A couple posts ago, I mentioned how excited I was and how much anticipation I was feeling about a workshop I was to attend. Well the workshop has happened and I am still glowing from the energy and hope I drew from the experience beyond the sheer pleasure that being at the conference, in the moment, brought to me.
The workshop was entitled, “Our Lives as Sacred Stories.” And, “Oh, Lordy, Lordy, it was wonderful,” as my maternal ancestors used to say.
Carrie Newcomer is a dear friend I have known since before disco-died. In the very late 1970s or extremely early 80s, I heard Carrie perform as a solo act at the Pizza Keg in West Lafayette. I am not sure if she had written “Survivors” as yet, and she probably performed “Black-eyed Susan.” Within a short time she was dating a good friend of my boyfriend, and I was eating veggie dinners of delightful stuffed mushrooms, and wine, at her place, and was marvelling at this woman who soaked soybeans and made her own soy milk and tempeh, and made a run-down upstairs apartment in central Lafayette, Indiana into a beautiful, homey haven from impending Reaganism, and on top of it all she was a singer-songwriter. I was in awe of her. Still am.
I was right there through the entirety of the Stone Soup era. I lived with the sound man. I wrapped a lot of cords. I wrote a thesis about underground networks of midwives attending home-births as she had a home-birth. I marvelled at her strength, and her belief in the path she was making, taking, or following (depending on your own world view) as her solo career began again.
We were both there at the beginning of the ending of some quite significant relationships for both of us. One of images my memory conjures up whenever I hear the word “angels” is of Carrie and I as we sat on a low concrete step connected the sidewalk in front of my student ghetto home. There was a sense of turmoil and sadness around us as we talked. There were some pretty hard times ahead for both of us. I listened as she told me how she saw angels. I did not really understand this nor the verse that she had referenced until I heard the song of hers, Angels Unaware, decades later.
We have rarely seen each other in the intervening decades, but there is still a connection when we meet. Two midwestern girls all grown up, in fact grown to an age where some become wise women (but not us…, nah, we both see ourselves as doing foolish things with some regularity) as we live very different lives across the continent from each other. She is fiercely gentle as she shares her story of love and the connectedness of all things.
One thing I know: “Never get between a Quaker… and her mission.”
So what did we do at the workshop?
She showed us how to write about a kindness received or given. Then, she showed us how to take that glowing feeling we had after writing and take it out into community and grow it larger, this time, into a song. She showed us that when we share this kind of experience and really listen to someone, and connect, it is then good to stop, and say, “and it was holy.”
Carrie is so good at walking the walk. It is like the difference between being lectured at and having someone share a part of her heart with you.
Sacred Stories
This Friday I attend a workshop by Carrie Newcomer called, “Our Lives as Sacred Story + Community Songwriting.” I will report back, of course, as the course is very much in synch with what WLP is about. I’m writing now as there is some trepidation about attending. The person leading the workshop is someone I first met a lifetime ago when we were both young women with lives intertwined with men who we would be with for a while, but would both soon come to know we had to leave behind these men, through whose lives we met, if our lives were to grow toward the light.
I have seen her a few times since then for coffee, a quick meal, a walk in a park or along a stream, or a rare day long visit. She is a rather well know singer and song writer. Me, I am a women that few know who writes and tries to help other women write or capture their stories. For me it is always daunting to see someone who has made her dreams come true with incredibly hard work, tenacity, persistence, and a whole lot of days and nights on the road. It seems like a more difficult path than mine, but as we say these days, “she persisted.” It would be relatively easy to say she is successful and I am not, but inside I know we are all successful in our own way, just as we all have our stories, sacred and tender that we have lived as we walk our path in life.
It is still a bit daunting for me, here I am signed up for the workshop yet I do not write music, or lyrics or songs. Poems, yes. So while I am a bit nervous about tomorrow, I am also very excited. I want to see what women’s wisdom she has accumulated about the topic so I can share it with you.
The sacred, the place in our hearts where our precious aches and joys are felt and remembered, is not an place easily called upon for sharing, let alone easily evoked, yet Carrie writes words wrapped in music that open the hardest lithic hearts. Her music calls out and lifts our better, light-filled, selves.
We all have these selves inside us. Sharing our selves, sharing our sacred stories is a beautiful frame for living our legacies now, telling our stories, giving those stories as beautiful gifts of self whether they are songs, poems, acts of kindness and helping, or times spent with grandchildren at our knees.
You can find her touring schedule and a few recordings and videos on her site at CarrieNewcomer.com.
Delivering Legacy
Prompts
Can you bring forth legacy? Can you deliver a lively legacy? Of course you can. You simply begin. One way to start is to use prompts to start regular writing as a legacy diary or blog. Any prompt will do. Well almost any. You can turn almost any thought or word toward legacy. For example, one of the good, do no evil, places at which you can find daily prompts is https://dailypost.wordpress.com.
Wordpress has both for-profit and non-profit branches within its organization. Stalwart participant in the open source movement, you can read more about the history of the company here where the freely distributed and free to use software platform is distributed and maintained, or here where you can get a free wesite or purchase wordpress hosted sites that are tailored to different personal and business types and needs. You have to love any company that considers its mission to be “the democratization of publishing.”
WordPress Prompts and Traffic Generation
The Daily Post sponsors WordPress University which exists to help those new to websites and WordPress create a successful blog.
I recommend using the prompts listed each day at the Daily Post as a start. All you need to do is:
- Go to the Daily Post’s prompts page and find the term that is the prompt of the day.
2. Write a post on your blog that thematically links to the prompt.
3. Go back to the prompts page and click on the word for today’s prompt.
4. You will be taken to a page for the word of the day. On that page, below the word of the day, you will see a phrase that says,
Want to participate? Publish a new post on your blog interpreting the theme. Create a pingback to this challenge and we’ll list your post below. Show instructions.
5. Click on the Show instructions link.
6. Below Show instructions, more complete text will toggle into view. It says,
“Pingbacks are easy! Just copy and paste the code below into the HTML tab of your post editor and you should be all set.
Please note that sometimes it takes a little while for your post to show up in our grid.
<a href="https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/delivery/">Delivery</a>
PLEASE NOTE: the last part of the link and the title of the link will change every day to reflect the inclusion of the word of the day. The above code shows …/delivery?” and >Delivery</a> This part of the code will change every day.
The code for that specific day needs to be somewhere in your post for the the post to ping back to the daily post to let it know it should list your blog post in on the wordpress posts page as the entry for the participating blog.
I simply link the word of the day, centered, at the top of the post as you can see at the very top of this post.
Do this for the days you participate.
Of course if you do not want the traffic to your site you may use the ideas for the prompts and not link or ping back.
Tying Prompts to Legacy
Almost any word can be tied to legacy. For example, today’s prompt is delivery. You could write a post about:
- Birth and delivering your child
- How was milk delivered to your grandmother’s house?
- How delivery and timing was the most difficult part of his stand up comedy routine for your Uncle Frank.
- How did lunch get delivered to your school as a kid, was that different from how your child had lunch at school? What about your grand
February 2017 Prompts
Female Connections to February
This month, February 2017, continues a several month-long streak of heightened, and potential, change as well as challenge for women, societal interactions and perceptions. This is true, dear reader, no matter where you fall into or upon any political spectrum. The only political opinion expressed here is that “not to make a decision is to make a decision.” Laying low is not opting out of discourse. It is support of the status quo, the people in power, the way things are. I was taught this by a woman I worked with at Purdue long, long ago, whose name may have change by now. She often said, crediting her father, that:
Not to make a decision is to make a decision.” — Mary Barger Briand (nee Barger Drapé)
Events in the U.S. in the last few months will continue to shift attitudes, actions, laws and norms concerning pay scales, business formation, education, healthcare, and every other practice within the sphere of women’s lives.
Role models, informative examples, do more than inspire. They guide. It is our intention that this month’s collection of women and women-related topics will inspire, but will also guide. This is especially important as we prepare for Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day.
So this year as always women must construct a strong present upon which to build the future , especially in this cock-sure year.
Celtic Groundhogs
Cailleach, a Gaelic/Celtic Goddess arrives as a crone at Samhein, after the Harvest has her last flurry of activity around Imbolc, Candlemas, or Groundhog Day which all fall at or near the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal Equinox. Contemporary Earth-centered religions call it a “cross quarter holiday” which denotes it is a midpoint date between a solstice and an equinox. Folk belief states that if Cailleach is out and about, and can be seen gathering firewood for the remainder of Winter, then Winter will continue on for a long while. If the day is rainy, or dreary and damp, she cannot gather firewood and Winter will not last much longer.
The hut of Cailleach Bheur by SylvanSmith on DeviantArt
The connections between the early February holidays seem obvious to me; so I suggest we rename the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, Punxsutawney Philomena. Groundhog day is February 2nd. Imbolc, the currently favored name, denoting something about ewe’s milk, for Pagans celebrating this midpoint is February 2nd this year. Candlemas, also celebrated on February 2nd is when Mary would have had purification rites, 40 days after Jesus’ birth. These observances to me are all interconnected. The ending of Winter was a heavy constant on the minds of early sedentary or agrarian peoples, reserves are low if not depleted, and the Spring with its light and promise of food is only a few days to a few weeks away.
Unlike the coming of Winter, when the goddess enters as an old woman, the coming of Spring, when the crone leaves, finds her more youthful, ready for the Spring and rebirth. She mirrors the cycle of seasons, or the Wheel of life, and the role of women to bring new life to the world even as they age. Cailleach inspires. Imbolc and Cailleach go hand in hand along with Saint Brigit and the Goddess Brigit. Some say that Imbolc is the celebration of Goddess recovering after giving birth to the God. As stated in The Right and the Wrong of Imbolc The Saint and the Goddess continue to intermingle into the present day. I suspect this is one more example of the covering or layering of Christian observations (Candlemas), not the creation of Candlemas, over indigenous ritual celebrations so as to supplant the Old Gods and Goddesses of a region.
No matter what you believe, Spring is coming. And Spring is female.
Votes and Valentines
Leap years, as defined by the presence of a 29th day in February take a bit of the splash of Valentines Day away as the neatest thing about February. But there is no Leap Day this year. So one of this year’s coolest things in February is the anniversary of the Utah Territory giving women the vote on February 12, 1869. What a great lead up to how on February 14th, perhaps we should celebrate the far seeing non-partisan, League of Women Voters that was founded founded February 14, 1920, six months before the 19th amendment was passed, rather than a martyred man (St. Valentine.) And while we are at it, let’s work in one of the incredibly important things that happened 50 years ago on February 14th. Aretha Franklin recorded Respect at Atlantic Records Studio, New York City: February 14, 1967
https://youtu.be/7kDGi8gYS18
So, yes, I am advocating to make Respect by Aretha a central part of any and every Valentines Day celebration.
There is more advocacy in which we need to engage. The next Leap Year will take lots and lots of extra planning and celebration as 2020 will be the 100th Anniversary of women gaining the right to vote with the passage 19th Amendment.
The following video of a panel discussion familiarizes us with some of the types of organizations who already are involved in the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.
Page Herrington’s panel, Women’s History on the Horizon: The Centennial of Woman Suffrage in 2020.
So let us continue on in these women-centric Celtic and political discussions.
Last year I featured Augusta Savage in my February post. Was I on top of it or what? This year Google featured another female sculptor, Edmonia Lewis, for the first day of Black History Month. I like women being included, featured, and celebrated!
Augusta Savage was born Augusta Christine Fells on Leap Day, February 29, 1892. Her passion for sculpting emerged early in childhood. To say that her minister father did not encourage this pursuit is a complete understatement. But despite her father’s physical punishment for crafting graven images as a child in her small town Florida home, the family’s move to West Palm Beach, Florida allowed her to study and teach art after her father softened his stance. After her husband’s death shortly after the birth of their only child, and a move back in with her parents, she moved to New York to pursue her study of art. Keeping her second husband’s name, she was one of the influential artists in the Harlem Renascence and won many significant commissions. She also waged personal battles against racism to call attention to and eventually shatter barriers for those who followed. In 1934 Augusta Savage became the first black member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.
More Women of February
Ursula Nordstrom
Born February 1, 1910, Nordstrom edited many of the classic children’s books of the mid-20th Century such as Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and Stuart White, Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and Elsie Minarick’s “I Can Read Books.”
Andre Norton
The “Grand Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy” authored “more than 130 novels, nearly 100 short stories and numerous anthologies that Ms. Norton edited in the science-fiction, fantasy, mystery and western genres…” NY Times March 18, 2005
Elizabeth Key
Please do not forget to feature women in any Black History Month writings you may do. Elizabeth Key was the first woman in The Colonies to legally win her freedom and whose case was then used against slaves and free persons to enslave more people based solely on their skin color or their parents’ skin color. Elizabeth’s story is critical to understanding that judicial rulings can take long-established rights away from individuals, and groups of people, as well as establish them.
Finally, let me mention one last link that taught me a bit more about women in black history as I searched for info to update this year’s February “writing prompts” post. No, make that two more links.
And Now For…
“Oh Lordy Lordy.”
That is what my mother might have said. Were she alive today, she would be 102. She was born before women had suffrage in the U.S.
I’ve been looking for a phrase that is tame enough to not offend, but that anyone who knows me will know I am turning something on its head when I use the phrase. I am considering this one. I am not one for Lords. Nor even Ladies. Caste systems do not appeal to me. When something wonderful happens and I want to acknowledge it, I throw my hands to the sky and say, “Thank you Goddess.” I do not believe that the great organizing principle in the sky is male, nor female, nor even sentient in any way we understand the term. And me, well, I am egalitarian to the core, grown up on a farm where horse drawn plows tilled the land until shortly before I was born, tossed from a public U.S. Senate Armed Services committee for calling, rather loudly, Donald Rumsfeld a liar on my 49th birthday in 2006. That about sums it up.
For the last few days I have been quiet, thinking, listening. Doing a lot of listening… to audiobooks. I am also looking forward to attending an evening with John Cleese and Eric Idle later this month in Together Again At Last…For The Very First Time. My choices for reading/listening are telling.
First, I finished listening to The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood the award winning author of The Handmaid’s Tale. This is the second title in the MaddAddam Triology. Oryx and Crake was the first book in the series. I am on the hold list for the third volume with my local library. I listen via Overdrive, an app I love. Somehow reading, re-reading, listening to end-of-the-world, disaster, and dystopian novels always improves my mood when I am really down. I used to read Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle every time I was really, really depressed.
I cannot praise the Maddaddam series enough. The Canadian author blends contemporary scientific knowledge with a nuanced understanding of what religion does for society and individuals as well as a rather enlightened ability to talk about society and cultural evolution. Intelligent, pertinent, and skilled. What more than that can I say?
Oh, I can wish Margaret Atwood a happy birthday. Margaret Eleanor Atwood was born on November 18, 1939. She lives in Toronto.
The second book was different from my usual dystopian fix. It was Zoo by James Patterson. I’m not a James Patterson fan. I made it through the listen, but I was disappointed. The characterization was lacking and personal motivation in characters was almost totally lacking. The science was not even laughable – more like groan provoking. I should have listened to Animal Farm. But it is good to stay on top of what the masses are being fed. Best-selling should never be confused with award-winning.
The third book is an old one, Neal Stephenson’s Zodiac from 1988. Greenpeace and monkey-wrenching are thinly disguised as slightly different entities and actions in this eco-thriller. He captures the era, the feel and mindset of the 1980s incredibly well. I wanted to revel in anti-corporatist elements of the novel but instead I am listening with an ear to how he conveys the time in which he is writing. But the thoughts of monkey-wrenching are very pertinent.
American women have an enormous task ahead of us to hold the fabric of our society together. Environmental degradation is escalating and empowering corporatism, as we have just done, will only hasten the collapse of the ecosystem. Devaluation of women and all we do destabilizes progress toward equal pay and creation of support structures that allow us to act as full citizens in a society where family probably doesn’t live nearby to help with daily family functioning such as childcare.
I Am Here as She Is Here and We Are All Together
I’m writing in the lobby bar of the J.W. Marriott in the L.A. Live complex getting ready for the BlogHer annual conference to commence tonight, Thursday, August 4th. I arrived here in LA on Tuesday night, but went to Long Beach via the metro and a bus on Wednesday to catch a ferry to one of the Channel Islands, Santa Catalina Island.
Yesterday was a personal pilgrimage to a place where a woman who influenced my understanding of what how a woman, a writer and a scientist could combine these constraints. She was a writer of simple, and sometimes saccharine tales of the midwest of her childhood in the mid-late 1800s. Gene Stratton-Porter wrote best-selling novels between 1904 and 1924. She also leveraged her celebrity and ability to sell books with her publishers so that she was able to write and publish an amateur science nonfiction book between each novel.
I grew up knowing about her forays into swampy and wetland areas where she used ethological practices to document the hatching of birds and other previously undocumented behaviors. The techniques she used would not be put into common practice until the likes of Jane Goodall began using non-intrusive methods to document animal behavior. Stratton-Porter also influenced Rachel Carson to work non-destructively within the living systems she loved and documented. Without the generations of influence of women who understood the world in different ways than the male-dominated science and governmental systems that controlled science and our understanding well into this century, we would live in a poorer world for lack of the nuanced understanding they brought to us and interjected about living systems. Their influence is still unfolding. They are all with us still.
I grew up amid remnant bits of swamp in the waterlogged mid-west, I know the settings of Stratton-Porter’s books. I grew up in them. I wanted to see the island she grew to love later in her life. So I took an afternoon trip the day before the conference started to Catalina Island in the Channel Islands off the California Coast.
I whole-heartedly recommend taking the ferry from Long Beach to Catalina. Here is a brief overview of my all too brief of a trip.
This trip oriented me in an unanticipated way for the largely female attended conference I attended over the next three days. For me, and perhaps through me, the past all the way back to the 1800s touched the future of women’s communications throughout the 21st Century. Gene would be proud.