tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80381803279710573822024-03-13T07:45:16.171-05:00The Scent of Dying RosesKelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-32602385712901756602015-10-19T10:39:00.000-05:002015-10-19T10:44:51.426-05:00New Real (or Virtual) EstateHi everyone!
I just wanted to let you know I have moved my blog. I've made my own website: keleneblake.com complete with blog. I've enjoyed having you here at "The Scent of Dying Roses" and invite you to join me at my new space Blackademically Inclined where I post weekly on topics of health, social justice, race, and my experiences as an international Black PhD student in a Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-36868246919831895852014-04-06T12:43:00.001-05:002014-04-06T13:29:53.766-05:00Fixing Women Who Are Not Broken to Appease Men Who Are
I don't really pay attention to Steve Harvey's relationship
guru direction, or anything on TV in general, but I found this particularly
disturbing and I can't help but wonder why it is acceptable of anyone. In the
above clip a husband has extreme negative reactions to his wife's natural hair
when she takes a break from wearing weaves. Harvey playfully admonishes the
husband for not supportingKelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-22304356690682894362014-01-03T16:05:00.002-06:002014-01-03T16:08:14.185-06:00The November Experiment: Health and Poverty<!--[if gte mso 9]>
Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-4698233391036759202013-11-03T14:55:00.000-06:002013-11-03T14:55:45.240-06:00The November Experiment a.k.a. Project “Don’t Starve. Thrive.”<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-13477298933201478662013-08-19T12:58:00.000-05:002013-08-19T13:10:31.831-05:00The Insanity of Health Disparities
I knew from childhood I am susceptible to diabetes and have valued
and studied health to give myself the best chance of avoiding that life sentence.
I took for granted what turned out to be an important part of health – the certainty
I had some control over my own wellbeing. I understood my choices and actions
could affect how I feel and my health outcomes as I aged. Years of studying the
human Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-90508051147974945902013-06-15T13:37:00.001-05:002013-06-15T20:06:59.081-05:00Overcoming "Normal"
“Normal is an illusion. What is normal to the spider is
chaos to the fly.” ~Morticia Addams
It’s normal for a men to be given more money and resources
than women. It’s normal for African-Americans to have lower incomes, health and
education. It’s normal for a woman to put her husband and family above her
personal needs, goals and dreams. It’s normal for a man to put his own sexual
desiresKelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-46853526333549065222013-06-02T15:44:00.000-05:002013-06-02T15:46:35.443-05:00Doing More With Less
Things are tight and many of us are learning to do more with
less. There are things we all want to do one day. Dreams. Goals. When trying to
accomplish something you need to be prepared to do so “in spite of.” The time
will never be perfectly right. You will never be perfectly ready. What we often
fail to realize is that achieving our goals isn’t a one-off effort: it is the
culmination of many, Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-27081969905840074582013-05-25T10:52:00.002-05:002013-05-25T10:53:12.536-05:00Starting & Finishing
The two most difficult parts of any endeavor are starting
and finishing. Starting because it’s so filled with uncertainty, you don’t know
what to expect, there’s a lot to make you anxious and afraid, sometimes enough
to leave you paralyzed and unable to actually begin. There are the times you
just have to jump in. You can submerge yourself like you’re trying to
acclimatize to cold water at the Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-75319590013499554382013-01-25T16:35:00.000-06:002013-08-21T17:19:48.443-05:00Kneading Dreams Part 2
Last week I posted the first of this two part list of
lessons learned from making bread. (I know, that’s a bit random, but my mind
wanders.) Here’s lessons 6 to 10 of that list:
6. Bonds will break. New bonds will form.
For the ingredients to become dough a chemical process takes
place. Bonds are broken and formed with the mechanical energy provided by your
kneading. Before you get where Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-35995508231369399682013-01-18T19:13:00.003-06:002013-01-18T19:13:45.216-06:00Kneading Dreams
Last Sunday, my baking day, I made my
first batch of bread for 2013. When you’re making bread by hand – kneading the
dough until it is ready to be put aside so it can rise – you have a lot of time
to think. I’ve learned a lot from baking, and from last year when life sent me
in the strange directions that led to me baking my own bread among so many
other things. Here are a few life lessons I Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-19076317460518277532012-10-06T12:05:00.001-05:002012-10-06T12:25:33.430-05:00Simply Speaking
Living simply can seem pretty complicated. It’s quite the
oxymoron. How we live seems set up to discourage a simple life and encourage a
highly consumeristic lifestyle in which we are constantly thinking of the next
thing… the next thing we want to buy, the next thing we want to try, the next
thing we need to do to become the person we’re trying to become: usually
modeled off of someone we see Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-48920019777149311722012-09-10T12:20:00.001-05:002012-09-10T12:44:01.044-05:00Storytime: How I Met Poetry
You never know where you will find life-changing inspiration. This is why it is good to be open to even the most simple, trivial things and follow the crumbs of inspiration wherever they lead. These days my life is all about poetry. In 2012 I’ve written and performed more poetry than in any other period of my life. I’m searching for a publisher for my book and working on to making a life doing Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-9987122348376497042012-07-27T23:49:00.001-05:002012-07-28T00:47:46.029-05:00WallsBeen playing around with some footage from my poetry feature in January of this year. Here's a clip of me performing my poem "Walls".
Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-77026584080861506172012-07-01T13:41:00.000-05:002012-07-01T13:46:33.819-05:00The hardest part
Beautiful ruins: Photo by Kelene Blake
by Kelene Blake
The hardest part
is
wearing the scars
as
stripes of honor
not
a shield
engraved
into skin/ mind/ heart
evidence
of what you’ve overcome
memoirs
of the times you’ve bled
reminders you are strong enough
to
heal
The
hardest part
is
leaving the hurt behind
taking
the lessons forward
escaping
oppression
not
as victim
as
a Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-1653751695376185822012-05-25T23:49:00.002-05:002012-07-01T13:42:01.335-05:00Summer Schooling
My summer reading list. Ambitious? Perhaps :-).
Summer’s here, and for me summer tends to be my most
productive, educational time. I don’t get bored because I use the free time to
do all the learning I had been missing out on while I was in school. Sounds
weird doesn’t it? Missing out on learning while in school?
But that is what happens, the structure of school,
particularly Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-69432199631379530702012-05-13T15:25:00.001-05:002012-07-01T13:58:26.431-05:00Wasting Good Life
Many of us spend years waiting for our lives to start:
waiting to be old enough, rich enough, waiting to finish school, waiting to get
that career before we can really start living. I have news for you. Your life
started the day you were born and each day, including today, you’re living it.
So if you are looking into some distant future or goal, waiting for something
to happen, you’re wasting Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-65022590176897224572012-04-07T18:38:00.006-05:002012-04-07T18:56:07.071-05:00"The End of a Drought"U.K. Djembe drummer who goes by the name “Shadow 9” put out a call for poets and spoken word artists to submit nature poems to go with his Naturu Riddem for compilation on a free mixtape. It looked like a fun thing to do, and since I didn’t have any spoken word poems about nature I took it as a challenge to write one. This was the result. This was definitely a departure from my usual poetry, but Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-82862209868288560302012-01-14T11:12:00.005-06:002012-01-14T11:15:12.353-06:00Art That Actually MattersAny brave soul who produces art, and to take it one step further, produces art in lieu of taking a regular stable, 9 to 5 job has quite the dilemma. People often judge them, think that they are just trying to avoid the responsibility of having a real job. But such artists not only have to work against that perception, they also have to face that theirs is a HUGE responsibility. Great art has to Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-21239184395083200082011-12-02T17:52:00.008-06:002011-12-03T12:31:33.253-06:00If I Had One Question: Chris COMRADE Goodman“Can’t do the same thing then expect to make a difference” ~Chris COMRADE GoodmanI’m not sure how I ended up there, but one day I found myself attending a forum on my then-campus, Morgan State, discussing the “school to prison pipeline”. The discussion highlighted (if I remember correctly) the inadequacies of the education system, the chronic state of underfunding in inner city schools and the Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-91907314509824950732011-11-26T10:42:00.006-06:002011-11-26T11:30:23.819-06:00Finding Wings ~ Spoken Word PoetryFrom the moment I learned to write I’ve been a writer. When the alphabet was first injected into my mind the letters crossed the blood-brain barrier and infiltrated my circulation turning me into one of those hopeless (or relentlessly hopeful) creatures who compulsively put words in order attempting to create meaning. But I was only half-formed, a literary Quasimodo. I found my other half in a Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-85718872151352433582011-11-04T19:12:00.004-05:002011-11-04T21:42:51.802-05:00Trapped in TimeOctober came and left before I could look up from the loads of research papers I’ve been reading. The pile I have gone through for my grad classes is truly epic, and the pile I have yet to go through is even bigger (sigh). But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is: Time, if you’re not paying attention, slips away quietly and quickly. I’ve heard the concept that time is man-made, an illusionKelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-11461171962520927172011-09-29T21:58:00.019-05:002011-09-30T16:40:33.748-05:00Growing UpI was looking through some of my teen poetry. I started writing poetry at about age 11 and I have over a hundred poems I wrote as a teenager. Looking through them I see snippets of the me I have become in development. Every now and again I would see a line that, though I know I wrote it, would surprise me that I was thinking that way even then. What surprised me even more is that so many things Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-26317835210380518952011-09-25T10:17:00.005-05:002011-09-25T10:31:12.487-05:00New Life, Same Old MeSitting on my bed early Sunday morning surrounded by piles of papers, I look up for a moment and breathe. September has been a crazy month. A new city, a new life, a new routine (if winging it can be called a routine), a new me… same old me. There’s always challenges in newness. You have to adapt to and learn all these elements that have now become part of your life. The most difficult thing Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-18922251894289492392011-08-24T21:48:00.005-05:002012-04-07T18:48:33.182-05:00Revolutions ~ My First Spoken WordI'm trying my hand at spoken word. I want to make a video for this, but in the meantime I recorded it and share the link with you here. A poem inspired by the times we live in and by the keeping of good company:Revolutions by JadeTygressRevolutionsBy Kelene BlakeRevolution cycles around the circles of oppression. The comfortable sit and watch the discomfort of the discontent Not realizing Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038180327971057382.post-86224076555809065512011-08-15T13:12:00.003-05:002011-08-15T13:17:56.687-05:00Losing Focus
<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>Kelenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07120467133131297763noreply@blogger.com2