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Grieving After Caregiving: After Death of Her Parents, Daughter Finds Healing Through Puzzling By Hazel Trice Edney

Jan. 6, 2025

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Dr. Tisha Lewis Ellison with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. "Tom" and Lucille Lewis. Mr. Lewis, a retired DC police officer and founder of D.C.'s Fishing School and Mrs. Lewis, a former DC business owner, were committed to hospice at the same time. 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Growing up in her Northwest Washington, DC, neighborhood, Tisha Lewis’s mother would often call her a Daddy’s girl.

“I was always hanging on to his leg or standing on his feet as he walked,” she recalled fondly in a recent interview. “Even as an adult, up until his passing, he would still greet me with, “Hey Sugar’”.

But as she grew up through her teen rebellion stages, went away to college and ultimately earned a doctorate degree in reading, she grew extraordinarily close to her mother. “She became my very best friend and my confidant…She was so much closer to me than any other woman that she was the matron of honor at my wedding.”

Actually, the loving relationship she had with both of her parents – Mr. and Mrs. Thomas “Tom” and Lucille Lewis - was what any adult daughter would want and admire. That loving relationship is why Dr. Tisha Y. Lewis Ellison, Ph.D. (Tisha) was shattered when her mother, a healthy woman who was the faithful primary caregiver to her sickly father, broke the news to her that she had been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.

Mrs. Lewis had nursed her husband through three bouts of cancer among other illnesses. “Dad had always had health challenges. He was always going to the doctor. And Mom was always by his side,” Tisha recalls.

So, because of her mother’s terminal illness, the next two years were harrowing. Especially heart-rending was when Tisha decided to take a leave of absence from her tenured professorship at the University of Georgia to become a caregiver to both of her parents at the same time.

“They were both admitted to home hospice care in Oct. 2019. I remember that dreaded day when my family removed their king-sized bed so that they could put in two hospital beds. That was so devastating and traumatic. This was going to be our new normal.”

Despite round the clock help from professional caregivers, her aunts and her older brother, Patrick (Issa), Tisha wanted to be sure her parents were getting the very best care. They had also designated her as their power of attorney. Before taking the leave of absence, “I would go back and forth between DC and Atlanta. It was just incredibly difficult.”

With Tisha by her side, Mrs. Lewis died on Nov. 20, 2019, within a year of being diagnosed with the colon cancer. Her father died from artery blockage and Alzheimer’s dementia only 15 months later. They had been married 50 years.

Meanwhile, the community, their church family, loved ones and friends rallied around this couple, known widely for their monumental public service. Mr. Lewis, a retired D.C. police officer, social worker and ordained minister, was founder of The Fishing School, a now 34-year-old non-profit after school program in Northeast D.C., that teaches underserved children how to excel through education. Mrs. Lewis was a seamstress and tailor, who for 29 years ran her tailor shop, Japats, on D.C.’s Georgia Avenue. From her business, Mrs. Lewis contributed the first $1,000 toward her husband’s renovation of a former crack house to start his dream, The Fishing School. The program received a visit and commendations from President George W. Bush in 2001.

It is a painful story that has slowly culminated into an unexpected blessing to Tisha and to anyone grieving after caregiving.

She had purchased a 1,000 piece puzzle during the Covid-19 pandemic. Someone had told her how calming it was and the puzzle business was thriving across the nation because of the national quarantine.

“It helped me to relax. It helped me to focus. I wasn’t thinking about my parents and sometimes I did. Sometimes I cried on those puzzle pieces. I always said if these puzzle pieces could talk, the things that they would say…I would have my hot tea and sometimes I would listen to music while I was puzzling. And sometimes it would be quiet. It just made me feel calm, peaceful.”

That particular puzzle was of a Black woman with a wrap around her head, similar to Nefertiti. Then, one evening, while watching a TV show about entrepreneurship, she began to think of her hobby as a self-taught landscape photographer and all of the pictures she’d taken in her travels.

“And then I thought, I will use the pictures from my landscape photography. I will generate them into puzzles and I will sell them.” With that epiphany, Perfect Peace Puzzles was born. She began selling – not only her landscape photos – but even custom-made puzzles from any submitted photo, even pictures of loved ones who have passed away.

Tisha participated in a Griefshare online group for over two years and received counseling from a private therapist. But it’s been largely her Christian faith and the puzzles that’s comforted her best during her personal and private time, she said.

Grief is inevitable when loved ones pass away. But there are ways to maintain good mental health while going through it. Caregiving experts offer a string of from trauma and grief. They include, expect a range of emotions, be patient with yourself, find a good listener, and don’t blame yourself.

Tisha cautions that, based on her experience, grief therapy is often an ongoing self-care activity, one that may need to be revisited during anniversaries of the death, birthdays, and during family holidays, for example, or even during deaths of other loved ones.

In fact, just as she had made significant progress two years following her parents’ death; she was hit with yet another unexpected tragedy. Her brother, Patrick (Issa), who lived in the home with her parents, died suddenly of a stroke in September of 2023 at the age of 54.

Patrick’s death led her to return to Griefshare even as she continued the puzzling. His death reminded her of the death of her eldest brother, Jason, from colon cancer in 2015 at the age of 47.

Ironically, Tisha came to the end of the Nefertiti puzzle only to discover that the very last piece did not fit. So, it still sits, with a hole in it, a missing piece, just like the empty place left in her life by her deceased loved ones, an empty space she now fills by serving others.

"I have recently accepted a position on the board of my father's Fishing School," she said. "It's somewhat healing to continue my parents' beautiful legacy of community service. Through Perfect Peace Puzzles, we've offered free Grief and Loss webinars and plan to hold one on November 8th. Additionally, by being transparent and vulnerable with my students about grief, loss, and self-care, they have shared their own personal struggles with me, which has enabled me to better serve them pedagogically. In becoming more aware of these feelings and experiences of grief and loss, I’ve also discovered sprinkles of joy – knowing that life continues as I care for my family.”

Warning: Palm Technology and Microchipped Hands Could Become an Obsession By Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds

 Dec. 22, 2024

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - New Age Palm technology and microchipped hands are the growing wave of the future but so are aged old Biblical prophecies of “The Mark of the Beast.”

Burgundy Waller, recently known as “the Chip Girl’’ in her Tik Tok videos, has recently created a social media stir of three million followers by demonstrating how a microchip about the size of a gain of rice implanted in her hand serves as a key to unlocking doors, closets, and storage areas in her Las Vegas mansion.

While chipped hands might sound new, between 50,000 to 100,000 people globally are using implanted microchipped as credit cards, or to store their medical and health information, gain access to gyms, use public transportation, says the Journal of Hand Surgery.  Furthermore in 1998, a British Scientist, Kevin Warwick( Captain Cyborg)  made headlines using a hand implanted micro-chip to operate doors, lights, and heaters around his office at the University of Reading.

For consumers looking for  a non-surgical way to free themselves of the hardship of  reaching  in their wallets for plastic or tapping their phones on scanners,  Amazon is also rolling out a plan which allows  customers to simply hover their palms over an Amazon One device to pay their bills.  On May 24, 2024,  Amazon and its company -owned Whole Foods, introduced palm technology that can be used for payments in over  500 stores.  

Amazon uses consumers’ palms and their underlying vein structure to create a palm signature, which is produced  with the help of generative AI and verified by Amazon One scanners for  things like retail purchases and age verification. Amazon One scanners, once limited to Amazon stores, can now also be found in  third-party locations including stadiums, airports, and fitness centers. The new app lets users sign up for Amazon One through their phones instead of having to visit a physical location to take photos of their palms for enrollment.

Along with the excitement over the new hand developments, however, are the aged-old prophesies about a controversial “Mark of the Beast.”     The Mark of the Beast refers to Biblical references that during the last days of history a mysterious  autocratic and diabolical Anti-Christ leader would rise to rule over an evil empire where Christians who do not bare his mark on their hands would perish because they would be denied life sustaining goods such as food or medicines. Although mostly ignored by mainstream news, social media are roaring aloud that in the future the hands of Christians whether chipped or scanned could  play a role somewhat like the Star of David was used by the Nazis to identify Jews for death during the Holocaust.

The specific reference of the Mark is found in Revelation 13:16-17:  ‘He caused all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the  666 number of his name.”

 The story of  the Mark and its role in today’s technology was featured in my    recently published book entitled the Rise and the Fall of the Techno-Messiah: Artificial Intelligence and the End Times. This writer described how some respected theologians give credence to the Mark of the Beast prophesy  as part of their eschatological doctrines dealing with the Second Coming of Christ in the Last Days of history.

Consider the warning of J.F. Walvoord the late president of the Dallas Theological Seminary:  “There is no doubt that with today’s  technology a world leader in total control, could keep a continually updated census of all persons and know precisely which people had pledged their allegiance to him and who has not. It is highly likely that chip  implants, scan technology, and biometrics will be used as tools to enforce restrictions on buying and selling without  the Mark.”

Too often when the End Times and the Mark are discussed it is usually contained in only conservative white institutions.  Black churches and seminaries, however, also  teach and preach the  End Times prophesies  resulting in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.   The recent pandemics, the possibility of nuclear wars, cataclysmic weather events, such as the frequency of hurricanes and flooding  all fit in this apocalypse scenario.

In fact, this writer, an African-American woman is among those who  have taught on the End Times, including the Mark of the Beast at Calvary Bible institute in Washington D.C. Although it is surprising to some, there are 1,845 prophetic references to the Second Coming of Jesus, a factor of eight to one  over references of His First Coming.  In Fact, Scriptures show Jesus speaking of  His return 21 times.

The Mark of the Beast and the spirituality around it have also made its way into political circles. Mark Cole, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, once introduced a proposal to prevent corporations from forcing employees to submit to implants.  He also said his  concerns were also based on  the Book of Revelation which deals with the Mark of the Beast.  Referring to the microchips, he argued,” they just  might be that mark.”    

Aside from the spiritual considerations, today, since the  FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved an implantable chip last year, the chips are gaining respectability and will one day  be as commonplace as using Sirius to order dinner.

The most popular microchips use radio-frequency identification technology which for decades were used for tracking animals.  It works like a barcode label to identify vehicles, animals, and luggage tags.  This technology can be  used to monitor patient health,  locate missing people, track people under house arrest, and trace valuable items.  As  people become  more comfortable with internal devices such as pacemakers, birth control rods and nerve stimulators implanted in their bodies, the fear factor is diminishing.

In fact, microchipped hands could easily become an obsession, especially among those who see tattoos as fashion statements.  On the plus side, the happily chipped person could glide through customs and waiting lines with a flip of the hand, have instant medical and education information in hand and , abolish the need  to carry keys, remember passwords or even carry a wallet.

Microchips could speed the screening of passengers for air travel,  subways could use  them to collect fares. Bars could use microchips to “card” underage drinkers without concerns about fake IDs. An implanted microchip could also be used to ward off voter fraud or increase it by denying those without the chip the right to vote.

While the future for chipped  or scanned hands seems dazzling, there are other considerations, such as how long it would take for criminal enterprises to learn how to gain access to personal information by hacking off chipped hands of victims or hacking into their programs which continues to beguile users.

The peer reviewed Journal of Hand Surgery also recently warned that current implantation is typically not performed in a medical environment. “Implantation of these devices in humans can result in complications, such as infection and tendon attrition, and the relevant safety implications have not been extensively studied.” 

 It looks like speed,  convenience of micro-chips and palm technology, along with more safety guardrails could one day overrule fears of invasion of privacy and health concerns.  As for the speculation of Bible believers about the eventual rise of an evil empire and the Mark of the Beast this is also a story that will be continued.  

Dr.  Barbara Reynolds is a  journalist, who was a writer on the editorial board of USA TODAY for 13 years and is the author of eight books, including the memoirs of Coretta Scott King and her latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Techno-Messiah: Artificial Technology and the End Times.

   

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War on Women by Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq. (Ret.)

Dec. 23, 2024

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(TriceEdneyWire.com)In case you haven’t noticed, there is an uptick in the war on women. The tragedy is the war isn’t just coming from men.  The hate is coming from every direction.  If you didn’t notice it before, I suggest you take a look at how so many women voted in the November 5, 2024 election.

Vice-President Kamala Harris supported women’s rights every time she did a rally. She never failed to carry the concerns of women, but what did women do—except tor Black women who always vote in our best interest, yet so many of our sisters with whom we have marched, protested for, stood up for on rights they claimed to be for all women and we thought they were women in the struggle.  Well, there was a slap in our faces when you look at how so many voted in this last election.

When there was such a contrast in who joined us and worked in their best interest, along with ours, it is clear that we must reassess where we spend our time, and on which issues we concentrate.  Once Donald Trump interfered and had his Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, while Black women in larger numbers, as were made public, were dying. So many of our allies seemed to think that was okay, and decided to vote for the man who was responsible for this tragedy.  So many of our so-called allies turned away their attention to the issue.

So, what do they want?  Choice of what to do with our bodies for women is not the only issue on which we were deserted. Take a look at what is happening with smart and accomplished Black women around the country.  The case of former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby worked brilliantly for the people under her jurisdiction in Baltimore, Maryland. She worked her heart out for justice for those in her community, and helping her colleagues in other geographical areas. She was applauded by many.

She did nothing wrong, but if you read or listen to what is said in the news, you wouldn’t know that she was selectively prosecuted for the great things she did! Trump and his allies, on the other hand, thrive on doing the wrong thing by continuing to threaten a lot of people who do the right thing—something that seems to be a foreign idea to him and his cohorts. I find the vulgar things he says and does and can still be chosen by so many people to be their leader, using people who have no leadership skills to be insane!

Look at some of the things happening or recently happened to brilliant Black women and we see either no or a smidgen of other women coming to their aid. District Attorney Fani Willis of Georgia, has been stripped of her racketeering case against Trump and 18 of his aides and associates. This is a stunning ruling from a Georgia State Appeals Court to please the already convicted 34 times Trump, with more cases on the horizon, but who is punished? D.A. Fani Willis! 

Kim Foxx, Kim Gardner, Aramis Ayala all punished for their great work. Monique Worrell has faced her challenges. New York's Atty. General, Letitia James, is definitely doing her job, but Trump denigrates her because she’s making him pay for his wrongdoing!  All of these, and I’m sure there are more, were just doing their job. I’m left wondering where my sisters of another color are in standing up for them?

There’s a war on women, but most of them seem to be Black women who are just doing their job. Please do the right thing for one Black woman. Go to www.justiceformarilynmosby.com and sign the petition to have President Biden pardon her now so she can go back to work!

(Dr. E. Faye Williams, President of The Dick Gregory Society.) 
 
 

A Loan Shark in Your Pocket: Cellphone Cash Advance Apps Leaves Many Consumers Worse Off by Charlene Crowell

 
November 25, 2024
 
Shocked young african american man sitting on sofa at home with phone in hands and looking worriedly at screen. Lost money in online games, betting, bankruptcy, fraud.
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Many Americans continue to find it challenging  to keep up with the rising cost of living. Despite economic reports attesting to a growing broad economy, the majority of Americans’ household finances feel insecure – especially people who live paycheck to paycheck with little or no savings.
The financial marketplace has responded to this ongoing consumer cash crunch with an emerging predatory lending product designed to take full advantage of consumers’ financial mismatch: earned wage advances (EWA). These cash advance products are small, short-term loans, typically ranging from $40 to $200, that are repaid on the consumer’s next payday either directly from a bank account or as a payroll deduction. They’re also conveniently available with a few clicks on borrowers’ smartphones.
But as with other predatory loans, wage advances also create a deceptive and highly profitable cycle of debt built upon repeated reborrowing with interest  equivalent to 300 percent annual percentage rates or more. In most cases, these cash advances also lead to frequent overdraft fees. The combined repeat borrowing and high costs result in unsuspecting consumers learning the so-called convenience brought more – not less – financial hardship.
This summer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shared its early analysis of this growing market segment, including key data points:
  • The number of transactions processed by these providers grew by over 90% from 2021 to 2022, with more than 7 million workers accessing approximately $22 billion in 2022;
  • The average transaction amount ranged from $35 to $200, with an overall average transaction size of $106, and the average worker accessed $3,000 in funds per year.; and
  • The average worker in their study had 27 earned wage transactions per year, and a strong growth in frequent usage of at least once a month rising from 41% in 2021 to nearly 50% in 2022.
More recently, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), released a new policy brief entitled, Paying to be Paid: Consumer Protections Needed for Earned Wage Advances and Other Fintech Cash Advances 
“By offering predatory credit with just a few taps on your cell phone, cash advance apps are a loan shark in your pocket. This report shows many cash advance app borrowers are trapped in a cycle of debt like that experienced by payday loan borrowers,” Candice Wang, senior researcher at CRL. “Cash advance app companies issue loans with triple-digit annual interest rates in nearly every corner of America – even where those rates are illegally high – inflicting financial pain on a growing number of consumers.”
 
CRL’s analysis of EWA harms wrought in 18 states from January 2021 through June 2024, led to three key findings on its impacts on low- to- moderate-income consumers:
  • Many cash advance app borrowers are trapped in a debt cycle and the heaviest users drive the business model. Repeat use of advances is common and high-frequency users accounted for 38% of users and 86% of advances. Many users borrowed from multiple apps simultaneously. Nearly half of all borrowers had used multiple companies in the same month.
  • App use is associated with increased overdraft fees and payday loan use. 
  • Consumers across states are experiencing similar harms. The eighteen states analyzed had similar patterns of repeat borrowing and overdraft use.
States studied included: Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington.
An earlier and related CRL report released this April, cited the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) finding that the share of users earning less than $50,000 a year ranged from 59% to 97% across four different advance companies that separately provided these percentages. A survey of low-income workers receiving government benefits found that 51% had used or downloaded direct-to-consumer apps and 16% had used them once a week.
Most importantly, this report included comments by consumers who used cash apps to make ends meet.
“I usually use them every time I get paid because they take out their payment and usually my check is short because I use the apps and I have to go back and re-borrow almost every time I get paid. It has been harder to save money, because I often find myself paying back more than what I borrowed every time and that sets me back for paying off other things.” –Ayanna
Resolving this growing predatory product would best be addressed by a vigilant combination of more state and federal financial regulation. It took decades of consumer advocacy before 20 states and the District of Columbia enacted payday lending rate caps that made triple-digit lending illegal. Even so, the other 30 states without comparable regulation still drain nearly $3 billion in fees annually.
Fortunately, one state attorney general, Maryland’s Anthony Brown, wrote a related guest column in the Baltimore Sun that reads in part:
“EWA providers claim that they offer an important service. But Maryland workers, many of whom live paycheck-to-paycheck, cannot afford exorbitant interest on these loans which diminish their hard-earned wages. Although my office understands the inconvenience caused by employers who don’t pay workers frequently enough, or bills that come due between paychecks, the answer is not payday and other predatory loans that charge more than permitted by law.”
Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Common Ground is a Testament to the Power of Film to Change Hearts and Minds By Ben Jealous

Dec. 18, 2023

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(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Soil. It’s where our food comes from and the foundation of all life on land.

The way human beings have traditionally farmed in the modern era devastates the soil. It impacts the quality of the food that people and farmed animals eat, and thus our collective health. It’s not sustainable, vastly reducing the amount of farmable land available to us and our ability to continue to feed the planet.

There’s a solution. One that we need to consider carefully, that offers a path towards sustainability and environmental health. It’s called regenerative farming.

The recent documentary film Common Ground provides a groundbreaking look into this critically important crisis and how we can fix it with regenerative farming. Normally when I’m asked to watch the latest “environmental documentary,” I admit to being susceptible to that mild sense of dread we all get when we’re about to be presented with the problems of the world further solidified before our eyes. But Common Ground is anything but bleak. To the contrary, it offers desperately needed hope at a time when environmental degradation, the climate crisis, the extinction crisis, and threats to our natural resources are driving cynicism among even the most optimistic.

Common Ground explores how, as Gabe Brown, a Bismarck, North Dakota regenerative rancher featured in film, puts it, the current dominant system industrial agriculture, “is working to kill things,” while regenerative agriculture “works in harmony and synchrony with nature, with life.”

The status quo system of industrial agriculture abuses and degrades our soil with tillage, synthetic substances, monocultures – that is, the cultivation of just one crop in a given area – and not sequestering carbon. Regenerative agriculture, in short, doesn’t rely on these things. In contrast, it relies on methods that protect the soil and offers a sustainable, healthy alternative.

Even before today’s high-tech agribusiness, industrial farming methods used by small and large farmers alike were causing devastation to our topsoil. Brown points out that the Dust Bowl of the 1930s wasn’t caused by drought alone but by “copious amounts of tillage.”  

Common Ground uses historical examples in its storytelling that, as a lifelong student of history, I love. One highlight is a newly told account of the revolutionary agricultural genius, George Washington Carver (told by Leah Penniman, herself a farmer and author of the book, Farming While Black). While Carver is known in history books as “the peanut guy,” he was far more. Carver understood that to take farmers out of poverty, you had to build healthy soil. Peanuts, it turns out, put nitrogen into the soil. Using peanuts and various techniques he developed by studying nature, Carver taught an entire generation of Black farmers how to farm in harmony with nature, like the indigenous peoples of America. 

Common Ground also strikes an important chord in addressing climate. Healthy soil has the potential to sequester tremendous quantities of CO2. From large farms to urban gardens, the caretaking of soil can produce more profitable and more nutritious food and help mitigate the climate crisis. 

The entertainment industry, through film and television, can be a powerful catalyst for change. It can motivate, enlighten, and inspire us to tackle daunting challenges.

“The slap heard around the world” by Sidney Poitier’s character in 1967’s In the Heat of the Night was an important symbol of the right and need to stand up for Black dignity. And, of course, how can we forget the societal impact of the TV shows like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times, created by Norman Lear – my dear friend who recently passed away at the age of 101.

Common Ground’s celebrity narrators open the film by passing on reflections in the form of a letter to current and future generations. One of them, Woody Harrelson, mentions that what viewers are about to receive are “hard truths.” I couldn’t help but think of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which was instrumental in sounding the alarm and raising global awareness about climate change.

The impact and influence of An Inconvenient Truth got an important cultural boost when the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature of 2006. It would benefit all of us for Common Ground to gain similar recognition (for the Academy’s and America’s consideration).

To borrow a phrase from Woody Harrelson, “the one thing that’s keeping us all alive is that soil you’re standing on.” Let’s get hopeful again about environmental solutions (including soil). Let’s work to find our common ground. 

Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club, professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free.”

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