The dreams and creativity of our young people / Rain has never been more welcome / Alive Alive-O / Against all odds / Three generations / "... the sapling was glowing."/ People Have The Power

"Children's Art Walk Children’s Art Walk is a cherished Bellingham tradition. This year even with everything we are currently enduring in the world we could not bring ourselves to call it off. We are excited to present our first-ever virtual Kid’s Art Walk tour. Once again we partnered with Cedar Tree and Samish Woods Montessori’s and had their 4th through 6th graders pick the most imaginative dream in their dream journals to inspire their creations. All of these works will be showcased on our website during May along with stories to describe their work. We found local and regional artists to pair up with each student and reinterpret their work in their own medium. In total this show features over 100 artists between the students and the working artists to create a dreamy and eclectic overview of work." (MAKE.SHIFT May Art Walk: Kids Art Walk - Beyond My Wildest Dreams)

Yesterday morning

This morning after the first debate

Nearly 50 years ago I bought a pair of glasses, inspired by John Lennon, and then never wore them but have kept them all these years.  A few weeks ago, I took them to my optician and asked if she could put new lenses in them.  I am wearing them now.  They help me to see well enough to draw

 (-:

(I lied about my weight.  I had an eating disorder.  120-125 pounds was my goal weight.   I actually weighed a "healthy" 135 pounds that I achieved by restrictive dieting and found impossible to maintain.  I was 5'7" tall, but my goal weight was based on thinking I was 5'6" tall and wanting to be at the lowest "healthy" weight possible.  I was bulimic and anorexic, binging and throwing up, constantly on a diet, obsessed with restricting my caloric intake and compulsively exercising from age 10 to age 37.  This 1971 photo was taken just before my life took a dark turn.  The 13 years that followed were a mostly a nightmare I thought would never end.  This month marks 33 years since I learned that it is possible to be free of compulsive overeating and endless dieting.  I am  within a few ounces of what is considered "overweight," but it is a truly healthy weight for my current 5'6" (loss of height due to normal aging).  I don't diet.  I don't worry about my weight anymore.  I don't have a scale in my home.  The only reason I know what I weigh is that I was weighed in a doctor's office a few weeks ago.  In my opinion, the charts for "normal weight" are inaccurate.  I would still be at a healthy weight for me if I were to gain 10 pounds.  In order to be at the low end of what is considered "healthy" for my height, I would have to starve myself.)

Patti loves Fred:

Thank you to beth coyote for posting this.  I can't resist posting it here, too.  Together, Patti and Fred wrote this beautiful song in 1988:

Tomorrow will be my 71st birthday.  Patti Smith will be 74 years old in December.  My only nephew will be 27 years old in January 2021.  My grandnephew will be 6 years old in May 2021.   

*

Ava Johnson 

She/her

Glowing Sapling

Inspired by Zander

Embroidery 

*

By Zander:

I was surrounded by vines, leaves, and trees.  The trees were beautiful:  Oak and maple, at least 200 years old.  But in the middle of the clearing was a tiny, tiny sapling and, strangely enough, the sapling was glowing.

*

People Have The Power

Faith and Climate Action / The teaching of a Lummi elder in September 2020 / Listening and taking heart / Gospel singers / "20 Feet from Stardom"

Faith and Climate Action Montana

Faith and Climate Change for 5 major religions

Although I am not a religious person, I take heart when I listen to religious people who are committed to doing what they can to help heal that which has been so deeply wounded in our world.  I am moved today by listening to Douglas James in September 2016 and September 2020.

And by this:

Thank you to Elizabeth for bringing "20 Feet from Stardom" to my attention. That documentary is one more good thing that has led to so many other good things. Now I can recommend it, too.

Note copied from YouTube page for the above video: Originally released in 1969 on Ode Records, this rare and sought-after album finds the California collective covering a clutch of Dylan classics in the era's revolutionary gospel style. Produced by Lou Adler, soon to work his magic on Carole King's mega-successful Tapestry, and arranged by Gene Page, noted for his work for Motown, the performers were largely unknown, but many went on to find great acclaim. Merry Clayton, the powerhouse singer best known for sparring with Mick Jagger on Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" (and star of the recent documentary 20 Feet from Stardom), appears here, as does Edna Wright of The Honeycones and Gloria Jones who recorded the original version of "Tainted Love" in 1965.)

A long night's journey into day / "May we become a credit to her name."

 

So when you hear us say “May her memory be for a blessing” don’t hear “It’s nice to remember her.” Hear “It’s up to us to carry on her legacy.” When you hear us say, “She was a tzaddeket” don’t hear, “She was a nice person.” Hear “She was a worker of justice.” May her memory be for a blessing. May her memory be for revolution. May we become a credit to her name.

(click on the above to read the article)

I didn't know this.  Now I do.

With Gratitude To Ruth Bader Ginsburg (update on September 23 with video embedded)

 

Constitutional Oath:

“I, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

(The following is copied from The Posen Library)

Thank you, Chief Justice. Mr. President, distinguished guests, colleagues, and friends. Not yet two months ago, President Clinton announced his intention to nominate me as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. I said then that if confirmed I would try in every way to justify his faith in me. I renew that pledge this afternoon in the presence of people I hold dear: my family, colleagues, co-workers, and treasured friends.

There is one in this audience whose presence I want specially to acknowledge. She is my wonderful mother-in-law, Evelyn Ginsburg. She was always there when I needed her. She sensed without ever being asked when that was. She constantly held up my spirits when the going was rough. “This too will pass,” she would say. (am's emphasis in green:  In yet another synchronicity for me, the words "This too will pass" came to mind early this morning as I thought about the mounting challenges we are currently facing.  Thank you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for your continuing strong presence which I will now connect with those words.)  I am overjoyed, Mother, that you are with me today.

This weekend I attended a celebration of women lawyers in New York. The keynote speaker was our grand Attorney General, Janet Reno. It may have been the best attended; it was certainly the most remarkable event at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting.

Awards were made in the name of Margaret Brent, a great lady of the mid-1600s, celebrated as the first woman lawyer in America. Her position as a woman, yet a possessor of power, so confused her contemporaries that she was sometimes named in court records not as Mistress Margaret Brent, but as Gentleman Margaret Brent. Times are changing. The President made that clear by appointing me and, just last week, naming five other women to Article III courts. Six of his total of 14 federal bench nominees thus far are women.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor recently quoted Oklahoma Supreme Court Jeanne Coyne, who was asked, “Do women judges decide cases differently by virtue of being women?” Justice Coyne replied that in her experience, a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion.

I agree, but I also have no doubt that women, like persons of different racial groups and ethnic origins, contribute what a fine jurist, the last Fifth Circuit Judge Alvin Rubin, described as a distinctive medley of views influenced by differences in biology, cultural impact, and life experience. A system of justice will be the richer for diversity of background and experience. It will be the poorer in terms of appreciating what is at stake and the impact of its judgments if all of its members are cast from the same mold.

I was impressed by the description of women at the Bar by one of the 1993 Margaret Brent prize recipients, Esther Rothstein, an attorney in private practice in Chicago. Esther said she found women attorneys to be tough, yet tender; wanting to win, but not vindictive; cautiously optimistic, with the sense to settle for victories that do not leave one’s opponent bloodied and bowed; willing to be a link in a chain that is strong, yet pliable.

In my lifetime, I expect there will be among federal judicial nominees, based on the excellence of their qualifications, as many sisters as brothers in law. That prospect is indeed cause for hope and its realization will be cause for celebration.

Thank you.

For some reason, I can't find a way to embed her swearing-in ceremony from 1993:

https://youtu.be/mJW4olEDzxM

(Could New Blogger be the culprit?  I didn't want to use New Blogger, but it appears there is no way to avoid using it, despite the fact that the impression was given that we have a choice.  Mysterious, too, is that the title I gave this post does not appear in the Preview but does appear when I publish it.)

I have figured out how to embed videos on New Blogger! When I click on "insert video" in the task bar, one of the options is "YouTube."  

Timely and Timeless / "... We didn't perish that day in November 1972 ..." / Canoe Journey Anthem

 

https://vimeo.com/397256728 (if you wish to listen to an excerpt)

“Expansive in scope and feeling, The Mountains Sing is a feat of hope, an unflinchingly felt inquiry into the past, with the courageous storytelling of the present.”

Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

As I was reading a novel obtained from our public library, The Mountains Sing, by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, during this past week while confined indoors due to the smoke from the fires that continue to burn on the West Coast of the United States, I was reminded of Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Sandra Cisneros, Linda Sarsour, Louise Erdrich, Anna Akhmatova, Virginia Woolf, Ursula Le Guin, Jacqueline Woodson, and Thich Nhat Hanh and how so many of the circumstances that we are experiencing currently have been experienced throughout known history and that human beings have survived against all odds, continuing to be challenged to find ways to live in the present moment with complexity, grief, paradox, uncertainty and song:

Canoe Journey Anthem:

When The Light Of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through / Gratitude

 

With gratitude to Joy Harjo

In the time of fires / Mandala #50: Sabine and her Bicycle (A meditation on bicycle spokes, suns, moons, stars, planets, skies, mountains, oceans) / More of one thing leading to another / Talking about spiritual energy and the children of 9/11

Update:  Since I posted this morning, the air quality here has steadily diminished to the Unhealthy range with severely limited visibility.  The sky is a sickly pale yellow, approaching pale orange.

As I was downloading the above video, YouTube suggested this video:



Which led me to:

I make a distinction in the book between physical energy and spiritual energy. I don’t mean spiritual in the form of religious sense; I mean the sense in which you are high spirits or low spirits. (click on this if you wish to read the article)

Which led me to pause and look up and out my window to see the sun for the first time this morning, its light dimmed by the fires, near and far, that are raging on the West Coast of the United States, and to know that high spirits leave and return, over and over again.  Low spirits are still spiritual energy, dimmed like the sun is today until the fires subside and the sky does its work of clearing itself, as the sky has done since long before we were here and will continue to do so after we are gone. 



Which brought me back to what I had planned to post today, a song by Bruce Springsteen:



"The Rising" was written as a response to the terrorist attacks in the USA on the 11th September 2001. The song tells a story of a firefighter climbing up the staircase at the World Trade Center.

"Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine 
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight"

I've been saving this for a day like today:

"The Children of 9/11 are About to Vote"

Thank you to Sabine on your bicycle for the inspiration.

"Stay Connected" (Official Video)

" ... this need ..."

Denise Levertov

Of Being

I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences –
great suffering, great fear –

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

this mystery:

In response to being stunned / More of one thing leading to another / Growing up white / Death falls in love with Life / Real Change

Upon learning that after 48 years of wisdom, the Democratic Party is endorsing nuclear energy as part of its 2020 platform, I was stunned.  When I looked out my window early this morning, I saw what looked to me like a mushroom cloud rising from Lake Whatcom.  An overreaction to a passing morning mist rising or a reaction I can trust with all my heart and respond to with right action?

Until I read Quicksand: What It Means To Be A Human Being, by Henning Mankell, I thought I was fully aware of the immense dangers of the use of nuclear energy as a source of the kind of power that human beings have come to take for granted to heat and light our homes and run our internets and pretty much everything else we depend on.  Little did I know.  I am suggesting that book to anyone who might be considering nuclear energy as a solution in today's world or any world imaginable. For anyone else, I am suggesting the book as a text filled with reasons not to pursue nuclear energy as a solution.  Nuclear energy is a not a solution to anything.

Ever since reading Joe Biden's biography many years ago, I have had reservations about him.  Reading his book then gave me a chill.  I never dreamed that he would be a presidential candidate.  I am feeling that chill again.  It is not a good sign that he is endorsing nuclear energy.  It is not a good sign that he distanced himself from Linda Sarsour.

I have no choice but to vote for him. and my heart is torn.  Michelle Obama said, "Joe Biden is a profoundly decent man."  Decent men can have blind spots.  Political parties that are decent can have blind spots.  Politics today seems to be a kind of religion with glaring blind spots.

We all have our blind spots, the places where our "hearts are not yet capable of seeing and loving," to borrow words from a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Henning Mankell admitted as much:

And he’s still ashamed of the “disgraceful and insensitive question” he once asked a 14-year-old African girl dying of Aids: “Are you afraid of what’s in store for you?”

In the interview below, when Henning Mankell talks about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, I was stunned again because I had to admit to myself how oblivious I was, too, when I heard the story of Robinson Crusoe as a child in the 1950s before the Civil Rights Movement was a conscious part of my life.  I knew so little as a middle class white girl from a Protestant family, living in the suburbs of San Francisco.  I still know so little.  I do my best to keep my heart and mind open and take right action.  No matter what happens.

Henning Mankell has a generosity of spirit and, after listening to this interview, I would say that he is a profoundly decent man.



"... death will always come to disturb you ..."
(Henning Mankell)

Or not.  Death falls in love with Life

The mushroom cloud revisited a short time later:



May Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and "the powers that be" in the Democratic Party think twice about endorsing nuclear energy and may they play a part in bringing the real change that Bernie Sanders and his supporters continue to work for whether elected or not:

Connection through time and open hearts

Thank you to a dear friend in California who sent me a link to this article about a woodblock made by Katsushika Hokusai in 1830 to 1832 (click on this link and then scroll down to see pictures and read article)

Timeline for the United States from Wikipedia

• 1830s – Second Great Awakening is the religious revival movement
• 1830s – Oregon Trail which comes into use by settlers migrating to the Pacific Northwest
• 1830 – Indian Removal Act
• 1831 – Nat Turner's revolt
• 1831 – The Liberator begins publication in 1831
• 1831 – Cyrus McCormick invents the mechanical reaper
• 1831 – Petticoat affair (also known as the Eaton affair)
• 1832 – Worcester v. State of Georgia the Supreme Court rules in favor of Cherokees; President Jackson ignores the ruling
• 1832-Maria Stewart is the first woman to give speech in front of a mixed audience
• 1832 – Black Hawk War
• 1832 – Tariff of 1832
• 1832 – Ordinance of Nullification passed by South Carolina
• 1832 – Department of Indian Affairs established
• 1832 – 1832 United States presidential election: Andrew Jackson reelected president; Martin Van Buren elected vice president
• 1832 – Jackson vetos the charter renewal of the Second Bank of the United States, bringing to a head the Bank War and ultimately leading to the Panic of 1837
• 1832 – John C. Calhoun resigns as vice president

In the pre-dawn hours, after The Pleiades and Orion have risen in the sky to the east:



"... and knowing that your heart is your home ... the seat of your strength ...

Understanding that the whole world pulses there ... in the divine nexus of your heart ... where all the delicate, luminous strands converge ... glistening and glowing ... in the unseen web that connects us all, one to the other ...

And suddenly you are certain ... you know with your whole heart ... that you are healing ... that you will continue to heal .. that your heart has always been whole ... that whatever you thought was lost ... still abides there ... whatever seemed unforgiven ... is redeemed there ... that whatever appeared to be shattered by grief ... is made whole there ... that there is nothing in this world that can't be healed ... in the vast space of your own open heart ..."

(Stage 3 guided imagery from Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal  by Belleruth Naparstek)

Early morning light:



Synchronicity?  When I checked my email after posting this, I found words from the open heart of Octavia Butler

Hurt

"... Practice every day, with love ..." / Morris Broderson / Suzanne Jackson / More of one thing leading to another

Morris Broderson was Joan Ankrum's nephew.  She opened the Ankrum Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles with William Challee in 1960.  Morris' art work was first displayed at that gallery.  The Ankrum Gallery staged the first group show for black artists in that area and featured the work of diverse artists for 29 years.

Had I not followed my intuition and clicked on link after link because I found a comment on another blog to be compelling, I would have missed being inspired by Morris Broderson and missed learning about Suzanne Jackson, seen below with Bill Challee, co-founder of the Ankrum Gallery



(photo screen shot from Ankrum Gallery Records from The Archives of American Art)

Currently getting up at 2 a.m. and working on Mandala #50:   



... when asked if you care about
the world's problems, look deeply
into the eyes of he that asks
you, he will not ask you again ... 

(from "Advice to Geraldine On Her Miscellaneous Birthday" -- Bob Dylan, early 1960s)

Sister

Many thanks, Elizabeth, for your comment that brought Merry Clayton to light and brought this to light again.

Convergence / More of one thing leading to another / "... I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away ..."

"Free At Last -- If We Take Care Of Each Other"

*

This and that happened and, as a result, I met someone who recommended this film that is based on what I would call a spiritual event during World War I. 



Because the film puts war in a complex cultural context and does not glorify war, it reminded me of Spike Lee's "Da Five Bloods."  Our public library had a copy of it.  I watched it first without subtitles and then watched it again with the excellent commentary by the filmmaker, and then watched an interview with the filmmaker who says in another interview that despite a Catholic education he does not believe in God but respects those who do, as demonstrated by his film.

In the sidebar for the trailer, I found this:



All these years later, I am startled to realize that the lyrics are:

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I always heard it as "O children ..."  

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

Kamala Harris / UFW statement / August sunrise with moon and birds

UFW statement



Looking at the photo of Kamala Harris and the photo of the sunrise this morning seen from my porch, this art work from the mid-1980s came to mind:

Sleepless Woman With Moon and Birds

Woman Listening

Witness With Blue Hair

Woman Looking Up

Witness With Courage

Woman With Questions

Woman With Window

Woman Turning Toward The Light

May 2008 Revisited / Ten Years Later in November / Standing Our Ground in August 2020 (Not Alone)

Although summer in this far northwestern corner of Washington State is mild, we had a few days of temperatures in the 80s.  I don't walk as much when it is hot or even warm and had not taken a walk for a week or so.  On August 3 at noon, I decided to take a short walk from my home to Whatcom Falls Park.   Even though the section of trail that fills with mosquitos in June has been free of mosquitos for almost a month, I haven't walked into Whatcom Falls Park since May, choosing to walk up the hill to the high point where I can look out at the Canadian Cascades in British Columbia and be free of mosquitos.  Here are the photos I took on my way into Whatcom Falls Park:

 













Here is what I photographed as I was getting close to home again:

Just beyond this dappled section of the trail is the cattail pond that my porch looks out on.  Most of my walk, except for that section, is in the shade.  Probably because it was midday and somewhat warm, I saw few people during my walk.  When I was a little more than halfway along the section of brightly sunlit trail that is visible from my porch, I became aware of a man's voice at some distance behind me, but he was close enough that if I had turned around, I would have seen him because the section of trail beside Scudder Pond is straight.  Within seconds as the voice drew closer, I realized that he was yelling as loud as he could.  He was angry.  I could hear in his voice what I have heard in the voices of men who attack women.  I have been attacked when I have heard that kind of voice before.  At first I couldn't hear what he was saying but as he approached I heard his clearly shouted angry stream of obscenities and threats that seemed to be directed at me but were clearly directed at all women in an attempt to terrorize.

I felt the fear that I have felt before.  Then, something within me that I have learned to trust told me to keep walking, not to turn around, not to register in any way that I heard him.  I thought of John Lewis.  I thought of all the women and men who have had to face this kind of fear and had to learn how to respond in the moment.  It occurred to me that I might be assaulted or even killed by this anonymous man filled with rage against women.  As the yelling came to within 10 feet of me, I was thinking of John Lewis and everyone who has ever stood their ground.  In this instance, continuing to walk in dignity, not showing fear, I was "standing my ground."  I kept walking, wondering what was going to happen next.

In a silent instant, a nondescript white man, neither young nor old, neither large nor small, wearing a neon green bike helmet and generic clothing, riding what I would guess to be a mountain bike that cost him some good money, rode past me at a high speed, turned to the right just ahead of where I was walking, and disappeared on a short path that leads to a busy street.  Can you imagine my relief despite the fact that I was deeply shaken?

As I tried to absorb what had happened, I knew that I needed to call the police and make a report. Within a few minutes I was able to speak with the woman who answered my 911 call and took down my story and said that a police officer would be calling me.  Within a few minutes, I was talking on my phone with a sympathetic young male policer officer, telling him what had happened and answering his questions.  The police officer said that he was sorry that I had that experience.  He said that he had never heard of anything like that happening before.  I said, "I am reporting this because the man on the bicycle will do that again when he gets the chance, and I want there to be a record in place when that happens."

This happened in the middle of the day on a popular public trail in full view of the condominiums where I live.  I can only wonder what else this man has gotten away with when there were no witnesses, where the woman he threatened was afraid to make a report.  I can't be sure, but I sensed that both the 911 dispatch woman and the police officer wondered if I had made the whole thing up. Who wouldn't question my story that I was able to keep walking the way I did?

I am grateful to the many women and men who have been in the position I was in and who stood their ground and whose stories encouraged me to stand my ground.  Standing one's ground is not without risk.  Something told me to take that risk.  John Lewis was brutally beaten for taking that risk.  He continued to risk standing his ground.  He was not alone.

Hiroshima Day and Jacob Lawrence and the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima (2016) and Soh Horie's story

From the Builders Series:  Carpenters, by Jacob Lawrence (1977)

When I watched a documentary on John Lewis, I saw that he and his wife lived with art work by Jacob Lawrence.

Planting a tree in July 2020 in Vietnam

Lagerstroemia speciosa.

Mission Statement from the PeaceTrees website:

"Our Mission is to heal the legacy of war by removing dangerous explosives, returning land to safe use, promoting peace and cultivating a brighter future for the children and families of Vietnam."

Addendum:  It just occurred to me that no one is wearing a mask.  With a little googling, I find this and then this.

"(HANOI, Vietnam) — Vietnamese state media reported on Friday the country’s first ever death of a person with the coronavirus as it struggles with a renewed outbreak after 99 days without any cases."