Category: Uncategorized

Feeling a Little Blue Today

I’ve had so much going on lately – work is crazy, and home life is hectic. Planning a Family Reunion, trying to have a decent garden this year and all of the household madness in between. It has kept me from posting here about some of the great things going on in my online communities.

But right now, I’m really missing my Mom so I thought I would shed a few tears why watching the video I made of trying to capture part her life.

Take a look – this is the fabulous woman that gave birth to me, nurtured me and just loved me unconditionally! How I miss her!

Powder Necklace – A Review

Powder Necklace
By Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
280 pages

I just love when I have no preconceived notions about a book and delve into and really find myself enjoying it! That was just the case with Brew-Hammond’s Powder Necklace.
If I were to put it into a category I would call it a “coming of age” story, but it is also a story of the different dynamics that make up a family in our world.
Told from the narrator, Lila’s, point of view this international story follows the path a young Ghanaian girl takes as she travels to the homeland of her parents – something she has no knowledge of and back to her native London and then to New York.
Add to this mix the fact that she is prepubescent, sheltered and her parents are divorced and living on different sides of the world.
The writing is conversational,and although written from the context of a very young girl it is not elementary. The writer/narrator is wiser than her age.
Because we have all been children of this age we can relate to some of the issues she faces as she wants to assert her growth, but her parents understand that she still needs nurturing and guidance.
The story is also an eye opener for Americans or Westerners as the narrator presents the harsh realities of life in Ghana.
One scene I truly enjoyed for the written style of bringing the reader into the story was Lila’s return to London as she compares the two places “Where everything in Ghana had some red it it – from the soups we ate to the dirt roads we bumped along – everything in London was black, ash or brown.”
With passages like this Brew-Hammond draws the reader into her world and you absorb it – seeking to see, hear and feel more of this young girls life.
To learn more about the author and the book, visit here.

Voyeurism in America – Enough with Charlie Sheen!

Have you watched the local news lately? What were some of the prominent stories, and did they effect your local community?

Today as I watched the 6 p.m. news the lead story was the passage by the Ohio Senate of SB 5 followed by two stories on home explosions in Portage County, but inevitably the focus switched to Charlie Sheen and his latest antics!
Everyday this week we have been inundated with stories about Sheen, and why is this important to us? Well I don’t think it is important, but it shows how focused we are on the lives of celebrities – we are voyeurs. Are we really? I know I could care less about what is happening with Sheen. I sympathize with his family, particularly his children who are thrust into the spotlight because of his apparently unstable behavior.
As a point of clarification I am utilizing Merriam-Webster’s secondary definition “a prying observer who is usually seeking the sordid or the scandalous.”
However, in the grand scheme of things this is minutiae, and has no direct impact on my life. The shenanigans of Sheen will not lower the exorbitant rates at the gas pump, nor will it assist any of the middle class public employees rallying to have their voices heard.
I am truly saddened by what we as Americans call news, and what we long to see. Often it is the scandalous and salacious news from Hollywood, and other corners of the world where celebrities live the “glamorous” life!
Enough already, let’s focus on what’s most important and relevant – home, family and your own survival!

New Year – New Attitude

Well I’m starting off the new year with a new attitude and focus. This is pretty much how I planned to end 2010, but somewhere along the way I found myself in a fog and many of my plans were derailed. This was not a negative however, it’s just that many of the things that I had hoped to complete in the last 30 days of the year did not happen.


I started #reverb10 with the hopes that this would force me to write everyday, but I didn’t quite finish – at least not the posting portion. Many of the prompts for the final couple of weeks were handwritten, or not completed at all. I may attempt to complete them, and possibly post them later this month.

My next task was participation in Picture the Holidays, which was an online photography workshop offered by Big Picture Classes and unfortunately I didn’t complete all of these daily prompts either. I’m disappointed that it appears I have a problem completing tasks, but I’m happy with the progress I did make. The candle above is the result of one of our daily inspirations.

I think the time I spent writing the reverb10 prompts helped me to get through the holiday season, my first without my mother, and helped me to make it a pretty good holiday. You see at the last minute I decided that I would continue our family tradition of gathering for Christmas Brunch, and I expanded the family base to those who do not share my blood yet have become so much like family to me.

Well with last minute planning comes a whirlwind of activity that kept me pretty busy the week of Christmas. Christmas Eve was very emotional, but I was able to keep it together for Brunch and enjoyed the love that was flowing throughout.

Finally in an effort to end the year on a positive note, I hosted a “Sister Girl Year End Gathering” as an opportunity to bring together some of my dearest friends and say “Thank you” for helping me

get through the most challenging year of my life. We had a blast! The flowers are from a very special young lady who couldn’t attend, I tell you the love I have received is as my niece would say “Awesome”!

About a month before she passed away my Mom said to me, “You’re going to be fine” and through tears I told replied, “I’m glad you think so, because I’m not sure.” Well as always – Mom’s always right! Not a day goes by that I don’t want to reach for the telephone and talk to her, not many go by without me crying, but all in all I have survived the greatest pain in my life and as I approach the one year anniversary I can say – It gets a little easier each day, but the hole in my heart will never close!

#reverb10 – Action

Action. When it comes to aspirations, its not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?
I would say that my current aspiration have to do with exercising my creative juices and if the cards align themselves to support myself, or supplement my income through these endeavors.
I strongly agree that these ideas and aspirations must be placed into action in order to achieve the goal or make the aspiration a reality. To that end these daily prompts have helped me move from talking about writing and placed me in front of the computer typing. While these prompts have nothing to do with current projects, they do get the juices flowing and have helped the mind to expand and open up with reference to works in progress.
Another aspiration is to advance my photographic skills which have languished for a number of years. While working on these prompts I am also working on daily photography prompts to exercise that skill.
So while I am moving in the right direction, the final piece of this puzzle is to develop a flow and a way in which to complete these tasks along with the day-to-day life tasks.
Organization is the key to that problem, and I am currently trying to purge my home of extraneous items that are no longer of use so as to create a better work environment at home.