Yvonne Battle-Felton: Words Move Me

My daughter is a beautiful young woman with thick, dark brown hair; wine colored, almond shaped eyes; creamy, full cheeks and hundreds of other attributes, talents and gifts. When the hair on her head is long, thin and shiny she believes me when I tell her she is beautiful.When her hair is her natural length, either natural or relaxed, she does not.
It isn’t that she only feels beautiful when her hair is beautiful; she worries that she is only beautiful when her hair is longer.
I wish I could convince her otherwise.
My words are not those that will convince her, probably because I have and sometimes still do feel the same way about myself. When my hair is braided it frames my face and falls to my shoulders, the faint swish of braids makes me move differently and sometimes even feel differently. Braids, more precisely the hair, makes me feel more beautiful—for awhile.
As a child I had short thick hair. I can remember trudging behind my sister through the streets of Atlantic City as we we…

I am terribly close to breaking another one of my constitutions and reading her mind.I have shockingly few constitutions intact which is one of the reasons I am holding childishly on to this one.It will be her fault when I do it; just like it was the first time, when I was nine years old.We were sitting around the table one night, a typical family dinner, when I asked her an innocent question about my father.In that swift unguarded moment, her face contorted with pain and fear.In my confusion I read her mind and learned she was ever so slightly afraid of me.Of course I changed the subject, silently vowing to never read the mind of another.Over the years I’ve amended that rash decision.It has been whittled down from never reading any one’s mind; to never reading the mind of a family member; and finally to never reading her mind again.She is the last obstacle to my using my talents freely.
I try to appear patient as she rambles on about her youth.There is a point to this, I must remind m…

Dear Editor:


As the editor-in-chief of Nemesis, the leading source of obituaries in the Washington/Baltimore area, I would like to share one of the secrets of my success: death sells.Almost every day death is reported in newspapers worldwide in one form or another.While most expected in the obituary section, it can be reported in the crime, local, entertainment or in almost any section from the front page to the last.The media coverage a death receives and the placement of the notice depend on the way a person lives or dies.Your actions in life literally affect your place in history.In your newspaper, those whose lives or deaths touch the most people appear to get the largest coverage, while others receive minimal space in which their lives are condensed.
On February 4th, 2005 the online version of the Baltimore Sun announced the death of activist, actor Ossie Davis in an article published by Associated Press writer Hillel Italie. On that day they also announced the death of Elizabet…