Viva la Saved Sisterhood!

Just came back from a wonderfully clarifying, energizing, catylizing and empowering women's conference with my church sisters and all of our good girlfriends from across the country and around the world. Mmm mmm mmm! Just so great to get away and worship Jesus & study His word and challenge ourselves anew to manifest His great goodness all over this here terrestrial ball.

In fact, one of the super duper highlights/manifestations of the weekend journey [as in the best antidote for all talk and no action making for empty worship and a meaningless spiritual walk every so often punctuated/interrupted by ersatz "holy" calisthenics, holla if you feel me] was when your DivaCardista joined with her sisters in the gorgeous ballroom of the Philadelphia Marriott to raise over 60 thousand dollars for the deliverance of our sisters caught up in the absolute horror and shame that is Darfur.

60K+! Now how meaningful & truly awesome is that?

Blessedly, the Co-Pastor of my church is a long time friend and colleague of the Co-Pastor of Bethel AME Church in Boston (as well as a pediatrician at the South End Community Health Center). Her name is Rev. Gloria E. White-Hammond, M.D. The organization we were blessed to join our faith and financial resources with is hers and it is called

My Sister's Keeper

http://www.mskeeper.org/site/

Check them out and make a donation. It will do your heart & soul good.

Enjoy this April day and may your Holy Week be blessed.

Blessings,
DivaCardista
www.blessedstarcards.com
ps:
need a lovely lil Easter card?
buy 1 and get 1 free, girlfriend!
just stop by the site by 4/4/07,
and mention code lilDIVA4easter.

Bowlegged Lu...[pus]?

"Please God, I've got enough character today...." --Oprah (one rough morning)

OK. So this week has been much to do about my immune system. And lots of blood spun. And well paid medicos going hmmm...

You know, like when Grandpa Simpson has the other old guy's beard caught in the pencil sharpener? Or when Lisa gets gum stuck in her hair?

It's been like that, kinda.

Or like doing a tap solo to "Put on a Happy Face", while some mean kid/stage manager is throwing pebbles/marbles at your feet.

We go for...*sigh*...more testing on Tuesday.

But, thank God for God & our sweet friends & the Internet. (Mostly God.)

Oh, snap. Are they sure? Oh...they think this is what you got...hmmm... clik clik clik Well,you know we will be
praying for you, right? clik clik clik Oh, hey...
this site says Seal had that when he was a kid, and now he's singing his song loud and strong. Therefore, so will you.

&

Just like that time Oprah went bald from that bad perm and now
she got more hair than Mr. Andre know what to do with.
You are going to make it, you hear me?

and

God has not brought you this far to leave you. We will walk this walk, together,
ok? Don't you worry now...

"Don't cry, keep singing." —Bob Marley

Let's see what else...

Went straight fr Les Docteurs to my HairDo-ist, whom your DivaCardista did not tell as we do not need to carry on/to carry ourself as if we don't have an enormously blessed life and muchmuchmuch to be thankful for. (Thank you Jesus for LIFE!!)

As I waited [four hours?!?] to be washed/conditioned/greased/blown/singed/pressed/clipped/spritzed/curled/n/wrapped (you know, with those big giant colorful hair pins sold only in AfricanAmerica), I made myself busy reading all 78 new ways to wear patent leather, macramae & sunbeam yellow this season, not to mention the manymany ways to wear bronzer and/or drive my man wild. (Them fashion folk need to s t o p!)

Then I came home in the rainy darkness of the night and bought myself some sunbeam yellow daffodils.

Life is good.

Happy Spring, y'all.

Blessings,
DivaCardista
blessedstarcards.com

Don't Call it a Comeback

Dearest Ones, I have been blogging in my head now for about three months. And all of those "astral entries" were witty, refreshing and astoundingly prescient, not to mention on point. But for those of you who cannot beam into my head and dig the display on my soul's flatscreen, you will just have to trust me. You would have laughed until you cried while learning just a little more about this thing we call life.

Ah, me...

One of the high water moments for me last year was when I was charged to pre-pay for my mother's funeral, which included selecting and purchasing my mother's coffin and paying for the band who will play after the service. (Mind you: mother was then and, thankfully, is now yet alive. Marinate on that.) My high water mark thus far for 2007 was attending the breathtakingly lovely wedding of my best friend with whom I had gone to elementary school and junior high.

She is still a size 7. (You go, girl.) Now, I know, empowered Divas who are living golden and too blessed to be stressed yada yada yada should not be buying into the perpetual message that mere weight loss or weight maintenance is something we should be waving like a doggone flag...but on my planet it is kinda groovy being able to even hang with someone who has been the same size since seventh grade.

Let's see...what else? Oh, yes: it is positively Nordic up here in the City of AllThingsFabulous. 12 degrees this morning. Lord have mercy. Stayed in bed just about all day, watching Curious George and expanding my oevure. Just sketching and drawing all the livelong day. Readying myself for Spring, doncha know.

Had to go to Le Docteur yestiddy and, you know, when they sign you in they ask "occupation", we find that a bit frustrating, because DivaCardista is a multifaceted artiste, after all, and what occupies her is life itself. But if you say something like

"we are a student and champion of man and womankind. Babies, too. We weep when
there is war, we dance when there is peace and we are occupied with making all
these things poetic and harmonius--or not-- through the miracle media of ink,
graphite, white linen, water colour, Holy Writ and the occasional Negro
Spiritual. We pray, we sketch, we meditate, we sing, we replenish, we moan, we
bear down, we bring forth. We occupy ourselves with creation so that others may
be edified."

you will be put out and the piece of paper upon which your online health insurance data has been downloaded will be shredded without ceremony or afterthought. So, instead, when the lady asked "occupation", I said

"artis",

figuring that my adding the "-te" might pushing the envelope a tad.

Bopped on over to Brussels for my bday -- yay!-- to see my grrrl Corinne Bailey Rae in Feb. Aside from the super short time we were there, it was great being somewhere else, even if it was just for a moment.

She is a powerhouse, in her lil easter dress. I so appreciated going to a concert that didn't make me feel like I needed to pray all the way there and all the way home just because of all the potty mouth and potty songwriting. Don't let the press and curl fool you: this chick can blow! She can sing her heart out all the while encouraging yours. Girfriend not only put her records on, she had the nerve to sing her some Jimi Hendrix! Just wonderful.

And if you've never traveled this way, I'd recommend it. It's kind of fun, being in a whole other place where you've never been while jamming to the grooves of new artists that you love or would like to know better.

And there is nothing like live music!

Only thing: I wouldn't recommend good Christian folk to go to the land of beer and chocolate during Lent. You'll only break your heart. (Got places over there, make Willy Wonka's factory look like a crackhouse.)

Well, of course, there's more, but that's all for now.

Stay Peaceful.

Happy Women's History Month!!

Blessings,
DivaCardista
blessedstarcards.com

Gucci Gums

Ok. So maybe the goal of "daily-ish" has lost its lustre for this temporarily dentally daunted yet ever divine Diva. (But I figured I'd better write something before Dick Clarke began his mike check, if ya know what i mean...)

Last we spoke it was all about one of the results of making my nuveau trustifarian lifestyle hold true to the goal annual philanthropy. Now? Due to several decades of lackadasical encounters with dental floss & hard living on the run, it's all about learning to love oatmeal, bananas & tylenol anew. Oy.

Imagine my shock turned acceptance after waking up at 4am on Friday (Hello December!) with a mouth full of blood (think: Black Dahlia poster), which required an immediate 9am revisit a mi dentista, who was more than willing to remedy my situation begun a mere 24hrs prior with several more whipstitches, from back to front and tied with what looks/tastes like about four more tiny black bows along my gumline.

What did I do during those five hours between discovering my erstwhile dryer-fresh pink satin pillowcase smeared with my own personal hemoglobin & gurling my concern to the dental tech/office workers over the phone at 8:57am that morning? Worked on [what turned out to be smudged & unsaleworthy] cards till i fell back asleep, of course.

But as soon as I got the word, there was your fashion forward though bleary eyed DivaCardista in a lovingly slept in black t-shirt and soft fuzzy pink patterned anti-sweat pants in which she works & sleeps & imagines lands unknown plus a black hat, boots & coat back on the train with a gentle crush of upscale nine-to-five-then-drinks folk.

"Too much. Too many people, too much. Huh huh huh huh."

Not to mention that I was to be on a bus to a spiritual retreat with a bunch of Jesus loving folk who were not so spiritual as to allow late comers to hijack their 12noon ETD. So duly suctioned and stitched, I got back to my boro, changed into "going to a spiritual retreat" clothes, took a cab to the bus, and off we went.

On time & eggggzausted. But I did get "rest for my soul".

(Big up to my bible quotin'/soup totin' roomate who took care of me when i cdnt.)

So now its me & Sassy "above the blue and windy sea", working out the best way to get back to the passion of life.

Upcoming:

• more integrated card sale related data here for you unique & beautiful people...
• poetry as it comes...re:
• feelings stirred by "trigger happy polices"
• ma
• body & soul
• da holidays (but of course)

&

• war & peace

"Are you pretending/ it looks like the ending?" Sassy asks.

Let's hope not. Sheesh. Enough.

Let's make with the eggnog & The HoneyMooners Marathon already.

Hope it's been peaceful where you are.

Holiday Blessings,
DivaCardista

PS: You need a fabulous holiday card? Check www.blessedstarcards.com.

Mention code DivaC & get a FREE card with any three holiday cards purchased. Ho ho ho!!!

The Color Purple? Hell Yes!

Your DivaCardista just got calm enough to type after seeing the perfectly lovely Broadway show (at the Broadway Theatre) The Color Purple. And if you and all of your friends haven't, you simply must.

First of all, we -- DivaCardista and her 40 new best friends from The Hotchkiss School -- saw the matinee this past Sunday and what a time we had.

Then, the Lord blessed [through a friend of a friend who just happened to be the Director of The Color Purple] so that we were able to get a backstage tour after the show.

Now just how fabulous is that?

And, let me tell you: for this to be a fairly understudy-heavy performance,
those understudies held it down! They did the doggone thing! Bravo! Brava!

And that ensemble is simply too marvelous for words.

And how humble is Lou Myers?

Simply listed as Ol' Mister in the Playbill and "just" part of the Ensemble online, muli-talented, multi-lingual Lou Myers, the man whom DivaCardista has loved since he came in to the Huxtable household talking about his onion sandwich & then went on to fry up onions and tough love in A Different World, could have "demanded" more in terms of billing & "star treatment", but saw the big picture (I bet) and decided to get in where he fit in. So although Mr. Myers had just about a scene and a half altogether...BrotherMan took those three/four lines and two/three entrances and worked them, doyouhearme?

More can learn from he.

Onliest thing that I would change would be to put some elevators up in that mug! Bad enough that large groups have to wait six months or more to get tickets, which, actually, we are really happy about because it means all them superdupertalented on&off stage folk remain employed in the telling of an important series of stories first woven so beautifully by Mz. Alice Walker & re-rendered so truly by Mz. Marsha Norman,

but for those patrons who are neither decathelets nor in posession of crampons & grappling hooks, those staircases can be a bit much.

Yet, even with that having been said, especially since I can't get the score out of my head, even if you have to wait, even if you have to climb for a while, even if it cuts into your Starbucks budget a bit, just go.

Your soul will thank you.

Blessings,
DivaCardista

Can This Be Real? (You Down wit OPP?)

Since I like to keep in touch, though busy as a mug, here are a few of the things that pass through a Diva's mind on a rainy Thursday (in no particular order):

• Them Fancy Feast InFauxMercials!:

Um, it is me, or

a) are we treating cats better than we treat our own mothers on Mother's Day?
Think about it:
when was the last time you had gourmet salmon & shrimp? On crystal, no less?
(And no, Chicken of the Sea on a White Rose paper plate doesn't count.)

b) shouldn't there be some cat food ad with

50% more field mouse!

somewhere on the label? (I'm just tryin to keep it real, gnome sayin?)

• "Maybe I'll Whip You [if You Misbehave?]":

Whip Appeal? Perchance. Let it Whip? OK. (great beat, easy to dance to...) DivaCardista will even let the perennial favorite slide: Lovely Aisha's phonic contusion which promts the oft quoted

"sound like she said sound like she said
Beat Me"

as heard over Mr. Wonder's happy "Isn't She Lovely" harmonica solo.

But, not to be all 1865 about it...

Am I really supposed to be cool with a stage full of beautiful brown people harmonizing and soulfully making music to support a white guy riffin & runnin himself into an r&b froth over & over again about the possibility of a [tee hee] whipping (of any description) following the probability of his lover's misbehavior?

"Most records sold" quoth Ms. DeGeneris. Hmm. Looks to me like "Sexy" needs to go Back and read HEmotions or go see The Color Purple so he can hear Sofia's message loud and clear:

I love Harpo, God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead
before I let him or anybody beat me.

or to quote the DivaCardista Director's Cut of Love Story

"Love means never having to say
Whip me
and
I Will Cut You."

& finally (for now)

• When Kofi Speaks, Folk Should Listen:

When this thoughtful, reserved, wise, even-tempered, erudite man talks about
...er... Our Persia Problem & starts to sound like Usher

"People screamin it won't work
Time and time [you] say
I'm gonna leave
But [you] can't let [this] go..."

we all best be scheduling some extra prayer time tonight!

Blessedly,
DivaCardista

Yearning to Breathe Free

Ah, September! That special time of year when a Diva's mind turns to feverish thoughts of just how are we gonna get Ma on @*&% Medicaid!!

And if you've not journeyed down the sweet and [mil]dewy paper trail that leads one to Medicaid Lane, well, darling, you simply must.

But enough about the seeming infinity of data that flutters round as we endeavor to catch up. Let's be about the actual Catching Up, shall we?

Just before these delightfully white walls began to close in on my person, DivaCardista opted to break out (or be clowned) and began her inaugural Friendship Tour!

Both delight and psychophysiospiritual necessity, my tour loosed me from the Atlantic and led me clear across to the Pacific and those fantastic Hollywood Hills. Thank you Lord, for, you see, once the wheels of that jumbo jet touched the tarmac, my shackles broke and my spirit was set free.

And didn't your DivaCardista play La Tourista to the hilt. We went to the Rose Garden, The Science Museum, saw our first IMAX film (scared me half to death, everything just about to eat everything else...thank you, Mr. Brad Pitt aka The Narrator...next time, warn us about the grizzliness about to ensue up under the beautiful blue, ok?), wove through USC campus, went to a fierce wrap party for my multitalented Television Writer pal Anthony (held in some delightfully offbeat architectural oddity that looked like The Goth Hilton)...and, most importantly, spent time with my fantastic friends at their gorgeous home with a kidney shaped pool and, yes, room for a wee pony.

Speaking of which, I really loved waking to the pitter patter of two and a half year old feet. Said feet belong to none other than wee Diva Olivia Pearl, my friends' pride & joy. And did she and I have a blast! My favorite part was when we fingerpainted together. Now that was great, as it has been a minute since I've worked in that medium. She is truly a bright light in this world and I am so glad to have finally met her.

During my stay in LA -- just three nights/four days, because of the whole fish & house guest theory -- my friends & I had the happy opportunity to see fantastic Miss Fantasia just doing it right in the record-breaking Lifetime special "Life is Not a Fairy Tale". Mph mph mph! What a wonderful piece. She and Miss Debbie Allen did the doggone thing! And the fantastically ubiquitous Miss Loretta Devine (whom, I am happy to say, I also saw last night on "Everybody Hates Chris" as Chris' maternal grandma) better just go on with her badd self.

And then it was off to see my goodfolk in the Midwest.

Rolled up in Chicago, feeling all kinda good from LA only to experience new delights in the truly new & improved downtown Chicago. Got to see the amazing outdoor sculpture known as The Bean; The jazz was just great; the beach was...well, janky, but still enjoyable as my entrepreneurably lovely galpal Ally took me past it and onto my first (drumroll please) totally tricked out sailboat! (And I helped!) Learned a bit about rigging & physics all whilst chilling in the middle of the freshwater pond known as Lake Michigan.

I even got to see my Chicago alma mater and one of my dear professors, who is gently recovering from a bit of a fall.

Dear folk, all.

And then, enriched, enlivened & considerably refreshed, I returned to my little home near the Diva in the harbour just in time for the next verse of the neverending song that is @*&% Medicaid.

All in all, We truly hope you & yours enjoy this Labor Day Weekend and the last breeze of summer.

Blessings,
DivaCardista