Remembering Women I Never Met
Five Generations and Rosemary, originally uploaded by Ninth Raven. These are my maternal ancestors, photographed in Oklahoma in the mid-1920s . The baby is my grandmother’s older sister, Hazel Fulmer. The woman holding her is her great-grandmother, Betsy Strickland. Clockwise from her is my great-grandmother, Mabel Fulmer; her mother, Betsy McWhorter-White; and Granny Gepford, Hazel’s [...]
Problematic Family History
“When We Talk to Our Dead, They Talk Back” ancestor altar, installed at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA, for “Dia de los Muertos: The Art of Remembrance” exhibition, 2011 How do we relate to problematic ancestors, family secrets, and past betrayals of faith and trust? Honoring the ancestors seems to imply that you [...]
Shrine for the Guardian of Life and Death
I’ve been working on this piece for two and a half years. It was supposed to take only two months. The vision from the Baron was so clear. I felt all I had to do was gather the pieces and put them together. And yet it took so long. If I have learned anything [...]
Beautiful Wise Women
“As we age, we have the chance to reinvent ourselves and to have new adventures. Arthritis took me away from painting. Now I use my artistic abilities to design clothes. As we age, our connection to our deeper womb powers increase and we are often blessed with new gifts of magic.” —Ingeborg Ten Haeff, [...]
Things I Hate
Stephen Harrod Buhner, in Ensouling Language: On the Art of Nonfiction and the Writer’s Life, says “Everything you hate is everything you stand against. It is everything that you oppose, that you write to change, that you want to be a part of changing, that you must participate in changing in order to respect yourself. [...]
A warm, sunny afternoon in our front yard
This afternoon I am sitting on my front porch watching the local wildlife, naming the sparrows, cardinals, mourning doves, butterflies, and feral cats. Right now about twenty little birds are hopping through our unmowed yard and pecking seed under the bird feeder. We have three identifiable feral cats that live in the woods across the [...]
More Things I Love
Remember about a month ago, I wrote a list of things I love because I was reading Ensouling Language: On the Art of Nonfiction and the Writer’s Life by Stephen Harrod Buhner? I’ve been adding to that list and also working on the other lists of things I hate, my heroes, and books that have [...]
Things I Love
In the process of reading Ensouling Language: On the Art of Nonfiction and the Writer’s Life by Stephen Harrod Buhner, I feel emboldened to play with language. How can you not when Buhner issues this challenge: “I believe in writing that burns the blood, in which you feel forest wolves tensing behind you, writing filled [...]
A Moment of No Obligations
Last night I was in a fury. I woke up at 2:17am And could not go back to sleep. I was still angry From earlier in the evening When my take-out meal Which was supposed to save me time Made me late For a meeting I didn’t really want to go to In the [...]
Word for 2011: JOY
Over the last few years, I’ve become more aware of how just how thick the barriers are between myself and my lived experience. And how that keeps me from fully experiencing the wonders of the world. For example, I don’t allow myself to become “too excited” because I don’t want to be disappointed when real [...]
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