Category Archives: Authors I-Q

ADR Authors by last name I-Q

Authors I-Q, Social Issues

The Impact of Images – by Kenyada Posey

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Cultural expressions, icons, and the arts have played a major role in how we’ve seen ourselves and others in the past, and can play a major part in bringing us together in the future. Before social media, newspapers and black and white television exposed us to the lives of others, arts, and society. Whether it be negatively or positively, music, TV, and movies and the imagery they evoke will continue to impact our society and the way we view community.

As a Black woman, the images shown in movies, TV, and mentioned in music has had a major impact on me and my self image.  Cultural expressions have seemingly been more negative than positive and date back to the runaway slave flyers posted around America a century or two ago. The image of the Black woman and Black man were usually exaggerated with a huge nose and a goofy-like look to depict ignorance. We have also seen the image of the angry Black woman plastered everywhere.
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Authors I-Q, Poetry 2021

Admonition at the Crossroads by Sherry Poff

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Admonition at the Crossroads

From the hard red road
straight to the edge of nowhere,
the vanished forest fading
into parallel poles and rigid wires,
from creeping darkness covering
a groundswell of sorrow—

lift your eyes.

Already the heavens shine
with turrets and clouds of majesty.
Already, tentative fingers of mercy
enter the field of vision.

A storm of miracles
is about to fall.

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Image credit: A road through the mountains (Den Belitsky)

Authors I-Q, Poetry 2021

From a Long Line of Trees by John C. Mannone

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From a Long Line of Trees

My brothers—one shaped into chariot wheels, the other, into an expansive bed for a king—had it good. I’ve been rough-cut and split into two. God knows where I am being taken to now. My leg drags through camel dung, my arms straddle a broad-shouldered peasant cloaked in dirt-brown tatters. Sweat on his brow. A noisy crowd follows me to a barren hill outside of town. They throw me to the ground; lash a man to me, whose face is so marred I cannot tell who he is, but thorns crowning his head scratch me. I feel his blood. Lots of blood as the Romans nail his flesh to mine; hoist us high as one—each of us a cross to bear the other’s weight. It grieves me to hurt this man who won’t speak one word of guile as he hangs broken; I am washed in his blood. After many hours, he struggles to speak…It is finished. 

When I hear those words, I recall my father’s story still resounding through the ages. My father, when he cradled a most precious baby, spoke of a gentle old carpenter from Nazareth, who had fashioned a manger from the same stock that I came from—strong acacia wood planed smooth until soft enough for the king of kings. When the carpenter was done, he cried out with great pride to his wife, Mary, Bring me our son. It is finished. It is finished… It is finished!

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Editor’s Comment and Image Credit: An acacia tree in a Kenyon sunset [wallpaperflare] and silhouettes of crosses [pngwing] are combined for spiritual symbolic effects.

Authors I-Q, Make a Difference, Trends 2021

How Will You Toast The 2020s? – by Martin Kimeldorf

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Cocktail party discussions in the rambunctious boom years of the 1960s often ended in dark pronouncements for the next century. Upward trending population growth graphs collided with downward bar charts displaying resource depletion. A few brave souls uttered dark prophecies for the 2020s. They whispered about a world landscape filled with economic and environmental collapse. They claimed this would create a breeding ground for pandemics that would challenge our very survival.

America loves to terrorize and confine itself with a bipolar view of the world.  The Ozzie-and-Harriet voices in our heads droned on with happy-talk. In George Jetson cartoons, we imagined escaping traffic gridlock in our flying cars.  At the same time a Civil Defense doomsday voice commanded us to “duck and cover” beneath atomic mushroom clouds. Eventually Twilight Zone voices questioned these comedic survival tactics.
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Authors I-Q, Of Women, Social Issues

My Salute to Women Overcoming Challenges – by Soumaya Khalifa

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Resilience, Determination, Support and Hard Work

This Women’s History Month I am thankful for the many women who paved the way for me. These amazing women include my mother, sister, daughter, mentors, friends, colleagues, managers and too many others to list.  With these women as guides and companions, my path has been smooth yet challenging, steady yet adventurous.  For all of those women, I am deeply grateful.

I know a beautiful five year-old named Samira.  At birth, she was diagnosed with a rare genetic mutation that doctors thought would keep her from seeing, speaking, walking, running and living her life like any typical child.  Of course, her family was devastated: they wanted only the best for their newborn daughter.  Samira’s mother, however, immediately jumped into action.  She sought doctors who specialized in Samira’s condition and found the physical, occupational, speech and other therapies that she needed to thrive.  Samira’s mom fought the doctors, therapists and insurance companies to make sure her daughter received the best treatments and support.

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Authors I-Q, Pandemic

A Post-Pandemic Recovery Playbook for Women  – by Cathy Light

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As vaccines roll out, we turn our attention toward economic recovery. The traditional stimulus measures of the past, dominated by investment in infrastructure and construction, will not be effective in our post-pandemic world. Those sectors are male-majority employers, and COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on women.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in one month (September 2020), more than 1 million Americans over the age of 20 left the U.S. workforce. Roughly 80% – over 865,000 of them – were women. There are now nearly 2.2 million fewer women in the labor force than there were in February 2020 before the pandemic. In October 2020, the U.S. retail trade sector gained 103,700 jobs. Women accounted for only 11.4% of those gains, despite making up 48.4% of the retail trade workforce. We must do better.
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Authors I-Q, Education, Of Women, Pandemic

Maybe Some Silver Linings – by Gay Morgan Moore

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The world will long remember the past year!  We were thrust into circumstances that will forever change us individually and globally. We know the results – over 530,000 dead in the United States alone, millions sickened, an economy in free fall struggling to recover, a severely challenged health care system, new medicines, new disease conditions, and trillions of dollars in government spending attempting to ameliorate the effects of this global pandemic. The list of negative consequences goes on. But are there some “silver linings?” Is there some good coming from this daunting and often frightening global challenge?
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Authors I-Q, Of Women, Race & Ethnicity

I’m Black and I’m Proud – by Eva Johnson

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Eva Johnson and John Lewis
Eva Johnson and John Lewis

I attended 12 public schools in Chattanooga during times when almost everything was racially separated: schools, churches, restaurants, tours,  organization memberships.  After my high school  graduation and an  early marriage, I relocated  with family to New England and eventually graduated from  Southern Connecticut University.  In the mid-seventies when I became an educator in a large suburban high school in Hamden, Connecticut, only about 10% of the school’s staff and student body was African American.  

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