Wanda's Picks Wandas Picks

This is a poem I wrote to document the end of my first two semesters in the Women's Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. I am working on a doctorate. I am supposed to complete the rest of my coursework in the next year. I have learned a lot. This semester we looked at Radical Birthing and Revolutionary Mothering. What a concept! I also took a Gender, Sacred Sex and Healing class and Critical Thinking. 


 

We speak to Marcus Anthony Shelby about Zaccho Dance Theatre & Dancers' Group Co-Presentation of "The People's Palace" (World Premiere), a site-specific performance installation and artistic intervention inside San Francisco's City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, in San Francisco.


Performances are Thursday & Friday, May 9, 10 and Sunday, May 12, 8-10:30 PM. It's free. On Friday, May 10, 7 PM there is a Haptic Tour and Audio Description. 


Free, however, reservations are required: https://dancersgroup.org/onsite-joanna-haigood/

For more information: https://www.zaccho.org/?event_the-peoples-palace

Marcus Shelby is a composer, bassist, bandleader, and educator who currently lives in San Francisco, California. His work focuses on the history, present, and future of African American lives social movements, and music education. In 1990,  Shelby received the Charles Mingus Scholarship to attend Cal Arts and study composition with James Newton and bass with Charlie Haden. Currently, Shelby is the Artistic Director of Healdsburg Jazz, an artist in residence with the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and a past resident artist with the San Francisco Jazz Festival and the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. 

We are hosting a series of conversations with women about their motherlines. We began in March this year and continue through March 2025. In these conversations over the next year, we will speak to Black women about their motherlines.


Our guest today is Makeda Esi Ohemaa aka Sandra Hooper Mayfield. She is the youngest daughter of Ruby Mae, granddaughter of Evie, great-grandaughter of Hester, and great-great-granddaughter of Mary Magdalen. Ruby Mae passed away when she was 36 years old Makeda was 9.  Makeda fell in Love with words when her first-grade teacher read a poem. She is grateful to report, that she is still in Love.  Makeda is a retired mental/behavioral health counselor.


At 50 years Makeda returned to academia and earned a BA in business management. Makeda is the former Editor of the South County Post Newspaper, Curator of Sugar Water (An artist support group for girls and women), and the "Third Saturday Open Mic."

 

Makeda's work is published in three anthologies with the West Oakland Seniors. She is also published in the West Oakland to West Africa anthology. Makeda is a community activist who serves and promotes change through art and literacy in carceral institutions.

She is a 7-year cancer survivor whose diagnosis set her free. . . . 


We open with Mary Mary's "Shackles," and close with Tracey Chapman's "Stand by Me."

We are hosting a series of conversations with women about their motherlines. Join us monthly. We began in March and continue through March 2025. 

We speak with Stephanie JT Russell, poet and visual artist, Poet Laureate for Dutchess County, New York. 

Poet,interdisciplinary artist, and cultural worker Stephanie JT Russell’s most recent creative nonfiction book is One Flash of Lightning, a poetic treatment of the classical Samurai Code (Andrews McMeel). Her poetry, essays, and visual art are anthologized in books and journals including Colossus: Body, Xavier Review, The Winter Anthology, Sequestrum, Lightwood, and ArLiJo. She has performed and exhibited at venues such as The New Museum, The Griffin Museum of Photography, The Albright Knox, Bowery Poetry Club, and The Berkeley Museum. A visiting teaching artist at New York University, Vassar College, The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, and other noted institutions, Russell received the Overall Winner Award from the 2022 Wirral Poetry Festival, UK.  As Dutchess County Poet Laureate, Russell is curating Stream of Life, a series of intercultural poetry and multidisciplinary events featuring diverse Hudson Valley artists. https://www.artsmidhudson.org/dc-poetlaureatewww.stephaniejtrussell.comwww.stephaniejtrussell.com


We close with Abby Lincoln and Max Roach's "Freedom Now." When do we want it? Now! 

 

 

 

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!


This afternoon we speak with playwright, Larry Americ Allen and director of the current production, James Brooks.


Americ's current play is, "The Shadows of Love and Light, A Mother has dinner with the son she aborted 30 years ago." Directed by James Brooks, Americ joins us to talk about a reading this weekend in Richmond, CA, at the Corbiz Center, 1503 MacDonald Avenue, 2 p.m., $5. For information call: 510-309-7107. 


Americ is the author of more than 40 plays, and has won the Perry Award for best play "Shakespeare’s Lost Masterpiece."  Some of his other plays include the magical realism play, "The Chef", the political drama, "The Expulsion of Malcolm X," and the psychological drama "Paradise Revisited/Gravity Is My Fate."

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!


My Cancer Journey Part 1