Jingle Dress Dance / All of us who live in the Americas are living in Indian Country / Whatcom means "noisy water"

The Google doodle today celebrates the Jingle Dress Dance.  On my way home this morning, traffic was stopped for Whatcom County road repairs.  I took this photo:

Watch the Jingle Dress Dance:



Learn about the Jingle Dress tradition:

Tall Tales / Stories That Could Be True / "... the circus is in town ...) / All the light

We phantoms are assembled at the end of the Rolling Thunder tour.

We started out trying to recover America.

We discovered a certain amount of truth about ourselves.

Old friends who thought their loves had been lost were able to get together and, uh, face each other eye to eye and sing over an electrical microphone to please the desires of myriad young yearners who had been seeking some kind of union and community and saw therein an image of that community.

…

You who saw it all or saw flashes or fragments, take from us some example, try and get yourselves together, clean up your act, find your community, pick up on some kind of redemption of your own consciousness, become more mindful of your own friends, your own work, your own proper meditation, your own proper art, your own beauty. Go out and make it for your own eternity.

(am's note: Allen Ginsberg is shown speaking these words at the end of the film.  He then bows in the Buddhist manner)

Click to read this:

Dylan is confronting us with the difference between the stated idea of America and the present reality of it, in the process asking why, after 200 years, we still haven’t gotten our shit together. The question stands.

(am's note:  Now, in 2019, it's 243 years since 1776. My income doesn't allow for me to subscribe to Netflix.  I am grateful to a friend who made it possible for me to watch "Rolling Thunder Revue:  A Bob Dylan Story")

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

BY William E. Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

A view of our beautiful earth and our beautiful sky from my porch, and then there is:

"All The Light We Cannot See." 

Heartening

Celida Moran from DDCSP@UW Conservation Scholars on Vimeo.

Inspired by 37 Paddington and Ellamae Simmons

Wide-eyed 
And listening,
I walk.
Intent.
Looking at everything.
Rarely understanding anything.

Hey world:
You are a puzzle.
With no piece in place.
Every day I bring my own puzzle piece
With me
As I walk
As I wait

As I work with friends on a project that will culminate in two exhibits of selected tapestries from one of our friends who wove for 50 years before losing her ability to weave due to cognitive difficulties, the time I usually have for blogging is limited.  Thank you to everyone who responded to my post connected to this year's Memorial Day.  I felt so alone in the year the man I loved served as a helicopter mechanic in Vietnam and felt alone for nearly 20 years after the war ended.  I spent as much time as I could at the ocean -- one place where I did not feel alone.  This year, in large part because of your comments, I know fully that I am not alone, no matter where I am.  You are never far from my thoughts.  I am grateful to belong to this far-flung community of kindred spirits.

A friend who is staying in Laguna Beach, California, with her husband this week emailed me this ocean scene.  It may take several clicks before the video appears:

P.S.  Rosemarie -- Our public library secured a copy of Overcome for me.  I am just a few chapters into the book. The long and eventful life of Ellamae Simmons is an inspiration.  Thank you for making it possible for her story to be told.

Almost 50 years ago

Deven's sister found this photo in one of Deven's old photo albums and emailed it to me.  My R took this photo of me when we were on the island of Oahu during the week of the 4th of July 1970.  I flew to Oahu from San Francisco.  He flew to Oahu from the war in Vietnam.  It was a bittersweet week.  My overflowing happiness at being with him in that moment was innocent of what he had already been through in Vietnam and of what was to unfold for both of us (all of us) in the years to come.



From "The Hours"

And...and I remember  thinking to myself:



"So this is the beginning  of happiness..."



"This is where it starts!"





"And, of course,  there'll always be more."



Never occurred to me



it wasn't the beginning,



It was happiness.



It was the moment...

Just Because

"This Land Is Your Land" sung by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

With gratitude to our friend at 37 Paddington who recommended the Netflix documentary, "Knock Down The House."  A friend of mine who subscribes to Netflix had already watched it and was more than happy to watch it a second time with me this morning.  Both of us were moved to tears and gratitude for this documentary.  The above version of "This Land Is Your Land" is sung during the credits.

Here's another version of "This Land Is Your Land," by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings:

Mandala #42: For Deven (Affirmative!)

"... Those crazy crows always making a commotion ..." (from "This Place," by Joni Mitchell)

Back in 1967, as we became friends while attending University of California at Irvine, Deven introduced me to the music of Joni Mitchell.  "This Place," released in 2007, is a good accompaniment to the mandala for Deven.



Deven and her beloved Kevin (who also created mandalas) making music in the 1980s, and that's their dog, Star:

A rediscovered source of inspiration / Mandalas completed since August 2018

The husband of my friend who died in February died of ALS in 1991.  He was an artist who created large mandalas at the end of his life.  While looking through my photos of my friend, I found newspaper photos of him, along with this mandala:

With her in mind, I started a mandala soon after my friend died but have not found time or energy to work on it since then.  Any day now, I hope to sit down at my work table and see how Mandala #42 unfolds.

I am grateful to my friend's sister who called me shortly after my friend died.  Being able to communicate by email with her during our time of confusion and grief and loss and celebration of my friend's life has meant the world to me.

Viola da Gamba / The mystery bird is a male bushtit / "Mountain!" / Night sky

My dear friend who died in late February was musically gifted.  As a small child, she learned to play the accordion. She taught herself to play the gamba in the early part of this century.  Music sustained her.

Here is a note I received yesterday from an Audubon Society member who identifies birds:

That is a BUSHTIT, male.  The female has a pale eye, the male's eye is dark as in your photo.

My sister, in Santa Maria, had a pair of nesting Bushtits in her backyard. They kept pecking at their reflections in her windows: a territorial behavior.

In non-breeding season you will see them, in flocks of 20 or more, moving quickly thru bushes and willows, foraging as they go.  I also live in Cambria and have had flocks coming to my suet feeder, almost covering both sides!

Here is a photo of my friend in 1993 on one of her many walks in search of birds to photograph:

Below is a photo of her as a small child, growing up in Southern California.  Notice the duckling standing next to her in the first photo.  Her story that went with these photos is that as she was busy drawing, one of her parents asked her what she was drawing.

She pointed emphatically in the direction of a mountain and said, "Mountain!"

My friend struggled with depression throughout her life.  In the last few years, she diagnosed herself as having Asperger's and felt some relief experiencing herself in that light.  That explained many of the difficulties that had plagued her throughout her life. 

Beginning in the 1990s, she suffered from arthritis.  She seemed relatively healthy when I visited in 2008, although she was noticeably underweight and admitted to eating very little due to digestive upsets.  She had not been to a doctor in the Western tradition of medicine in years, although she occasionally sought help from alternative sources, including the use of medical marijuana.  In the last month of her life when with extreme reluctance she turned to Western medicine for help, the doctors and nurses were baffled to find that there were absolutely no medical records that could be found for her. 

In the last years of her life, her passions were for astronomy and caring for her beloved disabled pigeons as she had been doing since the early 1990s.  She sent me an article written by a man with Asperger's who found solace in looking deep into the night sky.  My friend studied star charts and searched for obscure stars and delighted in finding them.  As has been the case for many years, whenever I look into the night sky, I think of her. 

This morning I woke up at 3 a.m. so that I could experience the darkness before the dawn and then the gradually building chorus of birds and frogs.  In the days before and after the Summer Solstice, I feel uneasy here in what is the northernmost part of the U.S. except for Alaska.  I am grateful that my father's ancestors left Norway in the 1800s, as I would have had a harder time living with months of daylight than living with months of darkness.  The long hours of daylight at this latitude begin to feel exhausting and oppressive to me.  I need the respite of darkness and starlight and moonlight.  This year especially.

My friend got to know and appreciate those of you who have been visiting my blog since 2007 and enjoyed reading your comments and occasionally visited your blogs.  Although she never commented on my blog, she visited here intermittently.  She did not particularly like using computers.  I'm not sure if she had visited my blog anytime recently.

Calling all birders (this is part of the story I will be telling mostly in pictures)

A dear friend I have known for 52 years died unexpectedly in late February in Cambria, California.  While accomplishing the major task of settling her estate, her sister and brother-in-law have been staying at the lovely dream house she had bought not far from where she had owned a home in Cambria in recent years.  She was all ready to move in when her death came.  Yesterday a bird began flying at two windows, seemingly trying to get in the house.  Her sister sent me these three videos.  Do any of you have any idea what kind of bird this is?  I am wondering if it is a type of flycatcher.

Three days after my mother died in 1994, a Black Phoebe appeared in a similar manner at my parents' house in Gualala, California.

Before and since then I have heard story after story of a bird appearing after the death of a loved one.  When the husband of my friend of 52 years was dying of ALS in 1989, he told her that he would appear to her as a Baltimore oriole after his death.  A pair of Baltimore orioles appeared in her yard after his death and built a nest and soon there were fledglings.

Here I am, finding that I do have something to write.  I am still gathering photos to celebrate the life of my friend whose death shook me to the core and whose friendship I have treasured since we met in college in 1967.

Here is the view of the backyard of her dream house:

She loved the music of Laura Nyro and Nina Simone:

Update:  Here is a screen shot of a just-received video of the mystery bird:

Richie Havens and George Harrison with more "Ahí viene el sol"

That's Oboe and K-9 in the past week.  It's part of a long story that I don't know how to write about yet.  Maybe that story will be told in pictures.  I can say that K-9 arrived in a large box last week thanks to the sister of one of my oldest friends.