Farewell My Beautiful Mlother Part 2...

Sharing the poem i wrote & read at my mother, Sallie's funeral Sunday. (Thanx for all you well-wishes)
-Daniel aka Obsidian


Sallie
By Daniel Canada aka Obsidian c.2016

My earliest memories of you was a pocket book swing as I waited baited breath for your beautiful form to show up on the horizon of a dirty Bronx street there’s my pretty mother come to rescue me from the confusion of kids playing hop scotch on the hot summers concrete

Leather purse holding the wages of food for we hungry chillum hungry for spaghetti and rice and beans corn flakes along with the remnant of pink milk saved in the heart of a woman who put in more than 14 hours of work to feed the mouth of her babies

Nights fill with terror and the screams of daddy who felt it made sense to beat the hell of a Princes to make up for hard day’s mafia work

Mommy taught me how to read the bible first so I was way ahead of my colleagues who wanted to know how Dick chased Jane, mommy got a bachelor’s degree after raising a family in the ghettos of the Bronx to become a teacher she taught bible classed quoted scripture better than the arch bishop of Canterbury we buried her not… she said the flames are my end so burn me like the mustache man burn me like the flames of love that simmer in all your heart-you fell me?

Sallie, I still see you crocheting blankets in the night organs and piano you use to play spiritual cord wafting into the wee hours I play piano now no memories of southern root rooted deep in the red South Carolina soil I wasn’t born there but I remember grandpa and his thirst for sweet potatoes the waving fields of wheat you wanted to come back home even from your last stage your spirit traveled across the parch and arid lands it came home to roost to rest upon the house you had built a monument to the

Wilsons a monument to the Samuels DNA still whispers in my vein I really miss you Sallie Canada you were light shining in dark places you were so stoic so Cherokee Indian woman-you fought the spasms of death until you gave up your final breath

To fly away to southern skies cosecant ore Kelly Camden fields of green there you are with your ancestors saying “We shall overcome.” for you are strong-you were strong in life you are strong in spirit

And the legacy of your love of your fried chicken like Aunt Sugar Lump and Aunt Mamie, collard greens and dumpling live on in me I have pictures of you now smiles frozen in sequential time-they are not you… you are the sun that wake the early hours of dawn in the stillness of twilight-and hear you

So, now I know what the name Sallie meant: it meant Soulful Attributes of Loving Light & Internal Endearment-you see mommy it is at this moment I finally understand what you stood for &apologize cause it took me this long…

I wear your unfinished green scarf and I carry your wonderful smile…with pride

Farewell My Beautiful Mother...

My beautiful mother, Sallie Canada, passed away from this earthly plane last night @ 10:03pm. I was at her bedside to see her draw her last breath. Mother, I know that you know that my love for you will burn unto the end of our undying sun.
-Daniel aka Obsidian

Is There Anybody Out There?!...

Just when we thought we knew it all!
-Obsidian aka Daniel

FRBs: Mystery repeating radio signals discovered emanating from unknown cosmic source

Repeating radio signals coming from a mystery source far beyond the Milky Way have been discovered by scientists. While one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected in the past, this is the first time multiple signals have been detected coming from the same place in space.

FRBs are radio signals from deep space that last for just a few milliseconds. Since their discovery over a decade ago, scientists have been searching for more to try to understand their origin. At present, there are several theories as to what they could be, with most involving some cataclysmic event like a supernova or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole.

All of the events seen so far appear to have been one-offs, with subsequent observations failing to find follow-up bursts coming from the same position as the original. However, an international team of researchers has now discovered an additional 10 bursts coming from the same direction as FRB 121102, using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

Publishing their findings in the journal Nature, the researchers report the subsequent bursts have the same dispersion measures and sky positions as the original FRB. This, they say, means the source must have survived whatever event caused the FRB to be produced in the first place – i.e. it cannot have been a cataclysmic one-off event. They also found the bursts differed in brightness from other FRBs, suggesting a different source.

Paul Scholz, from McGill University, was the first person to notice the repeating burst: "I knew immediately that the discovery would be extremely important in the study of FRBs."

In the study, researchers suggest the repeating bursts are coming from a very young neutron star. "Although there may be multiple physical origins for the population of fast radio bursts, these repeat bursts with high dispersion measure and variable spectra specifically seen from the direction of FRB 121102 support an origin in a young, highly magnetised, extragalactic neutron star," they wrote.

The team now hopes to identify the galaxy from which the repeating FRBs came from. "Once we have precisely localised the repeater's position on the sky, we will be able to compare observations from optical and X-ray telescopes and see if there is a galaxy there," said Jason Hessels, corresponding author on the study. "Finding the host galaxy of this source is critical to understanding its properties."

Their study follows another paper on FRBs published earlier this month. Also appearing in Nature, researchers announced the discovery of the location and host galaxy of another FRB first discovered in April last year.

They found FRB 150418 had emanated from an elliptical galaxy six billion light years away. Unlike FRB 121102, this burst did not repeat, leading scientists to say it was probably produced by merger event, where two stars that are orbiting each other come together. In the paper, the team also said they believe there are at least two different sources of FRBs.

More about FRBs.

A Long Time Ago in an America Far Away...

This is an documentary about one of my relatives, Geoffrey Canada & an interesting testimony about the truth of racial identity in America. Check it out!
Daniel Canada aka Obsidian

‘Finding Your Roots’: Why White Family Refused DNA Test for Geoffrey Canada

Apr 13, 2016

Geoffrey Canada from the PBS series "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr."

Harlem educator Geoffrey Canada made some startling discoveries in his family tree as part of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.”

“Every black family believes that they descend from the white man who owned them, and it turns out that we have never tested an African American who was a hundred percent black,” Dr. Gates told reporters during a press conference for the series. “Every African American has a significant percentage of European ancestry. So do you know what we did this time? We actually tracked down the descendants of the slave master, white descendants, and matched their DNA against the DNA of our guests.”

Gates said in two cases out of four this season, DNA tests proved that the guest was descended from the white ancestor that the family believed was kin. In Canada’s episode (scroll down to watch in its entirety), he learned there was a significant amount of European blood in his DNA.

But sadly, Canada will never have the identity of his white ancestor confirmed.  On camera, Gates informed him that the descendants of the slave master believed to have fathered Canada’s family line refused to take the DNA test.

Below, Gates explains why they refused and their initial reaction when he first made contact.

image: http://c14.zedo.com/jsc/images/zplayer/inarticle-Close-Btn.png

Read more at http://www.eurweb.com/2012/04/finding-your-roots-why-white-family-refused-dna-test-for-geoffrey-canada/#HlxsrTUl5bo6WdYW.99