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Legendary author Maya Angelou dies at age 86
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Byron Leigh Hatch @ team Carl Sagan Send message Joined: 5 Jul 99 Posts: 4548 Credit: 35,667,570 RAC: 4 |
Legendary author Maya Angelou dies at age 86 A literary voice revered globally for her poetic command and her commitment to civil rights has fallen silent. Maya Angelou died at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Wednesday, said her literary agent, Helen Brann. The 86-year-old was a novelist, actress, professor, singer, dancer and activist. In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. One of Angelou's most revered books was "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The memoir bore witness to the brutality of a Jim Crow South, portraying racism in stark language. Readers learned of the life of Marguerite Ann Johnson (Angelou's birth name) up to the age of 16: how she was abandoned by her parents, was discriminated against in rural Arkansas, was raped by her mother's boyfriend, lived on the streets and gave birth as a teenager http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou |
Lynn Send message Joined: 20 Nov 00 Posts: 14162 Credit: 79,603,650 RAC: 123 |
Death of an Icon, :( R.I.P. Maya |
Mike Send message Joined: 17 Feb 01 Posts: 34257 Credit: 79,922,639 RAC: 80 |
RIP With each crime and every kindness we birth our future. |
celttooth Send message Joined: 21 Nov 99 Posts: 26503 Credit: 28,583,098 RAC: 0 |
The loss of such courage is hard to bare... RIP |
Wiggo Send message Joined: 24 Jan 00 Posts: 34744 Credit: 261,360,520 RAC: 489 |
R.I.P. |
Es99 Send message Joined: 23 Aug 05 Posts: 10874 Credit: 350,402 RAC: 0 |
A Brave and Startling Truth We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we learn A brave and startling truth And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we release our fingers From fists of hostility And allow the pure air to cool our palms When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And children dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged can walk into evenings of peace When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh And childhood dreams are not kicked awake By nightmares of abuse When we come to it Then we will confess that not the Pyramids With their stones set in mysterious perfection Nor the Gardens of Babylon Hanging as eternal beauty In our collective memory Not the Grand Canyon Kindled into delicious color By Western sunsets Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji Stretching to the Rising Sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor, Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people on this mote of matter In whose mouths abide cankerous words Which challenge our very existence Yet out of those same mouths Come songs of such exquisite sweetness That the heart falters in its labor And the body is quieted into awe We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety Without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it. Maya Angelou Reality Internet Personality |
TimeLord04 Send message Joined: 9 Mar 06 Posts: 21140 Credit: 33,933,039 RAC: 23 |
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Angela Send message Joined: 16 Oct 07 Posts: 13130 Credit: 39,854,104 RAC: 31 |
R.I.P. |
Julie Send message Joined: 28 Oct 09 Posts: 34053 Credit: 18,883,157 RAC: 18 |
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anniet Send message Joined: 2 Feb 14 Posts: 7105 Credit: 1,577,368 RAC: 75 |
So courageous! The world is always a much sadder place when we lose someone who taught us so much about righting the wrongs around us. Very sad :( RIP |
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