A Legend Is Gone

America (and the world) has lost a great poet and a wonderful human being. Maya Angelou has died at the age of 86 at her home in North Carolina. I simply don't have the words to express my affection and respect for this legend -- so I will let her own words speak for her.

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise. 

Maya Angelou

New Mayan Calendar Discovered

Much has been made of the Mayan calendar that ends this year. Some say the calendar ends just because the calendar's carver ran out of room on the stone. Others take a much more apocalyptic view -- saying the Mayans had some kind of mystical knowledge and it meant that the end of the world would come this December. There has even been a rather bad movie made about the world ending in 2012 -- a fulfillment of the Mayan "prophesy".

Modern-day Mayans have denied that their ancestors ever predicted the end of the world -- for this or any other year. Now there may be some proof that they were right, and all the apocalyptic theorists were wrong. At the Mayan Xultun ruins in Guatemala, a previously unknown part of those ruins has been discovered -- and this part pre-dates all the other Mayan ruins found, being dated in the 9th century.

Among the remarkable finds at Xultun are some remarkably preserved wall paintings and another Mayan calendar (part of which is pictured above). But this newly-discovered calendar doesn't stop in 2012. In fact, it goes far into the future -- about 7,000 years into the future.

Dr. William Saturno of Boston University says, "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."

It was always a silly apocalyptic myth, and now it's been busted. Ancient Mayans did not predict the end of the world -- not in 2012 or at any other time.