Save Tuesday Nights for The Treehouse Coffee Shop

                                               

For the month of December, our wonderful proprietors, Tina and Randy of Audubon's favorite place to grab coffee and good food, The Treehouse Coffee Shop, will be hosting a Crafters for Cheer Night every Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. Check it out.

                                                            

                                                                 

I'll be there on the 16th and I'll be looking forward to meeting you.

Steampunk Granny Reminisces About the Ole Days

                                                                             

I’ve been reminded many times by my grandsons who are better known as the Desperadoes in most of my family blog stories that I’m old. In fact, the youngest once told me that I was probably as old as the dinosaurs. Little smart ass, but maybe they came to that conclusion when I was telling them how different my childhood was from theirs. They could not get over the fact that we did not have cell phones or computers.

“How did you keep in touch with your friends?” Nathan asked.  

“We called them on the phone, or walked over to their house, but if they lived too far away; we wrote letters,” I replied.

“No cell phones?”

 

                                                                    

“You know that heavy old black phone in Grandpop Fred’s house?” I asked and waited for his nod. “Well, it was connected to the wall and that’s where you made your calls.”

                                                                 

My friend Rita sent some photos to me that demonstrates perfectly the immense progress we’ve made since I was a kid, but these pictures also feature a few objects that will be sadly missed.

Nathan, this is for you.

This is what my Grandmother would wash her clothes in and then hang the clothing outside on clotheslines that stretched from one side of the yard to the other. We would play hide and seek between the sheets and if it began to rain, the whole family ran outside to help get the clothing inside before they got wet.

                                                                             

My generation didn't have video games or expensive toys. We played outside for hours and the games we had were passed down to our little brothers and sisters. We were not allowed to break our toys.

                                                                     

 

 

 

We didn't have MP3 Players or I-Pods or Smart phones to listen to music. When the transistor radio came out, my friends and I thought we were super cool to be able to bring our music with us. We only got radio stations. There was no downloading of music. You listened to what you got.

 

                                                           

                                                                  

When we were sick, our parents had their own version of a first aid kit, but if that didn't work then the doctor would make a house call. Yep, our family doctor not only came to the house to take care of us, but he would often stay for dinner

 

                                                                    

 

We girls didn't have the money to get pedicures or manicures or even go to a hairdresser, but we did one hell of a job teasing or hair and then spraying with enough hairspray to repel atomic weapons

 

                                                           

 

Uncle Mike, Aunt Jane and Me.

 

Oh, one more thing. As far as discipline, our parents believed in spanking and so did the Nuns at our Catholic School. When we went home and told our parents that the Nuns had smacked us with a ruler, they would give us another smack for upsetting the teacher.

 

                                                                

 

We didn't have it as easy as the kids today, but we sure as hell knew how to have a good time.

 

                                                             

 

Yes, Nathan, your granny is old, but not as old as the dinosaurs and I will always love you...from here to the moon and back. I hope I live long enough to hear you explain to your grandchildren that things were better when you were a kid.





Steampunk Granny Presents A Few Unsung Female Heroes

                                                           

What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than to celebrate the unsung heroes in the world; past, present and future. Here are a few ladies who made worthy contributions to the world

                                                           

Alice Evans (1881-1975)

Alice Evans was an American microbiologist who worked in the Animal Husbandry division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the early 20th century. While researching the bacteriology of dairy products, she discovered a bacterial infection of cows that could cause serious illness in humans, and advocated for the pasteurization of milk to prevent such illness. She published her findings in 1918, but no one really took them seriously, partly because she was a woman and partly because she didn’t have a Ph.D. About a decade later, other scientists (presumably men with doctorates) replicated her findings, which led to the federal government enacting laws requiring milk to be pasteurized.

                                                              

Mary Anning (1799-1847)

Mary Anning was a British fossil collector who made significant contributions to the field of paleontology at the very beginning of the discipline. She discovered many important fossils, including the first Ichthyosaurus and some specimens that provided transitional links between species. Her discoveries advanced the idea of animal extinction, which was very upsetting to many people because it seemed to counter the prevailing religious views. Like Alice Evans, many of Anning’s discoveries were downplayed at the time because people didn’t believe that she had the knowledge or the skills to have made them.

                                                            

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)

Watson and Crick’s discovery also would not have been possible without the contributions of Rosalind Franklin, who took the X-ray crystallography pictures that showed the structure of DNA. Studying DNA structure with X-ray diffraction, Franklin and her student Raymond Gosling made an amazing discovery: They took pictures of DNA and discovered that there were two forms of it, a dry "A" form and a wet "B" form. One of their X-ray diffraction pictures of the "B" form of DNA, known as Photograph 51, became famous as critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA. The photo was acquired through 100 hours of X-ray exposure from a machine Franklin herself had refined.

It is thought by some that the pictures were taken from her and shown to Watson and Crick by her colleague Maurice Wilkins. The story behind the DNA structure discovery, and how much credit Franklin deserves for it, continues to be a topic of debate.

Despite her cautious and diligent work ethic, Franklin had a personality conflict with colleague Maurice Wilkins, one that would end up costing her greatly. In January 1953, Wilkins changed the course of DNA history by disclosing without Franklin's permission or knowledge her Photo 51 to competing scientist James Watson, who was working on his own DNA model with Francis Crick at Cambridge.


                                                         

Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010)

In July 1987 Wilma Pearl Mankiller became the first woman elected as chief of the Cherokee, the second largest Indian nation in the United States. Born on November 18, 1945, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, she was the sixth of eleven children born to Charley and Clara Irene (Sitton) Mankiller. Her father, who died in 1971, was full blood Cherokee. Her mother has Dutch and Irish ancestry. Before Wilma Mankiller's election as chief of the Cherokee, she served as the first woman deputy chief of the Cherokee beginning in August 1983 and became principal chief in December 1985, when Chief Ross Swimmer resigned to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. Mankiller was elected in 1987 and reelected in 1991, serving as principal chief until 1995.
As chief of the Cherokee Mankiller served approximately 140,000 enrolled members and handled a seventy-five-million-dollar budget. Increasing tribal membership and revenues by almost 200 percent, opening three rural health centers, expanding the Head Start program for Cherokee children, and starting a center for prevention of drug abuse are among her many achievements during office. In addition to her achievements as chief, she was a founding director of the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department. Mankiller helped establish an Office of Tribal Justice in the U.S. Department of Justice and helped found the Women Empowering Women for Indian Nations.
Several life events as well as her Cherokee heritage motivated Mankiller to become active in Cherokee tribal affairs. Under a federal program that attempted to urbanize Indians and to help them find work, her family moved to a housing project in San Francisco in 1957. The American Indian Movement protest mounted at Alcatraz Island in 1969 and her volunteer work among American Indians in California during the 1970s provided a catalyst for her future activism. Also, her family debated politics and other national issues at the dinner table.

Conclusion

I'm trying to raise the level of consciousness in the world. I want us to celebrate all the great works done by great people. Two of the women featured today were scientists and one woman was a leader of the Cherokee Nation and fought for social justice for native tribes. We need to encourage our children to read books, to imagine a better world and to act on making a peaceful and an equal future for all. The time for Harvesting is ripe.

Steampunk Granny Interviews Actress/Dancer Dawn Noel

                                                                

I recently had the chance to interview a very talented young lady. Not only is Dawn Noel an amazing dancer and actress who is also working on producing movies, but she is from my old neighborhood in South Philly and shopped at my parent's grocery store.

South Philly has produced its share of Stars and I was lucky to get this interview. Check out parts one and two of my interview with Dawn Noel


http://biffbampop.com/2014/11/17/steampunk-granny-interviews-actress-dancer-and-producer-dawn-noel-part-one/

                                                              

http://biffbampop.com/2014/11/20/steampunk-grannys-interview-with-dawn-noel-part-two/

A Tribute to Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe

                                                           

I am continuing something I started last week with a story I had seen on Facebook about a very brave man, Eugene Bullard. This week, I am doing a tribute to Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe. This tribe was responsible in helping the Lewis and Clark on one of their stops during the Expedition. Here is a quote from Chief Joseph about this:

“The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things which our people had never seen. They talked straight and our people gave them a great feast as proof that their hearts were friendly. They made presents to our chiefs and our people made presents to them. We had a great many horses of which we gave them what they needed, and they gave us guns and tobacco in return. All the Nez Perce made friends with Lewis and Clark and agreed to let them pass through their country and never to make war on white men. This promise the Nez Perce have never broken.”  

                                                                    

Chief Joseph (1840-1904) was a leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce Tribe, who became famous in 1877 for leading his people on an epic flight across the Rocky Mountains. He was born in 1840 and he was called Joseph by Reverend Henry H. Spalding (1803-1874), who had established a mission amongst the Nez Perce in 1836. Young Joseph and his father soon returned to their traditional ways in their Wallowa homeland in Oregon. When Joseph grew up and assumed the chieftanship, he was under increasing governmental pressure to abandon his Wallowa land and join the rest of the Nez Perce on their reservation near Lapwai, Idaho. Joseph refused, saying that he had promised his father he would never leave. In 1877, these disputes erupted into violence and Joseph's band, along with other Nez Perce bands, fled across the Bitterroot Mountains into Montana, with federal troops in pursuit. Joseph was by no means the military leader of the group, yet his standing in the tribe made him the camp chief and the group's political leader. It was Joseph who finally surrendered the decimated band to federal troops near the Canadian border in Montana. Joseph and the tribe were taken to a reservation in Indian Territory in present day Oklahoma, where they remained until 1885 when they were sent to the Colville Reservation in North Central Washington. Joseph made several visits to Washington, D.C., to plead for a return to the Wallowa country, but his pleas were in vain. Joseph died in 1904 in Nespelem, Washington, of what his doctor called "a broken heart." His tomb remains in Nespelem today.

                                                                      

The rest of the story can be read here: http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8975

                                                                       

Conclusion

When you do a great wrong; your soul does not rest and neither does the land you steal. We came to this land, immigrants and refugees from other lands and we forcibly took what rightfully belonged to the original people. I picked this story because of what is happening to other immigrants and refugees that seek shelter in America. How dare we refuse sanctuary in a land that we took from the Native Tribes? Sure there needs to be a safe and productive way to introduce new arrivals into the fold, and yes, they should pay taxes just like us, even though the corporations and filthy rich seem to find all kinds of way to not pay their fair share...big sigh!! If we are closing our borders to immigrants, then maybe the sign on the Statue of Liberty, should read, “It’s a big lie.”

                                                                            

I’ll end this debate with one of many quotes from Chief Joseph which you can find here: http://www.fold3.com/page/1250_chief_joseph_of_the_nez_perce/stories/#3675/

If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian...we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself."  

Amen to that

Steampunk Granny Interviews Kahlil Weston & Zhariya'Amani of Mad Writer Publishing

                                                            

I’m here today with Kahlil and Zhäriya to learn more about their writing and what their plans are for the future. Kahlil is a writer and a publisher and he is also a member of the South Jersey Writers’ Group. Zhäriya is still in high school, but this is one talented young lady and she’s had her first book of poems published.

Marie Gilbert: “So Kahlil when did you start your writing career and what inspired you to write?”

                                                                        

Kahlil Weston: “I started writing back in 1997 when I started writing I started kind of raw and I didn’t know the idea I wanted to take when I wrote. I didn’t start taking my writing a little more serious until I went to prison in 1998 and during that course of time, I started writing things up. I didn’t know what style of writing I wanted to take so I did a lot of writing, hand writing for several years, but eventually I had to learn to start typing and once I learned how to type things then I said that IZZhIt'siyato start publishing  books so then I went under Author House. When I went with Author House, I signed a contract with them in 2004, but I got burned out and once I got burned out, I went through a major case of writer’s block where I didn’t write nothing at all for four years.

What kind of got me back into writing was when I was under house arrest in 2009, I had a lot of down time so I began to start writing again, but what basically got me influenced where I wanted to get my book published was...I went to a book signing for Mika Brsezinski from the Morning Joe, it was a book that she promoted called “All Things At Once.”

                                                                         

Marie Gilbert: “And, where was this?”

Kahlil Weston: “In Philadelphia, and I was on house arrest and it’s kind of funny.”

Marie Gilbert: “Well don’t say that on here.” Both of us are laughing.

 Kahlil Weston: “No, no, I’m not on house arrest. So I went over there and I sort of had a moment and went over there and kissed her on the cheek and I think it got me the influence because I started thinking from a writer’s perspective. If she has her book out, what’s stopping me from doing mine? So that’s when I started writing again and I wrote two books under Author House, “The Kahlil Weston Hour” and another one called “The Wes Daddy Mack Hour.”

                                                                   

                          

“The Kahlil Weston Hour”, was just an introduction of me as a writer, but with “The Wes Daddy Mack Hour” I took a darker and deeper turn, a more sinister and twisted turn in that style of writing where I wanted to go. Then last year when I wanted to come out with a book called “The Young and The Westless, Author House and I had an impasse and then they decided that I had given several different revisions of the book and they canceled the project and didn’t want to have anything to do with it. So a friend of mine named Eric Jackson told me how to basically do your own publishing company and to start doing your own thing and that’s how the whole idea came up with “Mad Writer Publishing”

                                                          

Kahlil points to Zhariya and continues his story. “Now what brought her into this was last year my facebook information got synched with my phone and Zhäriya's stepfather, Johnnie Thomas El, who is now my right hand on “Mad Writer Publishing”. I called him on a whim because I hadn’t seen him in a few years and Johnnie happened to mention that he heard that I had published some books. I told him that I was going to start my own publishing company and one of my goals is to bring out other writers whose last name isn’t Weston, because you know that’s my famous catchphrase. Johnnie told me that his stepdaughter did a book of poetry and I told him for her to give me the material so we could work on it. I knew I had to be serious about the whole thing.

I stayed in touch with him and Zhäriya and I periodically spoke until her material was done around Christmas time last year and we started working on the project.”

Marie Gilbert: “So starting with “The Young and the Westless” that was the first book published under The Mad Writer Publishing?”

                                                                          

Kahlil Weston: “Yeah that name came about from originally a chapter I wrote in “Wes Daddy Mack Hour” called, the mad writer, and when I wrote a sequel called “Mad Writers Gone Mad” and the idea was there and then when my friend Eric Jackson knew I was going to start my own publishing company and that’s when he said to me, “You call yourself the mad writer, so why don’t you come up with Mad Writer Publishing. I felt like the mad happy face fit the personality of me as a writer.”

Marie Gilbert: “What do you like better, writing or publishing?”

Kahlil Weston: “As of now, I would say more the writing than the publishing because I can get my impressions, thoughts and view out there because I consider myself a dark type of writer and I like to write sarcastically. I like to write about sinister stuff and on top of that I feel that if I have a bone to pick with somebody, I’ll write some stuff up on them; find weaknesses with them. It’s like how rappers rap. When I’m coming at somebody, I call it battle writing and what I’ll do is write a chapter where I verbally tear down somebody’s dignity to the smallest compound.”

Marie Gilbert: “But, you only do this in your stories and not to their face?”

Kahlil Weston: “No, I don’t do this to their face, but after I’m done, I’ll send it to them to let them know what I was thinking and usually I tend to humble them when I do.”

                                                                    

Marie Gilbert: “Did you ever have someone not get what you were trying to tell them?”

Kahlil Weston: “I think people got the message when I did it. The seed for this was planted when I got fired from a job in 2001 and some people were taking shots at me and I wrote some stuff up about them and humbled all those who went against me. The old saying is the pen is mightier than the sword and that’s where I go with that. After, when I meet an old adversary, they’re usually quiet because they were bullying you and you came back at them.”

Marie Gilbert: “Where do you get your experience for your writing? Does it come from your background?”

Kahlil Weston: “Some chapters do. I don’t talk about what went on in prison because that’s not my type of style. I like to have fun and I like sarcastic humor. I can be serious about things and I can write a parody of something tragic that happened, but that’s just part of me as a writer. It’s nothing personal, but let’s just say that something happened in America and I would take that role as a villain for example a chapter I did called (Wes Mohamed) about the sniper from D. C. and I put my spin to the whole thing and wrote about people I don’t like and taking sarcastic pot shots at them.”

Marie Gilbert: “Okay, I’ll stop here and pick up with Zhariya. When did you start writing and what is your inspiration?”

                                                                  

Zhäriya'Amani: “What inspired me to write was back when I was about eleven years old, me and my grandmother always went back and forth. We always had animosity between us for whatever reason there was always a strain in our relationship and it came to the point where I was always holding things in for so long that I just ended up cussing her out at one point in time. After that day happened, I wrote about four lines on Facebook and apparently they were deep. A lot of people liked it and a lot of people said that I had a talent. I wasn’t thinking about that. I was just venting. I don’t put a lot of stuff on Facebook, but when I do, people see it.

After that happened, my uncle got me a journal. It was a Mickey Mouse journal and he got it specifically for me and said, “Well, since you’re putting stuff up on there, it seems like you’re a writer. Why don’t you try to write something every day in the journal? It will help you out and you won’t’ bottle things up.” So, I started writing. It was stuff that was very light at one point and anything that I felt like doing, things I liked saying, it was goofy just dumb stuff I was writing. I started writing more started putting my experiences down, and then, I started putting down things that I wanted to say to people, but didn’t know how to say it. When I was talking to my mom there were things that I couldn’t say to her so I wrote it down because anytime you write it down, it’s going to be different than speaking it. That’s when my writing basically started.

                                                                         

In eighth grade, when I was thirteen and right before I turned fourteen is when I started writing more often and my uncle got me another journal and he put “Writer of the Year” on it and these were encouraging words and everybody needs that type of motivation to keep going because I’m not as self-motivated as I should be. I realized that a lot of people are like that; I need the motivation, the constant badgering, the positive badgering and the constructive criticism to keep going. That increased my writing and when I had a relationship with my ex, it increased my writing as well because I started writing my feelings out.

I’ve always been a fan of metaphors and similes and always enjoyed vocabulary reading. You know vocabulary was hard for a lot of people in my grade and age and so I never really connected to the people and stayed to myself and so I would write it out and with my friends, a lot of them were cool, but a lot of them didn’t understand where I was coming from even the people who were poetic. A lot of my friends are poetic. A lot of my friends who went through something, they come to me and talk about it, because they don’t have anyone else to talk to and even if I didn’t go through that situation; I could still relate to them, talk to them and give some advice and, this triggered more writing and made my writing deeper. It made me use images as well because a lot of people don’t understand me when I’m talking and I would have to explain myself. I don’t like explaining myself so when I write there’s a lot of imagery so they can see what I’m saying. Sometimes when I’m reading poetry, I don’t understand what they’re talking about or the concept, the plot; nothing. So, the majority of my writing is imagery.”

                                                                     

Marie Gilbert: “What grade are you in?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “I’m in eleventh grade.”

Marie Gilbert: “Do your teachers know that you’ve published a book?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “I think that all my teachers do right now.”

Marie Gilbert: “Are any of your teachers encouraging you with your writing?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “Yes. A lot of people are encouraging me and a lot of people stopped talking to me because of it. People just give me looks because of it. They gave me looks before, but once they heard that I published a book...well. Two of my teachers bought a book from me.”

Marie Gilbert: “Will they put your book in the school library?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “I don’t know. I didn’t do that yet because it’s been so much to do during the year with school stuff that you have to do.”

Marie Gilbert: “You should see if they will put it in the library. Okay, so you did your book of poems called “Words in My Head” would you like to write a novel or short story?”

                                                                        

Zhäriya'Amani: “I’m not sure. When I write stories in class they turn into poems in my head. Even if it’s not in the standard that I usually write poetry, it’s still poetry and not a novel or a story. Maybe I could but it’s not going to be the same.”

Marie Gilbert: “Did you and your grandmother make up and does she know about your writing?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “She knows about my writing, but it’s kind of confusing right now. We talk whenever I see her. I’m not disrespectful and whenever I see her we talk. I don’t have any hard feelings towards her and if she has hard feelings towards me, then that’s on her. I’m doing my part.”

Marie Gilbert: “Back to you Kahlil. Where do you see The Mad Writer Publishing Company going?”

Kahlil Weston: “I’d love to have my own building and office and I’d love to start bringing out other writers; expanding and branching out. If Johnnie and I want to start expanding, we’ll have to bring on other writers.”

Marie Gilbert: “So are you talking about an anthology?”

Kahlil Weston: “We’re discussing that right now. We’re bringing on other writers and Zhäriya is going to have other writers with poems or short stories and it’s depending how many are in this project, to see if it will be one book or two.”

Marie Gilbert: “How are you getting the news out there for people to submit?”

Kahlil Weston: “John and I spoke about this and when I joined the South Jersey Writers’ Group, we started bringing it up periodically, but as time went along and as we got people interested in the project then I started discussing it even more. Then in February, Zhäriya and I met at the African American Book Store in Camden and that’s when we had a lengthy discussion and I told her that this was her project.”

Marie Gilbert to Zhäriya: “So, it will be up to you to bring in the writers?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “Right.”

Kahlil Weston: “People will tell you that they have stuff, but when you say here is my information, call me.”

Zhäriya'Amani: “Then you don’t hear anything.”

Kahlil Weston: “You don’t hear anything because they don’t have anything to work with.”

Marie Gilbert:  “You can put a call out on your Facebook page and on your website. What type of stories are you looking for? I can put this on my blog with your information of where to submit.”

Zhäriya'Amani: “I’m looking for anything from the heart. I want it to be original. When I'm writing poems and if there’s negativity like when I’m talking about Camden. Camden is a community I live in. Camden is my community. So I have a poem called “My Community” and I talk about racial relations and anything we go through because Camden is very destructive, but I also talk about the positive outlook, like this is what we need to do and not something that we say we’ll do. We actually do it by making ourselves better because if we make ourselves better by spreading love instead of hate; we can go places. If you're writing negative stuff then it has to be followed by a positive outlook. I want you to perform it at different places and I want church people to say, “Well, hey, I like your piece.” 

You don’t have to write all your pieces like that but I want at least one of your pieces to have it and you don’t have to talk about religious things but positive things that anybody can relate to.”

Marie Gilbert: “So you’ll be taking more of a “Slices of Life” type of stories?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “Right, I want personal experiences. When I do personal experiences, no one knows what’s involved because I use metaphors or cover it up with subliminal messages so you may not know exactly what’s going on, but you get the feelings.”

Marie Gilbert: “Has your schooling helped with your writing or did you have to do it on your own?”

Zhäriya'Amani: “No, the schooling helped with my writing because I honestly did not know what a metaphor was. People would tell me and tell me, but I was confused; what is a metaphor? I knew what a simile is, so you know what I mean. English definitely helped with my vocabulary. I read all the time, but there were certain things that I learned in there and in the shops that I take up. I go to technical school and I’m taking up Allied Health and I’m going to graduate and become a health aide...some of the terms from there I incorporate into my writing and learning how to play with certain words.”

                                                                    

Kahlil Weston: “I’ll use this as a metaphor and you know where I said sometimes you have to go where your leads are for example, I’m the leader of my own publishing company. Well sometimes you’re a leader and sometimes you lead by following so sometimes I’ll take a back seat because she’s the one bringing in the people and so she’s the leader of this project and I’ll follow her lead and I’ll have to respect that and that’s why I’m going with the metaphor; you lead by following.”

Marie Gilbert: “Well, that is a sign of a good leader. You have to allow others to shine be it work or government.”

Kahlil Weston: “What I do with the compilation of writers that Zhariya as a Co-Publisher is bringing in is to expand the business by opening it up to other writers. That’s what I’m trying to do by going forward with Mad Writer Publishing.”

Marie Gilbert: “So if someone sends you a horror story, it wouldn’t matter.”

Kahlil Weston: “No, it doesn’t matter. I have several projects going on along with Zhäriya's and I’m working on “As the Wes Turns” a sequel to the “Young and the Wesless” or “Wes Daddy Mack Hour 2” and Johnnie Thomas El, my C. O.O is going to come out with a book also called “Garden State of Mind”. It's a health and wellness book and it’s still a work in progress.”

Marie Gilbert: “Will there be royalties for the writers who submit a story to the anthology?”

Kahlil Weston: “Yes, royalties will be involved.”

Marie Gilbert: “Would they be required to promote the book?”

Kahlil Weston: “Yes and also that is why I’m breaking it down to two different teams or books, it would help bring in the sales.”

Marie Gilbert: “Having the writers help promote the book involves a lot of book signings. Will you be doing this?”

Kahlil Weston: “We’re working on that, in fact, we have a book signing coming up for Zhäriya at the Made in Camden Store today and we’re also going to bring out books under the Made in Camden Store branch because they are trying to branch out and do more than sell tee-shirts.

Marie Gilbert: “Sounds like you’re trying to create an art and culture center with the Made in Camden store.”

Kahlil Weston: “Just like we have the South Jersey Writers’ Group, we might have the Junior South Jersey Writers’ group or Black Urban Journals’ Group in Camden.”

Zhäriya'Amani: “That’s what I’m trying to do is promote other people especially if you can write. I want to show them that there are other opportunities. My friend, Siani, just started writing a few lines to a poem and I told her to just write it down. Then we did a combined poem together and the poem is nice.

Marie Gilbert: “I’m wishing you both the best, but Zhäriya you did say that you’re interested in nursing, but what if your writing is doing better.”

Zhäriya'Amani at the Made In Camden Store
 

                                                                                

Zhäriya'Amani: “Yes, I’ve always been interested in neurosurgery and now I want to be an adolescent psychologist so nursing is just a way to get my foot into the door of medicine so when I do go to college, I can major in child psychology and a minor in nursing and I’m thinking of also taking a couple of classes in creative writing because this is something that I like to do."

Marie Gilbert: “I want to thank you both for appearing as a guest on my blog and I’m looking forward to following your progress and sharing it with my readers.