Excellent Health Reports from My Mt. Sinai formerly Roosevelt Hospital Doctors who are the best in New York City!! Got Good News phone calls from both my GYN and regular MD. All my tests came back normal! I’m totally and completely healthy!! My general practitioner did say I do need to drink more water and cut back on starch & carbs. Other than that I’m in Great Shape!!
STEPHEN VINCENT PALMER GOOD NEWS
Stephen attended a “Paint with Friends” party on Feb. 26th. Here is his artwork. Autism is No obstacle to Stephen. He is very creative and ready to express his talents!! Stephen has also successfully tried his hand with photography! I LOVE MY BROTHER STEPHEN PALMER!!
Stephen will be with me this weekend March 5th & 6th and we will take in a movie and visit local museums. A great way to end my Chillaxin’ two week vacation!
I have always seen and viewed my brother Stephen in a positive light. For me Stephen is my personal Blessing and gift from God. All of us have some degree of disability. Autism has been a Plus + for Stephen and me. Despite naysayer doctors back in 1963 who advised my parents to put Stephen in an institution Mom & Dad ignored the medical profession and raised Stephen to be a contributing member of society. Stephen will be 55 years old on May 3rd and continues to break barriers and amaze me. I know our parents are smiling down from Heaven on us!!
For My Birthday Bash I will share some of my favorite Celebration songs. 57 and Loving It!! I Still Got it Going On cause age ain’t nothing but a Number!!
Write about your first name: Are you named after someone or something? Are there any stories or associations attached to it? If you had the choice, would you rename yourself?
The name Deborah is a Hebrew baby name. In Hebrew the meaning of the name Deborah is: Bee. Deborah was the Biblical prophetess who summoned Barak to battle against an army of invaders. After the battle she wrote a victory song which is part of the Book of Judges.
I’m not really sure who or what my Dad had in mind when he named me. Perhaps he was a fan of Deborah Kerr who was a popular actress during the 1950s. Once he told me that he wanted to avoid the traditional Palmer female family names and name me something different, a name he thought would be unique. However when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade there were about five (5) Deborahs, Debras, Debbies in my class!! So much for unique. Like most African-Americans born during the 40s, 50s, and 60s pretty much you either had a passed down family name or a Bible name. Later in the 1970s and thereafter African and Muslim names became popular I believe in an attempt for African-Americans to reconnect to the Mother Land.
About six or seven years ago I did a Free DNA screening given by 23andMe. Here are the results copied from an old document.
Through my maternal line my ancestors were from Mozambique. I belong to the maternal haplogroup 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 was free and they
were targeting African Americans mainly to ascertain my African Americans have such high levels of high blood pressure and diabetes. I 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, Kenya, 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 20 years.
In a way I envy my fellow bloggers who were born and raised in Africa and who had the opportunity to retain their traditional African names, perhaps some indigenous belief system, culture and language. Sadly when my ancestors were kidnapped and brought here on slave ships all of that was stolen from them. Even when I do visit Mozambique or Nigeria I will never know my tribe and cannot speak any of the tribal languages. However I do feel a very strong spiritual connection to my African ancestors especially those who came here during the Middle Passage. This may sound strange to some people but from time to time they speak to me as do some of my family members long deceased some as long ago as from the Civil War. My paternal Great, Great Grandfather William Henry Halstead served in the Civil War. Their voices rise up from ages past beckoning to me as a 21st Century Scribe to write about them so that they are not forgotten.
William H. Halstead name as inscribed on the Colored Soldiers Monument in Washington, DC
William Henry Halstead Headstone ~ Sleepy Hollow
In December of 1863 my Great Great Grandfather, William Henry Halstead, who
lived in Tarrytown, New York, traveled to New Haven, Connecticut to join the
29th Connecticut Colored Infantry. On his Volunteer Enlistment papers it notes
his occupation as a farmer. He enlisted for three years and was discharged on the
24th day of October 1865. He married and had five children. William Henry
Halstead passed away in 1888 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in
Tarrytown, New York. His wife moved to New York City with her five children.
Her children grew up in Harlem and belonged to various organizations such as Odd
Fellows, Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Daughters of New
York.
The same goes for my Native American ancestry.
Several years I wrote a blog post about that dilemma also called “The Cruelty of Christianity” basically when the Europeans first invaded America in 1492 or thereabouts the Native Americans had the land and the Europeans had the Bible. Now the Europeans have the Land and the Native Americans have the Bible. Perhaps their revenge are the casinos and tax-free cigarettes.
The Lioness of Judah Reigns. The Lioness does not concern Herself with the opinions of a sheep for She is the Alpha Female of the Tribe!! Victory is within her grasp!! Time to Rise and Grind!! For I come from Great Peoples of both African and Native American Ancestors who built a Great Nation!! A Warrior Queen may rest but only to regroup and come back even stronger than before!! The bloods of Nzingha, Queen of Ndongo, Yaa Asantewaa was the queen mother of the Edweso tribe of the Asante (Ashanti) in what is modern Ghana, Candace, Makeda ~ The Queen of Sheba, and Amina flow through me!! I am a Nubian/Native American Queen!!
4 When Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of theLord. 2 So the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth Hagoyim. 3 And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord; for Jabin had nine hundred chariots of iron, and for twenty years he had harshly oppressed the children of Israel.
4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time. 5 And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. 6 Then she sent and called for Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, “Has not the Lord God of Israel commanded, ‘Go and deploy troops at Mount Tabor; take with you ten thousand men of the sons of Naphtali and of the sons of Zebulun; 7 and against you I will deploy Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitude at the River Kishon; and I will deliver him into your hand’?”
8 And Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go!”
9 So she said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh. 10 And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; he went up with ten thousand men under his command,[a] and Deborah went up with him.
11 Now Heber the Kenite, of the children of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, had separated himself from the Kenites and pitched his tent near the terebinth tree at Zaanaim, which is beside Kedesh.
12 And they reported to Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor. 13 So Sisera gathered together all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people who were with him, from Harosheth Hagoyim to the River Kishon.
14 Then Deborah said to Barak, “Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the Lord gone out before you?” So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him.15 And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army with the edge of the sword before Barak; and Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot. 16 But Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth Hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not a man was left.
17 However, Sisera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite; for there was peace between Jabin king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. 18 And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said to him, “Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me; do not fear.” And when he had turned aside with her into the tent, she covered him with a blanket.
19 Then he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him. 20 And he said to her, “Stand at the door of the tent, and if any man comes and inquires of you, and says, ‘Is there any man here?’ you shall say, ‘No.’”
21 Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, and it went down into the ground; for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. 22 And then, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said to him, “Come, I will show you the man whom you seek.” And when he went into her tent, there lay Sisera, dead with the peg in his temple.
23 So on that day God subdued Jabin king of Canaan in the presence of the children of Israel. 24 And the hand of the children of Israel grew stronger and stronger against Jabin king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.
Shawnee Sioux War Dance
Maternal Grandmother Hattie Finney Banks
You May have Stolen My Land but not my Spirit!! I have been anointed and called by My Eternal Ancestors for a time such as this!!
Name know only to God. Paternal Woman Ancestor
Philippians 3:13-14 King James Version (KJV)
13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
“…I love dressing up in superhero outfits and in fact, when I dress up as Wonder Woman, I actually think that I’m more powerful…”
—Olivia Munn
Real or made up. A super hero can be anybody. The lady next door who devotes her time to the needy, our soldiers across the seas or like our heroes growing up we can write about Batman or Wonder Woman. A super hero can take many forms. Lets write about them this week!
Every Halloween my brother Stephen and I become Super Heroes. Halloween is my favorite holiday because you can not only dress in costume but it’s okay to walk around the city in that costume with your new though temporary Identity. For a long time I went with a feline theme thus I was Cat Woman channeling Eartha Kitt for several Halloweens. As you can see I greatly enjoyed my Cat Woman and Tigeress Avatars! Stephen won Best Costume in 2011 for his Scarecrow Costume!! in 2013/2014 Stephen was a Sailor aka like the kid on the Cracker Jack box for those of you old enough to remember the caramel popcorn with the toy surprise. Obviously for those of you living on the East Coast of the United States Hurricane Sandy put the kibosh on Halloween that year. Some photos were taken at Stephen’s training center AABR in Jamaica, Queens, New York.
Sailor Stephen
Sailor StephenStephen as ScarecrowEbony Panther
Me as the Black PantherStephen as Scarecrow. Me as Cat Woman.Halloween 2013 ~ Year of the Tiger!!Me channeling Cat Woman Halloween 2011
My Avatar ~ Cat Woman
This past summer Stephen with his Group Home residence had visited The New York Renaissance Faire located in Tuxedo, New York. So together we decided on variations of a Renaissance Theme. I re-imagined Diana the Huntress as DeBorah the Huntress, a combination of the Hunger Games and the Goddess Diana. So I become the Goddess DeBorah acting out my incarnation as Huntress Protector of the Forest. Stephen transformed from a Sailor into the Black Robin Hood! This is what ensued.
Espiritu en Fuego/A Fiery Spirit 