Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright — Ms. Bachuta’s Revenge

On September 22, 2012November 17, 2012 By dancingpalmtreesIn Africa, Alligators, Bachuta, Bronx Zoo, Cats, Caucasian, Crocodiles, Darwin Award, Genetic Memory, Hippos, Hold That Tiger, Mills Brothers, Moms Mabley, Swimmers, Tiger, Track & Field, WTF2 Comments

Tiger, Tiger burning Bright – Ms. Bachuta’s Revenge

Warning this post is not politically correct and may be offensive to some. However if you were a fan of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Moms Mabley or LaWanda Page (Aunt Esther) read on for another WTF New York news story.

Yo Joe! Joe! Did you order take out? No then who’s this muthafucker in our cage? Where’s the babies, Ivette & Yvonne. RaeKwon get the hell away from there. What I tell you about messing around in that part of the den. This white muthfucka damn near fell on your head.

Shit! Who gives a damn! Come on y’all. Dinner is served. We gonna have white meat tonight. Might be a sight better than the regular Bronx Zoo crap we get every day! Hey he broke his fuckin’ leg in the fall! Easy pickin’s. Hold still ya dumb bastard! Gotta get that fool before the dumb ass Zoo Keepers rescue him!

CHOMP!!

I still can’t get over the fact that this idiot jumped off the damn monorail and into the Tiger’s den to commit suicide. There are easier, quicker and less painful ways to do away with yourself. Why not just swallow some sleeping pills, Xanax and top it off with a few cocktails. At least you’d just go to sleep and wake up somewhere else. No Jackass had to become one with the tiger. I guess the tiger Ms. Bachuta taught him a thing or to. Morale of the story: Don’t Fuck with Tigers from the Bronx or anywhere else!

The Mills Brothers– Hold That Tiger (Tiger Rag)

http://youtu.be/P0GKbpSN3nA

Give this dumbass a Darwin Award! Sorry but most Black people don’t even swim much less get near dangerous wild animals. So far I only know of one brother who had a Wild Kingdom obsession. This Negro had a tiger (again!) and an alligator in his Harlem apartment. The policeman who came upon these creatures unexpectedly probably almost shit himself. Well maybe he did shit himself. I know I would have.

Black people despite being separated from Africa over 400 years have collective memories about wild animals. That’s why up until recently there were next to no Black swimmers in the Olympic competition and plenty in Track & Field. Why are Black folks so good at running? Because genetic memory throws us into “Haul Ass” mode, recalling running from tigers, lions, and various other predators with sharp teeth! To this day I betcha very few Africans jump in the old swimming hole next to the village. Why? Muthafuckin hippos & alligators! I don’t care if they are herbivores. Them muthafuckers got teeth and they bite. Get on their surf & turf and you will be lunch or dinner. Also keep in mind every last one of those nature show hosts have been white. Go ahead keep fuckin’ with those animals. Look what happened to Steve Irwin. Leave the fuckin’ crocodiles, alligators and tigers alone!

The Five Racketeers “Hold That Tiger”

http://youtu.be/bwfHD8MDP8o

I could go into why white people also go investigate weird noises and/or sounds in horror movies but as the expression goes curiosity the cat or in this case the Caucasian. That saying is wrong because cats got nine lives and are very good at sensing danger. Well that’s for another post.

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Vanities of Aging ~ Confronting Mid-Life Challenges

On August 25, 2012November 17, 2012 By dancingpalmtreesIn 50+, Africa, African American Queen, Catharsis, Creativity, Dark Skin, Dreams, Ecclesiastes, Edward Palmer, Ethiopian Goddess, Fantasy, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Goddess, Images, Innovation, Inquisitive, Inscriptions, Mable Elizabeth Palmer, Mable Palmer, Menopause, Mid-Life, Sacred, soul, Spirituality, Stigmata, Surrealism, Tattoos, Vanity, Visions, Wisdom2 Comments

The Vanities of Aging

Confronting Our Mid-Life Challenges

Ecclesiastes 1:2

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Three years ago I experienced the thrill of turning 50. For me any birthday with a zero behind it was a special occasion. Each new decade signaled a new chapter in my life, a new beginning of sorts. I remembered when I turned 40 my Aunt Helen lovingly expressing to me the old adage, “Life begins at 40!” For me it really did. My 40s were a decade of singular accomplishments. I earned my B.A. at age 43; I reached a high level on the earning ladder at my then workplace; I was at my physical and sexual peak as a woman; and I had a new sassiness and vibe that enabled me to reach new heights on that climb to success.

My 50^th birthday was exciting with friends taking me out to dinner, a beautiful birthday cake, balloons, flowers; but after the celebration was over a certain uneasiness set in. “Wow. I’ve lived over half my life.” The career I had carefully developed had hit a brick wall. In fact I seemed to hit a plateau in terms of career success. Then came “The Change”. I was not prepared. For puberty my mother and I had “The Talk”. However as I entered menopause my mother was long since gone on to her Heavenly reward and during this frightening period of my life my last link to the past, my beloved Aunt Helen passed away. I missed my Mom and my aunts terribly. Then horrible things were happening to my body that I did not understand. I sought explanations and some assistance from various GYNs. Their answers usually involved some sort of hormonal treatments which I instantly rejected since both my parents died from cancer. I decided I would just endure the deluge of sweat that engulfed my body day and night, drenching my clothes and making sleep impossible.

Of course I tried all types of holistic treatments. I do believe I’ve been through every herb and natural juices offered in the health food store. Nothing. No effect at all. I’ve decided it’s best to stay near the A.C., turn the fan on at night and keep bottled water with me at all times.

Menopause is an evil creature. She brought along her friends high blood pressure and arthritis to add to my daily pain and discomfort. Yes, this certainly was a ‘Change of Life’. Everything changed in my life, my diet, my ability to go up and down stairs without stopping for breath, the increased popping and cracking in my joints. I kind of felt like a human Rice Krispies, “Snap, Crackle, & Pop.” My mind was just as sharp and creative as it was at age 25 but I could not get my body in agreement with my mental desires.

But I told myself that I still had my good looks. Thanks to a fantastic gene pool and being a dark skinned African American Woman the saying, “Black don’t crack” is really true. Mind you this proverb only works if you took care of yourself when you were in your 20s, 30s and early 40s. I never smoked, did not do drugs, and only drank socially. I also exercised albeit moderately which kept me in fairly good physical condition. I’m also lucky that most of my family tend to be small people so I’ll never gain an extreme amount of weight.

However specific physical changes cannot be avoided. By the time I was 52 all my hair had turned white, seemingly overnight. Finally one day when I overheard a co-worker described me as the African-American lady with the white hair I knew I had to do something. The bubble burst. Reality set in. Oh My God! I look old! This would never do.

After conferencing with several women co-workers I decided upon L’Oreal Feria. First I started out brown because I had read that going back to my original color of black would just make me look hard and emphasize any lines my face might have. Finally I went red, no not Kool-Aid red like some of the pop stars but a spicy Fire Engine Red that matched my fiery personality. This was the time of my life to really experiment. After 40 more of the free spirit in me came out. I got tattoos on a yearly basis. Sometime after I turned fifty I had my belly button pierced but then my belly played a trick on me and I developed that menopausal belly bulge that comes to nearly all 50+ women.

Was this a chase after lost youth? No because I’ve always been a non-conformist. My parents were Free-Thinkers and they brought me up to be my own person. I remember when I decided to spike my hair back when I was in my 20s. My Dad thought I looked so wonderful that he took pictures of me and had them blown up to poster size. My parents support and encouragement fostered in me a self confidence that has enabled me to survive a multitude of challenges. It has given me a sustaining power. My mother and father always encouraged my creativity and insisted that I think for myself not just follow the script handed to us by society in general.

For me the next 50 years will be a celebration of maturity and individuality with lots of creativity and a little bit of insanity thrown in for good measure.

Donations and Freewill offerings can be made directly to my PayPal account deborah.palmer280@gmail.com

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Female Ancestor from my Dad's side, Name lost to Time

The Cruelty of “Christianity”

On May 5, 2012February 9, 2015 By dancingpalmtreesIn Africa, African Goddess, Ancestor, Ancestry, Dark Skin, Edward Palmer, Ethiopian Goddess, Family Tree, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Goddess, Koyaanisqatsi, Mable Elizabeth Palmer, Mable Palmer, Matriarchy, mitochrondrial DNA, Mother, Mozambique, Native American, Nature, Noah's Ark, Sacred, Scars, Songs of Solomon & Sheba, soul, Spirituality, Stigmata, Suffering, Tekahionwake, Trail of Tears, Visions, William Henry Halstead, Wisdom7 Comments

The Cruelty of “Christianity”

“Oh, why have your people forced on me the name of Pauline Johnson? Was not my Indian name good enough? Do you think you help us by bidding us forget our blood? By teaching us to cast off all memory of our high ideals and our glorious past? I am an Indian. My pen and my life I devote to the memory of my own people. Forget that I was Pauline Johnson, but remember always that I was Tekahionwake, the Mohawk that humbly aspired to be the saga singer of her people, the bard of the noblest folk the world has ever seen, the sad historian of her own heroic race.”

Nobody knows my name or the real me except Jesus and him alone. Some ancestors unwillingly pulled from the breast of Mother Africa the others walked the “Trail of Tears”. Both had forced upon them the indoctrination of Euro-centric Christianity to the detriment of each noble culture.

A few months ago I traced my maternal ancestry back to Mozambique. When I made that discovery something in my spirit clicked and I knew that one day I had to return to the birthplace of my Great, great, great, great, great Grandmother, her birth name lost to time and eternity. Other ancestors born in this great land have yet to be revealed. Many times I wonder, “What was my African and/or Native American name.” The names of Finney, Halstead, Gordon, Palmer were all given by some distant slave-owner. Who were they and who were they 500 years ago?

Like Tekahionwake I live my dichotomy every day even in my spiritual life wondering about the respective faiths of my African and Native American ancestors. Thinking about how their own unique worship was torn asunder only to be replaced by a Euro-centric “Christian” god who relegated them to a lesser status, below that of their European captors.

Children of an accursed Ham? (Genesis 9:20–27) I think not for the descendents of the great Realm of Ethiopia have risen again to the rightful place in the Diaspora.

Matthew 12:42

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁴²The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.

The cries of my people would not be extinguished. The voices of my Native American ancestors called to me for redemption. Through an experiment called Carlisle Indian Industrial School History, really internment in re-culturalization concentration camps Richard Henry Pratt sought to erase the cultural identity of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other tribes through forcing children into complete immersion in Eurocentric culture and identity, effectively erasing their own. Take away a person’s language and belief systems, telling them that how God created them was wrong and had to be fixed only serves to create indwelling images of self-hatred within those lost children. If eradicating my indigenous and African American culture, traditions, ethnicity and exchanging them for dominant white culture will I be closer to God? Will Jesus accept me in this new form?

As I gaze in the mirror as many Native Americans did 150 years ago neither my face nor my features as God made them can be erased. The efforts on the part of European conquerors failed. Nor were the colonizers able to erase the connection to the Great Spirit as he was known long before the white man touched our shores.

White man you tell me that only your version of Jesus can save my soul and deliver me from sin. And just what is my sin? Being born with a brown face, high cheek bones, full lips, long flowing Jet Black hair or locs that rise to kiss the sun. Does my sin lie in the dances my people perform to honor my ancestors and Mother Earth who gives us all sustenance? Am I or my ways at fault because we revere Nature as opposed to destroying the land, fouling the waters, polluting the environment in a never ending obsession to conquer, convert and control? Now who is the savage? Who is the so-called heathen?

Oh European who comes bearing the sign of the cross who is this God of yours that lifts up your customs and traditions but disparages mine? He is not the Jesus depicted in your Old Master paintings from Italy, Spain, France or the Flemish Masters. No, more than likely he was a swarthy man with kinky dark woolly hair, skin darkened by constant exposure to the sun. Jesus was someone whose looks paralleled the populations most of the indigenous tribes of Africa, North and South America.

Revelation 1:14-15

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁴His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; ¹⁵His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters;

We Sisters and Brothers from what you named the “Third World” now know that Jesus came for us just as we are. God accepts us in all the richness with which he created us. We Black and Brown followers have redefined and returned Christianity to its original intent and meaning.

No longer do we walk the “Trail of Tears” or the Via Dolorosa. Now we stand together arm in arm marching onward to Zion that beautiful city of God taking our place among those who have been redeemed.

Nina Simone – If He Changed My Name

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My Maternal Ancestry Tree: The bond and bridge that enable me to crossover from America to Africa

On December 2, 2011 By dancingpalmtreesIn Africa, America, Ancestor, Ancestry, DNA analysis, Family History, Family Tree, Genetic lineage, Mable Elizabeth Palmer, Maternal lineage, Matriarchy, mitochrondrial DNA, Mother, Mozambique, Ohio, West Virginia

Friday, December 02, 2011

My Maternal Ancestry Tree: The bond and bridge that enable me to crossover from America to Africa

Maternal Ancestry Journey

Isaiah 54:1-3

New King James Version (NKJV)

A Perpetual Covenant of Peace

¹ “Sing, O barren,
You who have not borne!
Break forth into singing, and cry aloud,
You who have not labored with child!
For more are the children of the desolate
Than the children of the married woman,” says the LORD.
² “ Enlarge the place of your tent,
And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings;
Do not spare;
Lengthen your cords,
And strengthen your stakes.
³ For you shall expand to the right and to the left,
And your descendants will inherit the nations,
And make the desolate cities inhabited.

The eternal question, Who Am I? Many of us find the answer within our respective Family Trees. It was obvious to me that my ancestry began in Africa, but where in that great continent did my ancestors originate. But for me as an African American some of the branches were broken off and gone missing.

Thus began my quest to not only discover my maternal lineage but my genetic link to Mother Africa. Hidden within the larger search to trace my family history on my Mom’s side was the greater goal to honor my mother and complete myself as a branch of the family tree. DNA can now unlock the secrets and the past giving voice to generations of women, the collective matriarchy that ultimately formed me. Living in a society that often devalues, trivializes and cuts Black Women down, within my personal family history lay the opportunity to validate and reaffirm self.

Family Skeletons Revealed

Hattie Finney Banks was my grandmother. Hattie and Mattie Finney were twin sisters. Mattie Finney moved to Illinois and married a man named Harper. I always wondered what became of Mattie. My grandmother Hattie Banks never spoke of her twin sister Mattie. I always thought that was unusual but I did not ask any questions. Did not want to pry.

About two years ago my brother Stephen and I spent Thanksgiving with our New Jersey cousins. My Aunt told me a family story which might explain the split between the sisters and why they never again contacted each other.

My grandfather Hugh Banks, Hattie’s husband murdered Daniel R. Finney. So Hugh Banks killed his in-law, his wife’s close relative. Hugh Banks died in prison sometime around 1940. My Aunt went to the funeral. She does not know the reason why Hugh Banks murdered Daniel Finney. All this took place in the 1930s. After the funeral Hattie took my Mom, Mable, her sisters and moved to Dayton, Ohio. Hattie told everyone including my mother, her sisters and me that Hugh Banks had died in a coal mining accident.

I suppose she had to make up a false story and hide the truth because of embarrassment, shame or just wanting to forget. From what little my grandmother Hattie Banks told me Hugh Banks was a violent and abusive husband. I guess when she moved to Dayton to be with her brothers Clarence & Willie she just want to forget the past and start with a clean slate. I can’t prove it but somehow, some way this murder was probably behind Hattie and Mattie breakup.

23andme Ancestry

Good Ancestor News: Found out this week that through my maternal line my ancestors were from Mozambique. I belong to the maternal haplogroup L3e2b1a.

I also probably have some Nigerian ancestors. My maternal genetic makeup is 85% Africa, 12% Europe and 3% Asia.

Our ancestry and genealogy are traced through mitochondrial DNA which is only passed down from mother to child. This is fascinating information. By the way the study affiliated with Dr. Henry Louis Gates is free and they are targeting African Americans. I’ve wanted to have my DNA traced for several years and when I saw the ad in Ebony or was it Essence along with the word Free, I immediately signed up. I was so thrilled to find out this news. Now along with my African co-workers feel a more direct connection to the Motherland.

Naturally, I’ll never be connected to Mother Africa the way in which my co-workers from Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Mali are since they were born there and have a direction connection with the culture, language and respective tribes, I feel now more of a blood tie. Now I can plan for my pilgrimage to this country of my ancestors in the next five to ten years.

I’ve shared my findings with a select group of like-minded co-workers and when I return to work on Sunday will continue to do so.

As I previously stated, Hattie Finney Banks was my maternal grandmother. I’m in the process of writing a book honoring my mother, Mable Elizabeth Palmer, Hattie’s eldest daughter. Right now I’m trying to locate the birth certificate of either Hattie or her twin sister Mattie Finney. I want and need to know who their mother, my great grandmother was. I need that piece of information for not only my research but for my literary work. I know plenty about my Dad’s family history but almost nothing about my Mom’s side. Also there is something in me which needs completion.

When I look in the mirror I see Mable Elizabeth Palmer. I see unknown people from my collective past begging me to tell their story. I must answer their cries to be heard. Before I travel to Mozambique, South Africa I’ll have to visit West Virginia and examine birth, death, prison and military/Armed Forces records that may be available.

Then in 2012 back to Ancestry.com for more research on my maternal family tree. My maternal ancestors from Mother Africa call me and I willingly answer the call. Our patriarchal society bows down to the greater stronger Matriarchy for only females carry the mitochondrial DNA that enable all of us to trace our roots and find our origins. The Journey continues!!

http://www.23andme.com/

National Geographic also offers a similar test but it costs $99.95. That will have to wait until I receive my Federal income tax check next year. I want to see if genetic lineage test comes up with the same result as 23andme. I would think that for $100 the testing would be more wide-ranging and comprehensive. My goal is to find out more about my maternal lineage. My ultimate goal is to deepen my connection to my mother, grandmother and of course Mother Africa.

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