Nancy Ziccardi and Cindy Owens

[00:02] NANCY ZICCARDI: Hello, my name is Nancy Ziccardi. I am 71. Today's date is January 13, 2025. We're located in Selma, Alabama, and my relationship to my partner is I'm a friend.

[00:21] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Hi, my name is Cindy Edwards Owens. I am 78 years of age. Today's date is January 13, 2025. We're located in Selma, Alabama. My relationship to my partner is Nancy Ziccardi, and she is my dear friend.

[00:43] NANCY ZICCARDI: Cindy Owens.

[00:45] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yes.

[00:47] NANCY ZICCARDI: Very special human being. Absolutely, 100% across the board. Thank you. Cindy, what are the beginnings? Where were you born, Cindy?

[00:59] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: I was born in Orville, Alabama. That's 15 miles west of Selma. I was born on a little farm. Well, not so little because we worked hard. But my parents, we were farmers. And growing up in the rural South in the '40s was very, very difficult for black people. Particularly in the '40s, the '50s, and the '60s, which incidentally led up to the Civil Rights Movement. But the '40s were horrible. We went to an all-black school, and our school didn't have the amenities that the all-white school in Oroville had. We had hand-me-down books. We had books that was dirty. We had books that pages were torn out of. And we just didn't get the proper education, but Prayerfully and thankfully we had great teachers. We had wonderful teachers who loved us and who taught us. And school was really good, was fun. I enjoyed going to high school, elementary, middle and high school at Keith. I really enjoyed that. And graduated in the 40s. Now, 1960 from the 40s.

[02:13] NANCY ZICCARDI: Yeah, that's when you went to school as a child.

[02:16] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: I started school in the '50s. I was born in #### and I started school at seven years old when I started school. And I was articulating myself all the way through elementary, middle and high school through Keith High School, graduated with honors, graduated 15 and a half years old. I skipped two grades. And I asked the children sometimes, you know, what motivates you? When I go down, I talk to the children in the schools today as we speak. And I tell them the cotton field because I was picking cotton. We were farmers. We did everything, I did everything on a farm but plow mule. So that was a motivational piece for me. And I loved reading. Luckily, my family were educators. They were some of the first PhDs in Orville, Alabama.

[03:09] NANCY ZICCARDI: Tell me about it.

[03:10] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: There's a school named after my dad, first cousin in Camden. Alabama, J.E. Hobbs Elementary School. My grandmother was Bessie Hobbs, who lived to be 107 years old. And her mother's sister, who was born in ####, we call her Aunt Della, she was born #### during slavery and passed away in 1962. So I got an opportunity to know a lot, to learn a lot, from my Aunt Della.

[03:43] NANCY ZICCARDI: And Orville is rural.

[03:46] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yes.

[03:46] NANCY ZICCARDI: Orville is a small community, a half hour driving distance from Selma. Selma. Selma is your bigger, bigger town.

[03:56] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Absolutely.

[03:57] NANCY ZICCARDI: So you grew up in the country.

[03:58] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: I grew up in the country, totally in the country. Cotton fields, corn fields, plows, mules, cows, horses, chickens, we had all of that. On the farm, on our farm. We raised everything we ate. We raised and my mother did the sewing. She would buy material and taught us how to sew. So we were totally self-sufficient. We didn't have to depend on anyone for our livelihood. And my dad always stressed the fact that land, land is the source of our freedom. You got land, you can grow food, you can cut down trees for wood, for heat. So we, We feel that land is very important. And so we still maintain the land.

[04:42] NANCY ZICCARDI: Yeah, you took me there.

[04:43] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yes, we still maintain the land. So, but the South, like I said, was really rough, you know, growing up. We would, my dad would be driving us here to Selma, where we did our shopping here in Selma. And we would pass the road and there would be the Ku Klux Klan. They would be standing out in the field and to intimidate. And my dad knew all of them. He would tell us, The man that's standing over by the tree, he said, that's the sheriff. He knew from their body types because he'd worked with them here in Selma. So I learned very early that the Ku Klux Klan were the ones in power. It wasn't the people that was necessarily poor farmers. It was the ones who had the power, the sheriffs, the judges. And so we, you know, it was really rough, but we persevered and we were taught to love despite all of that. My parents taught us not to hate anyone. That was the strength, I think, that carried me through. Love. My grandmother would say, no matter what, you don't change because someone else is different from you.

[05:52] NANCY ZICCARDI: Mean.

[05:52] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Mean. You stay the way that you are. Be yourself. Because all other selves are taken. She would often tell us. All other selves are taken. Be yourself. Because all other selves are taken. So a lot of wisdom came from my grandmother. Then when I graduated in 1964, I left, went to California, and started college there, Monterey Peninsula College. It was a private college there on the Monterey Peninsula. Beautiful college, beautiful campus. Met a lot of people there who later became professionals, like gentleman Nate Wright, who became a professional football player. Of course, the late O.J. Simpson, I got to know him there in California. We was all in school together out there. And I met a lot of interesting people. I remember after leaving the South picking cotton, I had no way of understanding, I had no job. I had never worked on a job or anything. I had no experience on anything other than in the field and taking care of the property. So I needed money for books. I had money for my tuition. But I needed money for books and I tell this story all the time. And my sister said, well, they're looking for people to come out and pick strawberries.

[07:10] NANCY ZICCARDI: In California?

[07:10] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: In California. I was in Fort Ord, California. So my sister and I went out and we picked strawberries and I picked enough strawberries to buy my books. So I tell the children that story. I said, It doesn't matter where you came from, it's where you finish. It doesn't matter where you came from.

[07:29] NANCY ZICCARDI: It's where you finish.

[07:30] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Where you finish? Where you going and where you finish. So that took me from California to Michigan. And Michigan is where I kind of took off. My first, I became, I kind of got, I became political. My first political act, I should say, was making sure they had street signs. There were no stop signs where The school was located, my son was attending the elementary school there, and there were accidents there every day, and the children would be crossing, nobody wanted to stop. So I went to the city council, and I protested and got signatures from the community, and that was my first political endeavor. And I caught the political bug. And you caught the political bug. After that, yes.

[08:17] NANCY ZICCARDI: And you were the, so advocacy, civil rights.

[08:20] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yes. Working with Rosa Parks.

[08:23] NANCY ZICCARDI: California in 1964.

[08:26] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: 1964.

[08:26] NANCY ZICCARDI: And then Detroit.

[08:29] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yes.

[08:30] NANCY ZICCARDI: What year?

[08:31] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: 1964. I left California. 66. I was in Michigan and 67. The end of 66-67. And then went to the University of Detroit.

[08:44] NANCY ZICCARDI: So you caught the fever.

[08:46] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Caught the political fever. I went to the University of attended the University of Detroit where I graduated with my bachelor's and my master's degree with honors. I have to say that because I came from Keith High School, Orville, Alabama. And like I said, I caught the political bug with the stop signs. And then there was a book. I was working on my master's at the university. It was written by this author, and he started off my background was criminal justice and pre-law that's what I was studying. International Security Administration. And the book started off saying, what is a criminal? And then it says, A criminal is a 15-year-old black youth throwing a rock through a plate glass window. And that, flat out, in the University of Detroit, Jesuit, Catholic, and that's what that set me off. And so my political endeavors grew.

[09:45] NANCY ZICCARDI: And when you use the term political, you're also implying you're wanting change. Change.

[09:52] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Activism. Activism. Then having met the great Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Ture, and got involved in that with him and having worked with the late great Ms. Rosa Parks for 21 years and of course helped Minister Louis Farrakhan with the Million Man March. I had the opportunity of meeting and doing a documentary with the relatives of Harriet Tubman in Macon, Georgia at the Tubman Museum. I was given the notable women award here last year, December. That our interview will be in 34 museums around the country. So I became an activist. I stood up against the criminal injustice system, knowing that system and how it affect black men, particularly black men, and the mental illness that this system causes us, or the mental illness that the educational system creates, in my opinion. The educational system, the religious system, all of those systems create, in my opinion, mental side, because it doesn't speak truth. So it's a lot of lies that we have been told. The miseducation of the Negro is real. We have been totally miseducated. When I speak, because I am a historian, I've studied history for the last 55, 60 years. I've been under some of the best scholars of the late Dr. John Henry Clark, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. Molefi Asante of Temple University. You know it. Oh, yes. And I've visited the continent of Africa six times. 2018, I visited the Congo. Which took us 28 days. So I visit the continent and countries in Africa. I've studied, I've researched and learned that we have been totally, totally miseducated.

[11:52] NANCY ZICCARDI: Miseducated.

[11:54] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yes.

[11:55] NANCY ZICCARDI: Let's go back to that. Miseducation. The books. What is a criminal? The negating of a black youth.

[12:05] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: A 15-year-old black youth. Very specific, throwing a brick through a plate glass. And I says, How in the world? And then they had the classrooms, they had the white Jesus hanging up on the cross in the classroom. And I'm looking at that and say, what a contradiction. The letter J in 2024, the letter J is only 500 years old. It was the last letter added to the alphabet in 1524. And the word J was not even used. The letter Y was used. So when they say, when we say Jesus, we're mispronouncing the word. It's Jesus. And-- but in the English, they got us saying Jesus. However, the name is Y-E-S-H-U-A. Yeshua. So we've totally miseducated on-- and when I speak in the universities and the colleges, I've spoken in many, many universities. Many colleges. I've been on many radio shows. I've been on many television shows. I've been in newspapers. I was referred to in Detroit in 1991 as they did a two, three and a half page article on me, Detroit News, and the title race woman.

[13:24] NANCY ZICCARDI: You're, you're. Okay, so your motivation and I, what I want to bring up is that you are, can you, You seem to have a passion for children.

[13:35] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Love children.

[13:35] NANCY ZICCARDI: And so education, what is being taught to younger folks, your advocacy, who are you advocating for? You're advocating for the African American community. Who are you advocating for?

[13:49] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: All children, all children.

[13:51] NANCY ZICCARDI: Children, period.

[13:52] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: All people, because we are all miseducated, all of us. So I'm advocating for truth, simply for truth.

[13:59] NANCY ZICCARDI: You're advocating for truth.

[14:01] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Simply for truth, justice, and reciprocity. Those are the three things I'm advocating for. I don't care about where it comes from, what mouth it comes from. If it is the truth, it's the truth. It's the truth. Can I ask you a question? Sure. Where do you feel like the city of Selma is in that process? Selma has in my opinion, has very, it's disappointed me. It has, the mental status of the people is not where it used to be. We grew up with a lot of pride. Despite the racism, despite the Jim Crow laws, we were, we had lots of pride. And I don't see that in a lot of the young folks today. In the schools, the clothes, the way they dress, the sagging pants, all of that. That's why I go into the schools and I talk to all the Dallas County children in the schools. Sometime I go in there and I preach. Sometimes I cry because I don't want them to see them go to the criminal injustice system. And that's what this system is aiming to put our children. There is a prison being built Right here in Alabama, one of the largest prisons in the world is being built here in Alabama. And yet the schools like Keith High School, South side High School are deplorable. The walls haven't been painted since I left 60 years ago. They don't have science teachers. I fought for science teachers. I go to the board meetings. Sometimes they threaten to put me out of the board meetings, but that's okay. But I fight for the children because the children They're not only our future, they're our present. They're here now. Yes. And the children need us now. They need us. And we're turning our backs on our children. When has it, where has it been that we couldn't raise our children? We've always been able to raise our children. And today, young parents, I can't do nothing with a 15-year-old. What do you mean you can't do anything with them? You start raising, rearing children when they're little. When they're from the womb, you begin. You don't wait until they're seven. When they're seven years old, they're mentally set. Children are set at seven from zero to seven. Psychologists prove that. They've been proven. So you have to mold children. You have to compliment children. I have a cup I carry. It's a cup, and it's 101 ways to praise children. When I go down to Keith High School, Sometimes tears. I go down to Keith and when I walk in the cafeteria, 30 or 40 children get up from their seats, from eating, and with their arms stretched out.

[16:54] NANCY ZICCARDI: Sure.

[16:54] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Wanting hugs. Yeah.

[16:56] NANCY ZICCARDI: Wanting hugs.

[16:57] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Wanting hugs. Yeah. And some said, Ms. Owens, he need another hug. And I end up hugging sometimes 75 to 100 children in one day.

[17:07] NANCY ZICCARDI: And you are retired, but this is your life.

[17:12] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: My passion.

[17:13] NANCY ZICCARDI: This is your passion.

[17:14] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: My passion and children. My life. The children tugs for a lot of hugs to help them start their day. A bright smile for every child helps to guide their way. Bend their ears so they may hear great wisdom and great knowledge. Give a hug. Show some love. It will help shape and make their character solid. So hug a child today in great reverence and great joy. Our children, our gifts from God, our daughters and a bouncing baby boy. Our children need us. And that's why I fight. My greatest passion of all the things, all the awards on the wall, all the things that up doesn't mean anything. Mm-. Doesn't mean anything the children means the most.

[18:07] NANCY ZICCARDI: Well, you keep coming back to Keith High. You went to Keith High. And you also have a strong artistic poetry connection with the children, with yourself, and with your children.

[18:23] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Started a poetry club. Yeah. You helped me with that. Poetry, debate, drama came back. From living away for 54 years, started a drama debate club, poetry club, and there were the naysayers. Why are you going down there with those children? They can't speak. You're wasting your time. I just, I don't, I've learned very early to ignore all of that. As a child, I learned that. So I went down to the school. I began to talk with the English teacher, Dr. Anjean, who's now the president of Selma University, wonderful gentleman. And he got us involved in the National Endowment of the Arts. Yeah, for Poetry Out Loud, National Poetry Out Loud. Got us involved in that. And my students went, I began to practice my students, rehearse them. They won everything in the county. They won everything in the They won everything in the regionals, and one young man went to the state the first time in the history of Keith High School. Not only did I do that, along with the minister and another young lady, we started a tutoring program down at Five Points, old Five Points Elementary School. Orville. Orville. I started a tutoring program, and And we did well up until COVID. And then after COVID, we haven't started back up again. But the children were really moving forward. The school, Keith High School, Salem Elementary School, the two schools in Orville, they saw the difference with the students while I was tutoring them. So life has been really good.

[20:19] NANCY ZICCARDI: You know, you grew up, you began in the country, and then you went citified, you went to California, and then you went to the big, the big, the other big city stuff. And what's beautiful is that you've retired back here, you're healthy, and you have energy, and you have returned home. So what is that like, returning back to home?

[20:44] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Wonderful, wonderful, because I look at my life, When I started here in Oroville and the things that I've gone through over the years, wow, several marriages that didn't work. I was married to a politician, the first black state senator of Massachusetts, and I'm going to call his name, Senator Bill Owens. He's passed on. Got involved in reparations with him. We got a bill in the United States Congress. Congressman Conyers and I became very good friends. Life has been really, really great with me. I have no complaints. In 1979, I was in grad school. I got sick. My liver ruptured. I went into the hospital, went into a coma for two and a half months, and lived to tell the story. My liver ruptured. And when I went back to Ford Motor Company, I was working at Ford Motor Company, working on my masters, And the doctor, she was the first black female doctor to graduate Wayne State University. Beautiful lady. I walked in her office. She said to me, she says, Come on in, Ms. Miracle. I've been waiting to meet you. You know you're a miracle. So then the doctors all began to call me Ms. Miracle. That was my other name, because I survived a ruptured liver. I had 13, I had 13 blood transfusions. My liver popped inside of my body and I went to a coma. So life has been great. I had thyroid cancer, got over that. Ectopic pregnancy, got over that. So and came back home and people said, where do you get your energy from? I walk among nature.

[22:36] NANCY ZICCARDI: Yes.

[22:37] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: I walk among nature. I talk to trees. I'm like George Washington Carver. I'd rather walk the grounds, walk among the trees. I'd rather walk and hear the birds. I'd rather walk and feel nature's air conditioner, the natural air. And then I talk to nature. Then I talk to my ancestors. Every morning I get up. I go to my great-grandmother, picture, and I look at her in her eyes and I talk to my ancestor, I talk to my great-grandmother, I talk to my great-grandfather, I talk to my grandmother, and I talk to my parents because I know that they are guiding me, they are leading me. The things that I'm doing with the schools here in Dallas County, my mother, before she passed away, she says, Cindy, May, I can't wait for you to come back home. To teach the children. So her dream is being fulfilled. Simple as that. I'm a very. I'm not religious at all. Religion is man-made re is a prefix. Legions means military or many demons within. But I am spiritual.

[23:48] NANCY ZICCARDI: Yes.

[23:49] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: The Creator gave me spiritual Spirit. Man tried to give me religion. I didn't accept it because my great. Great aunt, Aunt Della, who was born in ####, never accepted Christianity, never accepted Jesus. Didn't know anything about that. So I patterned after my family, my ancestors, who knew the truth, who knew there was no such thing as Christmas, who knew that Christmas was first celebrated according to the archives in Washington, DC, that I visited. Many times, the archives here in Alabama was first celebrated in 1848. So how could Jesus have been born on some Christmas Day? Lies. Dr. King said the bigger the lies, the more believable they come. We've got to start telling the truth, period. Can I ask you another question? Sure. What do you want your legacy to be? Love the children. Love them. A little boy in Detroit said to me one day, he said, I had on this medallion that I got from the guys in prison. They allowed me to work in the prison system. It says, Save the Children, right? He said, Save it. They said, Save the Children. He came to me. He says, Ma'am, you gotta love them first. Yeah. Love the children.

[25:20] NANCY ZICCARDI: Have a relationship.

[25:22] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: And you got to be on that, you got to get to their level. You got to understand them. You can't go in, children don't care how much you know. They don't care about how much you know. They don't know how many degrees you have. They don't know how many countries you've visited in Africa. They don't care about that until you show them how much you care. When you go into the schools, when I walk into the schools, They can feel you. They can feel your energy. They can feel light because I come with light. I don't come with death like many of our ministers preach. Death. He died. Died. I don't teach death. I teach life. I don't deal with the cross. I deal with the ankh, which means eternal and everlasting life. That's what I deal with. I deal with the African symbols, the spiritual symbols, nature symbols. I don't deal with Eurocentric symbols.

[26:19] NANCY ZICCARDI: Neuros. Say that again.

[26:22] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: I do not deal with Eurocentric symbols. Many of the symbols they've stolen. Like, for instance, Washington, DC. The. The. We call it the. What is what the statue? We call it is the obelisk. We call it the, what's the tall thing?

[26:37] NANCY ZICCARDI: The Big Momma Memorial.

[26:39] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yeah, what do we call the, oh, what do we call it? The statue, the big statue. The Washington Monument. The monument, thank you, young man. But you know, that's, see now they have, they call it the Washington Monument. It's also been called the obelisk, all right? Because it has a, and you know what it represent? It represent the black man penis erected to the unit of the sun and the earth is ground. And then you notice in Washington, they have the Potomac River. That's the water. The amniotic fluid. Women have water when they have birth. The male Peter penis. The phallus is called the phallus. P-H-A-L-L-U-S phallus symbol. That's what it is. It's penis. Look up the P-H-A-L-L-U-S the phallus symbol. That's a phallus symbol. The water, the Potomac River, it's right in front of it. And then you got the oval office. Oval comes from the word Ovary. So that's the life sign right there in Washington that was laid out by Benjamin Banneker, a black man, an African. So we need to understand, we don't understand symbols, you know, and I've studied symbols. Sure. So we need to understand that, you know, the black man is the source, the black woman is the source of all creation. Let's get real about that. Henrietta Lacks, I think that was her name. They sued her, her ancestor sued, or I mean her, Her descendants sued. I think it was Johns Hopkins University.

[28:05] NANCY ZICCARDI: S-U-E.

[28:07] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: They sued because they used her cells for something, and they found that her cells transformed to all human. We know that we were the first on the planet. Elon Musk didn't have to tell us that Jesus was a black man. That Yeshua was black. Lamb's wool hair, burnt brass skin. Look at Revelations. That's in the Bible. So we've been lied to. We've been, as Malcolm said, we've been tricked. We've been bamboozled. We've been hoodwinked. And please, I'd ask everyone to read Dr. King's book that he wrote, forwarded by his wife, Mrs. Coretta Scott King. It's called Strength to Love. That book was in his briefcase when he was shot and killed in Tennessee. I didn't know anything about the book. I read, I had many of his books, but when I met Ms. Coretta Scott King in Washington, D.C., I was talking about religion and how we've gotten mixed up with that. And she said, you, sound like Martin. And it kind of bothered me. I said, what do you mean, I sound like Martin? Because in his book, he said that when he began to criticize the Bible, Black people began to call him crazy, but he had learned the truth.

[29:24] NANCY ZICCARDI: Read the book.

[29:25] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yeah. Read the book.

[29:27] NANCY ZICCARDI: Well, I think our culture is so, our cultural digs, the things that control us, our culture is so strong in molding our behavior.

[29:40] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yes, it is.

[29:41] NANCY ZICCARDI: And I believe that that's where you're going with that, and you would like people to catch hold of themselves again. The truth, the real, the real us.

[29:54] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: We all human beings. We all breathe.

[29:57] NANCY ZICCARDI: The culture is transitory.

[29:59] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Exactly.

[30:01] NANCY ZICCARDI: And, yeah. I also want to bring up your strong spirit. You have maintained a strong attitude despite things that happen to you or things that happen around you. You recently went to the ER with a broken hand. And she went in there with a big old smile and she's flirting with the doctor. With the doctor.

[30:28] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Hey, everybody in the ER laughing now. That's right.

[30:31] NANCY ZICCARDI: So you bring light to a lot of people.

[30:34] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Thank you. I try to.

[30:35] NANCY ZICCARDI: And I'm grateful for that.

[30:37] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Thank you.

[30:39] NANCY ZICCARDI: I know that the children and your home is very important to you.

[30:44] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yeah, very, very important. Culture is very important. People, very important to me. I love good people like yourself who, you know, just straight up good people. Your musical talent, I just adore. I love singing with you. I love listening. Yeah. Yes, and so that's what has made, and then you're very upbeat. You're not a, as the old folks say, a sourpuss. Sourpuss? Yeah, you know what I mean? That old words and she's a sourpuss.

[31:12] NANCY ZICCARDI: No, actually we talk funny when we get together.

[31:15] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: That's true. We do. And you're very upbeat and we do upbeat things. We sing, we do things.

[31:20] NANCY ZICCARDI: So sometimes we tell dirty stories.

[31:23] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Oh, I can tell dirty stories.

[31:24] NANCY ZICCARDI: We ain't going there.

[31:25] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: I can tell some dirty stories. I am 78 years old so I can go there too, you know. I mean, I'm very spiritual like my mom, but there's always other side, you know, there's two sides to everything.

[31:36] NANCY ZICCARDI: Now there's something I want to bring up. Sure is that, We live in the black belt. We live in the Bible belt. I have had issues with that, and I think you touched on that, because there may be 200 Baptists, Protestants, churches everywhere in this town, and churches very.

[31:58] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: And crime is rampant.

[31:59] NANCY ZICCARDI: Now, there are advantages for the church involvement in the fellowship, but do you want to discuss any of that business? Yeah, the church has its purpose, and.

[32:08] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: The black church has its purpose. Has maintained a stronghold in the black community over years, over centuries, I should say. But today's church is not sufficient to the needs of the people. Today's church, that's why people are not in church anymore, very seldom. You pass a church, you find maybe five or six cars, because people are not interested in what is being said, being pulled into a pit. Look at the word pull pit.

[32:40] NANCY ZICCARDI: Pull pit.

[32:41] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: And I did do a little research in some linguistics at Harvard when my husband was teaching there. So I learned a few words, a few things by sitting in the class. Because churches-- Churches is important. It's important that we have church. It's important. Fellowship, coming together, fellowship. But the church needs to be teaching truth. The churches are not teaching the truth. They're teaching you know, all these, as my grandmother called them, hollidays, Christmas, Easter, all those are man-made holiday, hollidays. So why would the church be involved in that kind of ritual, which is Christmas trees in the church? That's, that's not what that's supposed to be. Has nothing to do with no Jesus or no savior. So I think the churches are important, but they, they're not. They're not providing the necessary nurturing that the children and that people need today. I very seldom go to any church.

[33:43] NANCY ZICCARDI: Well, when I go to church, I hear a lot of negative talk.

[33:47] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: That's all you hear.

[33:49] NANCY ZICCARDI: Kind of hell and damnation.

[33:50] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Yeah, that's all.

[33:51] NANCY ZICCARDI: It still pops up. Now, how do you feel about the new young folk and all of us having to grow up with Wi-Fi, internet phones. How do you feel that that cultural phenomena has affected our people?

[34:11] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: I'm gonna say what my grandmother said before she passed away in 1996. We start talking about technology and one of her granddaughters had started working computers in Mobile, Alabama. And she was telling us about the computers. It was foreign to me. So my grandmother, she said, It doesn't sound that good to me. She said, Technically, there is no logic to some of it. So we're growing up in a computer world.

[34:37] NANCY ZICCARDI: How is it affecting us?

[34:39] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: The elderly is a society. It's going to take us out of here. It's going to put us in a place where we shouldn't be, because technology will not last. It'll break down.

[34:49] NANCY ZICCARDI: You mean the electric goes off or what?

[34:51] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Sure, electric can go off. I mean, electric can go off. Anything can happen. Grids can burn out. You know, you got grids. You know, I've studied International Security Administration, so I'm a little bit, yeah, so all that can go out. And I tell the children, read what you put in your computer in your mind. They can't take that from you, but they can take that stuff, whatever you put on it, they can be taken from you, or it can crash and you lose all your stuff. But if you put it here.

[35:21] NANCY ZICCARDI: Because this is the world we live in now and being strong and looking at you as a strong person. So I think this young man also said, what is your legacy? What's your following? What's your ending?

[35:37] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: To take care of the children. We owe a debt to our ancestors to be guardian of our children.

[35:44] NANCY ZICCARDI: To be guardian.

[35:46] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: We owe a debt to our ancestors to be guardian to our children. We owe that to them. And we're falling on the job. We're not doing what we're supposed to do with our children. We're not going to... And to keep.

[35:58] NANCY ZICCARDI: Our heads up and continue... To be positive. And to continue... To be positive.

[36:04] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Think positive. Live positive. You know, I think positive. I don't think negative things. That's why I'm 78 years old and I can I can dance like a 15-year-old until I get tired. But, you know, thinking positive, eating well, living well, and loving.

[36:22] NANCY ZICCARDI: Breathing, walking, people.

[36:23] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: And loving people. And loving.

[36:25] NANCY ZICCARDI: And loving.

[36:26] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: Love is life, omnipotent, vibrating energies, L-O-V-E, life, all powerful. We're vibrating, we're energy, we're vibrating energy. That's what love is.

[36:39] NANCY ZICCARDI: Energy.

[36:40] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: And we need to understand that. The ground has energy. Clothes have energy. Static. It's energy. And that's what life is. Life is energy.

[36:52] NANCY ZICCARDI: And we're right here, aren't we?

[36:53] CINDY EDWARDS OWENS: We're right here. And I'm grateful for life. I live every day as if it's my fullest, my last. I have no regrets in my life because what can I do with regrets? Nothing. I packed those under my feet and I Rose above all of that. So we must learn how to love and to get along and to respect each other's opinion. We all different. No two fingerprints are alike. So we are different. And we must understand each other's culture and embrace. I go embrace each other. I love learning going to other cultures. I go to Indian weddings. I go to Arab. I go to weddings. If anybody invite me, I love embracing other, because I learned stuff. I learned things. So we on this planet together, we got to learn to live together as human beings.