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It’s been a minute but I am back with another PBS Blog Podcast. Today we are talking about the language of love. The language you use when you speak about yourself is what is eventually manifested in your life.
I AM a PUBLISHER. I WILL publish books. I CAN publish books. I MUST publish books.
I AM paying this bill. I WILL pay this bill. I CAN pay this bill. I MUST pay this bill.
See how powerful these statements are as compared to: I want to publish books, I wish I could publish books….? Sounds kinda weak now right? Right.
When we start to infuse this kind of language into our lives we take back control of how we feel.
Listen to Language of Love now on Soundcloud and don’t forget to subscribe for notification of new episodes.
Welcome back to Black History Fun Facts where I am still not finished with my original article (lol), but I got you covered.
Now, we are familiar with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and many of the writers and musicians of The Harlem Renaissance Movement. What we are not always familiar with are the painters, photographers, and sculptors. That is why when I find someone great, I like to highlight them.
Before we go on, take a moment and dig into your purse, wallet or coin jar (or coin purse….I know some of ya’ll still have them!) Wherever you keep your change, pick out a dime.
In the 1920s, Selma Burke became one of the African American women of the Harlem Renaissance through her relationship with the writer Claude McKay. The two shared a Manhattan apartment but McKay was mean, destroying her work when he didn’t like it, and the relationship was a strange one. Nonetheless, it was through Claude that Burke got introduced to the Harlem community. She studied under another black woman sculptor of the movement, Augusta Savage.
Selma Burke in her studio, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0100403.
An educator, Burke later taught at the Harlem Community Art Center and founded the Selma Burke Art School in New York City and the Selma Burke Art Center in Pittsburgh. (This makes her one of my heroes since I do want to start my own school one day.) Burke is most famous for her 1944 sculpture of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was the model for his image on the dime, though she never received credit for it. Only now are people starting to recognize that she was the inspiration behind the image.
Burke’s sculpting of the image came about as part of a contest, where she wrote the White House stating that she could not sculpt the image from a photo alone. The White House responded and granted her a sitting with the president. The credit for the plaque was given to U.S. Mint Chief Engraver John Sinnock but it was Burke who created the original design. Burke also sculpted Booker T. Washington and later, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Burke made sculpture by shaping white clay from her parents’ farm as a child. After being educated at what is now Winston-Salem State University and trained as a nurse at St. Agnes Hospital Nursing School in Raleigh, Burke moved to New York City to work as a private nurse.
“Selma Burke was born on December 31, 1900, in Mooresville, North Carolina, the seventh of 10 children of Neil and Mary Colfield Burke. Her father was an AME Church Minister who worked on the railroads for additional income. As a child, she attended a one-room segregated schoolhouse and often played with the riverbed clay found near her home. She would later describe the feeling of squeezing the clay through her fingers as the first encounter with sculpture, saying “It was there in 1907 that I discovered me.” – Wikipedia
After completing a Masters of Fine Arts at Columbia University in 1941, Burke began to teach art, first at the Harlem Community Art Center and later at schools she founded in New York and Pittsburgh.
Burke’s last monumental work, a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Marshall Park in Charlotte, was completed in 1980. Selma Burke died in 1995 in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
My Guest Blog Post on The Story Reading Ape Blog. My message is simple: Authors, please do your OWN research, FACT CHECK, and experience this journey for yourselves. Don’t let someone tell you something is a waste of time or money. Double check everything for yourself first and ask questions from those who have been where you are trying to go and who actually know what they are talking about.
*Comments disabled here. Please meet me on the other side.*
Hey Guys! Wow. It’s been a long time. I miss you all!
*waves to readers and sits on virtual sofa*
This article started out extremely long but then I realized how necessary it was to keep this short and simple.There is so much information out here for Independent Authors and so many made-up commandments it isn’t funny. Everyone has an opinion on what the new author should and shouldn’t do. Everyone has a piece of advice to give or stones to throw. If you move this way you are doing it wrong and if you move that way you are still doing it wrong. There are more laws for the Self-Publisher than there are in the bible. There is something to say about everything. This is why I humbly advise each person to experience everything for themselves and to do their own research. Sometimes you don’t need to…
Welcome back lovelies! To another No Whining Wednesday, the only day of the week where you do not get to whine, criticize, or complain for a 24hour period. If you are new to this blog or new to this segment, please visit the first post HEREto understand what this is all about.
The No Whining Wednesday Badge
Today’s inspiration is Will Smith’s Instagram video. It has been making its way around social media and for good reason. We live in a world dominated by social media and for this, it’s important to remember that everybody who LIKES you don’t “Like” you. In fact, I am willing to bet that many of us have people on our Facebook “friends” list who are not our friends and people who like our every post but will not reach out in real life. People who say they support you but have never bought a book or left a review or just helped you to promote your work. This goes far beyond writing, this is about life. Who we surround ourselves with has a lot to do with the person we eventually become. This is how important associations are. If the people around you are not encouraging you, lifting you up, inspiring you, correcting you, helping you, etc, why are they around you? Why are we allowing people who do nothing for us to have so much access to us?
It is important not to get emotional about it. I am just going to discuss the facts. Let’s just be real for one second here people. If they won’t even show you that the Egyptians were a BLACK SKINNED people, why would anyone admit the Israelites were black? (Who were often mistaken as Egyptians…also Israel is in Northeast Africa by the way.)
I am sure we’ve all heard it by now. It’s all over social media. In the midst of Black History Month The Today’s Show decided to showcase an image of a white Nefertiti. Not only am I not surprised, but I think maybe we (so-called Black people) deserve it. Maybe this is what it takes for us to wake up and stay woke. Maybe these are the kinds of shockers that is necessary for us to realize the truth. You don’t have to know much about history to know that the Egyptians were a black skinned people. “Egypt is in Africa, not some small island in Sweden.” (Paul Mooney)
The word Ham in Hebrew is Khwam, and it means “hot, burnt, and black.” The first-born son of Ham, Cush, forms the Kushite nation. They were also called and known as the ancient Ethiopians. Ethiopia comes from the Greek word, Aethipos, which means, “burnt or black face.” The Greeks applied this name to the people living south of Egypt. The name Egypt comes from the word Aegyptus though the Egyptians called themselves Khemet / Kemet, which is a variation of the Hebrew word Khawm (Ham). It means, “People of the black land.”
Gerald Massey, English writer and author of the book, Egypt the Light of the World, wrote, “The dignity is so ancient that the insignia of the Pharaoh evidently belonged to the time when Egyptians wore nothing but the girdle of the Negro” (p. 251)
Sir Richard Francis Burton, a 19th century English explorer, writer, and linguist in 1883 wrote to Gerald Massey, “You are quite right about the ‘AFRICAN’ origin of the Egyptians. I have 100 human skulls to prove it.”
King Tut
King Tut
Scientist, R. T. Prittchett, states in his book, The Natural History of Man, “In their complex and many of the complexions and in physical peculiarities the Egyptians were an ‘AFRICAN’ race” (p. 124-125).
The ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century B.C.E., saw the Egyptians face to face and described them as black-skinned with woolly hair.
Anthropologist, Count Constatin de Volney (1727-1820), spoke about the Egyptians that produced the Pharaohs. He later paid tribute to Herodotus’ discovery when he said:
“The ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Romans and Greeks, must have lost the intensity of its original color, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold. We can even state as a general principle that the face (referring to The Sphinx) is a kind of monument able, in many cases, to attest to or shed light on historical evidence on the origins of the people.”
Volney also stated:
“What a subject for meditation. Just think that the race of black men today, our slaves and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, science, and even the use of our speech.”
Egypt: Ham’s second born son < Blood brothers to the Ethiopians
Ethiopian > Burnt Face
Egypt > Burnt Black
Phut: The Somalians – According to the ancient record of Egypt, Phut has been traced back to the Somalian
“Every man has flesh and blood, which includes a skin tone, but the Israelites and Egyptians were black, I’m just making it known.”
From Music Video: Remember the Time by Michael Jackson
“Alright, girl, here’s another one. This here from Caroline down the road”, said Pearl.
Molly rolled her eyes, “Alright, put it on the table.”
“Whew, child. You mind if I oblige myself to this here sofa? All this running around, can’t be healthy.” Pearl heaved in and out as she sat down, lighting a cigarette. She closed her eyes, savoring the nicotine in her throat before releasing it into the air.
Molly chuckled, “Did you just say running can’t be healthy?”
Pearl cut her eyes at Molly, smiled, and answered by taking another long pull from the cigarette. Pearl was a big girl, and proud of it. She had a plump backside, wide hips, thick legs, and big breasts. So is the make-up of all the Tate’s.
“Girl, you know I can’t be losing no weight. Charles will have a fit. Have me walking around here looking all sick like y’all skinny heifers,” said Pearl as Molly laughed.
“I’m serious. Shoot, the bigger the berry, the sweeter the juice.”
“No you didn’t!” laughed Molly. Pearl joined in. She cracked herself up.
Molly glanced over the table, almost completely covered with German Chocolate cake, sweet potato pies, greens, macaroni and cheese, yams, baked beans; you name it, it was here.
“She’s not dead, you know,” Molly spoke from nowhere.
“What?”
“All of this support. It’s like everyone’s acting like this is some kinda repass. Like my daughter is dead or something.”
Pearl let the cigarette die out in the ashtray. Whatever kinda buzz she had, Molly just blew it.
“They just tryna be supportive is all. You know how country folk are. Your child is their child. The men folk are out looking and the women folk are at home cooking. That’s how it is.”
“They will find her.”
Pearl shrugged, “Humph, I know they will. Got the dogs, NAACP and everything else. They better find her.”
“I mean alive. They’re going to find her alive. I can feel her, Pearl.” Molly thought about the last time she saw her very own mother that night on the porch, cold and tired. She wondered for a moment if that’s how Nora felt right now: alone, cold, and tired. Molly wanted to feed her. To give her all this food that was made for her.
Pearl sat back on the sofa, Here we go again. She wasn’t entirely honest with Molly, but everyone wore the same consensus on their hearts. There was a strong possibility they were not going to find Nora alive. No one wanted to give her credit because she talked too much. Miss Irene talked entirely too much and spoke with an unfiltered tongue, but what she said was true. Children in 1922 Mississippi didn’t just run away.
First, no one would let them. Besides their parents, there were just too many eyes watching, which is what makes it hard to believe no one saw anything. This was the South and you had not one parent or two, you had forty, fifty, and sixty. The whole colored community. People looked out for each other and someone, somewhere was always watching.
Still, she didn’t know how to break the news to her friend that she should prepare her heart for the unthinkable. Besides, she had her Marie to think about and she didn’t know what she’d do if something happened to her. If there was one thing her parents taught her, it was putting yourself in other people’s shoes. “That the onliest way to sympathize wit ‘em,” her father would say. “You gotta be able to feel where they been, where they walked, and then you can help ‘em ‘cause you knows. You knows in your heart what they been through and where they is.”
“She gone be alright, Molly. She gone be alright.”
Pearl lit her cigarette again, leaned back on the sofa, looked at the table, and prayed her words were true
Grab your copy of Renaissance today. Part two is on its way!
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