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  Well, I have had several days of real productivity in recreating my Golden Child website. It is a tedious task for me and I am having a lot of outside stressors.

Errands have to be done, things need to be bought, money has to be made, the dishwasher needs unloading/loading…it goes on and on and most times I am overwhelmed. But here I sit, working at this computer much of the day.

This new and improved site will be a Flash XML site and although the creators of the template assured me that there need be no coding and the site will be easy to modify I find that not to be the case.

When you are altering anything in an XML file you will quickly find that having a space or a quotation mark out of place will prevent the site from working.

Look at it this way. It’s like writing a book and forgetting a comma on one page in chapter 6, then finding that your table of contents has vanished. Imagine that you don’t know that a comma is missing. You have to find out why you TOC has vanished and fix the problem. That takes a lot of trial and error and a lot of time and frustration.

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Yet, I am the only one who can do this. Like all art forms, I am the only one who has this dream in my head. I know what I want it to look like and sound like and feel like. Even if I did have the hundreds of dollars it would take to pay someone, I would still have to find the photos, do the interviews, create the Power Point presentations, the quizzes the puzzles etc. The paid person could only put everything together and make sure it all worked.

Right now I am just trying to get the basic elements together for launching. Like all web sites it will be an ongoing project. But just as I take pride in having the first comprehensive informational site for pan-Africans with albinism, I also want it to be the best site for pan-Africans with albinism that I can make.

So, I will work on my albinism site and this Zebracorn site and my art and my writing each day until I am satisfied with my product.

As a Creative, I don’t think I have a choice.

Some in the movie wanted a cure and some rejected it. The “normal” people couldn’t understand why some didn’t want to be “helped”.

Of course I thought about us.

What people do is give those who are different a “disease”. They call it a disease or condition or illness or say you “suffer from” something. It’s their own mental illness and paranoia that makes them uncomfortable with anyone different.

There are pigmentoids out there who think we must want to be like them…poor things that we are. After all, they are sooo perfect we can’t help but envy them. One of my college mates even said that to me thinking I would agree with her. The look I gave her shut her up.

When people ask you wouldn’t you rather be “normal” they are asking if you wouldn’t rather be like them. People have even said the worst thing in the world would be to have a child that doesn’t look like everyone else. They would rather abort a child or put her through painful surgeries that have her be different.

I have read several books on eugenics. That’s the practice of breeding people. You would be surprised how many people believe in it. If you are thinking how evil Hitler was, understand that he got his ideas from America: from famous and beloved people like Darwin and his father and brother who thought the world would be a better place if the not-so-perfect people would just go away.

Well, it’s never going to happen. No person born, who has ever been born or who has yet to be born will have perfect genes. It’s not possible. It’s the way we’re built. It is necessary for evolution and maybe survival. It’s necessary for diversity. Whether you can see it or not, everyone has something different about them. It may be manifest in having a brown eye and a blue eye or being short or being allergic to strawberries or having albinism. Sometimes it has devastating effects, sometimes it’s minor.

So why sweat about it? You are who you are and your kids will be who they will be.

There were some profiles of children and the trouble they had in school. There were some profiles of successful adults.

The most powerful part for me was the segment about how albinos are being killed in Africa. Poverty has created a violent and bloody outbreak of murders. Children are being hacked apart in front of their families. And sometimes the families are the culprits. I told LIB about this a year ago. Some did not want to believe I was telling the truth. Here is proof. Someone has heard.

Someone has heard and answered the call. There is an organization called Under the Same Sun that was formed to help what I consider my people: my family. They also help provide sunscreen, sunglasses and hats. The sun is poisonous to our skin, and we are extremely sensitive to light.

On Sunday, October 18 two more shows were aired. One was on The Learning Channel and was called Albino Island. It also spoke of the violence going on the Congo. It spoke about how albino children are being protected by housing them in camps. Adults are also being treated as if they (we) were an endangered species.

The other show was on animal planet and was a bit less flattering. I only mention this show because most people don’t now anything about albinism. I am as fascinated by albino animals as anyone else. This show featured a white dolphin, a nest of white alligators, and several other beautiful creatures.

What both TLC and 20/20 failed to say was that there is another myth going around about albinos. If you have sex with an albino she will remove your AIDS. Albino girls are being gang raped at a high rate.

For more information on the 20/20 show and to see some videos go to this website:

For information on TLC’s Albino Island go to this great post

To find out what you can do to help go to Under the Same Sun

Also go to Albinism Aid

Virginia
The Golden Child

There have been many revisions on my home computer but I kept abandoning them. They just weren’t to my liking. I made many CSS sites that didn’t work, or had so many problems that I got bored with them. I wound up just redoing the home page.

I even downloaded a Word Press site, and transferred most of the information. I didn’t like that one either.

I finally found a template to use. It’s xml and Flash and I really like it. I may have to provide a mirror site for those who cannot use Flash. Transferring all the historic information and adding new things is proving to be a daunting task. And I am not known for speed. Everything I do is slow, methodical and I hope, well thought out.

It would be so much easier to have an expert do it for me but I don’t have the money to pay anyone and I am a control freak. This site will have more than 30 pages so bear with me as I delete, include, tweak, revise and make sure all the graphics and text are just right.

Once the new site is up, this blog will go away. (Not that anyone is reading it.) It will be incorporated into the new site along with some nice surprises.

I will send out announcements when it is done. It will take me a while but you have waited this long, I hope you will enjoy the new site

The man, who calls himself Remi, contacted me after continually reading the words of other pan-Africans that Blacks with albinism are the cause of White people being on the planet and ruining everything. He thought it was ludicrous when people used the phrase “Whites/albinos” to describe the actions of the Arian race. He read further and was horrified to read that phonies had actually written books with fake histories of how albinos were thrown out of our homes (all on the same day, I am guessing) in Africa went on a million year hike to the North, and bred ourselves to each other to breed a race of “White albino mutants.”

In Remi’s words, “The theory that the White race came out of African Albinos is pathetic and from the look of it, a lot of (people) do agree with that joke.” He went on to tell me that the Isis Papers is “a bloody pathetic science fiction from the round about head of a jobless somebody…, which I received in my mail, and I must confess it’s a waste of money from the look of it.”

He wanted to hear from an authentic albino voice so he went to my Golden Child site to get some real history and insight as to whom we are as a people. That’s when he contacted me and we started talking.

My new friend is right when he says that we (pan-Africans) find ways of blaming and attacking ourselves. He was right when he said we are sometimes our own worst enemy. We have found yet another way to divide ourselves while talking of unity. I have found this to be true many times when I join a group of so-called progressive Black people.

Not only do I find some Black social groups albinophobes, I find them to be homophobes, color struck and/or sexist. It turns me off in a big way.

Remi has people with albinism in his family and thinks that one or more of his children will be, “blessed” with albinism.

At least (and at last) somebody gets it. Thank you, Remi for your intelligent insight.

Maybe together we can spread the word that we are being force fed a pile of… well… something I don’t find very tasteful.

I did not accomplish what I wanted to in January. My year is off to an okay start, but not the fireworks I expected out of myself at the end of December. My long To-Do list for January is still mostly undone. For my February list I simply deleted the things I had done, and added a few new items. I left most of the list intact.

Why is it that I seem to always add more items to my list than I remove? My list gets longer rather than shorter or staying the same. My coach says that I have come a long way and gotten many things accomplished. I don’t see it. There’s just too much more to do to achieve my goals.

I have to tolerate February in order to get to March. I just want to get through these 28 days of doldrums and what may seem like endless and meaningless labor and get on to brighter skies, better weather (most of the time) and more reasons to get outside.

Just like Oprah and Obama say, I need to make this my best year ever. In order to do that, I must make this my best month ever. So once again, I am going to lean into the plough and push through this gloomy month.

Here’s hoping your February is as productive as you want it to be.

I woke up this morning and turned on the radio. Although it was only 6:00 my time it was several hours later in DC, my old stomping ground. I went back to sleep and dreamt I was there. I could hear the radio in my sleep so as the commentators were describing what was going on I dreamt myself right into the action.

When I finally woke up for real I turned on CNN so I could see what was going on. I was fascinated by the enthusiasm of the millions on the mall. That used to be my neighborhood in a way. I used to walk those streets and go into those buildings for my job.

A friend had invited me over to watch the swearing in. I would have been happy to sit right where I was but I knew this was something you wanted to share. So we spent a couple of hours together watching, discussing, giving each other tidbits of information and clapping at the good parts. Then I went back home to continue watching the parade.

Another friend called me and asked if she could come over. She wanted me to help her create something on my computer. Was she kidding? Today was not the day. Obviously a Republican or something.

I watched until it grew dark both where I live and in DC. I watched until the parade was over and the new First Family left for their night of inaugural balls. I wasn’t too interested in the parties. I finally took off my Obama T shirt and sat down to write this blog entry.

This is the beginning of a new era of enlightenment. Obama is not the cause of it. Obama is a small personificationof of a new consciousness going on in the world.

I must say, though, of all the beautiful things I saw today; by far the prettiest sight I beheld was the butt of that airplane flying off into the distance. Good riddance.

I may run out and grab a newspaper tomorrow but I don’t know. There will be plenty of books, magazines and DVDs to buy. I’ll think about it. Right now, I’m just going to sit back and smile.

Peace.

I must admit I haven’t visited my own Golden Child site for a while. I have been occupied with other things.

As it happened I visited a social network site and was told by one of my online friends that my site had been tampered with.

Bummer.

Fortunately, the site was intact. The goon had just changed the index page. Right now the site seems to be back to normal. Of course I will find the hole he or she crawled through and close it.

This could mean disengaging my blogs from the mother sites and using them as stand-alones. It won’t be seamless. There will be a new URL and possibly a new interface.

That’s not such a bad thing. I will keep you posted.

TGC

http://www.underthesamesun.com/home.php

TGC