Birthday of Rihanna!

Rihanna at the launch of Fenty Beauty in NYC September 7, 2017.

Rihanna, born Feb. 20, 1988, was financially worth $245 million as of 2017! 

That is quite a disturbing sentence if one delves into symbols, and has become a student of how public perception works for famous artists. Often, the first assessment of a person is how much money one made in a year, in a lifetime. Granted, she is an accomplished entertainer, and enjoys her craft, but the public allows itself to be absorbed in her life, as a wealthy woman. On the surface, nothing is wrong with admiration. The problem is a solution. 

If one is curious about a thing, learn about a thing. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories Feb. 20, 2019 

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

Yeah? Yeah, what? Whatcha gotta say?

Paris Hilton, as much as I am intrigued by her, I am disturbed by her and the perspective she comes from sometimes. There is a vanity accompanying wealth and privilege from wealth that supersedes decency often masking real concern with displays of idiocy or the veneer of scorn!

Case in point:

In May of 2015 Paris Hilton was in Cannes, France 'performing' at a benefit for the earthquake victims of Nepal. It is a noble and necessary cause, but it was also an opportunity for a decent sense of being to surface. What showed up was a picture of her taking a picture with her cell phone. The fancy phone cover read, "Queen of Fucking Everything"!

What does that mean to the people that matter and who does matter in the games of consciousness and entitlement? Are the poor entitled to be fed and cared for by the wealthy? Are the wealthy obligated to care for the poor disenfranchised victims of natural phenomenon, or must those souls figure it out for themselves? Is it bad to flaunt your position, or illusions of self before the masses who have not, or wish they had with aplomb? Is it bad taste the display of her assessment of self, or do we care because after all the woman believes it is important to care for others?

Does it matter the stuff that offends the sensibility of women and men who are on the sidelines not participating, but judging and measuring others against standards that may or may not be kind, or from kind places of the heart? - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (9.13.16)

Kiera Chaplin attends a screening of Sony Pictures Classics' 'Equity' hosted by The Cinema Society with Bloomberg and Thomas Pink at The Museum of Modern Art on July 26, 2016 in New York City.

Paris Hilton performs at Hollywood Domino Cannes Benefiting Action Against Hunger Nepal Earthquake Emergency Response May 17, 2015 in Cannes, France

Well, I'll be!!

Nubian Rootz Cultural Center

September 9, 2016  

Charlotte, North Carolina, and Charlottesville, Virginia are just a couple of places named after this African blooded woman. The royal painters were tasked with... "whitening" her features in portraiture.

Princess Sophie Charlotte was born on May 19, 1744 the eighth child of the Prince of Mirow, Germany, Charles Louis Frederick, and his wife, Elisabeth Albertina of Saxe-Hildburghausen. . A princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Sophie Charlotte was descended directly from an African branch of the Portuguese Royal House, Margarita de Castro y Sousa. Her portraits and European ancestry are built up, and her African lineage is watered down, but the truth will set you free. ~ anon

Princess Sophie Charlotte from the African branch of the Portuguese Royal House

1828 Definiton of American 

Rich White, Black Wife!

White Billionaires Prefer To Date Black Women; Because They Are ‘Loyal’ the Ghanaian article blared!

I think it is worth the listen, but I recognize by a couple of dismissive comments the writer said that this is an observation piece of American culture by a Ghanaian. This is important to weigh because here in the States we are lost and absorbed in the dream, the fantastic illusions of our wealth and comfort and don't know how we look.

Anyway, here is the article. Read it and make your assessments. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 5.25.16



An interesting sociological trend has been recently observed within the small circles of the wealthy and powerful. Tabloids and other news outlets that specialize on gossip and lifestyle are reporting that more billionaire men can be seen with gorgeous and elegant dark-skinned women by their sides.
In reality, this observation is nothing new. In and of itself, powerful businessmen have been choosing women with African genes as their soul mates for centuries. However, a couple of online articles that were widely shared and circulated in early 2013 made it seem as if a handful of billionaire men and their peers suddenly paid attention to black women. Such is not the case; millionaires and billionaires have been interested in women of various skin tones and ethnic backgrounds for as long as they can remember, but the gossip media machine seems to have only recently paid attention to this matter.

That some very wealthy men prefer dark-skinned as their romantic partners is not surprising. What was surprising was a quote initially attributed to American tech investors Ben Horowitz, who ostensibly stated that black women made better wives because they are for grownups. Mr. Horowitz has made millions by making smart investments and wise decisions, not by making silly statements; he never uttered such nonsense, but he does have a gorgeous black woman by his side.

Aside from Mr. Horowitz, we know of other successful men whose dazzling partners are dark-skinned women. Robert DeNiro, Peter Norton, George Lucas, David Bowie, and the Prince of Liechtenstein come to mind in this regard, and these are just a few Western men who happen to be regularly reported on by the tabloid media. If we turn our attention to the African continent, we will find that the majority of men who are millionaires and billionaires over there have dark-skinned women as partners, and this is not by any means surprising.

If anything, the advent of Internet technology in the Information Age has made us more receptive to various constructs. Members of Generation X may recall a time when the tabloid and gossip media machine focused on a purported trend among successful African American men who apparently chose women of a different race as their partners.

This gossip item ended up being much ado about nothing since it only focused on a small circle of athletes, entertainers, and a handful of wealthy businessmen. To a certain extent, what we are seeing now is the opposite, and we should not believe it too much.

In the end, wealthy and powerful men are going to choose soul mates based on what their hearts and physical preferences tell them, and we can safely expect that beautiful, kindhearted dark-skinned women will continue to captivate them.  [author unidentified]




Must Read:  A White Woman’s opinion on Black Women


 

Hats Off: What The Man Said.



Lenny Kravitz said, "True luxury is not having possessions. It's about having the time to be still, listen and feel."
Photo: Mathieu Bitton 

 

"It's interesting to see that there are people who think that what I stated in my last post is easy to say because I'm so-called "rich.” Well what is rich? In my life I deal with people who only have enough money to eat and have basic shelter, and on the other extreme, I deal with billionaires who have "everything.” Why is it that, for the most part, so many wealthy people are unsatisfied, bogged down, stressed, insecure, spiritually depleted, and have horrible relationships? Just because one has an abundance of money, it does not make them centered and at peace. Yes, it's great to have money, but if your foundation is broken—that is what you will be. Let Love Rule."

Lenny Kravitz, musician 
April 4, 2016

Lenny Kravitz's daughter, Zoe Isabella Kravitz (2016)

 

Powerful Women We Know Little OF



Ink Master contestant, Lydia Bruno, co-owner/artist at Unique Arts Studio in Glens Falls, NY,
is a contesant on Spike TV’s “Ink Master” Season 4 (2014)



powerful stance of voice actress Linda Cardellini.



wealthiest woman, Abigail Johnson is worth $13.1 billion.
Her wealth comes from Money management. photo provided by Forbes Media LLC

 

IT IS RARE

Wealthiest women, eight of them, were featured today in a short article today. Why is that important? Because women's perception of themselves is encased in inferiority and the impossibility of asserting themselves above a station in life submissive to the needs and expectations of men. But, that is financial power the article is weighing. Not that financial power is a negative, I should point out, it is the non-emphasis on spiritual power that falters within the estimation of what a woman is in today's cultural circus.

Women carry their wombs with ignorance and indifference and contempt in many instances of their wombs. It is an edict from the terror of religions defined by the men they serve who hold stories and the monopoly over the stories of womanhood. I am thinking of this for many reasons some of which I have written about in this blog. There is a series hidden within this blog, "The Sacred Whore series". I don't contribute much to the subject online out of wisdom and knowing the state of women's senses of who they are. It is dangerous.

But, today. This moment. This morning I am honoring a rare woman I saw in the subway yesterday. She was a tall, slim and young Black woman. She wore jeans, stood erect and her elegance was embedded in her lofty air of thought, the sepia tone of her skin, her natural hair short cropped and a tattoo design peeking out from her jeans' cuff and encircling her left ankle. That was a show stopper, but she was gentle in a sacred beauty because she was caressing her womb.

Her action is rare. It is rare amongst American women, and amongst Black American women even less.

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
March 14, 2016



 

PRACTICE 30

Matthew 6:19–21

¹⁹ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

²⁰ But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

²¹ For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also

The first part of this scripture, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal..." has been used throughout the years to justify poverty and being poor. It has taught many to suppress the urgency to learn how to invest. It is a curious phenomenon, but it is evidenced in the fact of a shared financial illiteracy. I am not above it. It has been part of my own intellectual legacy. I felt it keenly in my early years, and questioned it. But, by the time I was able to counter it much time had elapsed.  It is compelling how theology exists within our terminology irregardless of our affiliation with an organized religion. It is true our beliefs are stronger than religion.

"...Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." weaseled into the thinking of suppressed people convincing them of the worthless chore of amassing personal wealth. The prospect of heaven and its rewards underscored the theme of countless lives when the apex predators came to collect their tolls and taxes. Slaves to the culture of belief set against one's Sacred Dream of Life produced millions of people who half-lived their lives thinking, and singing about the 'bye & 'bye!

The true investor, I learned late in life, stands between the divide in these interpretations and merges self into a concept balanced by modesty, adventure, and daring and takes the fear of judgment that the parable of the talents renders into the heart of those unable to make their one talent grow, and become financially secure, emotionally balanced, and mature differently. Jesus' parable about the servants who received talents from their master terrifies the above mentioned persons because the parable rewards the investor just as in real life the investor is rewarded. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 1.02.14





The Painter by Georgia AL Fullerton

 

COUNTRY GIRLS

Country girls have their ways of retiring from the fold into a seclusion that affords them visibility and access to their roots. It is always something to fall back on. There are the Appalachian mountains, and the skid row bottomed out uncles and nephews who couldn't escape the grinding poverty, or make it into the military. Those who escaped the hopelessness, or the firestorms of regret found niches in cities. Some, in the old days in particular, hired people to train their Southern accents out and away from them to get the jobs and the pensions. There is a desire and a longing expressed in the songs of the hills, and valleys, and mountains of the South that rings with the sounds of Scotland, the plaintive tones of Choctaw, Notowa, and other tribes, and the blues and African  musics long forgotten by bluegrass and country singers, and enthusiastic fans who couldn't handle the circular history of their music.

Vote

There are long songs and stories in the deep South about the things that marked their women Northerners don't like to talk about if they remember as far back as the 1870's. After the Civil War Southern white men returned home, rich and poor, to a new South decimated by war. Their wealth, and position were gone. The illusion of superiority was shattered by defeat, and jobs once scorned by whites as work for their niggers were held by their nigger slaves, and many unskilled white men, with no proficiency in carpentry, masonry, and such were bitter and bewildered and unemployed. White women had to make adjustments to the psychological damage war sickness left upon white men. Men came home with limbs missing, teeth gone, and sunken eyes and sunken chests filled with grief and humiliated. Food was not easy to come by, and the sight of Black folk walking freely about was unbearable. Over night it seemed Blacks were holding jobs white men weren't trained for.

There were freed Negroes getting jobs and starting businesses who did not have to hid their literacy anymore.  Political offices were filled by Blacks. Schools for Colored children were opening up, and to every Black person's pride and delight and the bane of every white man's existence Blacks were opening colleges and universities, and churches! Children of white men and slave women were adjusting to life in the new South too! White women who'd had secret liaisons with Black men were full of emotions we will never know, and Black men who'd secretly had affairs with white women were adjusting to emotions they couldn't express aloud. There was much to think about and feel in those times.

It was a complex time to be alive in the United States. There were many things to adjust to that today are hard to imagine, and even harder to feel. Slavery was embedded in a slaves' being. Many didn't know what free meant and stayed on with their masters. The rules changed. They were no longer slaves. They could make deals, and get paid for labor, but they couldn't leave their homes. It was all they knew. The Black men and women who were never caught for killing whites during the slave years could step a bit livelier. Many Blacks packed up and got the hell up outa there and headed up North, and West. Testing the new laws Blacks would congregate on street corners, or hold all night dances, or church services. Court houses were busy legally marrying Black couples who'd been in slave marriages.

Today, this understanding is not readily acknowledged by the newer generations. Freedom concepts have changed, not necessarily evolved, over the past two centuries.



Betsy Smith, by Ed Wilson Photography

Betsy Smith

Betsy Smith, model

In the illusion of the present is the notion that the glamour of a modern Western city is the epitome of sophistication, and fun had by a button push makes youth fabulous. But the enablers of this ideology keep countless young men and women in the dark about the sustaining forces of the civilization at present in command of the world's resources. In a culture out of sync with the natural rhythms of Life, and divorced from the primal forces of Nature there is a tendency to escape from a vague numbing pain that is just out of reach of comprehension.  The education of people gropes, by design, in murky territory, and in the end people graduate from universities, for the most part, disconnected from the myriad worlds of yesterday, the present, tomorrow, and the undertones of the spiritual legacy of knowledge and spirituality from the worlds beyond and within!

Glamour glosses over the passage of mystery and keeps a multitude of brilliant souls from gazing into the hand of Time with deep knowledge, and from 'seeing' into the Crystals of Knowing... - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 8.24.12

story of MAGICAL TIME

How painful is the preaching of the fortunate to the heart of the miserable! And how severe is the strong when he stands as advisor among the weak! - Kahlil Gibran, mystical poet

Dream of the Red Chamber III. Sin of adoration by Lenore Scarecrow

Dream of the Red Chamber III. Sin of adoration. by *LenoreScarecrow
RebelsMarket Steampunk & Victorian

My poor friend, if you only knew that the Poverty which causes you so much wretchedness is the very thing that reveals the knowledge of Justice and the understanding of Life, you would be contented with your lot.

I say knowledge of Justice: for the rich man is too busy amassing wealth to seek this knowledge. 

And I say understanding of Life: for the strong man is too eager in his pursuit of power and glory to keep to the straight path of truth.

Rejoice then, my poor friend, for you are the mouth of Justice and the book of Life. Be content, for you are the source of virtue in those who rule over you and the pillar of integrity of those who guide you. 

Kahlil Gibran 

sacred space upon a hill by Rizza Dela Cruz

WE DREAM WE ARE

Old Soul Luxury



opulence

Everyone in each era, each lifetime should experience at least one night of opulence feeling what it is like to be indulged, special and without a care in the world. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 10.5.13

 

Old building - inside the main chapel doors of an abandoned school in central Belgium.
The school next door was plundered, the adjacent church still stands © Matt Emmett

 

 

pretty African American woman smiling

Lucy Liu



Angie Vu Ha celebrating Easter dinner 2015

Daughter of 'He wish he were King!'

LISA MARIE PRESLEY

The King's petite, raven-haired daughter was born in the spotlight but showed no interest in either the attention or wealth afforded her by heritage. She was a moody, rebellious teen who dropped out of school, married early and often, and had a genetic disposition towards sneering. But she also had a natural born singing voice and something her daddy did not have - songwriting talent. At the age of 35, Presley finally put decades of fear about living up to the family name aside, releasing her debut album, To Whom it May Concern. Finally, shallow tabloid dissections of her love life and her dedication to Scientology were replaced by glowing record reviews. The media-shy heiress was eventually revealed to be a complex artist, mother, business executive, and charity activist, as well as quite warm, self-deprecating and charming in interviews. The fact that she also bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the most beloved and universally missed performers in the world, only added to her mysterious allure.

Born to Elvis and Priscilla Beaulieu Presley on Feb. 1, 1968, Elvis' only daughter spent the first five years of her life at the fabled Presley estate, Graceland, in Memphis, TN. Elvis had been a poor kid from the projects, so from the beginning, he lavished his only child with gold rings, a fur bedroom and her own golf cart. One day when the Southern gal mentioned she had never seen snow, Elvis jetted her off to the mountains of Idaho for a half hour of winter play, with the family back home in Memphis by dinner. When her parents divorced in 1973, her mother received custody of the King's sole heir and relocated to Los Angeles, where she prepared to pursue an acting career. The family remained close, with both exes determined not to expose their young daughter to any unpleasantness. Presley saw her father as often as she could, which sometimes meant going on tour with him or spending summers at Graceland, where she would enjoy afternoons of taunting tourists who came by, hoping to catch a glimpse of her dad.

Unfortunately, Presley was there visiting on Aug. 16, 1977 - the day the King died of reported cardiac arrhythmia from an intake of a large amount of prescription drugs. Newspapers were full of reports of the little girl circling the lawn on her golf cart as the streets filled with throngs of grieving fans. Her mother was now more than ever, determined to shield her from the media uproar and the rabid intensity of Elvis fans.

When Presley reached school age, Priscilla was already dealing with a forlorn, unusually dark little girl, who spent most of her time listening to records and playing alone. She ended up being cycled through French school, boarding schools, and schools full of other celebrity kids, all of which the young girl found distasteful. The melancholic kid evolved into a goth teen on a self-destructive streak that included several years of drugs, bad boyfriends and dropping out of high school. She spent time bumming around Europe, holding down a 9-to-5 office job, as her inheritance was not set to kick in until she was 30 years of age. She started talking about a recording career around the age of 17, but the thought of filling dad's size 11 sh s was too overwhelming for the underdeveloped talent. Priscilla began giving her daughter an active role in managing Elvis' estate when she turned 18 - a huge undertaking involving licensing, merchandising, publishing, and finance that began to give the directionless young woman a bit of an anchor. Mom and daughter moved to Clearwater, FL, where Presley began taking classes at the local Scientology center. The two women had been introduced to the "religion" by John Travolta in 1979, and however controversial, did seem to bring the teen out of her solitary shell and reunite her with her mother with a new level of maturity and understanding.

While studying at the Scientology Center, Presley fell in love with musician and fellow Scientologist, Danny Keough. Keough and a pregnant Presley married on Oct. 3, 1988 in a family ceremony at Hollywood's Church of Scientology. Not long afterwards, Presley and Priscilla, both of whom had shunned the spotlight since Elvis' death, gave their first interview to Life magazine. Several years into her marriage, Presley confided in her husband that she wanted to sing. Keough encouraged her by building a rehearsal studio in their home and helping her put together songs, as he learned she had been avidly creative writing since she was a teen. Family friend and former Beach Boys manager Jerry Schilling was impressed enough with what he heard, that he facilitated a record deal with Epic. Despite the wheels being set in motion, a panic-stricken Presley, who lacked confidence and still had misgivings about how she would be received as Elvis' daughter, found out she was pregnant with her second child and once again put music on the back burner.

In 1993, Keough and Presley divorced after eight years. They remained self-proclaimed best friends and continued to share the responsibilities of raising their children. Not long after the divorce, Presley made headlines with unbelievable rumors that she and Michael Jackson - the self-proclaimed "King of Pop" - had wed. As crazy as it seemed, it turned out to be true, with the unlikely couple having tied the knot in the Dominican Republic on May 26, 1994. The King of Pop and the King's daughter had first met when 7-year-old Presley attended several of his shows in Las Vegas, NV. When they met again as adults, things moved very quickly - suspiciously so - with Jackson proposing after only four months. Headlines speculated that he was taking advantage of her to gain access to the Elvis catalog or draw attention away from his legal troubles. They also speculated that she was taking advantage of him to launch a music career. In desperate attempts to defend their marriage as true love, they were interviewed on "20/20" (ABC, 1978- ) and had a spectacularly long, uneasy kiss staged at the MTV Music Awards later that year. But things fell apart quickly, largely due to Lisa Marie's longtime practice of trying to stay out of the spotlight and Jackson's apparent obsession with staying in it. Surprising no one, she filed for divorce in early 1996. Following the divorce, she was plagued with one illness after another, developing allergies, panic attacks, and having her gallbladder removed. The media speculated that she was suicidal, but it turned out Presley was suffering from toxic amounts of mercury from nine fillings.

Presley's procrastinated music career got a nudge forward in 1997, when she agreed to sing a duet of "Don't Cry Daddy" along with a track of her late father (a la Natalie Cole's "Unforgettable") for a tribute on the 20th anniversary of Elvis' death. She had been writing a lot of material about the changes in her life over the past decade, and inspired by the self-revelatory nature of Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill," she contacted the record's producer Glen Ballard. Ballard was impressed enough with Presley's deep, dark songs to sign her to a deal with his EMI imprint, Java Records. She and Ballard worked on an album for two years, during which time Presley became engaged to Hawaiian singer-songwriter, John Oszajca. In 2000, a change in management meant Capitol Records and President Andy Slater inherited Presley's unfinished debut. Slater brought in producer Eric Rosse, who had scored two hit albums for Tori Amos, and Presley's project was scrapped and re-recorded with an emphasis on capturing the soul of this complicated, mature talent. Meanwhile Presley and Oszajca called off their engagement and Presley paired up with oddball actor Nicholas Cage. Their fiery relationship was on-again/off-again from the beginning, culminating in a three-month marriage in late 2002.

In April of 2003, Lisa Marie Presley was glad to finally garner media attention for something she had created, rather than for being the daughter or wife of another performer. Her debut album To Whom It May Concernsold 140,000 copies during its first week of release, spawning the singles "Lights Out" (which reached #16 on the UK charts) and "Sinking In." The genre-busting album with edgy, powerful vocals and honest, penetrating lyrics, reached #5 on the Billboard album charts and helped show the world what the King's daughter was truly made of - it certainly was not sugar and spice and everything nice. Presley toured the world in support of the album, the once-reluctant singer learning to overcome her nerves and bring her hard-edged pop rock style to legions of new fans. The interviews and press circuit were even harder for her get used to, as she had never liked talking about herself in public, and thus, spent years misunderstood because of it.

Presley's new career proved to be cathartic. She was re-energized by channeling herself into her music, and unexpectedly rewarded by how powerfully her songs of personal growth, love, and loss had connected with audiences. For her sophomore effort, 2005's Now What, she was joined by Linda Perry, former Four Non-Blondes front woman, who had written and produced with Christina Aguilera, Pink and Gwen Stefani. Perry teamed with Presley to co-write five songs including "Shine," featuring guest vocals with Pink. Now Whatreached #9 on the Billboard 200 and included the single "Idiot," featuring Sex Pistol, Steve Jones, on guitar, and a cover of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" that hit #36 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The album also contained two tributes to guitarist Johnny Ramone, Presley's friend, who had died during the recording of the album.

During that same year, Presley, who had inherited the family estate in 1998, sold 85 percent of the estate's business holdings and turned over management of Graceland to entertainment company (and creator of "American Idol") CKX, Inc. Presley retained ownership of Graceland and the possessions found therein, continuing to visit her childhood home and family headquarters several times a year. Under the leadership of Presley and her mom, the value of the estate and Elvis Presley Enterprises had grown from $5 million to over $300 million dollars.

Presley was a supporter of dozens of charitable foundations, including the Presley Place Foundation for homeless families in Memphis and cancer charities T.J. Martell Foundation and St. Jude's hospitals. She also supported the Scientology-related LEAP (Literacy, Education and Abilities Program) and was active with the church's opposition to psychiatry and the medicating of children with mental disorders. In 2002, she spoke out against medicating children in a testimony before Congress.

In January of 2006, Presley married her guitarist, Michael Lockwood, in Kyoto, Japan. Ex-husband but still best friend, Danny Keough, served as best man. The third generation of Elvis offspring hit the spotlights when Presley and Keough's daughter Riley launched a career as a model, appearing on runways in Milan and in print ads for Dolce & Gabbana, Dior Perfume and Victoria's Secret. Elvis' granddaughter ended up being next in line to inherit Elvis Presley Enterprises - a tremendous responsibility she could learn much about from her own mother. - anon

A Perspective of Wealth & Women



Victorian era's illusion about white women was a kind of disdain

Kylie Jenner, 17

The reality star reportedly has a respectful $5 million - and she's not even 18 yet! She may have already started investing some of the dough in her new mansion.

Kate Upton, 22

Kate earned a spot on Forbes's World's Most Powerful Celebrities list with her reported $7 million income in 2014. By August of that year, she had raked in an estimated $16 million since becoming a modeling superstar.

Selena Gomez, 22

The actress and singer never needed Justin Bieber's millions - she's standing strong on her own with an estimated net worth of $18 million.

Jennifer Lawrence, 24

Winning an Oscar may have helped bulk up Jennifer's bank account by an extra $34 million in 2014. That would have been a big addition to her estimated net worth of $40 million - enough to cover years of pizza orders.

actress Evelyn Nesbit with her hair down in an era it was forbidden

 

Tax Relief for Them Helps Us?

"The wolf comes out to play. I don't look forward to the day poorly educated, and conservative Bible believing folks wake up to the glaring sound of the their contradictions and realize how they've been manipulated. In plain English how the rich whites have long playful manipulated poor whites. Watch What Happens when we tell ourselves the truth. What will we all feel and do waking up from the dreams we've selected from the American dream to live as..." - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 4/14/15

Republicans Push $269 Billion Handout For Millionaire Heirs And Heiresses

by Zack Carter for Huffington Post
04/14/2015 10:27 am EDT        zach.carter@huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans this week will vote to hand the heirs and heiresses of America's largest fortunes a $269 billion tax break by repealing the federal inheritance tax.
The legislation would shield the very richest families from taxes on the fortunes they inherit. After years of GOP attacks on the inheritance tax, also known as the estate tax, only a few thousand of the wealthiest families are subjected to it -- 4,700 total in 2013, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Only individual fortunes worth over $5.43 million can be taxed under current law, an amount that doubles to $10.86 million for wealthy couples. The Republican proposal would eliminate all of these estates -- which are over 15,700 percent richer than the median American household -- from taxation.

Inheritance taxes are at the center of the policy debate over economic inequality. French economist Thomas Piketty has called for a global wealth tax to combat widening economic inequality based on unearned wealth passed between generations. But the Republican bill scheduled for a vote this week would move in the exact opposite direction, eliminating even the limited taxes on family capital that the United States currently deploys.

"There has been a very aggressive lobbying campaign by some of the wealthiest families in the country for a couple of decades now," said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank. "But this is more radical than other recent efforts."

No Democrats voted for the GOP bill, dubbed the Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015, in committee. And the legislation wouldn't just eliminate the estate tax -- it would also allow heirs to escape the already-generous capital gains tax on any stocks and real estate they receive. The change would significantly alter the meaning of the capital gains tax, since capital gains taxes only hit the wealthy when they actually sell an asset. Moguls could keep their wealth in the stock market and pass it down from generation to generation without ever being taxed.


The result is an economic inequality double-whammy in which two of the most pro-rich elements of the tax code are further weakened, costing the federal government $269 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.


Half of all capital gains flow to the richest 0.1 percent of Americans, and they are taxed at just 20 percent, well below the 39.6 percent rate for ordinary income. But the estate tax is even more regressive, applying to just 0.2 percent of estates a year, at an average effective rate of less than 17 percent, since millions of dollars of the inheritance are exempted from the formal 40 percent rate.
Federal inheritance taxes used to be broader. In the 1970s, according to the JCT, about 6 percent of all estates were subject to the estate tax. During the Great Depression, the rate on the estate tax was 70 percent. But the Republican campaign against it went into overdrive in the 1990s and hasn't let up, even in the Obama era. Conservatives routinely make a moral argument against what they call "the death tax," saying it is unfair to tax a family just because one if its members has died.


Economists point out that shielding unearned inheritances from tax doesn't encourage any useful activity, and Democrats have typically opposed efforts to chip away at the estate tax. But they have allowed a host of Republican efforts to go through in broad bipartisan deals. In 1997, President Bill Clinton's budget secured child health care funding in exchange for a GOP item narrowing the estate tax to exclude a host of wealthy families. In late 2010 and again in the 2013 fiscal cliff deal, Democrats included generous inheritance tax measures into a bargain with Republicans.


The GOP has more than enough votes in the House to pass its latest proposal. But the legislation would likely succumb to a Democratic filibuster in the Senate or to a presidential veto. But while the bill has almost no chance of passing on its own, it could spur lawmakers to include a new break for the super-rich in must-pass legislation later this year, when Congress will need to raise the debt ceiling or fund the government, particularly if the GOP is able to peel off a few dozen conservative Democrats to vote in favor of this week's bill.



Paris Hilton's little rat dog !!!!

 

 

FACE PARIS

Paris Hilton

"Facing the self is as dangerous as facing a gun. The idea of self tangled with the myth of what is prestigious and refined about Paris, France goes to the core of an elitist quality of life in the Washington DC area." - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 3.1.13

EXCELLENCE Beyond Reality Shows

Kim Kardashian in Fair Lady magazine august 2011

 

DREAMS illuminate

Part of the illusion within wealth is the way wealth can blend fantasy with the accumulation of wealth as a banner of arrival for a select few fond of telling others to dream big without giving them tools, or the trade secrets of finance and wealth to but a select few. But, alas wealth isn't the sum of existence, nor is fantasy the end result of good living. Wealth is an expendable commodity, in one way of looking at it, and fantasy is the dreams we come from and remember as reality. Science likes to listen to the dreamers and make manifest the dreams of the dreamers who tell their stories so well, or paint their dreams so well.  Wealth needs the fantasy, and fantasies need the release money provides to the dreamer bound by a need to give expression to the dreams constantly coming in the day and the night times. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 5.13.13

FINE AS WINE

a bottle of Hornitos Tequila 

FIRST AMERICAN CITY BOMBED

Question: "What was the name of the R&B group whose name honored Black Wall Street? If this piece is to be titled let it be the name of Blacks and Whites referred to this community with its wealth and self-sufficiency."

Black Wall St.- the killing

One of the nation's worst acts of American terrorism and racial violence, the Tulsa Race Riot, occurred there in late May and early June 1921, when 35 square blocks of homes and businesses were torched by mobs of angry whites.

The riot began because of the alleged assault of a white elevator operator, 17-year old Sarah Page, by an African American shoe shiner, 19-year old Dick Rowland (the case against Mr. Rowland was eventually dismissed). The Tulsa Tribune got word of the incident and chose to publish the story in the paper on May 31, 1921. Shortly after the newspaper article surfaced, there was news that a white lynch mob was going to take matters into its own hands and kill Dick Rowland.[6]

A group of armed white men congregated outside the jail and, subsequently, a group of African American men joined the assembled crowd in order to protect Dick Rowland. There was an argument in which a white man tried to take a gun from a black man, and the gun fired a bullet up into the sky. This incident promoted many others to fire their guns, and the violence erupted on the evening of May 31, 1921. Whites flooded into the Greenwood district and destroyed the businesses and homes of African American residents. No one was exempt from the violence of the white mobs; men, women, and even children were killed by the mobs.

Troops were eventually deployed on the afternoon of June 1, but by that time there was not much left of the once thriving Greenwood district. Over 600 successful businesses were lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half-dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. Note—It was a time when the entire state of Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six blacks owned their own planes.

It was suspected by many blacks that the entire thing was planned because many white men, women and children stood on the borders of the city and watched as blacks were shot, burned and lynched. In addition, some of the black-owned airplanes were stolen by the white mob and used to throw cocktail bombs & dynamite sticks from the sky.[11] Property damage totaled $1.5 million (1921).[11] Although the official death toll claimed that 26 blacks and 13 whites died during the fighting, most estimates are considerably higher. At the time of the riot, the American Red Cross estimated that over 300 persons were killed. The Red Cross also listed 8,624 persons in need of assistance, in excess of 1,000 homes and businesses destroyed, and the delivery of several stillborn infants.[6] - source unknown

... from the wreckage a child pulled another out. What did that feel like in the scope of the terror white inflicted upon the town? How did it ripple throughout the years of his life?

Answer: the GAP band