Sonia Sanchez blessed Birmingham with her presence a couple of weeks back. I attended two of her lectures, one at Malcolm's Reading Room and one at the Honor's House at UAB.



Sonia Sanchez is a wonderful woman. I love her with all my heart. I had a much different experience with her than I had with Angela Davis. She gave me a hug, spoke to me several times, as long as I wanted to talked to her, she was all ears. I felt like I could tell her anything and she would understand. I would love to be just like her when I get old but I understand my mission is to be just like me. Perhaps, if I do what I know I need to do, I'll be just as much an inspiration to others.



While she was here, one of the things that she hit on constantly is the power of words. I remember her saying that she was from Harlem and used to have a reputation of being able to cut people down with her words. She said that once she made a man drop to his knees and cry with her words. I believe her.



Professor Sanchez had a book called "The Messages in Water". She said that in the book, a scientist, was fascinated with frozen water crystals. He conducted a large number of experiments that sought out the effects of words on the shape of these water crystals. He had young children come through and speak to the crystals saying words like I love you, you are beautiful and you are nice. The crystals came out to be beautiful and symmetric. The scientist then had the children come by again and say I hate you, you make me sick and your ugly. The crystals turned out to be distorted and asymmetric. The scientist also tried things like exposing the water to john coltrane vs heavy metal and got similar results.



Personally, I don't know if the difference was soley based on the words, the volume or the tone. I guess I will have to read the book. I do know, however, that Professor Sanchez is one of the most brilliant people I've come across and she believes that the crystals were effected by the words said.



She challenged the audience to not say anything negative about anyone else for a week. Then this awesome woman gave us all her personal phone number so we could tell her how it went. She told us she would give us further instructions afterwards on what we should do. I thought to myself, how hard could this be? I rarely ever talk about other people any way.

Wrong.

I don't gossip, but I didn't take into account that I work in customer service. I get annoyed very often and I may not say something about the ignorance of the people who call me on a daily basis to other people, but I sure say it to myself, lol.