MaryAlice Musings and More

Today was the first and only day in January where the temperature went above 32 degrees fahrenheit....January thaw, but not official because it has to be more than 2 days, and we are only get in one in January and the next day in February is not supposed to get above freezing.  Minnesotans in masse and me in particular went out to Medicine Lake (very urban ring of the twin cities) and visited the art shanty  projects... 20 plus "shanties" on the ice.. check it out. One of my highlights was teaching this gay guy how to knit in the knitting shanty (it was a yurt).  The entire experience is totally minnesota,  an acquired taste, and I went with a native - so all the better.  artshantyproject.org   So after being just jazzed up on the life on the ice.  I went to my neighborhood bar for a fundraiser for Kevin Reich.  I have known Kevin since shortly after I moved "nordeast"  he was born here, is a died in the wool community organizer, and is running for city council....I...

I am off to an evening of great music. Having just had a Five-Element Acupuncture treatment, I feel tuned up, refined, and ready to let in this music experience that I am sure will be heart opener and soul sustainer. January is almost done, there has been no thaw. The light of the day is longer. The sun is higher in the sky. The earth rotation keeps moving, keeps beating. I am breathing deep and glad that it is the end of the work week. That I have a wonderful plan for the evening. Tomorrow is tax preparation and Art Shanties. The world of paying attention to what needs to be done, making the ice and snow a friend, enjoying creativity, and having some fun.... Say Yes. Breathe it in.

There is such a huge range of what is real at this time.  Such hope and trust and appreciation of President Obama actually talking to Arab world with respect.  The tears of a mother who can no longer help her son to attend college and he has to leave, her lifetime dreamed seemingly dashed.  So as I knit, as I use my needle and turn wool into felt I hold it all in my heart.  That this divine creative spark I am manifesting acts as a pray a wish for the pain to be lessened, reconciliation to become a reality.  It is all right here right now.   "In everything is the hidden wholeness".  Thomas Merton

This morning very early I had a dream about days of January thaw.  At least I think I was dreaming, or it might have been that time when one is just awakening.  I was remembering that we have not had a January thaw, and maybe one will happen on the last day of the month but so far NO thaw.  I then went back some 30+ years ago when I was living in southwest Wisconsin in Vernon County.  They grow tobacco in Vernon County, it is not a high grade tobacco, it is one that is used as outside wrapper on what must be really bad cigars, or who knows what.  When I lived there in the early 70's, getting a tobacco allotment (there was a tobacco cooperative) was a valued commodity, you could grow on a very small parcel land enough tobacco to pay your taxes and other baseline expenses.  I planted and weeded and topped and harvested the tobacco-I did not "strip" it.  That is when you take the "cured" dried tobacco off the lathe and put into tobacco boxes for shipment and sale. ...

For a few moments this morning, the sky looked like a negative.  Pretty soon there will be people who do not know what a negative in, but I think I am safe now with the metaphor.  I was watching the sky, which is something that I spend time during almost every morning.  It is a morning meditation, a way for me to more slowly become awake.  A thank you for the our planet, the universe, to enjoy the majesty that is right here outside of my sliding doors.  Then there are moments like this morning when it's just amazing what is in the sky,  the clouds were all dark gray, some almost black, and the rest of the sky was white and light gray.  It did not last long, but it was a great picture.  I am glad my eye got to see it and my heart got to feel it.  A little gift at the beginning of another below zero day!  Happy Winter.

In 1992, the Americans with Disabilities Act went into effect.   Today is also, the first day of the Chinese New Year.  This year is the year of the Ox.  The Ox symbolized strength, stability and prosperity.  President Obama was born under the year of the Ox,  they believe that people born under this sign are born to lead, and are able to speak with great clarity and impact.   Here's to the continued effects of the landmark ADA legislation, and to this New Year and to our President who was born under this sign that we celebrate today.

Today was a recharge day.  I decided to not go out of the house.  I just had a completed whimp out day about the cold.  It's 2 degrees or so as I write, and it has been colder today, then there's the wind, and I had a pile of mail that has gotten larger and larger - so I decided it was "stay inside" day.  I had basketball on much of the day, it was background noise, except when the gopher's women's game was on!  It was ugly, they won, and I was glad to be home.  The pile of mail has been reduced substantially.  There is now a stack of envelopes, bills, letters, replies - finished.  Recharging, completion, finishing up - these are good things to do before Monday brings a new work week, a week when the Governor announces his budget,  we will hear (maybe) who will be the interim Deputy Commissioner and Medicaid Director - the current one will be gone on Friday,  and there will be countless meetings, contract negotiations, and more.  So it is good to have a day wh...

I spent the day with a very dear person in my life.  We were both dressed up in our most cold weather clothes, beautiful hats,  colorful mittens, scarves that protected us from the frigid weather and made us seem even more beautiful.  The sun was beautifully brilliant - we went in search of beauty and creativity - go to see "The Party" photos up at IFP, then off for Pho soup, and onto the Joan Mondale Textile Gallery.  It was a great way to get in from out in the cold.  To stoke up the heart, to be present.  It stirred and soothed as soul friends do with each. After I had said goodbye, rested and was still, I picked up several books of poems.   I always have poetry books close at hand, Mary Oliver, Rumi,  Hafiz, Nikki Giovanni, all right there for when I want to touch another kind of soul moment.  I like to just open one up, see what surprise or old friend I might find.  I grabbed Hafiz.  Perfect on a crystal clear cold cold cold winter night. Because of Our Wisdom In many pa...

Today, more than 4 1/2 months since my surgery, I went to my follow up appointment with my sleep doctor!  This was the appointment that happens AFTER the sleep study.  I knew that my sleep study had been pretty successful, I did not have to use a C-PAP machine.  I thought my numbers would be "pretty good" - but I couldn't believe what I heard when Dr. Alter sat down with me this a.m.  He was smiling and asked me if I remembered my numbers from the sleep study -- I hadn't but he reminded me that I did not have ANY stage of sleep that was in a normal range...I had 58.5 episodes of sleep apnea per hour.  So what about now?  Every stage of sleep was in the normal range.  There were 8 episodes of sleep apnea in the ENTIRE NIGHT --- No obstructive sleep apnea ---those are the kinds where you have delayed breathing.  The verdict?  NO Sleep Apnea...none.  The doctor said he was not only surprised, he was shocked!  Both he and the surgeon (Alter and Goding good names!) thought...

This voice that we have from our new President is not a new voice, but a voice that has listened, learned, and stepped into it's own place.  Today a friend sent me one of  Mary Oliver's poems...a reminder of how this "change" manifests itself one moment and one action at a time.....let's remember that we get to "Wage Peace" Wage peace with your breath. Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwind blackbirds. Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact. Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud. Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers. Make soup. Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages. Learn to knit, and make a hat. Think of chaos as dancing raspberries. Imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of...

What a Day!  The wave of people, the lifted spirit, the moment has come.  In the face of adversity, how fine to take a moment to celebrate!  History will always punctuate this day. And a fine fine poem to honor the day.   Praise Song for the Day!  Elizabeth Alexander wrote such  beautiful and accessible poem - a poem for the day a poem for everyone!  A celebration with words.  

I am without words. I have been listening to words,  watching pictures, and exploring my own landscape.  How is it we will all be free.  How do we end racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and all types of discrimination?  One thought, one action, one open moment at a time.  So in the bigness of Civil Rights of stepping up and doing what needs to be done.  Where is the solace?  Tomorrow night Beyonce will sing a song made famous by Etta James.  Here is Etta James, At Las t .  (if the link doesn't work, go to You Tube - search Etta James - at Last)! Settle in, enjoy the moment!

I am on an emotional roller coaster.  As we get closer to the Inauguration I have been so deeply moved by the history, the possibility, the sense of this country actually trying to perfect itself.  I feel so present as I listen to the speeches, the music from the Lincoln Memorial today.  Then I find myself caught by memories.  Driving the old volvo that we each chipped in $25.00 - and driving to DC, the snowstorms were so bad in Pennsylvania that I found myself just coasting on the shoulder as 5 other people slept in the early morning dawn.  Each of us moved to action to speak out against the Vietnam War.  Remembering 1987, the Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, not the first, but the  biggest.  The renewed and tangible clarity that this IS my country, that this government is MY government, and that I had a right to participate completely and fully.  I remember being in Lincoln Park and along Lake Michigan in Chicago in 1968.  The Chicago blues, race riots, singing in church, walking...

Today I kept sitting at my table and watching as the Presidential train traveled to Washington, DC.  Mostly I had the mute button on and just watched and paid attention to what was happening inside of me, what was being tapped and unfolding as I watched the president-elect, his family, all the people who waited in the cold for whatever reason they each had.  I am struck that when I am watching something momentous on the TV, I think about my Mother and I watching over and over President Kennedy being shot and the aftermath.  I remember my Mother grabbing me and yelling when his possible assassin was shot live on TV.  I don't know where my siblings or my stepfather were at these times, it seemed just my Mom and me were glued to the television and to each other.  So my Mom was for sure flitting around the room this afternoon, and while Barack Obama was shaking hand after hand in Wilmington, Delaware I was surprised to feel tears rolling down my cheeks.  The tears were from this place ...

Each morning this week as the temperature plunged I watched this rabbit, who would walk Maybe it is in this ruling hour that the rabbit walks slowly across my doorway,  stops and gives me a moment of pause.  The stone associated with the rabbit is a pearl, and in the early morning light, when the temperature is way way below zero, much is the color of the pearl.  There is a vapor that rises.  The rabbit signifies the artistic, the sensitive, diplomatic hospitable aspects.  With each connection I have begun to spend less time wondering what this rabbit is doing in my backyard at 6:30 a.m. looking into my house, and more just being present with this furry animal that has a home near mine, and that I am gifted with their presence as the morning sun barely shines at the start of a frozen still day.

I was talking with a friend while sitting in my dining room, and I realized my entire back side was getting really cold.  The cold was just radiating in from the sliding glass door.  We went out to kitchen to check the thermometer -14 and dropping!  The stars are twinkling, and the comics are heating up on the cold weather.  I am trundling off to get under the covers wondering what the temperature will be in the morning.  More cold, cold, cold.  

It might get down to a real temperature of -25 tonight.  Tomorrow may never even get close to zero.  It is cold, cold, cold.  Glad that I can now watch instant movies on Netflix!  I am watching movies from southern India, so warm, so colorful, such great stories of devotion, passion.  A great way to find comfort in the deep freeze.  Waiting and knowing that by Saturday we will be moving towards a January thaw.  30 degrees will be a cause for celebration, the shoulders will relax in a Minnesota heat wave.

My Gramma would have been 99 years old today.  She was born on January 13th, 1910.  I always thought that she was born on a Friday, Friday the 13th, but I don't know if that is true or a great family myth.  My Gramma grew up south of Toledo, Ohio.  They lived on a farm, 6 girls, one boy.  Oh my Gramma and her sisters, I loved every one of them, and I am sorry that they are all gone. But not from my memory.  My grandmother died when she was 72 years old.  She died too young.  She had the most biggest heart, and she was my hero, a compass point for me.  She honored my dreams, encouraged them, gave me hope, helped me to take steps that even I could not imagine.  As I write I am looking around my living room,  there a elephants peeking out from any number of places,  there are elephants in every one.  My Gramma collected elephants.  She was given her first one by an almost boyfriend who was not my grandfather!  I played with them, she let me play with the elephants, I let my granddaugh...

I started this blog as I was getting ready to have surgery on my throat.  The surgery I elected to do was to decrease the severity of my sleep apnea which was severe and a long term threat to my overall health.  A sleep study is  the "science" of what is happening with my body when sleeping.  This post surgery study could not occur until all swelling from the surgery was gone.  2-3 months post surgery.  Last night I trundled off to the sleep clinic.  There I was slathered with gel where the electrodes would go!  On my head, my face, my legs, my chest, my neck, my belly....hardly a spot not scrubbed.  "All dead cells have to scrubbed off in order for the electrodes to register", the technician said.  I owwed, and ouched, and gritted my teeth, as I was prepped.  Then electrodes were all in place.  The next step was picking out the appropriate C-PAP mask.  I almost ripped off the electrodes and went screaming out of the bedroom, the #1 reason why I had surgery was to e...

I am just finishing up a new "altered book", this book is from a big bag of stuff that my friend Kathleen gave to me along with a copy of a special book she had from her "young adult" reading days.  Wikipedia defines an altered book as: " a form of mixed media artwork that changes a book from it original form into a different form, altering its meaning."  It is a work of art, that I relate less to about altering and more about transforming.  This new book is magical, and I have kept several pages of the book preserving some of the line drawings.  I have colored, glittered, cut, pasted, glued all kinds of goodies that came from little stashes of Kathleen's.  Souvenirs and memories, a few things that I pulled out a my "stash".  For the first time, I am imagining a show.  It would have altered books, collages, felted boxes and bowls,  knitted accessories, and felted hats and jewelry, and poetry.  The show would honor my art and creativity - and ...

I have just returned from a work retreat.  We had several folks from "out of state" that participated in our meeting.  They were from New Brunswick, NJ, Tennessee, and Tucson, Arizona --- They all were psyched because there had been big big news about a substantial snow storm.  They planned to stay an extra night...and at the end of our meeting today at 4:30 p.m.  they were all pretty sad - no snow.  I am having brunch with them tomorrow and I fear that the skies are not looking like snow.  Then there are my friends in Madison, WI.  They ARE getting more snow, last year they set records 100"+ and they are on course to beat that record.  Snow weary the second week of January is not good.  So days come and go,  the weather report hit and miss.  And some of us would actually like to, " let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!".   

My boss and I were driving to Monticello this afternoon.  We were so engaged in having space and time to talk to each other, that we were well past our exit, when we realized that we didn't exactly know what exit on 94W we should get off on to get to our hotel.  So in the afternoon sun, we drove another 15+ miles, no exits out in the middle of nowhere.  We finally turned around and laughed as we pulled into the hotel 8 minutes before the start of the meeting.   We agreed upon a rule when we travel.  Read the directions and know where you are going!  A life rule with greater applications than our highway wonderingsQ Our facilitator is trained in appreciative inquiry, and it has been so energizing and refreshing to come to our from a place of pride, excitement, enthusiasm, hopes, and wishes.  It is like the difference in reading out loud from Winnie the Pooh,  Tra la la, tra la la,  humm, humm, tra la la vs. oh bother!  So I am enjoying the feeling that comes from being with a small ...

I am anxious and excited and feel great anticipation for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.  Today I put the inauguration poster on my blog site....Be The Change.  And I am also being pulled to listen.  To think and to try to understand from wise ones who carry a message that is clear in its history, who are willingly our teachers.  Reading Thich Nhat Hahn, messages from the Dalai Lama, former Presidential addresses.  What are the the threads, how do we, how do I continue to practice and embrace right action.  How do we find our way out of a world filled with war and terror and fear, and into our community, into ourselves?   This message from the Hopi nation has been out in the internet for a number of years, I have been reading and rereading  We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour Now we must go back and tell the people this is the Hour And there are things to be considered: Where are you living? What are you doing? Are...

The 13th day after Christmas...Epiphany.  The story of Epiphany is that this is the day that the three Magi visited the baby Jesus in the manger.  The MAGI came bearing three gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.  They also came to warn Mary and Joseph that they had to leave the country.  The wise men had had a dream, and in this dream they were warned that King Herod had plans to kill the baby.  They fled to Egypt and were saved.  The Wise men were never seen again. King Herod went on to kill all of the male infants and children under the age of two, the Massacre of the Infants.  The term MAGI comes from Old Persian magus.  It refers to an occupational title of the Priestly caste of Zoraster.  They were first known as priests from the Wisdom Schools, and were before the name Magi, called Magicians, and were known as wise men.   So here we are at the Epiphany- a divine manifestation.  May we all know and recognize our epiphanies.  

in 1914 Henry Ford introduced the $5 a-day minimum wage.  Some people with disabilities work all day long in a "sheltered workshop" making less than $5 per day....this is something that we could change before 2014.... in 1933  the first day of excavation for the Golden Gate Bridge, still a wonder and beauty of the world.  I drove over it in August...an amazing site.... in 1925 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman governor of a state (Wyoming!) --- yeah for the wild west....let's hope by 2025 we can have a woman as president! in 2009 the Minnesota State Canvassing Board certifies Al Franken as the winner of the U.S. Senate race.... who knows what year it will be when the legal battles end.

I am re-reading Alice Walker's book,  "We are the ones we have been waiting for."  Such an honoring of what we know from within.  The pause, is being comfortable, honoring the stillness, the quiet within oneself.  Being empty.  Filling up.  Understanding the rhythms.  Today I worked on a new "Altered Book".  I was given a book of "memories" from a friend, and a book that was special to her as a child.  It has now turned into a work of art.  The book of hundreds of pages is now 12 pages.  Scraps of paper, buttons, fabric, cards, all cut and pasted and glued, each inch of a page filled with inspiration and love and well wishes.  It is what comes from and with the pause.  The filling up and emptying.  All a part of a deep wisdom and trust and care.  What a nice way to begin a new year.

It has been 5 years since my Mom died.  She, Joyce Colleen died on New Years Eve 2005 (I have had a hard time remembering what year it was, it seems so long ago and yet at times just like yesterday).  I spent the last month of her life with her.  She and her husband, my step dad Ralph, and my youngest brother lived together in their home on the gulf coast of Florida.   It was the first time that I blogged - what I did everyday was send an email out to family and friends.  It was a way for me to be present with myself and reflect in some way what I was experiencing, what was happening as my Mother moved closer and closer to death.   This is a portion of the email that I sent out letting people know that she had died.   "Dear Ones, At 5:00 a.m. this morning Mom died.  She slipped away without even the teensiest bit of a struggle--she was finally totally and completely ready.  Bobby Coin, the nurse who was with Mom for the last two nights was a saint.  He was Mom's nurse and adov...

My favorite blogger (Patti Digh) did it again for me this 1st day of the new year.  She invites us all to learn to love the questions.  Oh yes, the questions, they are the roads we travel, the paths we walk, the lanes we bike on, sometimes with a map a clear destination, many times with neither.  It is a good reminder for me, a kind of resolution that I continue to learn to love the questions, it is easy for me to live with the ambiguity of  exploratory questions that help to provide information to further formulate a concept.  It is more difficult to love the questions that come in the dark, out of nowhere, that reflect the unimaginable, the undesired.  Yes, learning to love the questions and to notice an answer!   "And now let us welcome the New Year full of things that have never been."  Rainer Maria Rilke