Cyber Roving Interviews

Michele started this interview thread...of course she picked it up from another blogger and its one of these things that roves around blogs and cyber communities.  Generally, these things have medium to low appeal for me but this one I like because the interviewer, (in my case it is Michele who I think is pretty cool) personalizes the questions to the person being asked.

Here are the questions she gave me along with my answers:

1. If you weren't living during this period, what other era would you have lived in and why?  I've been asked this before and stated that my era hasn't come yet but this time after thinking about it...I'm gonna say around the mid-1400s and I'm a citizen of Songhai.  My father is a salt merchant and my mother is a seller of cloth...they have worked hard and prospered to send me to the urban and very cosmopolitan and international University of Timbuktu. I'm studying Arabic, Poetry, and Astronomy and am one of a few hundred women among a student body of 30,000. I head the Young Non-conformists Women's Student Association of Songhai...my parents are very supportive but don't understand my radical views.  I will go on to become the first female (but not the last) Official Bard of Songhai.

2. What do you want most to be remembered for when you are gone? That a poem I wrote really meant something to 1 person AND that I always encouraged and helped support the dreams of others.

3. What makes a woman beautiful? CONFIDENCE W/ KINDNESS!

4. What do you love most about your cultural heritage?  It is so rich and still yet to be understood and discovered so it is hard to narrow it down...but in a nutshell...the endurance, perseverance in the face of destruction. I was not meant to survive or be born and yet, here I be :)  I try to think upon this deeply when I'm at my lowest rungs of depression. 

5. How have relationships with those closest to you shaped your view of life and the world?  I give my great grandmother the honor due in shaping my sensibilities and intuitiveness.  My mother gave me my work ethic and sense of deserving to work hard for anything I want and she taught me how to stand and look people in the eye and SEE and not be afraid.  I don't know that I've always lived up to it, sometimes attributes and burdens are one in the same depending on the circumstances...my father gave me a sense of fun coupled with rebelliousness.  But ya know, Michele, I think my sense of the world came from the caste of characters that frequented my great-grandmother's house and neighborhood...I learned the people are different and diverse, people came in different sizes, heights, smells, dialects,...some thumped bibles, others thumped J&B Scotch bottles and some you embrace and respect even when they seem strange and some you steer clear of and keep one eye open on even when they seem comfortable and close.  My great grandmother knew what was going on in her block and who needed what.  So my need to connect with people and have a sense of a community of spirits comes from those days.

*********************************************************************************************

For anyone reading this, if you would like for ME to interview you, leave a comment saying "interview me".  I will respond by sending you five questions.  You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions I create just for you.  You will include an explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

So out of the 50 something links in the AQ ring...surely I can get 2, 3, 5 (cough cough Cheryl cough cough) of you to play...and if you are not in the ring but do blog and have read this, that makes you eligible too...so I'll be waiting.

*************************

On the quilting front...I've been working on a bed quilt in batiks that I'm determined to finish. Its the Attic Window that I posted a while back.  Other than this, nothing has been happening...I come home and collapse right here in front of the computer or in bed and sit here and chat with my teens.  Hopefully, I can get busy soon...the spirit is willing but the body is weak. hangeth in beautiful people!