On Having Two Places To Call Home

This book came into my life some time ago. My "countries" are the California of my birth and the Washington State where I have lived since I was 24 years old.  They are two very distinct places. In 1973, I lived briefly in Massachusetts near Walden Pond but didn't feel any sense of being at home there.  Forty years have gone by very quickly in Washington State.  I haven't been able to travel to California since 2008, but I visit often in dreams and memories and blogs. When I look through this book, I feel close to Allen Say and his grandfather.

"The funny thing is, the moment I am in one country, I am homesick for the other."
(Allen Say, from Grandfather's Journey)

I have loved and been loved by two places.

Mandala #8

Listen to the Great Animal Orchestra

While reading "Forest & River News" from Trees Foundation yesterday, I learned about Bernie Krause and The Great Animal Orchestra.

Then I watched this.

Wow! Listen.

The Lives of Chairs and Families

When my mother's parents were newly married in the early 1900s in Boston, Massachusetts, they bought six Duncan Phyfe-style chairs with caned seats and a Duncan Phyfe-style dining table. It is possible that my grandfather bought the chairs second-hand and repaired and caned them. It is possible that he made them from a kit. They have odd quirks, including holes that are drilled at odd angles along with added nails and bolts and different kinds of wood for the stretchers. Not long after their marriage, our grandparents moved to Hastings, Minnesota, bringing the chairs and tables with them. My mother and her older brother grew up with those chairs and that table. As I understand, my grandfather re-caned the chairs whenever the caning broke down. After my grandmother died in the 1930s, the table and chairs were moved to Hermosa Beach in Southern California with my grandfather, my mother, my uncle, my aunt, and their daughter. After my grandfather died in 1945, the table and chairs went to my mother, and she brought them to her marriage to my father in 1948. The table and chairs were moved from Southern California to a small apartment in San Francisco, and then to an apartment in San Mateo, and from there to a house in Palo Alto, to a house in Taft, and to a house in Redwood City.

My sisters and I grew up with that table and those chairs, although we were taught to be very careful with the caned chairs, and our family rarely used the table except for holidays and special occasions. Of course, as small children, we stood on seats of the chairs and eventually the caning broke down, and the chairs went into the storage in the garage. In Redwood City, my parents bought a new dining table and new chairs with upholstered seats. I can remember the old dining table being used peripherally, at least until I went away to college in 1967. I remember seeing the chairs with their broken seats in the garage in storage. When my parents moved into an apartment again before moving permanently to their retirement home on the Mendocino Coast, I think that they must have sold the table or given the table away, but my mother kept the six old chairs.

When I was still in my 20s in my first years in Bellingham, my mother gave me two of the chairs. I took a class in furniture refinishing, and learned to do chair caning. I toyed with the idea of becoming a chair caner, but hurt my neck while working on the first chair that I was paid to cane and gave up on that idea.  That chair that I was paid to cane was an antique oak swivel office chair with a curved back and curved sides -- a complex caning job. I did a beautiful job of caning, but I didn't work quickly enough to make any money at that job. When I tried to work quickly, I hurt my neck.

After my mother died in 1994, the other four chairs came to me because my sisters didn't want them. Two were in very poor condition, and I put them in storage, but I had the other two re-caned by a professional caner along with my first two which also needed re-caning again. By that time I was working full-time and didn't have the time or energy for caning. 

Now, another 20 years later, I am having one chair caned at a time by an expert caner (take a look at her website) who just moved to Bellingham in the past few years. There hadn't been a caner north of Seattle for some time. The two chairs which were in such bad condition have been finished and repaired and re-caned now. Just this week, I picked up another finished caned chair and dropped off another for caning. After that, there is one chair left that needs caning. When I picked up the chair and dropped the other off, Stella showed me two chairs nearly identical to my set of chairs. However, those two chairs had had their legs sawed off so that they were about 6 inches shorter. They were clearly of the same design but had more caning holes and slightly different dimensions. They were like cousins to my chairs -- even down to the quirkiness of their construction!

I hope that either my nephew or one of my cousins on my mother's side of the family will take the chairs and use them when I am gone. One of them is for sitting on when I play my autoharp, ukulele and dulcimers. Two are at my dining table with my father's mother's chair with the needlepoint seat. One holds a knit afghan. One is in my bedroom. The last one that still needs caning is in my hall closet and may have to remain there with two stuffed bears and two bins of old books sitting on it. The chairs are dear to me because of their history in our family.

Mandala #7: Yep

A New Baby Boy On Bodhi Day 2014

Although I am not affiliated with any spiritual or religious tradition, I listen carefully to the teachings of all traditions and find wisdom in each one. Today is Bodhi Day in Buddhist tradition.

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
-- Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

In what I hope is in the spirit in which the Buddha teaches, these thoughts came to mind after reading the above quote because through a process of observation, analysis, and reason, I don't believe that observation, analysis, and reason are everything. There is much to be said for the wisdom and experiences of the heart:

"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."
-- Blaise Pascal

"I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.
'They say they think with their heads,' he replied.
'Why of course. What do you think with?' I asked him in surprise.
'We think here,' he said, indicating his heart."
(Carl Jung, during a visit to New Mexico, in conversation with Ochwiay Biano, a Pueblo Indian, quoted from Memories, Dreams, Reflections)

"I believe in the impossible, you know that I do."
-- Bob Dylan

"I don't believe in Buddha."
-- John Lennon (who died on December 8, 1980)

"Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible"
-- Thich Nhat Hanh (Zen Buddhist monk) from Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers

"Because suffering is impermanent, that is why we can transform it.
Because happiness is impermanent, that is why we have to nourish it."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh, 10 June 2014

Today is the 8th birthday of my blog which began in December of 2006 as "Old Girl of the North Country," a vehicle for a 40-year retrospective of my art work. From that beginning, this blog became for me a path of healing from unresolved grief dating back to the last years of the war in Vietnam.

Although I do not post as much as I did that first year or read as many blogs as I once did, blogging has continued to play a huge part in keeping my creative spirit alive. I have immense gratitude to you whose blogs I visit regularly and am grateful to you for visiting my blog.

This past year has brought one dear baby after another into my life, along with a sense of a place of peace within me no matter what happens, and much has happened this year to challenge that peace.

A few weeks ago I began helping a younger friend and her husband who are in their early 40s and have recently adopted fraternal twin infant boys who were born to a meth-addicted single mother who had no prenatal care and simply appeared at a hospital in labor and, through an adoption agency, chose my friends to parent her twin boys. What a joy it is to be able to be part of a group of their friends who are spending mornings and afternoons helping this first-time mother and father by comforting, feeding, and talking to and playing with their baby boys. We are doing our best to take the place of the grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles who do not live nearby or who are no longer living.

Today on Bodhi Day at 10:38 a.m., a sweet baby boy was born in New York City and one of my oldest friends became a grandmother for the second time and emailed the above photo.

Welcome to L.L.S in his first few hours of his life!

It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.
-- Robinson Jeffers

Listen to this from "The New Basement Tapes"

Wow! Rhiannon Giddens singing! Lyrics from 1967 by Bob Dylan.

Have also been listening to the "The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 11." It's a treasure.

Thanksgiving 2014 / Child with Gift and Gratitude

(a trackpad drawing from 2005 by am)

True Names and the Door of Compassion

Please Call Me by My True Names

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow – Even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving. To be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am a child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, and plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people dying slowly in a force-labour camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh
This poem was written in 1978, during the time of helping the boat people 

(From this website)

One Breath At A Time With Thich Nhat Hanh

Our own life has to be our message -- Thich Nhat Hanh

I am thankful for Thich Nhat Hanh.

The Mockingbird Society

What are you thankful for?

I learned about the Mockingbird Society through the Mockingbird Society inserts in the paper copy of Real Change that I buy weekly from the Real Change vendor who sells his papers near one of the doors of the Bellingham Community Food Co-op.

Today I'm thankful for these young people.

An interview with Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my favorite writers. Reading The Wizard of Earthsea when I was 21 years old brought light into that dark time in my life. Most recently I read her novel, Lavinia.

The interview is here.

A Real Change vendor sells this newspaper near one of the doorways to our Community Co-op. Coincidentally, we have the same birthday, although he is much younger than I am.  He grew up in the same neighborhood in Minneapolis that my father did.

I first heard about Real Change in connection with Bob Dylan. As I understand, he donated the proceeds of "Christmas in the Heart" to Real Change.

Veteran's Day 2014

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
(Aaron Copland)

Sunrise Before Wind and Rain and Darkness Totem: 6 November 2014

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves. (Carl Gustav Jung)

Learn By Heart

According to the tenets of Ayurvedic medicine, memory's wellspring is in the heart. The more one loves, the better one remembers. Thus, we say "learn by heart."

(p. 16, The Essence of Yoga: Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, by Bernard Bouanchaud -- 1997)

I've been reading The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body which I heard about here. The music below was composed by Vissarion Shebalin, who lost much of his language function because of strokes, but retained the ability to compose music. I have been listening to this over and over again and find it deeply moving.

Beloved Person in Bird Costume Crossing the Night River

From the Calendar Series, "Beloved Person in Bird Costume Crossing the Night River" -- a gouache and watercolor painting from the 1980s by am.

Watch the river flow, here and here. Thank you to Candy for the inspiration for this post.

We are mourning

Jason Redmond /REUTERS

Bob Dylan The Welder and His Band / "Waiting For You"

              For the concert by Bob Dylan and His Band at the Paramount Theater in Seattle last night, I sat in Row Y Seat 4, very close to the beautiful ceiling of the Paramount Theater in Seattle:

As I was waiting for the concert to begin, a young man climbed down from Row Z and settled himself in the seat to my right.  He looked at me briefly and then stared straight ahead. He didn't say anything or clap until the intermission and then turned to me and asked if I liked the concert. I said, "Yes." I asked him if he was a Bob Dylan fan. He said, "Yes." I asked him if he had a favorite album. He didn't. I asked when he had first heard Bob Dylan. He said it was when he was in the 10th grade.  He said, "I grew up on Highway 61." I said that I did, too, thinking he was referring to the album "Highway 61 Revisited." Then I realized he meant that he grew up in Minnesota and had lived on Highway 61. I told him that I first started listening to Bob Dylan at the same age he had started listening. I told him I had seen Bob Dylan at the Paramount Theater in early 1980's and that I had first seen Bob Dylan in concert with The Band in Boston in 1974. He smiled tentatively. After the lights came on after the last song, I asked him if this was his first Bob Dylan concert. He said, "Yes." I told him he had chosen a good one. As he was walking down toward the exit, he turned and smiled and said, "Good to meet you. Have a good evening."

There is a feeling of fellowship among people who are drawn to the music of Bob Dylan. 

This was the set list for all three of the Seattle concerts, with the majority of the songs written since 1997:

Things Have Changed

She Belongs To Me

Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

Workingman's Blues #2

Waiting For You

Happiness is just a state of mind

Anytime you want you can cross the state line

(Those lyrics are from "Waiting for You," by Bob Dylan, a song that I first heard during the credits for the movie "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."  Apparently there is no official recording except in connection with that movie.)

Duquesne Whistle

Pay In Blood

Tangled Up In Blue

Love Sick

High Water (For Charley Patton)

Simple Twist of Fate

Early Roman Kings

Forgetful Heart

Spirit on the Water

Scarlet Town

Soon After Midnight

Long and Wasted Years

Encore:

All Along the Watchtower

Blowin' In The Wind

Although I had gone to the concert with the thought that this might be Bob Dylan's last tour, I don't think that anymore. My sense was that his energy is better than ever. I didn't feel any sense of nostalgia at this concert. It was about right here, right now -- the present moment with its ups and down. This concert was so much better than the last one I saw in the late 1990's when there was a grinding weariness to the old songs, except when he sang "Girl From The North Country" as an encore. 

From what I saw last night, Bob Dylan is thriving at 73 years old, and that's how I hope to be when I'm 73. 

Like a World Mandala

"Vi mot the gioi khong con bon min"

"The world without UXO," by Le Ho Huru Nghia - Che Lan Vien school

From PeaceTrees Vietnam:

Tran Thi Suong, a student at Gio Quang Secondary School in the Gio Linh district of Quang Tri province, wrote the following essay while attending PeaceTrees Vietnam's Mine Risk Education Summer Camp.

I remember a landmine accident in my village a few years ago. One afternoon, while working in a rice field, a farmer saw a small bomb. It was rusty and covered in soil. As he tried to use a hoe to throw it away it exploded. The farmer lost both of his arms. He went from being the bread winner in his family to being unable to work. The accident caused him and his family so many difficulties.

Although the war ended many years ago, its legacy is still present everywhere. In this peaceful time there are still many wives who have lost their husbands, children who have lost their fathers, and mothers who have lost their sons and daughters. There are many people who have been injured for life from landmine accidents.

To ensure safety for yourself and those around you, when you see landmines or UXO: 

• Don't go near, hold, throw or play with them
• Mark the dangerous area and tell an adult or the authorities   

Learn more about PeaceTrees Vietnam's work in mine risk education here.

Mandala #5 and Mandala #6 / For My Nephew and His Son Who Was Born on May 26, 2014

Blue is the theme for these two mandalas.