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 

Their Value, Their Powers!

woman with martini cocktail !!!!

"Women paid for sex, as women have told me over my years, and fall into categories they decipher: whore and survivor. A woman can marry for security and put up with all manner of discomfort denying her heart what it needs in exchange for financial security for her children, or she can keep the rent paid with a live-in boyfriend whom she will never marry. Porn stars can make big money on the screen and feel the comfort of the high income, but as I've listened to working harlots (as the Bible calls them) there is some soul loss. People sense the loss. That sense is an identifier..." 

"Who's zooming who?" the song asked! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8/30/2018 

Lyla Storm is a whore who submitted to severe sexual debasing for merely being a Latina. 

It is bizarre the practice, even worse the willing women.

Make IT, Survive!

Harriet Tubman. She stands in my thinking a menacing presence balanced in her years after the Civil War with marriage, property ownership, the building from a vision she carried, and a life serving Colored folks in the hard years learning how to no longer be slaves! It was a hard time after the Civil War most have no concept of, but her depth is in the role she played during the freed times (1965-1876)! How to live when Southern whites unleashed their rage from 1866 on are a complex circle of interlocked stories making the buzzing sound in the undercurrent of modern life in the States! 

Harriet Tubman is a complex part of America's contradictions, and the bane of the country's existence. If white Americans were to understand why an African freed slave would terrorize them freeing African souls, and why she killed those Negroes, who wanted to go back to their masters, they'd better understand the dark of their souls, and their existence!

When she said, she'd admonished slaves running north with the words: "If you hear dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there's shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going!" she was talking with and talking to the warrior spirit prepared to die to live!

I don't want to participate in the romanticizing of the woman, or her hard work. It is where she has slipped into in the expanse of time since her life was lived. And I do not want 

HOLD ON...
by jojo brooks shifflett

And in the Winter of life, Hold on.
Hold on to you, Not who you think you should have been.
Hold on to what you know to be good, if it be but a bit of bread and honey,
or if it be a bit of earth that warms you,
or a face that makes you smile.
Hold on to these things that made you, you.
Hold on to what you must now do,
Even if it means traveling far away.

Hold on to life,
When it is easier to just let go.
Hold on to my hand,
No matter the distance between us.
For my dear one, you still hold my heart,
though we be so far, far apart.

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

IN a Patriarch, there is this!

Adriana Chechik has a silken quality to her, but her penchant for ass penetration calls into question fundamental questions about health, decency and the how far from sacred a woman's spirit can travel without considering the ways of being sensual in a higher surrender! Women's sexuality is by far more interesting to modern women. Equality is the measurement of choice, habit, or force. These three are in place, not by women's design, but in the name of survival in a man's world indistinguishable from brutality!

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
Jan. 25, 2018

Aidra Fox's stab at decency is an appeal, but successful in a limited way of being indecent! What a riddle sex appeal plays! - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 1/25/18 

Adriana Chechik ascending stairs. Does her awareness expand, or her reach extend upward, within, or reach low into the lower chakras? It is a question to weigh. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories (Jan. 25, 2018)

Know This.

Master self. 

#breakthrough
Understand the reason for affirmations... people affirm negative thoughts all day every day with out even thinking about it.. and then wonder why they stay broke, sick, in bad relationships, worrying, stagnant.. this is happening because of the thoughts you are constantly affirming as you worry.. affirmations are done as a practice to replace those negative thoughts with positive thoughts in order to change the outcome you are constantly getting that you don't want. If you think about your daily thoughts and how your life is going right now you will see just how powerful this exercise is.. you are manifesting your reality every day whether you acknowledge it or not.. it is up to you to acknowledge it and do something to manifest a better reality than the one you have now. - Goddess Sage (Feb. 23, 2018)  

What Ails us?

Masked women with guns by Roland Dawson! October 2016

The places where being masked and armed intersect are important to grasp intentionally because it is gut wrenching, it seems, to be a woman in this world! A hundred years ago Euro-Americans, and European women were being treated cruelly by the medical profession, and psychologists. Today, over a hundred years away from the Victorian era Western women are entrapped in a whirl of violence that feels ancient!

If women are to be freed should they arm themselves or hide themselves? Are either possible?

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
10/16/17 

Intelligence, Resistence, and what it took. . .

Black man, Black woman as lovers motivated Africans to explore the notions of freedom erroneously defined by whites during and after slavery. The couple is a dangerous form of retaliation. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 2/8/18