedom in this world!"

In light of all the freedoms won, and exercised in this country are we really talking about a way of looking at present circumstances with the eyes and perceptions of the grandchildren of ex-slaves? I look around and see the counter to this gloomy outlook in the Black community on a daily basis in or outside of the ghettos. Is freedom being discussed as a slave, as one who hasn't learned to think and direct things his/her way, or are we giving excessive attention to people deeply invested in defeat who are unskilled negotiating with power as a powerful person? - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 12.19.13

The world according to Paris Hilton  is what many of us ascribe to whether we admit it or not her lifestyle is enviable and imitated daily in our communities. 

Playboy South Africa

These pictorials of adorable Ukrainian Olga Ogneva by Viktor Krasnov is enough to make a snowman blush. See it in our December issue:   www.playboy.co.za/subscribe/ 

After all founder, Hugh Hefner has done for the advancement of progressive ideas in his time in the arena of racial equality and women's rights is it still preferable for the magazine to under employ Black South African models as the major draw? Or has the populations in industrial nations fixated on the notion that white European beauty is the template for the business of fashion and the only sure way to sell product? - Gregory E. Woods 12.19.13

African FASHIONS and STYLES

This African woman's beauty knows no boundaries, or pretense of style.
Yesterday 

 

Yesterday 

 

Yesterday 

 

Lioness Daiba Sala

Flashes into American Thought!

CVS Lets Go of $1.5B Tobacco Cash Cow - and 6 Other Bold Company Moves

By SUSANNA KIM (@skimm)

Feb. 5, 2014

I am so sick of and annoyed with this hollow triumph. The myopic approach to  health, and pollution is pitiful. Pollution is a complex problem and because Americans think simply simple minded attitudes become solutions and are passed off as successful approaches. The movement to remove smoking from restaurants and office buildings was a good one. Now, it is just a mean movement. It is mean and myopic more than anything else. As long as Americans focus on the fly on the wall they think the bug problem in their house is dealt with. - Gregory E. Woods, 2.8.14

II.
In spite of Jim Crow

1. Fisk University Graduates including W.E.B. Dubois (right), 1888

III.



Phillip Seymour Hoffman was a favorite character actor of mine. I didn't realize how famous he was until he died, so deep I was into the films he worked in.

Heroin? That is a helluva a drug. I remember the way it ripped through the Black community in the 1940's and '50's. Amongst musicians and hip cats in the community heroin ran around playing with lives. I remember how opium took comfort among white Americans in the last of the 19th century. I remember how and when the British started a drug trade in China where, and how the Americans started the opium trade in the virgin soil of Afghanistan. I remember how guns and drugs entered into southern California at the end of the Black Panther's movement was killed off by the government.

And after this actor, whose craftsmanship I admired, dies of an overdose there is a call to hunt down his dealer? Is that a call exclusive for famous white men? Because that doesn't happen in communities around the country. You die of an overdose and the police don't give a damn who sold it to you. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2.8.14



IV.
Because of Jim Crow

2. Class from Roger Williams University in Nashville - 1899

V.
During Jim Crow 

3. Howard Univ. graduating class c. 1900

VI.
Black Women's vs. White women's sensibilities

singer Tracy Chapman
today

 

Tracy Chapman and Alice Walker were in a relationship when they both lived in Brooklyn in the mid 1990's. Walker discussed the relationship with an interviewer in The Guardian in 2006: “Why was it kept so quiet at the time? ”

"It was quiet to you maybe but that’s because you didn't live in our area,” she answers with a throaty laugh. She has written about the relationship in her journals, which she plans to publish one day. So why did they decide against using their relationship to make a big social impact like other celebrity lesbian couples, such as Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, have in the past? The idea seems to amuse her. “I would never do that. My life is not to be somebody else’s impact - you know what I mean? And it was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody’s business but ours.”

Alice Walker talks about her relationships (not always with men, not always a Black partner either) in some of her writing though, not always naming names. I didn't find her queerness to be a surprise because I studied her work. She even mentions women loving each other sexually or non-sexually in her definition of womanism. So queerness was included, in that aspect. I find the way she writes about the complexities of love and sexuality for Black women to be really important; some of the first stuff I read on the topic in my entire life. Started in adolescence. And Tracy Chapman is just everything! ~ Lioness Daiba Sala 2.7.14



"I have and have had deep feelings for Alice Walker a long time now. Her composure, intellect, beauty, the movement of her hands, daring, her writing skills and the steadiness of her eye, and voice drew me simultaneously into a study of her work and reflections of my own about various topics." - Gregory E. Woods 

Tracy Chapman 

Alice Walker, writer/scholar

VII.

Maya Angelou
 as a young woman 

 

“I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” — Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou 

AN AFRICAN KING

Lioness Daiba Sala

A King of Ghana

1930s Ghana:

A young King Otumfuo Osei Agyeman Prempeh II, King of Asante.

In 1931 the year of his installation he immediately began to work for the restoration of Asante Confederacy, which was accomplished in 1935 Accordingly his status was raised from that of Kumasihene to Asantehene This was one of his greatest achievements. During his reign he managed to get large parts of Asante lands which had been taken over by the British restored to the Golden Stool.

The Lioness

"The sense of nobility a daughter feels and later embodies comes from her mother's sense of being. It is transferred from breath to breath and within each gesture are the teachers of the daughter's spirit." - Gregory E. Woods 9.27.13

Lioness Diaba Sala
Sept. 26, 2013

"It is what holds us up that tells the story of who we are."
- Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories
9.27.13

BAKAYAN FATHERS

"It is a baffling complex of social and economic invasions of people's soul our culture (Western) extends to others as a benefit. There are problems created by our approach to the life of many peoples around the world, and the only solutions to the problems our ideologies create seems to rest only in the raising of money. Money and the acquisition of things, land and resources of others are the drive behind the mission of Western expansion, and raising money to correct the damage done is the only solution? I am not convinced. What is wrong with this approach is obvious to anyone outside of the worldview that sustains these destructive practices." - Gregory E. Woods 7.25.13

7.25.13
from Lioness Daiba Sala

Forty meters up, and surrounded by angry bees pacified by the smoking wet leaves he carries, mongonjay, a member of the bayaka tribe of the jungles of the central african republic, hunts for honey suspended by fraying vine.

"when climbing big trees, you have to empty your heart of fear," he says. “if you have fear you will die. many of my friends have died doing this." 

bayakan fathers like mongonjay are considered “the greatest dads in the world," and not just because they risk life and limb to provide their families with honey. bayakan fathers cuddle and play with their kids five times as often as fathers from any other society, and spend almost half their time within arms reach of their kids.

when the mother is not present, bayaka fathers will soothe their hungry, crying babies by having them suckle on their nipples until she can return. most male mammals do not have nipples, and some evolutionary biologists believe that human males have retained theirs for this very reason. seriously. many anthropologists believe this nurturing fatherly behaviour was once the norm for humans.

the bayaka, however, now face extinction as forty years of excessive industrial logging has forced most to abandon the sustaining forest they’ve called home for thousands of years and replace it with a life of poverty and disease (particularity malaria and cholera) where they are viewed as “not truly human, a people without civilization" by most across equatorial africa.

they suffer “appalling socioeconomic conditions and a lack of civil and land rights," states a recent study conducted by the rainforest foundation. according to the WWF, it would only take $2 million to secure enough rainforest for future generations of bayaka to retain their traditional lifestyle. - Lioness Daiba Sala

Bayakan father climbing...

LEAP WARRIOR WOMAN

by Lioness Daiba Sala
5.16.13

from the Lioness