i just finished my annual panchakarma cleanse. Panchakarma means 'five cleansing actions.'  it's a rejuvenating and healing process from the ayurvedic tradition of Inida, involving diet, herbs, purgatives, sweating, lymphatic-style massage, sinus cleansing, and more, ad...

      You know, one of the nicest things for me to realize, is that I don't have to 'cultivate' my moorish heritage, or seek it out.  I've already been living it my whole life.  The beauty is that I can just relax into 'being me.' The...

i've spent my wholespiritual lifein this dry placewhere treeswho don't belong togethergrow up side by side,the fir-tree and the palm,in a place wherenuns seem sillyamidst so much sunshine,and it's hard to takeLent seriouslywhen the surf is up....

Most of the people I know who support California's Proposition 8, Ban on Gay Marriage, do so out of the conviction that the Bible condemns homosexual love, and that gay marriage somehow threatens the institution of heterosexual marriage. I was brought up in a working class family in a very conservat...

i've been writing so much about my mother and her family and very little about my father.  well, until recently, i thought i knew all there was to know about my father's family.  but now there's been yet another major familial wake-up call.  my father's family were 'danish jews.' ...

These are excerpts from "Transgressions in Race and Place" by Darlene Wilson and Patricia D. Beaver, from a Women's Studies collection of essays entitled Neither Separate Nor Equal : "A word portrait of the Melungeon or mountain 'native granny' may be gleaned from legends and document...

"The primary importance of marriages between the Indians and the French was not genetic but cultural.  In early Canadien society the women, overwhelmingly, bore the brunt of child rearing and the passing on of the culture, beliefs, and manner of speaking.  Native-American women, their...

Does anyone out there remember the book 'In Wilderness Is The Preservation Of The World' ?  Since exploring my ancestry I've joined a number of Native American online groups and have discovered that we do indeed all share a great love of nature, just as it is, with minimal amendments.  I'm...

I find it interesting that the Delaware Moors now seem to refer to themselves as moor-indians.  I still don't quite understand what the moorish connection is, but in a certain sense, it doesn't seem as important to me, as it did, to find out.  At last, I understand what the problem was, an...

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain.  If you liked the 'nature writing' and the 'Native American' writing in 'Cold Mountain, you will love this book.  Although there is not exactly a gripping plot, for history buffs the creation and dissolution of the Cherokee Nation...