This weekend is Mother’s Day. What began as one woman’s public expression of love for the woman that gave her life in 1905, it became an official national holiday in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday of May the official day to honor Mothers. There are traditions that go on during the coarse of that day. Corsages worn to church and to brunch, lunch or dinner speak a...

          The majority of the year 2021 had been a curious one. Not only was I suspended in a phase of ambiguous activity, but the time I had been spending in the cocoon of my office had made my senses sharpen and my reading ability to become more acute. This heightened awareness has come with a price, however. More than before, my Guides and the Spirits that are with me are telling me “NO!” or...

          We are entering the colder months of the year and with that, monthly rituals of light that gives us something to look forward to every 30 days or so. Somehow I think our Ancestors planned it that way – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentines Day – to get us through the 29 other dark and dreary days. One of my daughters has the Christmas tree and all the lights up inside and...

  When I wrote my Newsletter for May, as well as an accompanying blog post and yet another article for another newsletter for a group to which I belong, how would I have known that one’s ancestry and genealogical composition would take center stage in the World. I have seen various Persons of Color of all ethnicities (there is a difference) stand in unison in protest for the recent deaths of those in police custody. This is the...

          “What a difference a day makes Twenty-four little hours Brought the sun and the flowers Where there used to be rain My yesterday was blue, dear Today I’m part of you, dear My lonely nights are through, dear Since you said you were mine” Dinah Washington – “What a Difference a Day Makes” 1959   Today is sunny and windy, nice considering a thunderstorm blew through...

  Grandma and Grandpa Graves had passed some time ago. They weren’t really my grandparents; they were friends of my Mom and my then stepfather at the time, and they became my babysitters when I was growing up. They lived across the street from the house we rented on Vermont Avenue, and theirs was the best manicured lawn on the block. Grandpa had been employed in the carpentry trade and Grandma was a homemaker, He was a tall,...