I started this blog on March 9 nine years ago today. This was my first post: The post title was just the word "integrity" and the post itself was the word's definition: "the quality or state of being complete, unbroken condition, entirety." I wish I could tell you why that was the first of cl...

I'm super excited to speak at BlogHer15: Experts Among Us conference next week July 17 at 2pm. I'll be part of a program called The Creative Life: Blog to Book, Your Content, Your Proposal, Your Platform. Longtime readers of this blog know that I started this blog in 2006 when I heard from my ...

I started this blog on March 9 nine years ago today. This was my first post: The post title was just the word "integrity" and the post itself was the word's definition: "the quality or state of being complete, unbroken condition, entirety." I wish I could tell you why that was the first of cl...

I started this blog on March 9 nine years ago today. This was my first post: The post title was just the word "integrity" and the post itself was the word's definition: "the quality or state of being complete, unbroken condition, entirety." I wish I could tell you why that was the first of cl...

I started this blog on March 9 nine years ago today. This was my first post: The post title was just the word "integrity" and the post itself was the word's definition: "the quality or state of being complete, unbroken condition, entirety." I wish I could tell you why that was the first of cl...

And I just fled from a yoga class. :( I'm not entirely new to yoga. There was a stretch of about two years in my early thirties that I attended two to three classes a week. It was what I called "old people" yoga; very gentle, mostly seated, lots of breathing. It worked for me. I increased ...

Many of my artistic role models are African-American writers and artists. I am always intrigued to discover that a number of these black women are (or have been) married to white men, and have biracial children. On my notable short list: writer Alice Walker, poet Rita Dove, artist Betye Saar...

Born in 1834, William P. Powell was the son of a free black man and a Native American mother in Bedford, MA. Powell, Sr. was a vocal abolitionist and helped house black seamen as well as fugitive slaves. In 1851, the family moved to England to escape the punitive and rightfully frightening Fu...

Illinois Jacquet was born Oct. 31, 1922. His mother was Sioux and his father was Creole. Raised in Texas with 5 siblings, Jacquet was performing as a child in his father's band along with 2 of his brothers as a saxophonist. After playing with a professional dance band at 15, he moved to LA whe...

Emanuel (Manuel) Woodson was born Nov. 1, 1865, the son of a registered freeman of color and a mother who was described as mulatto in St. Louis, MO. The Woodson family was a talented family of performers. At least two of Woodson's siblings became professional performers as young adults: a sist...

Many of my artistic role models are African-American writers and artists. I am always intrigued to discover that a number of these black women are (or have been) married to white men, and have biracial children. On my notable short list: writer Alice Walker, poet Rita Dove, artist Betye Saar...

I've done a lot of writing about my dad over the last 20 years since he died, but have kept much of it private. I wrote this essay for a news organization but ultimately it didn't fit the series. But I was happy with the balance in the piece, as well as the small measure of peace I found in wr...

I've done a lot of writing about my dad over the last 20 years since he died, but have kept much of it private. I wrote this essay for a news organization but ultimately it didn't fit the series. But I was happy with the balance in the piece, as well as the small measure of peace I found in wr...

Paula Gunn Allen, born in 1939 in New Mexico, was the daughter of a Lebanese-American man and a Laguna-Sioux-Scotch woman. She once described herself as a "multicultural event." Her early education was at mission schools; she went on to earn several advanced degrees including a Masters of Fin...

It has been a long month for me--not just the number of weekdays I needed to post for Mixed Experience History Month, but also the amount of time I needed to spend researching and writing each post. Each year, I find it more and more difficult to learn enough about the biographies of the hist...

I've been on a concentrated quest in the last few weeks and really for the last many months of trying to find some way of finding more balance and a sense of peace. I've been trolling bookstore shelves for self-help books, and meditation manuals. I've amped up my exercise regiment so that at ...

I've been on a concentrated quest in the last few weeks and really for the last many months of trying to find some way of finding more balance and a sense of peace. I've been trolling bookstore shelves for self-help books, and meditation manuals. I've amped up my exercise regiment so that at ...

Last Spring, I was traveling home from Portland, and noticed a woman knitting a gorgeous looking winter cap on the flight. It looked just like my beloved cap that I lost last winter in a cab. I was bummed out for several days about losing that cap--not just because it was blue and green (the ...