Friday, May 29th, 2009
Lula Davis Ledlow
Old Black Women and Other Wonders is a collection I’ve already written, except for the blog introductions and selection of photos. These portraits of the people I love feed into Changing Colors, but I don’t have room to include them in my memoir.
Over the past decade, I’ve read many of these prose poems to congregations inside black Baptist churches, to clapping hands and amens.
I would be honored if you’d take a peek at my 2 samples. And/or hear them being read by this author-my son Steffen providing a Jazz-blossoming video.
Thanks again, Ronald Lee Naas
Old Black Women
Honoring Lula Davis Ledlow, Annie Blair, Essie Clark
And the Mt. Carmel Choir
Old black ladies display a beauty more varied than the congregation’s babies. They range in color from full moon to the interior of midnight. Their shapes and sizes are as different as the stones among the shadows of swaying palms. Some have hips that protrude like the benches we press our weight upon. Although one wears a hat that Saturn and a comet revolve around, they are all rooted in the earth, their flower watered by the spirit. Click to continue »
Posted in Old Black Women, Poetry | 3 Responses »
Tags: Barbed Wire, Black Baptist Churches, Black Churches, Black Ladies, Blog, Bosoms, Changing Colors, Clapping Hands, Congregations, Dark Mother, Decade, Essie Clark, Full Moon, Introductions, Jazz, Matrons, Memoir, Mt Carmel, Naas, Nail Holes, Old Black Women, Peek, Pelts, Photos, Portraits, Prose Poems, Shapes And Sizes, Swaying Palms, Three Strikes, Wicker Baskets
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
Welcome to the blog of Ronald Lee Naas
and his memoir Changing Colors
Ronald Lee Naas
Welcome to the changing of my colors, a two book journey I’ve been working on for the past 12 years. This memoir keeps wanting to rewrite itself. At age 66, I’m realizing it may take me to 112, and still this story may not be done taking its trip (I mean that in the hippie sense). So my son Steffen Corby Naas suggested I put my magical mystery tour out there, in the form of a blog. Am hopeful your comments will guide future revisions.
Being a psychologist by degree and nature, I’m obsessed with explaining why a 45 year old white boy named Ron Naas (rhymes with at a loss) is dancing on the dangerous west side of Chicago, already infatuated with his chocolate queen, who hails by the name of Ms. Mahogany Kashmir Dubonet Moses-his Princess Vicksburg from childhood, he hopes.
So I spent a year or so putting flashbacks first, trying to spell out Ron’s motivation, but that act seemed to lessen this memoir’s intensity. I kept returning to Mr. Midlife Mess Ron hammering Kashmir’s door, trying every device he could think of, before she…. Click to continue »
Posted in An Invitation to Journey | 23 Responses »
Tags: Amory, Black Princess, Book Journey, Bounces, Carl Jung, Changing Colors, Chubby Checker, Cue Ball, Dangerous Side, Deadly Habit, Dubonet, Ell, Expository Prose, File Cabinets, Fill In The Blanks, Flake, Flashbacks, Hippie, Imaginations, Imperfections, Interracial Story, Kashmir, Magic Castle, Magical Mystery Tour, Mahogany, Memoir, Midlife, Naas, Page Synopsis, Reading Chapter, T S Elliot, True Romance, Vicksburg, West Side
