Mother Ebonne Davis has her face painted at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art’s Annual Community Day, Sat., Sept. 10 in Northwest. Her twins Elijah and Isaiah, 6, show the results of their paint jobs. / Photo by Victor HoltOn Saturday morning, people were greeted by an unfamiliar sight on high. It was a brilliant and warming bright golden orb that ascended that morning—better known as the sun. After three straight weekends of soggy, house-binding weather, families and individuals were finally able to get out and get active, and the National Museum of African Art's annual Community Day gave visitors plenty to get involved in.
This year's community day was titled "The Power of the Word," and featured Diallo Bumbry of Adinkra Arts and poet/singer Dehejia Maat as emcees, as they introduced West African traditional dance by Baltimore-based troupe Nazu, spoken word and acoustic guitar works by Queen Earth and Omekongo, an internationally renowned spoken word artist whose works address events and issues in Africa, especially in his native Congo. But those artists were just the openers for a day of fun, education and art that filled all the floors of the museum.
The Hubbards represented one of the most resilient images of Black family in media. Model Yaya DaCosta (left) and Cornelius Smith Jr. (right) round out the family as the Hubbard children, Cassandra and Franklin. / Courtesy photoThe wildly popular television soap opera "All My Children," is set to air its series finale on American Broadcasting Company (ABC) on Sept. 23. And while many fans of the long-running drama may not take too evenly to its replacement – the "food-oriented" talk show, "The Chew", they may not have to abandon the show altogether.
In one of the industry's most innovative moves, the Los Angeles-based production company Prospect Park has agreed to take the show virtual. Prospect Park, led by Royal Pains executive producers Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz, licensed the soaps from ABC and plans to re-launch them online in the first quarter of 2012, has also reportedly shopped both "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" (also cancelled and expected to run its final episode in January 2012) to several major cable networks.
Some actors on "Children" have been offered contracts which mimic their ABC ones, including Walt Willey, who portrays the character Jackson Montgomery.
"I'm very excited about it though. These folks [at Prospect Park] are innovators and I think they are very smart. I think that getting this up and running by fall was a little on the undoable side, but now it seems that both AMC and One Life will be starting up on the Internet at the same time in January 2012," said Willey.
Dr. Karen Davis-Foulks (Dr. Karen), PMD, DL, NES Health Practitioner, non-secular science of medicine uses Energy and Information Health Protocols to assist clients with their health conditions. Dr. Karen uses the "Self-Care/Self Responsibility" model for educating clients on how to use the power of consciousness, informational medicine, complementary and alternative holistic health tools and modilities.
Dr. Karen is not a conventional "medical doctor." She is not concerned about your medical doctor's named diagnosis. It takes Life Force Energy to run and maintain the body's (Physical body, Energy Body and Spiritual Body) homeostasis. Every healthcare system has a theory of promotion.
Dr. Karen derives her theory from Chinese Medicine, Quantum Biology, Physics, Spiritual Health, Western, Science of Lymphology and Cellular Ecology. She teaches that you are an energetic light being, your body is glowing, and light controls your cell functions. She asks the question: "do you know where your body's light comes from." She further teaches that when you are told that you have a disease, you do not have a disease and that you could not have a disease because most all illness occurs when biophoton emissions are out of sync?
Biophotons are the smallest physical units of light stored in, and used by, all biological organisms – including your body. The purpose of these biophotons is much more important than many realize. As it turns out, they may very well be in control of virtually every biochemical reaction that occurs in your body – including supporting your body's ability to heal.
Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp, who proved the existence of the biophoton field in 1974, believes that these types of "biophoton emissions" are responsible for transferring information throughout your entire body. Dr. Popp was the first to suggest that this light must come, at least in part, from the foods we eat. When we eat plant foods, the light waves, or photons, in the plants are taken in and stored by your body.
Dr. Popp also proved that light in your body is stored by, and emitted from, your DNA. The DNA inside each cell vibrates at a frequency of several billion hertz (which unfortunately is the same range for modern cell phone communication systems).
The molecules send out specific frequencies of electromagnetic waves which, not only enable them to 'see' and 'hear' each other, as both photon and phonon modes exist for electromagnetic waves, but also influence each other at a distance and become ineluctably drawn to each other if vibrating out of phase (in a complementary way).
Written by By Dr. Khadija AbdulMalik, CL,PMD,Special to The Informer
Adams Morgan held it's annual Festival Day in Northwest Washington DC, Sunday, September, 11, 2011.Contemporary African Artist Hussein Saidi shares information with customer Revalyn Gold about his paintings. Images from the festival below.
Recently the actor/comedian Katt Williams came under fire for dressing down a Mexican American heckler during a performance in Phoenix Arizona.
Williams' uber-patriotic, mean and visceral tirade against the heckler went viral and was immediately compared to Michael Richards – Kramer from Seinfeld –- and his N-word barrage against an African-American heckler during a show a few years back.
My issue with the Katt Williams and Michael Richards incidents is not that they used hateful language or pushed racial buttons, but that they weren't funny.
Differences among and between people are a corners
tone of humor: girls are like this, guys are like this, white people dance like this, Puerto Ricans don't have jobs. It's a powerful device which I think helps draw us together into a community of people who all have mock able traits. The catch is that you have to be FUNNY. Otherwise, you're just being racist.
When Katt Williams says "You remember when people used to tell us 'go back to Africa' and we had to tell em 'we don't WANT to," that is a poignant insight in my mind. And it made me laugh.
The experience of black people in America is different from the Mexican immigrant experience, but they find themselves sharing communities across the country. That dynamic is ripe for humorous exploration. Katt's problem was that his routine quickly unraveled into a bizarre, unscripted, vengeful tirade more concerned with shaming his Mexican heckler than making people laugh.
There's a phenomenon called 'the narcissism of small differences, it's the reason French people mock the Belgians, Americans tease Canadians and salvys clown hondos. We are so similar in so many ways that we have to highlight and ridicule our differences to differentiate us from one aanother. A lot of the time, these jokes reveal fears and social issues.
One of my favorite racial jokes is a very simple one: "What's long and hard on a black man?" And the answer is "First grade." When you hear that, you cringe. It's awful. But if you dig a little, we can learn a lot about a person who might tell or appreciate that joke. For one, it reveals a white fear of black masculinity and sexuality: the mythical (or not so mythical) Big Black Dick. That fear has driven a LOT of subjugation of African people throughout history.
The joke turns it on its head, however, by revealing a social ill. Young black men, by numbers, struggle in early education when compared to their white, Asian and Latino classmates. Why is this? Schools in black communities are under funded, compulsory education in America was built around a Western European experience, etc. But that two line joke explores two powerful themes: fear and social injustice. Fear and social injustice, incidentally, are the two things which consistently hamper progress in race relations. Also, the joke is hilarious. But it's hilarious because it's uncomfortable.
In closing, I'll throw in an Irish joke and a Mexican joke just so that my own people have been adequately ridiculed.
"What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish funeral?
"One less drunk."
It's true. We're alcoholics and we especially like to be drunk at moments of passage, to the point where you can't tell the difference between a birthday party and the last rights of a dying man. We're drunk in church.
"How is Jesus not like a Mexican? Jesus would never get a tattoo of himself."
It's funny because Mexicans DO be gettin tats of Jesus. And naming their kids Jesus (my grandfather's name). And put stickers of the Messiah on their cars.
I just wanted to chime in before we try to impose a ban on racial humor. Don't scream "Nigger!" over and over at a black person. Don't make an entire audience of people chant "USA! USA!" at a proud (obviously sensitive) Mexican American. That's just scary and uncomfortable. What I will fight for, though, is the right to tell this joke: "Do you know why there are no Puerto Ricans on Star Trek? . . . They don't plan on working in the future, either." I'm out.
On the heels of launching its enhanced Lilly for Better Health™ program, Lilly USA introduces the Lilly Health Channel on YouTube – www.youtube.com/lillyhealth – featuring videos on health and wellness, employee and community outreach efforts, health innovation, and other non-product-branded initiatives.
Videos on the channel spotlight issues like the growing rate of diabetes in the U.S., particularly among teens, and programs such as Connecting Hearts Abroad, Lilly's global service program which sends hundreds of Lilly employees around the world as ambassadors to assist people and communities in need.
The educational and motivational videos are intended to inspire patients to make healthy lifestyle changes, and provide insight into Lilly's diverse, talented team and innovative projects.
When Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help hit book sellers in late 2008 it was touted as a refreshing look at the lives of Black maids in 1960s-era Jackson, Mississippi. On the surface, Stockett's tale of race and class offered a lighthearted, however, disjointed account of burgeoning civil rights activity among Black maids. However, the rendering was done so through the eyes of a young, unbelievably naïve white girl, whose family employed one of the maids. The novel bent the natural laws of reason in order to portray innocence and southern gentility. In fact, it teetered on the absurd. Honestly, even Gone with the Wind needed the emotional anchoring of the Civil War to support its revisionist romanticism. The film, of the same name, opens in theaters this week and promises to offer a sideshow of sorts that supports the same light-heartedness.
The National Symphony Orchestra celebrates the beginning of its 2011–2012 season with its annual Labor Day Capitol Concert featuring new NSO Principal Pops Conductor Steven Reineke in Legends of Washington Music, a musical tribute to John Philip Sousa, "Duke" Ellington, and Chuck Brown, the "Godfather of Go-Go."
Harry Connick Jr. with Branford Marsalis before a performance to celebrate the opening of the new The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, named after his dad. / Courtesy photOn August 25, as the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approached, one of the most positive responses to the catastrophe that devastated New Orleans was unveiled – The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. Located at 1901 Bartholomew Street in the heart of the Musicians' Village in the Upper Ninth Ward, and named for one of the city's most influential pianists, educators and living legends, the Center will serve as a state of the art facility for the preservation and ongoing development of New Orleans music and culture.
Wilson Produces Boyz II Men Hit Single
Legendary singer-songwriter, Charlie Wilson and Boyz II Men recently teamed up to collaborate on a BIIM's new single, "More Than You'll Ever Know." The song which is already receiving a tremendous amount of radio play, was written and produced by Wilson, whose distinguished vocals are also featured on the track. For more information on Charlie Wilson log on to www.unclecharliewilson.com Pictured L to R: Michael Paran (Manager, P Music Group), Nathan Morris (BIIM), Charlie Wilson, Wanya Morris (BIIM) and Shawn Stockman (BIIM)
For me, women have always had this image as a larger-then-life hero. In my family, they were the engines that made us go, the mavericks who were feared and respected. They were the ones who taught you to work hard, dress well and always be a gentleman.
And no, I don't come from the stereotypical fatherless home. There was a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather - who all worked, by the way. But in their households, all of the women worked as well. That's why the phenomena known as the "working woman" is puzzling to me.
As far as I know, black women have always worked.
So, as I watch people - men and women - complain about finding the so-called "work, life, balance" thing, I can't help but think back to parents who made it through layoffs, graduate school, night shifts in the factory, job losses, raised children and still dealt with the customary rigors that go with life - without complaining.
To everybody else, the sky is blue.
But you see it in different shades: a lighter tone next to fluffy gray clouds. Pink and purple, like when the sun goes down. Sometimes, you can even see a dark, angry blue like a bruise, just before a good rainstorm.
All around you are colors and if you're good at pretending, you can imagine what they'd feel like. Green might feel prickly, like grass. Brown might be soft like a puppy. Silver feels cool, like Dad's car or Mama's earrings.
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