Maya Angelou’s Black History Month Special

One of my favorite black authors is Dr. Maya Angelou. I have had the privilege of seeing her speak in person twice. Her awe inspiring words and presence jump started me into a career of writing. She will be celebrating Black History Month on various public radio stations around the country. Please set your tuner and join her on this glorious journey of discovering famous African Americans.

Storied Poet, Author, Educator & Activist Hosts Black History Month Program
February 2012 on Public Radio

CHICAGO, January 19, 2012,  — This February Maya Angelou’s Black History Month Special, discussing the civil rights era, will be available to all PRI, Public Radio International, affiliated stations and African American Consortium stations free of charge. One of the 2011 recipients of the President’s Medal of Freedom and a civil rights activist appointed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Maya Angelou garners and offers mutual respect in each interview. “The civil rights movement caught fire and lifted our country out of the doldrums and lifted us to even believe that we could have freedom, to even believe that we could have fair play, to even believe that we could eradicate this vulgarity called racism.” Dr. Maya Angelou.

“AT&T is honored and glad to be supporting Dr. Maya Angelou’s Black History Month Special for the second year. Dr. Angelou is an inspiration to all of us and we encourage consumers to tune in to hear her interview some of America’s most influential individuals,” said Jennifer Jones, vice president of  Diverse Markets, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. Laced with the passionate and powerful music from this era, the poet and author, Maya Angelou, engages each guest in intimate and provocative stories, poems and conversations illuminating African American history.

Congressman John Robert Lewis recalls childhood stories, his first meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and his historic walk across Pettus Bridge, “I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a night stick and my legs went from under me. I thought I saw death and I said to myself, “this is the last protest.”

Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for poetry, Professor Nikky Finney, shares her critically acclaimed acceptance speech and excerpts from Red Velvet, a poem honoring the seamstress and late civil rights activist Rosa Parks, “By forty-two, you have pieced and sewn many things together in segregated Alabama. You have heard “N– Gal” more times than you can stitch your manners down.”

Ambassador Andrew Young recounts how his youth set the tone for a decision to embark upon a career in politics, his relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and little known stories from behind the scenes of the civil rights movement, “When Martin was killed, the last night before he went to Memphis, Belafonte, John Conyers, Dick Hatcher and myself were sitting around talking about how do we take the energy of the civil rights movement and move it into politics.”

Julianne Malveaux, Ph.d, economist, educator and Bennett College President, cites the Montgomery bus boycott as the modern day evolution of black economic empowerment and shares her experiences with the Black power movement. “These folks who had nothing, had literally nothing, decided they were going to do an economic boycott. They brought the city to its knees and put the bus company out of business.”

Singer, songstress and actor Mary J. Blige remembers her first meeting Dr. Maya Angelou at Oprah Winfrey’s Legend’s Ball luncheon, “That was the beginning of me wanting what they (the late Coretta Scott King, Ruby Dee and Maya Angelou) had, which was the strength that they had to press past all of the obstacles and to be educated, Black, African-American women.”

Throughout this hour-long trek through our nation’s history, Maya Angelou offers a historical and personal perspective. Additional interview excerpts will be continually released on the website mayaangelouonpublicradio.com throughout the month of February as well as links to the guests websites and photos from the civil rights era. A call for listener civil rights stories is also a part of the site. More information and a list of public radio stations currently airing the program can be found at mayaangelouonpublicradio.com.

Maya Angelou’s Black History Month Special is underwritten by AT&T. Articles, featuring additional interview excerpts and content on Black History Month, will reside on att.com/28days. Maya Angelou will post onhttp://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou with 3.2 million fans and tweets on Twitter updating a list of stations airing the program and alerting listeners when new content is available.hy

From RCW Media Productions Inc. rcwmediaproductionsinc.com

Skype an Author Network

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If you are an author whose target audience is kids, have you considered using Skype? Writers most often are on a budget. An inexpensive way to visit a school to share your latest project is by utilizing Skype. I stumbled across a site that offers lots of help.

Skype an Author Network

We are hosting authors of children and young adult (YA) publications.
Authors, we welcome your input and participation in creating what promises to be an exciting way to bring books to life for our students. A Skype visit is an excellent first meeting with authors who are invited to schools to make in-person presentations. Authors are listed in alphabetical order in the navigation list on the left.

Our goal is to set up a network of authors who are willing to participate in Skype conversations with students in classrooms and libraries. This wiki provides a page for each author who joins the network. Our author template ensures consistency of content and keeps things simple for authors, teachers, and librarians. The author pages provide procedural and contact information. Take a look at other authors’ pages as an example.

Arrangements for Skype visits are initiated via email and/or phone between the author and the teacher and/or librarian.

Authors offer two types of visits:

• No Charge – Meet the Author Visits – 10 to 15 minutes
• In-Depth Visits – Time and fee determined by each author 

To learn more go here.

Related articles

• Using Skype in the Classroom (askatechteacher.wordpress.com)
• Skype software update adds Skype-to-Facebook calls (digitaltrends.com)

Free Online:Writers Workshops

 

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We should look at the New Year as an opportunity to refresh and revitalize our lives. It shouldn’t matter if it’s writing, exercising, or juggling a new job with family and all of their needs. It’s about getting a grip on what we will need to do to move ourselves forward. Hence, the Lisa McCourt articles. By the way, I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.

 

Moving forward, how are you connecting and networking? Do people know who you are and what you have to offer? If you are a writer and have completed a project, have you thought about how you are going to promote yourself? Have you created a Twitter, FaceBook, or Writing Forums? It’s time to get started.

 

Have you checked out any writer’s conferences? The Muse Online Writers Conference is FREE!! Don’t panic. You have plenty of time to get prepared. It’s happening October 8 – 14, 2012. You may be wondering what you can expect from a free conference. Well, how about a few workshops? Everyone could some workshop help from folks in the business.

 

The Muse Online Writers Conference

 

Our next conference will be held October 8 – 14, 2012

 

The Muse Online Writers Conference

 

- the only FREE conference of its kind!

 

Affiliated with the award-winning sites and Writer’s Digest Top 101 Writing Sites:

 

The MuseItUp Club & Apollo’s Lyre & MuseItUp Publishing

 

No matter where you live, what you write, at what point you are in your writing career, you’ll find a workshop that fits your needs during our weeklong conference.

 

No hidden costs. Our conference is FREE, but we do ask for donations to help support this site and our cause – to continue offering you FREE workshops each year.

 

Are You Living In The Now?

Are You Living in the NOW?

By Lisa McCourt

We’ve all heard about the magic of present-moment awareness. It’s not a new concept (Buddhists have been touting it for centuries) but it’s enjoyed a revival in recent years with those of us looking for a more serene, joy-filled approach to living. 

My 14-year-old son is my best teacher of staying in the now. I call him Present-Moment Man. He somehow manages to structure the vast majority of his present moments so that they’re filled with the things he loves, and he becomes so deeply absorbed in these pursuits that it’s impossible to pull him out. 

I believe present-moment awareness comes naturally to kids, and we adults usually do everything we can to screw it up for them. Kids know life should be fun. Kids know you should follow your bliss, engage in things that excite you, and learn whatever you are naturally, in that moment, inspired to learn. 

My son will enthusiastically and quickly comprehend an impossibly-worded manual for some advanced electronic device that I’d rather cut my foot off than attempt operating. He’s a skilled and avid videographer who seems to intuitively know how to use any complicated equipment related to this passion. But the basics of middle-school math elude him; the monumental burden of actually writing down and following through with homework assignments repeatedly proves insurmountable; and I still have to ask him to brush his teeth in the morning. 

I confess that I’ve spent many years trying to “rehabilitate” my son – to cure him of his insistent present-moment tendencies so that he would more successfully fulfill teachers’ and society’s expectations of him. But he has proven himself incurable on that front. He is the funniest, kindest, most insightful, happiest person I’ve ever known, in spite of frequent academic failures and the ensuing consequences I impose on him. He simply, peacefully, refuses to expend any genuine effort or energy on anything that does not resonate with him. I still try – valiantly and in vain – to teach him the importance of caring about all of his schoolwork. But secretly, I’m envious . . . and a silent part of me cheers him on. 

For most of us, living in the now requires lots of dedicated practice and I’m far from an expert at it. Here are a few techniques I’ve found helpful: 

Recharge Your Energy and Joyful Vitality by Dipping into the NOW: 

1. Meditate daily, in whatever form and to whatever extent works for you. Meditation has repeatedly been proven to quiet busy mind chatter, providing meditators a far greater capacity to enjoy their present circumstances.
2. Whenever I catch myself ruminating or notice I’m feeling distracted, I use that as a cue to deliberately focus my attention on whatever is taking place in that immediate moment. (When my beautiful, loquacious preteen daughter asks a lengthy question and I blankly answer, “Huh?” I know it’s time to refocus.)
3. When you want to center yourself in the now, deliberately feel. Your thoughts are almost always about the past or the future, so the present moment is a feeling zone rather than a thinking zone. My favorite trick: Just decide, in that moment, to feel your divine self within your physical body. Focus on the sensation of life in your hands, your legs, your toes as you wiggle them. We take it for granted all the time, but it’s a really cool sensation to intentionally crank up your awareness of the buzzing vitality that animates every cell of your being.
4. Move. I love to stretch, feeling the aliveness in my body and knowing that aliveness is my God-self. When you’re focusing on the presence of your God-self inhabiting your form, you’re automatically released from your mental activity. I like to acknowledge in that moment, too, that I extend beyond my body. I can feel the energy in my form, but the energy that is me actually extends beyond my physical self, and I can intentionally extend it as far as I please.
5. If that’s too freaky for you, just focus on your senses. What are you seeing, hearing, touching, right in this second? You can’t focus on your senses while you’re consumed with thoughts, so this automatically brings you into the present. Admire the juxtaposition of colors in your current surroundings. What does your underwear feel like against your skin right now? What does the person next to you smell like? I’m a big fan of the tactile sense. As a mindfulness practice, I really enjoy touching my own skin or interesting fabrics or sticky things, and putting all my attention on the tactile sensations. My art-loving Katy’s Play-Doh is perfect. So yielding, so compliant, so submissive, squishy and warm. Find some Play-Doh and just revel in the texture, the feel of it, that funky smell, those disturbing colors. Listen to it squish. Go ahead and taste it. I won’t tell anyone. 

Take a vacation from your exhausting thought patterns by dipping into the now as often as you can. 

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About the Author: Unconditional love expert Lisa McCourt is a dynamic speaker, seminar leader and author whose 34 books have sold more than 5.5 million copies worldwide. Her new book, Juicy Joy – 7 Simple Steps to Your Glorious, Gutsy Self, teaches people to embrace “radical authenticity” to fully experience unbridled joy in life. Lisa lives in South Florida with her two children. For a free Juicy Joy audio program, visit www.LisaMcCourt.com.

How Authentically YOU Are You?

How Authentically YOU Are You?

By Lisa McCourt

The secret to a juicy-joyful life is mastering the ability to be you – all of you – all the time. One of the qualities Buddhists strive for in the path to enlightenment is called “sameness of being,” or “sameness of bearing.” It means being exactly who you authentically are, no matter who you are interacting with. The examples given are usually in reference to how we address those we perceive to be in positions of power above us or beneath us. For example, one who practices sameness of bearing would speak to the president of his company in exactly the same manner he spoke to the janitor of the building he worked in. 

My “Aha!” moment with this principle several years ago went beyond mere power-positioning. I had been happily giving successful out-of-town personal development workshops as part of my author-visits to schools across the country, but had not yet attempted that genre in my own home town. When I did finally decide to offer a workshop at a local metaphysical center, I sent out an e-mail inviting everyone I knew. I thought of it as a bit of a coming-out with my new career direction, away from mainstream publishing and into the more spiritual and metaphysical realm I’d been privately passionate about for so long. 

I bombed horrifically. It was by far the worst workshop I ever led and that was entirely due to my own internal, last-minute freak-out. I hadn’t anticipated it happening, but when I looked at my audience and saw my neighbors who knew me one way, intermingled with the parents of my kids’ friends who knew me another way, intermingled with my very metaphysically-minded friends who knew a completely different side of me . . . I froze. My brain literally could not sort out who I was supposed to be in that moment. I suddenly became uber-aware that many of these people had come merely to support me and were not actually interested in my subject matter. That shouldn’t have made any difference, but it did.

It was humbling to realize the extent to which I still routinely contorted myself to fit what I imagined to be people’s expectations of me. And like all painfully uncomfortable experiences, it provided a power-boost for my growth in that area. The Buddhist “sameness of bearing” principle took center-stage in my self-dev routine after that and it’s still a pivotal piece of my consciousness practice. Thank you, Universe, for that awful experience.

Take the “Sameness of Bearing” Challenge: 

1. For one full day, observe your interactions with everyone you come in contact with.
2. Notice the differences. Do you have a particular tone of voice you use exclusively with your lover? A smile that’s reserved just for your best friend? There’s nothing wrong with having special ways of interacting with your most significant others. But if you find that your demeanor fluctuates greatly, depending upon the company you’re keeping, it can be a sign that you’re wearing metaphorical masks to please the various people in your life. Maintaining these facades can drain your energy and put barriers up between you and others.
3. Think about how it feels to be with your favorite people. Most likely the ones you enjoy most are the ones you feel the most yourself with. Take note of your behavior around those people and set a deliberate intention to present yourself in that way to more and more of your acquaintances. 

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About the Author: Unconditional love expert Lisa McCourt is a dynamic speaker, seminar leader and author whose 34 books have sold more than 5.5 million copies worldwide. Her new book, Juicy Joy – 7 Simple Steps to Your Glorious, Gutsy Self, teaches people to embrace “radical authenticity” to fully experience unbridled joy in life. Lisa lives in South Florida with her two children. For a free Juicy Joy audio program, visit www.LisaMcCourt.com.