Out of Box Thinkers  

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• Featured Episode

  OPEN MIC POETRY JAM

  Out of Box Thinkers

  Date / Time: 4/18/2009 9:00 PM UTC

  Category: Poetry

  
  

  Consider yourself invited to Out of Box Thinkers on Blog Talk Radio for a night of open mic poetry. All are invited to share poetry, something that was written from the heart on any subject that moves you. George and Gracy would be honored to have you all share your talent! So call in and join us. Don't be at all shy. The more the merrier! Call in number 646-595-2846 Come and share yourself.

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• On Demand Episodes           34448          

  Original Air Date: 4/18/2009 9:00 PM UTC

  OPEN MIC POETRY JAM

  Consider yourself invited to Out of Box Thinkers on Blog Talk Radio for a night of open mic poetry. All are invited to share poetry, something that was written from the heart on any subject that moves you. George and Gracy would be honored to have you all share your talent! So call in and join us. Don't be at all shy. The more the merrier! Call in number 646-595-2846 Come and share yourself.
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  • Tags:
  • Imagination
  • Poetry
  • Writing
  • Inspiration
  • Open Heart
  Comments (1)

• Date / Time: 11/25/2008 4:21 AM UTC

  Thinking Out of the Box

  Gracy and I met through a chain of circumstances, all through the creation of a technology, the internet.  It is an impersonal technology, nothing living at all in any intricate separate components of its wires, pixels or circuitry.  However, as a whole in what may seem chaotic to some, forms a perfect avenue of transport  that comes alive to myriad avenues of communication from home to home, business to business, even from earth to space, computer to computer, connecting to yet another intricately collected set forms of living organisms, humans.
  
  It is through this technology of inanimacy that I met another human being, Gracy.  She has lived in England all her life. I have lived in America all of mine.  We just happened to be readers of the same blog by Clayton Littlewood a present day ascending author about Soho life in London. (Dirty White Boy, Tales of London. Amazon.com).  It was she that wrote me a note of friendship on MySpace.   I know I will never regret clicking on the button 'Accept'.
  
  It is what we shared over the next eighteen months and experienced together over  a distance of several thousand miles without leaving our homes that culminated in the both of us deciding to do a radio show together.  Again, Gracy introducing me to Blog Talk Radio. 
  
  I am in my fifties and she is in her thirties.  Who ever coined the phrase, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." just may have to re-think his belief system.  Gracy has that personality that entices you to go on a ferris wheel when you are only used to a bike with training wheels.  Although I have to admit I always dreamed of going on one, for decades, it was just something I would have not done on my own.
  
  One of my most favorite writers and speakers is Leo Buscaglia and during one of his lectures he shares with his audience, "Don't be afraid of going out on a limb for that is where the fruit is!"  She led, (suggestion), I followed, (action). 
  
  She has a nick name for me, "Guv" and I have a nickname for her, "Tata".  Which until these titles were smacked on to each one of us was reserved to only one other person, my sister.  It means "Princess."  as an endearment in German.  Literal translation meaning "Governance."  So it is interesting that she named me Guv.  However, in Spanish it is an endearment for "Daddy".  LOL...she is going to crack up when she reads this.  When I found out what it meant in the language of a portion of my heritage all I could think of was..."Who's your Daddy?"  Well in this case ...subconsciously....apparently...it must be Gracy!  LOL (that could also mean, " Love Out Loud"  and my good friend, a princess and my Daddy!  I do love you!
  
  Ahem....okay, now that we have that cleared up, I move to another facet of the reason for this blog.
  
  My lineage is a product of several bloods.  In line with the ingredients listed on any food package, the first being the largest amount of ingredient to the last ingredient being smallest.  None the less in this case, NONE are insignificant.   Spanish, Italian, German and Hebrew.  And believe it or not the Hebrew was mixed in with the Spanish blood centuries ago which I understand makes me a bit of Gypsy or what may be called Saphardic (Blood lines mixed in the area of the Iberian peninsula which today are the lands of Spain and Portugal).
  
  My ancestry came to the Islands of the Bahamas with Columbus on the Pinta, as told by my maternal grandmother (Noni) and her sister (Tia) as well as some other elders that I was blessed to meet when I was a child.  One of which was my great great Uncle David, at the time, 94 years old, that visited infrequently from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where the elders migrated to from the Bahamas and settling  there.  I learned the multilingual languages that my Noni spoke were Spanish, Italian and Chinese, and only from her stories I had  learned how they were brought to her mind as she was cared for by mixed bloods of the earlier century settlers before the arrival of the Spaniards, my ancestors traveled north  on the lands to enter Mexico. 
  
  I remember her every morning from the time of 3 or 4 years of age, finding her at 4AM on her knees before an old and fading painting of San Antonio (Saint Anthony) that allegedly had survived the voyage on the mast of the Pinta, handed down to her, from oldest child to oldest child, saying her morning prayers.  She would only be there after dressing and powdering her face and with swift skill tracing her lips with a pale red lipstick followed by a spritzing of Topaz perfume.  An empty bottle of that Topaz scent was oft an item of contention between my siblings and me as it was made of multi swirled yellow and gold cellulose, an early plastic, the lid adorned with a yellow fake Topaz stone.  The last ritual before she knelt was to don a bibbed apron,  nimbly tying it behind her.  It was amazing to watch her do that considering I had to have my shoes tied for me. 
  
  The stories I heard were numerous and have not forgotten a one, even to this day because of the time I spent with her under foot, as her perfect shadow, ears open, eyes wide, learning how to make bread, pastry and pasta and singing while doing it.  Her tone of voice was even and as much as I try to strain my memory, I come starved of a notion of her ever raising her voice.  She expertly mixed her bloodlines nations flavors and foods with salivating aromas that I prepare for palettes of my home guests today.  I, like her rarely use a measuring cup or spoons, or scale.  For some reason they are clumsy to me.  Noni never used them.  She was a magician and she passed the magic to me.

  
  
  Our first Blog Talk Radio show was just this past Saturday.  Both Gracy and I spoke afterwards and almost simultaneously expressed our being 'knackered' and jelly legged with residual nervousness.  It was good to share it with someone.  I honor so much our friendship and what the two of us are embarking to create.  After we called it a night exhausting what ever energy we had left with breathless laughter I needed more time to process the events of the day, the show and just being.  I clicked on my internet home page to check on any current events that may have been updated.

   

  Looming before me an article: Complete coverage:  Patchogue Hate Crime Case

  
  http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-lihate-sg,0,4550634.storygallery

   

  A young Ecuadorian man was allegedly murdered close to my home town on Long Island, New York.  I would be amiss if I did not emphasize, if you are reading this, to entertain the suggestion to watch the ENTIRE news coverage streaming from those implicitly involved, as well as both communities of Patchogue, NY and Ecuador and .  It is, I think to keep things in context of the event and the response.  The swift reaction of the community is astounding considering the death of this young man just occurred on the 22^nd of this month.

   

  It is not difficult to understand the circumstances of such events that involve the death of anyone under this type of event or the death of anyone in any other circumstance at the hands of one human being toward another.  That which interrupts the life path of another is difficult for me to understand in America, (let alone the world), in the circles of racial discrimination, considering the majority of America has been exposed to the teachings of the Christ and if not, then, by what stands second most to the meaning and Image of the American flag, is the presence of the Statue of Liberty in the middle of the Hudson River waterways of the island of Manhattan (New York Harbor).

   

   

  http://www.hudsonlights.com/liberty.htm

   

  http://www.usa-flag-site.org/history.shtml

   

   

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ

   

  What is it we teach ourselves and others individually, in a group, in a town or city, in a state or a nation?  I include myself in that ‘we’. 

   

  Thank you for reading,
  

  
  Namaste, 

  George

  • Tags:
  • Life
  • Blog
  • Ecuadorian
  • Columbus
  Comments (1)

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