Celebrating an African Experience
Tonight at the Missouri History Museum, as part of the Community Cinema Series, a packed auditorium viewed “Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Naathai.” “Taking Root” tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Naathai, whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human…
On midnight of January 6th, in a specially convened session of Parliament, the bi-carmel house switched sides, signaling a transfer of power. On January 7th, the day I arrived back in the United States, President John Evans Atta Mills was formally inaugurated as President. I was there for the duration of the elections. On the…
Photo from Aerphant. A tidbit from my Author’s Guild Bulletin caught my eye: “Comfy: Where do you do your writing? For a book of photographs, The Writer’s Desk, by Jill Krementz and published in 1996, John Updike wrote the introduction. “He was interested that some writers seem to avoid a desk entirely. Updike wrote, ‘Walker…
Map from Virtual Explorers (http://www.virtualexplorers.org/ghana/map.htm). Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, my West African speech gave way to my Midwestern speech. I am going home…to my ancestral home, the place of my father awaits, heart beating as promised, and the place of our foremothers and forefathers. This December homecoming pilgrimage to Ghana has been a thorough-going…
Between December 6th to January 7, Riehlife goes on holiday as Janet travels to Ghana, a place she lived and worked for several years in the 1970s. This trip will be far more simple than her August trip to Southern Africa. Because I’ll only be staying in two locations, I’ll be taking a few more…
It seems that humans, in order to deal with the mass of humanity they encounter, need to organize the masses by reverting to labeling people through identity. I don’t know if this is genetic or a learned behavior (clearly the details are very much learned), but it is the root of much of the problems…
It’s perfectly possible to not know a word of a language, but to seem as if you know the language and culture well if you know the symbolic utterances and music of a language…it’s rhythms, rising and falling. If you know when to make sounds of sympathy and appreciation. If you know when to exclaim…
A woman in an on-line group I belong to shared this comment with me: “I was at an Romance Writers of America party in the early ’90’s and we were talking about apartheid and a best selling author said, ‘What’s apartheid?’ It spoiled my whole concept of her.” I’d been noodling with how to re-commence…
Between August 4th to August 26th, Riehlife travels to Southern Africa—South Africa and Botswana. I’ve decided not to take too many gadgets, so I’ll be leaving my laptop and cellphone at home. I’ll be in erratic computer contact, so I cannot say if I’ll be able to update Riehlife while I’m gone or not. Maybe…
Iconic Moments are defining life moments we hark back to. On the downside, they may be idealistic images that keep us from being grounded in the now. On the upside, they can serve as guideposts in our lives…to follow what was best and brightest…and create more Iconic Moments to draw from, as Treasured Touchstones. How…