Because Love

What would you tell your younger self...?

I've been Power to the People since inception.
(*Insert smirking Emoji, RBG flag, and fist in the air.)

That's baby Me somewhere around four-ish.

How.

Cute.

Is.

This.

Little One?!

When I think about my Life; I'm thankful. Super thankful, in fact, that I am a woman filled with love & light, empathy & understanding, humanity & compassion. And, contrary to popular belief, none of the above descriptions mirror a weakness. It actually reflects the deepest strength. And it took me a few adult years to accept that Love is my power. Love is my strength.

#iLove.

That's just what I do.

Regardless of what YOU do.

#LoveIsAlwaysTheAnswer

Love is the light in my darkest days; the Life in my most iniquitous nights.

...and there have been too many to share and, truthfully, I no longer keep count and I haven't in millennia.

...and I've been here just that long.

...and I've loved You just that long. In this Life and in the next.

The problem that others seem to have in recognizing this light is that 1). They just don't have this light and so they can't see it or understand it; and 2). I am not like the others, independence set aside, yet and still -- I do not need. Like. Ever.

I want. I care. I love.

...but I do not need.

It's as simple as that.

It is unfortunate, in some circles, that men and women view these terms in disproportionate ways, need and want. It seems as if men need to feel needed while women want to feel wanted and somehow or another over the years, never the twain shall meet?

Really?

Not. Really. 

I so have the answer: 

LOVE. 

It is the end-all, be-all, cure-all method.

Unselfishly. This is so not about you (singular). It's about the two of you (plural). Two people. Not one. You. Collectively.

I mean, can it be explained it any clearer?

You would think it was like, Rocket Science. This is so not that complicated.

Align those chakras and get at me*.

Some people only see the love they choose to recognize. They see how they love or want to be loved. The unfortunate never seem to grasp the understanding of how someone else wants to be loved, and there inlies the problem.

You must learn to Love.

Unconditionally.

The how's and why's can be reconfigured.

And I said all of this just to literally explain that nothing but Love will show you the way or ease the pain & to express that I know this because I practice it everyday.

And, if you missed that memo, I put the onus squarely on your shoulders. I live in love everyday. It wasn't always love for Ayesha, that I've had to work on, but I've always loved my people and the humanity that we display.

So. I'm working on my older self by reminding my younger self of some important things.

-- If I could tell Ayesha Reneé anything, before she was Baby Doll or Stormy Weather, before the babies and the boyfriend, before Life and ultimately law school, before the wind shifted beneath her wings, taking her on journeys untold, I would tell her:

1. Absorb the love that surrounds you.
2. You are enough.
3. Don't ever be ashamed of how you love, who you love, or who is not worthy of your brain peace.
4. Always dance.
5. You absolutely deserve that happiness.
6. Go to Harvard.
7. Don't ever let That One Go.

It was all in HIS plan and it was all worth it...because, truth be told: Look at God ;), look how beautiful it all turned out...

#ItsJustASayingPleaseDoNotGetAtMe*
#LikeNotUnderAnyCircumstances

Goodnight, Moon...

Huffington Post Article Repost

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Mars Appears At Its Brightest Tonight As Planet Moves Into Opposition

The phenomenon comes a week before Mars will make its closest approach to the Earth since 2005.

 2 hours ago

• Nina Golgowski Trends reporter, The Huffington Post
  
  
  
  

Get your telescopes ready — tonight’s sky is expected to be a bright one.

Mars will be the brightest it’s been in two years as it undergoes what’s called Mars opposition, an orbital placement that puts the Earth directly between the sun and the Red Planet.

As a result, Mars will be brightly illuminated by the sun’s rays, making it the brightest object in the Earth’s sky, just behind the sun and moon.

“From our perspective on our spinning world, Mars rises in the east just as the sun sets in the west. Then, after staying up in the sky the entire night, Mars sets in the west just as the sun rises in the east,” NASA explains on its website.

It’s a phenomenon that happens once every two years (or 26 months), about the time the Red Planet takes to completely orbit the sun.

On Sunday, NASA estimates that Mars will be 47.4 million miles away from the Earth.

Amateur astronomer Dr. Ian Musgrave, from the University of Adelaide in Australia, has recommended stargazers use telescopes if they have the chance.

“From the point of view of someone standing around looking into the sky, it is just going to be a bright dot,” he told Australia’s ABC News. “But even if you have a small telescope, the disc of Mars will be big enough to see details and maybe even the polar cap.”

Those who miss Sunday’s event, worry not.

NASA/JPL-CALTECH

Stargazers have May 30 to look forward to as well, when Mars will be the closest it’s been to Earth since 2005.

May 30 is expected to be an even bigger show. That’s when Mars will make its closest approach to the Earth since 2005, coming about 46.8 million miles away. That process is called the Mars Close Approach.

From May 18 to June 3, the planet will appear brighter than usual because of its placement. By mid-June, it will start to become faint, as Mars and Earth move farther apart in their orbits around the sun, NASA explains.

Those will miss this month’s festivities will have to wait, but fortunately not a lifetime. The next Mars Close Approach is on July 31, 2018.

Susannah Mushatt Jones, 116 - Oldest living person heads to Glory...

Susannah Mushatt Jones
(This article and photo courtesy of:
New York Magazine.)

Here are some things that did not yet exist when Susannah Mushatt Jones was born in Alabama on July 6, 1899: the Model T, and for that matter the Ford Motor Company. The teddy bear. Thumbtacks and tea bags. Puccini’s Tosca and Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” The Flatiron Building and the subway system beneath it. Emma Morano, an Italian woman born four months later, who is today the only other living soul who was around before 1900.


One hundred and sixteen years ago, Susie’s tenant-­farmer* father, Callie, could theoretically have voted, though Alabama’s poll taxes and rigged literacy tests pretty much took care of that. As for her mother, she was barred from the polls twice over, because voting rights for women were two decades off. Mary Mushatt had 11 children — Susie being the third and the oldest girl — and cooked on an open fire with water drawn from a well. Corn bread was baked by burying it in the fireplace’s ashes. The family raised their own produce and meat. Susie walked seven miles to what was then called the Calhoun Colored School, a private academy specializing in practical education. Her family paid the boarding-school tuition by barter: wood cut for the fire, bushels of corn they’d grown.

Her relatives say she did not dwell on the bad aspects of the prewar South. Tee — family members call her that, short for “Auntie” — was the type to put her head down and keep moving. Which is what she did after graduation: In December 1922, she made the three-day train trip to Newark, New Jersey, where a well-off family had hired her to be a nanny and housekeeper. A year later, she jumped to an easier and more glamorous job with a couple in Westchester: Walter Cokell was the treasurer of Paramount Pictures, and he and his wife, Virginia, had no children. Winters took the Cokells and her to Bel-Air and to Florida. She met Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Ronald Reagan (all younger than she). Her already-good cooking got better and more refined.


In 1928, she married a man named Henry Jones, but they soon split up. (She doesn’t talk about him but kept his surname.) She had a room in Harlem for a while, in an apartment shared with other women from Alabama, but most of her time was spent as a live-in. After Mr. Cokell died in 1945 — killed himself, actually — she moved on to other domestic jobs. The Andrews family, with five children, was probably her favorite. Gail Andrews Whelan, now in her 70s, says Jones was a great caregiver — neither draconian nor a pushover, someone who laid down the law but also “always had your back,” and could serve breakfast to 30 girls after a slumber party.

Jones retired in 1965, a few months after the Civil Rights Act took effect. She went back to the farm in Alabama for a while, then returned to New York for good. Here, she was similarly surrounded by family, because after her journey north she had become a magnet. More than a dozen Mushatts made the trip after her, in a microcosm of the Great Migration, most settling in Brooklyn. A high percentage of her siblings and their descendants went to college, some with her financial help. Quite a few have lived longish lives, but none remotely like hers. One of her brothers reached 92, and died seven years ago. Of the 11, only she remains.


When she was about 80 — that is, 35 years ago — she moved into a seniors’ home in Canarsie. At 100, she had to stop cooking for herself and give up her neighborhood-watch role, as her eyesight started to go. (Really, it’s just cataracts, but she is too stubborn to sit for the surgery.) Late in life, she lost her aversion to curse words, though she’d subsequently deny any cussing she did. Miss Susie is her building’s micro­celebrity, and on June 17, she became the world’s oldest living person upon the death of Jeralean Talley, who had six weeks on her.


She is fragile, no question about it. Sleeps a lot, can’t hear well. But she still loves her bacon — four strips, every morning, eaten with gusto. Has a pretty good appetite, in fact. Chews Doublemint gum. Her hair, long since turned white, has come in brown again. She voted for Barack Obama, twice. (A birthday letter from him hangs on her wall.) And next fall, Susannah Mushatt Jones will perhaps get to vote for a woman as well. Whoever’s elected would be her 21st ­president.


*This article appears in the December 14, 2015 issue of New York Magazine. ( today you can find it on: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/this-brooklyn-woman-is-the-worlds-oldest-person.html#)


*sharecropper (calling a spade a spade)
(Mrs. Jones dies yesterday at the age of 116 years, 311 days.)