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7-7-2026 In 1969, the Panther Party was influencing Merritt College. Merritt was a two-year college on the Berkeley–Oakland border in Northern California. The college also had the nation's first Black Studies Department, created in 1964. In 1969, while living in Berkeley, California, my daughter was born. Her father and I lived on the second floor of an old nineteenth-century house. It had what had once been an upstairs porch that had been enclosed and turned into a room. Thi

There is an on line magazine which I read from time to time. It is obviously aimed at the young since most of the articles are about the young. Well the title above was the name of the article today and I had to read it because I am a woman and I have had a period in my life/youth when I thought about this. Well here it the article in full - and my response to it. You can skim or read fully but I would appreciate your comments. At the bottom of the article I have written m

Sunday and I have just returned from traveling in Europe whose weather is more like early spring now, cool days and chilly nights. You need a cover of sorts so I went into ---and bought a light denim jacket. The most intriguing, scary, emotionally disturbing place I visited was the Jewish Museum, in Berlin to be accurate. My husband wanted to see the Jewish Museum since he had worked on the model for the grant to build this extraordinary, unnerving piece of architecture.

5/27/2026....HOW TO GO MAD WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND! This is the name of a book I discovered somewhere within the last two or three years. When I first saw the book and read the title, I felt that someone had reached into my soul, found me, and was laughing at me. I was amazed that I had been found out. All this time I had been hiding, thinking no one saw me, and here it was — the truth — that someone had been watching me, seeing me, living the same lie, suffering from the sa

5/19/2026 Vantage Point Edited Article by Dr. Ron Daniels Despite the triumph of the Haitian Revolution or more accurately because of its success, it was critically important that competing European powers and the emerging United States isolate, marginalize and destabilize Haiti for fear that the example of a Black Republic would inspire enslaved and colonized people everywhere to rise up in revolt. Hence, because of a history of invasions, occupation, interference and domina

No Matter! 5/18/2026 I walk around with the devil in my head — and the devil is my dance. As soon as I hear the music, my body, my head, my mind, my soul dance on the wind, in the street, in the air, everywhere. I cannot live without the dance! I move, I move, I move. I turn and slide into my waist, moving in my hips, my shoulders sliding into the movement, sliding into the breathing in my head. Another summer, another summer of heat and sweat and mosquitoes and flies and hot

4/28/2026 Arborvitae—often called the “tree of life”—are evergreen trees in the genus Thuja. They are widely used for privacy hedges, windbreaks, and low-maintenance landscaping. I HAVE AN ARBOVITAE JONES! Last year, I planted sixteen arborvitaes in my front yard. Four of them did not make it through the summer. I couldn’t figure out why because I had hired landscapers to do the work. I replaced those four, thinking the problem had been solved. But I had already begun to lear