For the last few days my arthritis has been kicking up and my ankles are a little swollen.
Am I taking this lying down? No!! Well some rest but I’m taking abbreviated Soulful Struts and I’ve also purchased Turmeric, MSM, Biotin and Moringa Living Bitters which brings me to my next topic.
The Turmeric I got on Amazon which is convenient during the cold months when I do not want to go traipsing about freezing New York City searching for various vitamins and food supplements.
The MSM and Biotin I got from GNC around 84th Street and Lexington. I find their staff to be indifferent and somewhat rude so I will be patronizing my own people. Bottles of vitamins and other products blocked the cash register. The two clerks spent a lot of time gossiping and were not helpful.
The Moringa Living Bitters I purchased from Zam Zam an African store located along Fulton Street near Franklin Avenue. Moringa Living Bitters is a Detox and Energy Beverage which is all Natural and Organic. Taste terrible but so did the Cod Liver Oil Beef Iron wine my Dad used to make us take as children.
The young man in the store was professional, knowledgeable and polite. The store was neatly arranged, clean and smelled great!! Zam Zam offers an excellent wide selection of African products for reasonable prices. Health and Beauty, Cosmetics, Holistic supplements. Everything.
Moral of the Story for peoples of African Descent. Buy Black!! Don’t just complain about the disrespect we regularly get from certain other stores owned by other races. Let’s Move our dollars to our Black Owned stores circulating dollars within our community thus building up the race without having to rely on anyone else but ourselves!! Let us form Alliances with Africa and African merchants in order to better our situation!!
Misplaced. Lost but not forgotten. Every day they look for me. Divine Mother scours the land searching for her lost children. Crying because they are naught. Then once again she comes to the Island from whence the vessels filled with pale strangers cruelly kidnapped her young. Weeping. Wailing. Shrieking. Her gown is rent in two.
Taken
Then Divine Mother casts her gaze towards the wide waters. She hears the voices of her children calling her. Some from beneath the deep oceans. Others from strange lands.
She shall gather her children from distant shores and Ethiopia shall rise again.
There was a Gathering of Old Bones. Shall these dry bones live? Yes by Grace and Mercy.
Lost Tribes took in Lost Villages. Red and Black became one flesh. Pursued. Persecuted. Sometimes erased from this land only to resurface in another for in My Father’s House are many Mansions. Father God and Divine Mother call me forth to a plane of existence that the enemy can in no wise enter in.
Scented Sands. Gathered Aromas.
A Portly Golden Breeze scatters cosmic seeds into the oceans breath. Rescue my stolen children from alien Atlantic and Pacific waters. Yoruba and Jesus Dance together. The Goddess bestows her ritual Female powers. I am renewed. Orishas wash my soul.
Afroid Dreams of Salvation
We speak the language of old royal robes, the talking drums, painted faces, warrior chants…….
The Caramel, Sienna, Midnight Prodigal Daughter returns home. Indigo children reside on Astral planes, valleys, visions, 4th dimensional planets, solar systems, galaxies known only to the Enlightened Ancients.
The Misplaced Children of Africa have returned home. Lost no more. Egypt. Ethiopia. Ghana. Kenya. Nigeria. Mozambique. Togo. Mali. Namibia. Botswana. South Africa. All Nubian Kingdoms claim your Peoples from throughout the Diaspora. Baptize me in the Nile. Black Mother Moses I am Yours.
Thus says the LORD: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the LORD, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. Jeremiah 31:16
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Matthew 2:18
I Love the way 23andMe organized my Maternal Bridge linking me to Africa, Native American ancestry and I have some Irish lineage also! (See below chart)
I’ve always felt a special connection to my African co-workers knowing that I too am from the Motherland but my ancestors having been kidnapped and brought by force to what is now known as America some of that connection was lost. My ancestors lost not only their homeland but their language, culture, religion, (Christianity was forced upon both Africans and Native Americans) and traditions. For me the Connection or Bridges to my Ancestral Lands were partially rebuilt when I had my DNA test done a few years ago.
Through my maternal line most of my ancestors were from Mozambique. I belong to the maternal haplogroup L3e2b1a. Based on their findings I also probably have some Nigerian ancestors. Thanks to the advent of computers, the Internet and Blogs in my lifetime I can now connect with many of my African Sisters and Brothers across the globe. Exciting!!
When I pass through the African Art and Egyptian Wings of the museum sometimes I can feel the spirits of the artifacts reaching out to me. I look at items that once had spiritual significance and are now artworks and see my past, present and future. Sometimes I even see my face.
Canopic Jar ~ Perhaps Queen Tiye
Having Native American Ancestry from both my mothers and fathers sides I’ve always felt a deep spiritual connection to Native Americans, the traditions and the belief systems.
So I have the bloods of African, Native American and Irish Queens running through my veins but as the end result says on the below Ancestry Composition I am 100% DeBorah Ann Palmer.
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23andMe Ancestry Composition
Ancestry Composition tells you what percent of your DNA comes from each of 31 populations worldwide. This analysis includes DNA you received from all of your recent ancestors, on both sides of your family. The results reflect where your ancestors lived before the widespread migrations of the past few hundred years.
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.
Espiritu en Fuego/A Fiery Spirit 