Watching holiday movies was never a big part of my family’s Christmas rituals, growing up. We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and those early claymation flicks featuring Rudolph and Jack Frost, but that was it. Big blockbuster ‘must watch’ holiday classics like A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A […]
Is your little man tired of receiving khakis, hoodies and socks for Christmas? Has exhaustion from exerting yourself all year depleted your creative capacity? Do you want him – like his father- to just be grateful for the gift of refined cotton?? If the title of this post caused your pulse to quicken, knowing that […]
Ok guys. I KNOW it seems like this is the year where I’ve deliberately fallen into stuff (i.e. on my back being dry humped in a DC club by a random stranger or becoming the sole provider of reusable grocery totes for a local deli for a time), but I swear to you that these […]
‘Bullying’ isn’t just a 21st century buzzword that is strewn about like bunting at a state fair – it’s a real social scourge that affects millions of children worldwide, every day. Bullying has measurable and serious consequences, including diminished self-esteem, depression and suicide. It’s not something any one of us should take lightly, either as […]
Everyone thinks self-publishing – or any independent creative work – is sexy. There’s this aura of grittiness, the allure of the idea of that you can grind your way to the top, the crowning achievement being that indelible interview on Ellen or Access Hollywood. It’s not just spectators who harbor this delusion; we artists and […]
Mo nighean donn (Gaelic). Translation: My brown haired lass You’d have to be a fan of the series ‘Outlander’ to truly appreciate what I’ve done with the title of this post. And the answer to your unasked question is, yes. Yes, I’m right proud of myself. It’s a braw thing I’ve done there. So! Prince […]
I suppose I should’ve been ready for it. It was a Monday afternoon, after all. These sorts of things only happen during queer times. Like when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday, when the moon is full during its lunar cycle, and – of course – Mondays. I was so relieved that […]
Do you remember your early middle school crushes? Did you ever play that game when you wrote your name and substituted your surname for that of the class prefect you only dared to admire from afar, fantasizing about the day you would be wed? I did. And it was fun…until it actually mattered. For 27 […]
I’ve been sitting on this post for a week or better. The subject matter is one that people like myself – empaths – would much rather leave to our darkest imaginations than speak about, the risk being that the undesired event may come to pass. But if you’ve lived a day over 20, you know […]
It’s not the kind of message I was expecting to receive to early in the morning, particularly not from the individual in question. He is a casual (and one of my more pleasant) acquaintances on social media. Our conversation has run the gamut from history, to music, to women’s issues…but never this. “A friend of […]
Idolatry: extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone. A fetishism. It’s a widely held belief that the wedding industry is the only viable, locally sustained industry in the Ghana. Oil and gas is still somewhat nascent and has yet to yield all of the promised gains that were dangled in front of […]
In just four short months I will turn 40. I mention the coming of this milestone with pride and eagerly await its coming. Like 16 and 25, 40 is a one of those benchmark birthdays that heralds a shift in a woman’s life. For one thing, I will have achieved authentic ‘Auntie’ status owing to […]
There was an article making the rounds on social media last week querying why African judges still wear wigs 50 years after the end of colonization. The question remains a post-colonial conundrum: What is so appealing about the trappings of a judicial system that robbed an entire continent of its freedoms and imposed foreign laws […]
Are you listening to the Super Morning Show of Joy FM? Perhaps you would like to know more about PDM. Here is their official statement! This is our official statement on who we are, what we are about, and where we would like to go with the Ministry. Who are we? These past two weeks […]
De ting go skkrrrrr ka has made its way into and took over the zeitgeist of September 2017. Very few pop culture moments have staying power beyond 3 weeks, and as the interest in this one begins to wane, we give thanks to the BBC, Charley with the blue eyes, MC Quakez and Shakez and […]
In the movie Selma, there is a scene during which the members of the SCLC couldn’t agree on which obstacle to voting rights (and all civil rights, by extension) to tackle first. They deliberated hotly among themselves. “It has to be the poll tax,” said one. “No. It’s education,” said another, citing the literacy tests […]
My husband and I are entrepreneurs. He writes code for a living and I sell any and everything. I’m not saying that to be funny. From essential oils to smutty books (and I think I just came up with an idea for a combo pack!), I am a basically an e-market queen. It is just […]
I have the worst luck flying into OR Tambo Airport. Since I began flying to South Africa in 2011, I have had my bags broken into 100% of the time. There is no margin of error with regard to that statistic. No matter what flight/airline I’ve traveled on – be it Delta Airlines, or Virgin […]
Many years ago, I had the honor of hearing Leymah Gbowee speak in Accra as she gave an introduction to the film ‘Pray The Devil Back to Hell.’ The documentary covers chronicles social unrest in the West African Republic of Liberia, where civil war has torn the nation apart and left hundreds of thousands dead […]
I know we don’t like Joel Osteen. I know! We hate the way his face breaks into that peculiar goofy half smirk, like he’s always primed to play a game of peek-a-boo with his audience. We hate that curly shag he sports just above the nape of his neck. We hate that there is always […]
The idea that “Africans sold each other” into slavery is not a new one, but it is one that is generally advanced by the poorly educated or those wishing to shift the bulk of the blame from European participation and place it on the shoulders of the Mythical African. Mythical because before a person born […]