Julie Felix (El Condor Pasa)

Celebrating a long-time blogger

21 years of blogging

The Cassandra Pages

A GoFundMe for Willie and Aline

From Temryss Lane's GoFundMe page for Willie and Aline:

My dear Uncle Willie Lane and Auntie Aline's home burned down early on the morning of March 19th. Thank the Creator, they escaped the flames with their lives and second degree burns. Lifetimes of memories, cultural treasures, the smoke house (where my Uncle traditionally smokes salmon), their car, tools, clothes and their livelihoods went up in flames.

If you know Aline and Willie, you know they are in service to the community, exponentially generous, kind and loving, dedicated to helping people heal on their paths to wellness. Any offering you can make so they can purchase a new home and get on their feet again, would not only support them but benefit the entire community.

They have their lives and the clothes on their back. They lost everything else, including Aline's car. If you'd like to donate clothing items, old cell phones, a car, other necessities you can drop them at the Lane Family Home at 2877 Lummi Shore Rd.

Hy'shqe si'am! Our family feels so grateful Willie and Aline are safe and know that together we can help them rebuild their lives. Thank you for your generosity and support.

Temryss and the Lane Family

https://gofund.me/a1618623

"... it is better to speak ..."

Thanks to Devin Kelly for bringing this writer to my attention today.

Walking / O California (the landscape of my younger days)

"Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts. I wasn’t sure whether I was too soon or too late for the purple lupine which can be so spectacular in these headlands, but milkmaids were growing on the shady side of the road on the way to the trail, and they recalled the hillsides of my childhood that first bloomed every year with an extravagance of these white flowers. Black butterflies fluttered around me, tossed along by wind and wings, and they called up another era of my past. Moving on foot seems to make it easier to move in time; the mind wanders from plans to recollections to observations."

(Rebecca Solnit)

*

*

I'm grateful to have been born into and grown up experiencing the landscape of California.  It brought a joy that is still with me all these years since I left, never imagining that I would spend the rest of my life living a thousand miles to the north in Western Washington which has its own beauty but is not my first love.  Eastern Washington does look much the way coastal California did when I was young but only for part of the year, and the Cascade Mountains separate Western and Eastern Washington. Eastern Washington has snow in the winter and extreme heat in the summer, unlike the coastal region of Northern California where I grew up, never far from the Pacific Ocean.  I continue have dreams where I rejoice that I am living near the Pacific Ocean.

#41 of 52 Tiny Mandalas drawn with my non-dominant left hand (the true color here is elusive) / Devin Kelly's essay on falling and getting back up

The camera on my cell phone distorted the blues in this mandala.  I wish you could see the true colors.  Nothing I did with the edit function could remedy the discrepancy between the actual mandala and the photo image.  

This reminds me of my recent experience with replacing the lenses in my glasses.  The optician asked if I would like the new lenses on my old frames to have a blue light filter to protect my eyes during the hours I spend looking at my laptop.  I said, "Sure."  It took me about a week looking through those new lenses to realize that the blue light filter gave the world a yellowish tint, making everything, especially the sky look the way it looked before I had cataract surgery.  The yellowish tint had a decidedly depressive effect on me.  One afternoon I took the glasses off and realized that the world looked so much better.  When I compared the view through the blue light filter and the true color of the sky, I was appalled by the way the filter diminished the beauty of the color of the sky.  The relief I experienced at seeing the true color of the sky was astounding. 

When I called the optician's office, I was assured that they would replace the lenses at no cost.  They had forgotten that they had told me that my frames could not sustain another change of lenses because those frames are 50 years old.  All was not lost, however.  Now I have a pair of glasses with lenses that are protecting my eyes (albeit with the color distortion) for the hours that I sit at my laptop, and I bought a new frame and had clear lenses inserted that allow me to see the true colors that I love so dearly.

I love this song. Always will. It brings healing tears every time I hear it.

*

Grateful to have found Devin Kelly's Substack through a link from Sabine's blog and to have read the essay he linked to in today's post.

How Bellingham celebrates its young artists / Tiny Mandala #40 / Harpo and the sun shining through the window

One of the joys of my life is seeing the drawings and paintings of grade school children.  The first photo shows a semi-permanent display at a bus stop next to the public library.  The last three photos are of the rotating art work that is displayed at Trader Joe's grocery store.  Currently on display are drawings of Frida Kahlo.

*

Every year there is a Children's Art Walk in downtown Bellingham where the street windows of the downtown businesses feature the work of Bellingham's young artists.

*

Just finished Tiny Mandala #40:

On to #41:

Gave away to an artist friend one of the fifty-three 4 x 4 pieces of printmaking paper that I've been using for the Tiny Mandala series.  Now I will have one Tiny Mandala for each month of the year. 

*

Although we've had some sunshine, it's still quite cold here.  Shortly after I took this photo, Harpo moved to a few feet forward to a sunny spot near the porch door where he stretched out in the sun.

Snowing