LOOKS BACK!

actors Ray Milland and Jean Arthur in the film, Easy Living, 1937.

My father was 5 years old when the movie, Easy Living, came out in 1937, the Depression was in full swing, and Daddy's father was one of the few who owned his land, and his house. During the Depression that was a significant reality. Strategically, it provided a basis for the assurance that one's family could live through so hard a time! For those like Granddaddy, who cared for those around him he became a centered and central force that created the feel of being held in a community of poor folks. It was during one of the heights of the violence of big city crime bosses, Jim Crow's reign of terror, and a time Colored folks, in the South, were purposely being forced to accept no more than a 4th grade education. That decade was struggle and accomplishment, survival and denial...

The movies were important. They held sanity together for thousands bringing together everyone in dark theaters in suspended reality that blocked the depression of the era!- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/19/18

Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons and Tony Curtis behind the scenes in Spartacus (1960).

The movie, Spartacus, was good, and for the times extraordinary! But, the novel? It was the book that turned the country upside down! It was banned in the South! I did not understand that until I read it! The author's mastery interpreting Roman history gave the spiritual and the intellectual basis for the governing business of American life: slavery. It was an extraordinary read! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/19/18

the UnObvious Walk

Durga Holzhauser said, "Perhaps an old wound on the ocean floor of our soul drives our fulfilled life away. It may be obvious when someone has broken our heart, but the stickiest bandages are the ones that are hidden away in our subconscious mind, eating up our desires. Forgiveness has a thousand layers."

Art. Black boy against the Moon.

"Taught not to be aware Blacks are unaware of the wonders around them,

within them, and working around them!" - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 3/30/18 

This artist caught something surprisingly obvious Black Americans scarcely give cause stock to enrich their lives. It is the lies that perpetuate the confidence in not knowing what should be known. In this drawing is the typical dead walk. Nothing is heard, perceived, seen, or acknowledged save one thing: what does not matter.

Our boys are content with this show of no force. Head covered in hoods, dragging feet, slouching with plugs in their ears. They see little. With no peripheral vision their vision is narrow, somewhere beneath their feet. At some point, death finds a peace to begin its stalk of life forces with little unction to live beyond mere existence, a few years, or a life of violence for the sake of belonging to what does not want them, or see their souls.

There is no easy way to teach the dying to live if they lack the tools for a skill set to live. The movie, Black Panther, in its complexity points out this point with mastery, and without preaching. It is stacked well into the story lines and the imagery. If a one wants to know of these things he must think, probe and become something of a force to be reckoned with in the quest for the right knowledge and the right teacher to lead them towards their initiations! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3/30/18