The two sisters and the circle of horses

A story of two sisters and the horse circle - Images by Natalya McDonnell

It is an unusual story. Two sisters.
Zoe and Sybil. Rattus rattus.
They had heard of the great circle of horses
& They had to see for themselves.
They slipped out carefully and went to the arena at the special time.
So excited Zoe peeked over the red curtains, she could hardly wait

But, before they knew it there were horses all around them.

It was scary they almost got stepped on;  the horses came so close.
But in time it was exciting and the ritual of the circle called to them.
The horses were nice and Sybil joined their ritual circle and walked her "pride walk" in time to the drums circling with the horses.
Zoe tried to see if she could get on one and ride.
It was amazing.

The the sisters began to speak to the circling horses...
of their hopes, their lives, and to imagine a whole new way.
They spoke to the circle and they were heard.
Things could change!!

But suddenly there was stamping and the noises of fear. Hoof beats ringing loud -- horses with shoes? --  unfamiliar and, someone was yelling.

They heard "run!"
     "run!"
from the breath of the horses around them
But before they knew what was happening there was the shadow of the lasso over their heads

Oh no.... what will happen to them?

Any ideas?  Will they escape? What were they plotting with the horses?

[thanks to Natalya McDonnell for providing Zoe, Sybil and all the Schleich horses. Take note photographers.... rats are hard to work with. They constantly move and each part of them seems to move separately. Yikes!]

The Late Bloomer: Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Live in six weekly sessions online beginning September 21, 2011

Return once again to the “fireside” and join with women (and honorary women) from all over the world to hear Dr CPE present the latest from her masterwork on the Dangerous Old Woman.
 

Dr. E is living medicine

In this new program there are more original stories, poems, and psychological commentary exploring the cycles of “burgeoning, blooming New Life.  In the topic list there are such compelling topics as: "Aunt Edna on How to Misbehave", "Possession by the Overculture: Stockholm Syndrome and the Creative Force" and here is one "“The Woman Who Was Eaten by Her Relatives” 

Follow this link to The Late-Bloomer at Sounds True for the details and course topics.  All sessions can be downloaded to listen and share again later. 

 

You will be very glad you came in whatever way you can

Septic Shock newsletter-- finale

I emerge from my experience of septic shock not yet able to tell the story in a way that feels quite right.   There is much to process -- much good and much that is just much-- intense and interesting and that still needs digesting. In literature I find words that help me.  Here is a section from a wonderful book by Molly Gloss called "the Dazzle of Day"- Quaker science fiction. Ursuala LeGuin meets Rufus Jones. A wonderful book.  In one chapter a woman is working on a boat and trying to save a person that has been injured. She is preparing to jump with him from a small raft to the main boat and instead hits the side with her shins, misses her landing, and says....

"I lost hold of the boat and sank with him, straight down.

I had been afraid, waiting to jump, but now I wasn't afraid. How quickly our ties and ballasts are cast off! I was of the Owl Strait, suddenly my outstretched elbows were resting in fjords, my palms outspread on the cobbled beaches. Inside my body there were forest of lichens, galaxies of starfish and lamp jellies, and in my bones the shields of turtles, the teeth of balenoj. I felt in my blood the long slow tide, straining after the sun -- I was water, and its unknowable alchemies, dreading nothing, simply streaming and alive. This was one of those times when your mind and body cohere and you understand suddenly what the poets say: To die is different from what you had supposed, and luckier.


Then unpredictably I began to rise up through the muffled darkness toward the dazzle of the daylight -- Kikuma was hauling me up-- I remembered I was tied fast to the boat. There was a curious moment: I had a sense that I must now make an accommodation to the world, as if I had lived a long time under the sea."


......I was grateful, exhausted. We were laboring through heavy seas with the edge of the puso weather whining in the windpipe, but I didn't try to hold this or anything in my mind. I lolled in the bottom of the boat, my skill rocking dumbly among the sliding scraps of salvage. While Kikuma was steering for a lee shore, I suppose I stood up from my life and let it stream around me in a clear cataract. I was freed from time, not lying inside a dream but standing in the compass of heaven where everything goes onward and outward, nothing collapses -- and when I lay down in my life again we were beating noreast along the cape. When I looked over the gunnel of the boat, across the strait toward the rocks there was a break in the sky and the sun broke fleetingly across the water in long bright reef - the puso weather had gone over our heads onward."

The details of  my own story-- the fall into illness & the moments with death nearby-- the similarities and differences from what the author describes here are important to me.  But, I appreciate that it is close enough and that it helps me. The word "cohere" struck me because it is exactly the one that was in my mind when I was so deeply ill.   I was considering whether to melt or cohere.   How quickly one becomes ether and water and then the effort required to return and remain embodied, combined with gratitude.

What I learned was good news about dying and living and it is this quiet calm and relief that I want to tell you about.  I hope as I carry the experience forward and live it that in time I'll find a creative expression that suits it. Who knows, fiber arts, song, silence, drawings, or simply growing old as a woman touched by life and death.


 Be well and happy and thanks for the kindness from so many.
Sharon

Welcome: Newest Mother-Daughter Press Photographer-- John Feldhahn-- my grandfather

This path and gate lead forward and backward for me.  Sometimes I have heard something 1000 times but only on the 1001st time do I understand and take in what is important. Some paths are impossible to predict.  Who would have put me here looking at photos, family photos, and being touched as an artist and a daughter and mother.



My mother told me about her parents. That they were artists among their regular lives. My grandmother went to Parsons school of design -- enabled by the men in her life.  My grandfather loved photography. I heard this many times and I remember him with a camera and trying to catch us all in photogenic moments. But none of this prepared me for the day, about a month ago, when I opened up the boxes of photos she saved of his slides. They were beautifully filed, labeled, and even had compelling names on them such as "my 50 favorite pictures".  [Note to all mortal photographers-- this is one way to make your work live]. 

I fell into 3 days of breathtaking photos of people I knew including myself, my family, and complete strangers. So, as we have been selecting photographers to work with Mother-Daughter Press I want to welcome John Feldhahn and share just a couple of photos of his.  John's family came from Germany and he was born in Nebraska to a family that joined the Church of Latter day Saints. His mother Anke was a seer, a prophet, and woman not to be trifled with.  John went to Pharmacy school and met Madeline Crick at college.

The gate shown in the first photo was made by Madelines father -- Mr. Crick at his foundry in Independence Missouri. Much of the wrought iron work in their yard came from the foundry.

Until recently however, this one below was the only photograph of Johns I knew well.



It is Gay's wedding day. He has set the stage for this photograph. Each detail carefully thought out. She is very happy and wearing yards of blue silk. He places a photograph of her husband to be in a frame behind her and one of her mothers wedding in the other picture. He asks her to hold a mirror and look towards it. She wants to hide her hands, the ones whose nails she nibbled and a febrile illness had rendered unlovely to her.   They practice many shots but this is the one they like best.
The care and attention to detail are part of what make this photograph so beautiful. The model is gorgeous and the connection of photographer to subject-- uncommon and good.

Gay later worked some of his photos in with hers luckily, the same garden he photographed stayed in the family and my aunt Lois worked in it and made it even more lovely so we have over 60 years of one garden in photos.  Gay took his intital slide and then added in elements of Lois' garden and her own too. In this picture, that is her bird, his bird bath, Lois' birdhouse, and all of them shared the orchard. The flowers were from all three gardens.  


We were all shocked to end up gardners after watching our parents do it. Years later wishing we could ask them questions. This is the next best thing to getting a second chance to play in the dirt with them and design somthing together.

We plan to put many of Johns Photos in a web gallery and some images to stock for those places that like historical or antique images.  I am so pleased to have these to show.

Congratulations to John and his family :)
Let us know if you want to see more of his work or their work "together". Look for the stone pedestal birdbath as one clue 
Sharon

Watching photographers & A love story

Living with photographers

In his quiet way James Bumgarner took a picture of his wife Gay Bumgarner
The Photographer
They are in Costa Rica and
She crouches in the undergrowth still and watchful
waiting, camera to her eye focused close.
There is a chance that the unusual butterfly of the area – it being the reason for their hike to this section of the forest, where it’s preferred plants grow --
and its unique black and white sworls, will come & be at home

She waits watching... carefully.  Filled with anticipation at this good spot and feeling lucky --- a lucky day perhaps.
she hears a click behind her and looks up smiling surprised to see her husband standing very near. 
He replaces the lens cap and wears a wry satisfied smile.
She smiles up at him-- and asks if he saw something "good."

He is happy with his camera and its long lens. He enjoys looking -- watching the exotic world ----and she thinks he would be just as happy with a good set of binoculars since he seldom actually takes a picture yet, he always seems content about it.
"Did you see something?” -- she wonders. 'what inspired him to actually take a picture?'
He looks at her with mischief and says,
"The view from here is just lovely" and she is filled with the pleasure of his attention and the compliment.
Their marriage is still brand new, her sense of good fortune unfazed.

He watches, as the wind plays with her hair
and smiles.
His pleasure in her company, her beauty, and her joy is a sturdy force
--- delight durable as an element of earth

In her white blond, Gringa hair, the butterfly is an exotic hair bow,
A stylish fascinator 
& as The Great Eggfly warms itself brief notions of flowers rise up -- butterfly visions-- created by the sun releasing the aromatic floral scent from her shampoo

Does the man speak to her of the butterfly?
No, likely not.
Her butterfly, the one meant for her, will come in time and she will be filled with excitement at its beauty and the efforts of making a picture.

Much later the yellow box of slides, "Kodachrome" comes in the mail and she peers  down her loupe at the slides on the lightbox.
She is confused and then she laughs in music.

Ah, the Great Eggfly (Hypolimnas bolina)
She goes to him.
--------------------------------------------
Note: There weren't many photos that James Bumgarner took and this is one she kept.  These are my imaginings combined with my rememberings of those times.  For all who knew them, enjoy.  If you are a photographer or live with one....enjoy too.
Have you a photo or a story like this?

Sharon

Yes, four frogs. Thanks for counting

Hello, this is a bullfrog, Rana catesbeiana, smiling up at me from my "swimming pool" in Maine. She/he has her very own mosquito sitting in front of her that I think will be lunch (is it shocked into inaction or unaware?)

Thanks to all who played the guessing game.  You were right-- there were 4 visible. Most of you figured that if I was asking the question then there must be a trick so, most said "I see four but there are probably more".   Such a crafty lot you are.  But, I really wanted to know if the pictures on the website are actually visible in the way we have sized them.  Seems like everyone could see the details and count the 4 (visible) frogs.

The question is whether we should move away from thumbnails and offer bigger web pictures that will do them justice.  However, the problem comes when you try to make navigation and selection easy. I haven't seen what I like yet. It is just one of those head scratchers that may never be answered.

This big wonderful frog makes me happy because our "pool" is not going to get its complete maintenance this year and thus will be given over to the wildlife. Most of the wild life is amphibian and they sing deeply and with enthusiasm each evening.  They don't seem to mind my daytime visits with my camera at all.   I spend a lot of time archiving Gay's photos and some of the photos are 20 or 30 years old. Thus, the animal or creature in most cases is long dead. But, in this case I have a pool filled with frogs, tadpoles, and eggs, and a camera to learn so I am going to get to know them awhile in real-time.  I have even taken to giving them names.

In one of Gay's photography journals she admits that the frogs are one of her favorite animals to photograph. I agree but perhaps for different reasons. Right now I appreciate that they sit still a lot and although they are amphibian I find their faces seem expressive and interesting.

So, stay tuned to the updates from the frog pond in Yarmouth.  Join the blog if you want the updates...its free, easy, & more reliable than me remembering to send it to you by email.

Next will be a love story of cardinals with an unveiling of new cardinal and winter birds with berries.

My  health os still improving but it is slower than I would wish.  Thanks to all the well-wishers.

Sharon

ps here is the next photo taken after the one shown in previous blog-- those ol anti-social frogs just haven't read the books about amphibians I guess. I only see three here but we know there are more.

How many frogs do you see?

Put your count in the comments section of Facebook, or the website or email. Respondents are rewarded

If you cannot see very well (picture too small eyes, too old?) then you can go to original photo at

PHOTO COUNT THE FROGS

In the scientific literature bullfrogs are considered solitary and not particularly social although no distinction is made by sex.  Some sources say they will eat other frogs including smaller bullfrogs.  However, there is a growing appreciation of the complexity of their vocalizations as a clue to the oversimplification that may have been applied to their social lives and general intelligence.  If they are so darn solitary why are they always sitting around on lily pads and rocks together calling back and forth?

I think frogs are big jokers in the natural world. They love to make sudden noises or to leap up when it is least expected;  creating surprises for frogs and non-frogs too.  I think they love the freaked out look on those caught off guard.  If you watch them a lot there are activities that looks suspiciously like play.

For example, in the photo below there are two frogs sharing a moment of tender affection.  You don't see this kind of amphibian intimacy everyday.





 In fact in the close cropped view of the picture look at the front of the photo and you can see two young jokers ready to make sure that the intimate moment being shared won't last long or end quietly.




These fellows made a colossal nuisance of themselves in a very social way.  They swam surreptitiously under the lily pads emerging beside the quiet pair & filling the air with sudden loud calls.


Then diving under water they would be gone but I could see their silent eyes among the leaves. until they would reappear , out of sight only to reappear and jump on the occupied lily pad making it tip and then off they would go, kicking the pad and making it spin wildly so it would tip and  spin.

A group of frogs is called an "army of frogs".

Check out our new updated gallery of frogs and toads Amphibians galore here
I hope you are enjoying the frogs this summer by sight and sound.

And how many frogs are there up there in photo #1?

Sharon