Welcome to
Jubilee News
Edition 8.2
The 9th Edition
is coming
Saturday,
May 20, 2017
Stay tuned!
Join Blossom in her journey
through midlife in the
series,
“The Daddy Pages.”
Chapter 8 awaits.
Jubilee News!
You made us popular. Now, it's our turn
to make you proud.
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~Disclaimer~
The works, When Men
Speak, When Men Speak-The Radio Edition, & Jubilee News are the
intellectual property of its founder, creator, & Editor-In-Chief, James W.
Falcon. However, the submissions of all artists are expressly theirs. Jubilee
News wishes to thank each artist for lending this newsletter your gifts,
talents, and works. Jubilee News seeks only the best talent to convey the
sometimes complicated message of reconciliation between the sexes. Your
investment in the "relationship revolution" is greatly appreciated.
Reproduction of
material & information found in this newsletter is prohibited. All requests
to copy and or to reproduce material and information from this newsletter must
be submitted via electronic request to the Editor-In-Chief at wmsjubileenews@gmail.com. Your compliance is
appreciated and your professionalism, celebrated. Thank you.
A Message From The Editor-In-Chief
Welcome
to Jubilee News-A WHEN MEN Publication! This is the relaunch of the
publication and it is called the “8th Edition and Beyond.” It is the
continuation of a dream sparked back in 2012. And it is also the
fulfilled of a dream in the relaunch! Several attempts have been made to
gather a team of columnists and poets to re-engage our audience. But I
have come to realize that those attempts were indeed out of season. This
is the proper season for the relaunch! This is the proper season for the
voice this newsletter was intended to have to be lifted to signify women’s
empowerment, strength, and progress! Now is the time for the fires to be
stoked. Now is the time to bring about a relationship revolution!!! And
this newsletter will do just that.
A Team has been assembled and plans are underway to publish the 9th Edition very, very soon. There is
plenty of life left and plenty of issues to tackle in male-female
relationships. So…the journey continues with fresh, new talent of hungry
columnists, vloggers, and poets. In the meantime, please enjoy the
adventures of a character I created named Blossom until we release the next
edition. By the way, our mission remains the same: to provoke a
relationship revolution! I have no intent of stopping what we’ve
started…AT ALL! So long as the need for encouragement exists as it
relates to man-woman relationships, Jubilee News plans to continue publishing
its online newsletter.
Not
only for ourselves, but for our children and for many generations to come.
I thank you soooo very much for your patience…in advance…in this rebuilding
process.
Appreciatively,
James W. Falcon,
Founder
& Editor-In-Chief,
Jubilee
News-A WHEN MEN SPEAK Publication
PS:
Your support of this
newsletter is appreciated. Your input is craved! Drop me a note at wmsjubileenews@gmail.com if
you have any questions or comments regarding the content of the newsletter and
I will guarantee you a timely response.
Also, if you have any
suggestions for topics we have not covered, we will be happy to review those
requests as well. Once again, thank you for your support and thank you in
advance for your emails.
Thank
you once again.
|---------STAFF--------|
Editor-In-Chief
James W. Falcon
Co-Host, WHEN MEN
SPEAK-The Radio Edition
Open
Copy/Online Editor
Open
Director of
Marketing
Open
Marketing Intern
Unique E. Falcon
Manager, Social
Media
Open
Columnists
Open
Open
Open
James W. Falcon
Jai-ree
Nekil (Emeritus)
Poets & Spoken
Word Artists
Open
Open
Open
James W. Falcon
---------------------------------------------------[]--------------------------------------------------
|----------POETS,
SPOKEN WORD ARTISTS, COLUMNISTS-----------|
~8th Edition and
beyond~
Open
Open
Open
Jai-ree
James W. Falcon
~Previous
Editions~
MJD
God’s Precious
Flower (GPF)
MJAY
Victoria Sharrock
Memoirs of a Lady
From the
Reservation
Meredith Duncan
Weber
Sonja Maxwell
LaVerna Saunders
Jai-ree
Michelle Pringle
Barbara K.
Nekil (Emeritus)
James W. Falcon
I am immensely
grateful for the contributions of all of the above mentioned contributors for
their voluntary support of Jubilee News. Thank you.
This Publication wishes to honor the memory and legacy of a special partner,
Nekil R. Colden.
Nekil, a former
Editor-In-Chief of another publication, joined the Jubilee News Team in 2013
and made sizable contributions with promises of more in the future. But
unfortunately, Nekil lost her battle with cancer and passed away unexpectedly.
We are grateful for Nekil's life and contributions to Jubilee News.
Our deepest sympathies go out to her Family & Friends in her lost.
This Publication will forever honor her work and will hold a place for
her here among the staff.
Rest
In Peace
Nekil
R. Colden
11/25/1975
- 1/29/2014
Respectfully
submitted,
-James W. Falcon
THE DADDY PAGES-Chapter 8
How important is it for a little girl to have her father in her
life? Is a father's presence that important? What are the benefits of having a
solid relationship with your Dad? Follow a fictional character named Blossom as
she grapples with these topics in her growth and development from childhood to
womanhood in each edition of Jubilee News. Jubilee News is proud to present the
work of Baltimore
“A missed opportunity. Yup,
that’s exactly what I would call the death of my Grandmother-my Dad’s Mom,”
Blossom lamented.
“I never knew her,” she
thought angrily to herself.
“Unfortunately, I never
spend much time with her all at all,” Blossom concluded.
Blossom sat in the wake
feeling somewhat bewildered-mad even. As she watched the people flow in
reverently and paused in front of her Grandma’s coffin, she wondered what kind
of a person she was? She wondered, what wisdom she possessed? What
recipes she knew? What stories could she have told about her Dad and
Uncle?
Blossom felt like a
full-fledged member of the family that day. But in many ways, she felt
like she was estranged from her family, too. She wondered why her Dad
didn’t take her around her Grandmother more? She wondered why she never
spent nights, weekends, and holidays with Grandma? Was the relationship
between her Dad and Grandma strained? Did they even care about each
other?
At the time of her
Grandmother’s passing, Blossom was thirty years old. Yet, she only had a
single photo of her Grandmother. It seemed photos of her Grandma were as scarce
as her visits. What baffled Blossom even more was the fact that she can
recall hundreds of stories about her-stories her Dad would tell in bits and
pieces at dinner. They were humorous antidotes mostly that were told in
her Dad’s unique, storytelling fashion. They were stories that made me
proud to be a descendant of strong, feminine lineage. They were stories
that let Blossom know about the origin her funny bone. Stories that
confirmed why the meaning of the word “family” sparked such an emotional
stirring deep down in her soul. The sheer volume of the stories alone
made Blossom feel like she knew her Grandmother intimately. Yet, Blossom
wished she had learned all of those wonderful things about her Grandma
personally, directly, instead of through stories. Blossom always got a double
dose of stories laced with tons of humor whenever her Dad and Uncle got
together. Blossom recalled how the two would carry on for hours with
stories about their mother almost as if she was dead then. But she
wasn’t-she was very much alive. Blossom always found that strange,
peculiar even.
As she sat there in the
wake, she longed to spend time with her Grandmother. She yearned to learn
more about her. She wished she could be in her presence. As the
stories go, Grandma was a big women. She was about 6 foot, maybe 6 foot 1
according to the lure and weighed about 220 pounds. That made perfect
sense to Blossom considering her Dad was almost 6 foot 4 and her Uncle was 6
foot 8. As the stories go, Grandma had as big a heart as she was in stature-traits
that apparently existed in abundance among Grandma’s 11 siblings. It
seems Grandma and that whole side of the family were giants. They were
all tall and slim. Apparently, Grandma could cook, too.
Blossom never had the
pleasure of eating any of her Grandma’s cooking, but she heard her Grandmother
was masterful in the kitchen…capable of creating meals out of thin air as the
stories go. Her Grandmother loved to sit around after a good home cooked
meal and tell stories. One of Grandma’s signatures was her
laughter. The one photo that Blossom has is of her Grandma laughing
hysterically in a group setting. Her Grandma’s laughter was the one image
that she had somehow had etched in her brain. Whenever she thought about
her Grandmother, she thought about that photo and of her Grandmother’s
laugh.
As Blossom reflected, a
tear or two started to build up in the outside corners of her eyes. It
suddenly dawned on her why her Grandmother’s laughter had impacted her
so. She remembered that Grandma was born in 1926. Grandma lived
through some extremely tough times. Yet, laughter was her signature and
legacy.
“Wow!” Blossom thought to
herself. “To have gone through so much and still have the ability, the
determination to find humor and to use it, exploit it as a tool, was the mark
of intelligence as well as self-preservation,” Blossom concluded.
All of a sudden things
started to make sense for Blossom. Now she understood why her Uncle-the
older of the two siblings-told his little brother to always make sure that
above all else in life, before he laughs at anything else, he must first laugh
at yourself. Now it made sense why her Dad was always clowning
around. Blossom used to get so annoyed with her Dad-especially when she
was in her pre-teen and early teen years. She could not understand why
her Dad was practically possessed about garnering laughs. Now it makes
sense, Blossom thought to herself. The light bulb had come on and come on
brightly. She figured it out. Her Dad wasn’t a clown! He was
using laughter as a shield-a defense for all of life’s pain. Now Blossom
knew why her Dad quoted the Bible verse, “Laughter doeth well like a
medicine.” Blossom was having an epiphany right there…in the middle of
her Grandmother’s wake. Blossom’s entire countenance changed. So
much so that she didn’t realize her change in demeanor was very noticeable to
all who were around her.
That day, Blossom felt
closer to her Grandmother than she had ever felt before. Her sense of
pride had skyrocketed. Blossom felt like her Grandmother left her a
fortune…not in money and material thing…but in leaving a single
tool-laughter. For the first time, Blossom knew what made her Grandma so
strong. Blossom felt like she knew her Grandmother’s beauty secret,
secret to inner peace, and secrets in all of areas of life. She
understood why her Uncle was always so jolly. Blossom was now in
possession of the thing that made her Dad’s belly shake like Santa Claus when
he laughed. She knew. She got it. Blossom had somehow hurdled
the vast chasm that existed between her and her Grandmother. It was the
thing that Grandma passed down to both of her boys. And it is the thing
that her Dad passed down to her.
That day, Blossom forgave
her Dad for the many missed opportunities to connect with her
Grandmother. That day-the day of her Grandma’s wake and funeral, Blossom
felt more alive than ever. Instead of resenting her Dad, she loved him
even more. She actually thanked him for including her in such a rich heritage
and history. Without his stories, Blossom would have never been able to
connect the dots. Without his antics…without the Bible verse
quotations…without his hunger for humor, Blossom would have remained estranged
from such a wonderful family trait. But with him, she had a powerful
sense of purpose and identity.
At thirty years of age,
Blossom had been privileged to accomplish quite a bit. She held a
Master’s Degree and earned several certifications. But Blossom realized
that her learning had only just begun.
“Thank you LORD
for my Grandma,” she whispered. “And…for my Dad,” she added.
Join Blossom in her journey through her middle years as she reflects on the interactions she's had with her dad and...for a new chapter of...The Daddy Pages. Thank you.
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