Wisconsin – THE DAILY ROUND

Becoming, Celebration, Daily Round, February, Full Moon Cottage, January and February adventures, Nature, Noticing, Slow Life, Snow, Spirit, Winter, Wisconsin

February Celebrations

February 8, 2015March 23, 2020by Kitty4 Comments

A typical February day, both in my memories and today’s experience, is gray, muddy, and moist. Puddles and the sound of melting snow dripping on the deck are a constant, as are the imprint of paw prints across the wooden floor, requiring several quick swipes with the mop each day.

For variety, such days alternate with sudden freezes, like the one forecast for later this week, that turn every walkable outdoor surface to ice, and every necessary navigation to a dance with death, or at least a possible broken limb or two. In November, I look forward to snow and ice for all the magic they bring; by February, the melting of all that snow and ice, and then the freezing of all those puddles, become less and less enjoyable. The garden catalogues have become so pawed through the ink has blurred and “gardener’s impatience” begins to mount: Let me out! I want to plant seeds, and weed weeds, and caress the earth.

Of course, imagining spring and summer, I project only future bliss. In my fantasy of the coming months, there is no humidity; no chiggers or Asian beetles terrorize me or my gardens; no drought threatens to choke green lushness, nor will constant rains drown it. It is the promise of perfection that contrasts so sharply with the utter dreariness of February, a month whose name means “purification,” not a great selling point. It’s also been called “mud month” and “cabbage month,” also not terrific slogans were we advertising its virtues.

We northern natives survive this challenging month, knowing it leads to the perfectly-placed season of Lent (Yay! Six weeks of spiritual purgation!), by having winter celebrations, heralding the longer days, making fun and sport where clearly Mother Nature and the Catholic Church intended none to exist.

This week, we’ll celebrate Valentine’s Day; the following week, Mardi Gras, and, locally, the Knickerbocker Festival exists solely to celebrate celebrating, I think, although it’s ostensibly dedicated to winter’s unique offerings, of which I am a devoted fan. I love snow and ice, snow-shoeing and hiking, skating, and the way the winter atmosphere and the many crystals it creates refract light like no other season.

For the local festival this year, some men built a small scale version of Stonehenge, using ice from the lake. Icehenge generated some media attention, and the day I walked down to take a look and some photos, I met people from the Madison and Milwaukee area, who came for the adventure…as I said, it’s a tough month, and any excuse to get out and do something different is welcome.

February celebrations save our sanity just long enough to last till the first mosquito bite.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without Catherine O’Meara’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors.

Balance, Becoming, Environment, Gifts, Gratitude, Listening, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Silence, Slow Life, Spirit, Transformation, Travel, Web of Creation, Wisconsin

Island Vacation

October 5, 2013March 23, 2020by Kitty12 Comments

My husband and I wanted a break. Together. After so many years together, there is little we want or need; instead, the best gift we can give each other is shared time, away from the rutted routines we walk each day. New views help to create new outlooks, and the shared imaginings we have for this slow life we’re co-creating can be stimulated and renewed by travel. The weather’s been warm and the fall color is blushing its way down the state, so we decided to take 4 days and head a bit north, to the state’s largest Cranberry Festival.

Wisconsin produces most of our country’s cranberries and festivals are held every autumn to celebrate the harvest. I’d read something about “1200 booths” participating at this festival, and thought this referred to artists and flea-market/antique vendors. I knew there was a cranberry-focused museum and bog tours, so it sounded like a perfect adventure.

We drove up the night before the festival opened and met other festival-goers when we checked-in to our hotel. “Oh, we come every year; you’ll love it!” they assured us. We woke up early to head from our hotel to the little town, Warrens, where it’s held. This is what we saw:

A tiny town crammed with thousands of people lugging carts around to booths that lined streets and sidewalks, and narrow, narrow “alleyways,” everywhere. Claustrophobic doesn’t begin to describe it, and the merchandise was largely made-in-China mass-produced schlock. Little art, no antiques. Disappointment…I could feel my anticipation swirling down and drowning in one of the numerous stomach-turning vats of frying fat preparing decidedly non-cranberry food.

It wasn’t a complete or epic fail: We appreciated a brief bus tour of some cranberry bogs and enjoyed the town’s museum, but then exited the noisy, packed town. Quickly.

10:00 A.M. and three days left to our Cranberry Festival vacation. Hmmm. Luckily, my travel partner makes me laugh, easily and deeply, and did; all would be well.

Happily, this part of the state is rich in geological and environmental history. The almost 44,000-acre Necedah Wildlife Refuge, just a few miles from the over-crowded shopping spree of the cranberry festival, called to us.

When the “local” glaciers retreated almost 15,000 years ago, they left a vast, low-lying wetland, called the Great Swamp of Central Wisconsin. For centuries, Native Americans lived in this area, which they called “Necedah,” or “Yellow Waters.”

Then Europeans arrived, and their farming, which necessitated draining the marshes, cutting trees, and battling the wildfires which had long nurtured the prairies, eventually destroyed the natural landscape that had endured for thousands of years.

In 1939, President Roosevelt’s administration, through the Civilian Conservation Corps it established, reclaimed burned-out land, restored prairies, oak savannahs, and wetlands, and created the wildlife refuge. Among others, a restored whooping crane population is welcomed to its acreage each year.

We hiked along raised planked trails in silence, feeling cleansed and at peace. A lovely breeze carried the calls of geese, herons, eagles, frogs, and songbirds through the air. It was hard to believe thousands of people preferred what the “festival” offered to what was available at the refuge, but there you go.

The next few days we explored nearby lakes, rivers, sandblows, and the bluffs, mesas, and buttes that are actually former islands in Glacial Lake Wisconsin. We hiked around state parks and climbed for hours, grateful for glorious weather and views.

Sunday morning came too quickly, but we were able to ride into the sunrise and stop at Roche-a-Cri State Park to see the petroglyphs and pictographs of Native Americans, and those who came later. (Note the “A.V. Dean. N.Y. 1861” carving.) 300 steps up, and we had an “island view” that took our breaths away.

For us, vacations are times to “be” together, center our spirits, listen to our feelings and hearts, create new dreams. We like adventures and surprises, and generally don’t over-plan, but the Cranberry Festival that became an island vacation was completely different from what we expected. A perfect gift.

Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Community, Daily Round, Earth Day, Full Moon Cottage, Gratitude, Green Living, Home, Hope, Nature, Noticing, Poetry, Stillness, Transformation, Web of Creation, Wholeness, Wisconsin

Earth Day, Every Day

April 22, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty14 Comments

Our goal is an environment of decency, quality, and mutual respect for all other human creatures and for all living creatures. . .The battle to restore a proper relationship between man and his environment, between man and other living creatures will require a long, sustained, political, moral, ethical, and financial commitment- -far beyond any effort made before. ~ Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson , founder of Earth Day

If we don’t have certain outer experiences, we don’t have certain inner experiences or at least we don’t have them in such a profound way. We need the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers and the mountains and the trees, the flowers, the birds, the song of the birds, the fish in the sea. All of this evokes something in our inner world, evokes a world of mystery. It evokes a world of the Sacred and gives us that sense of awe and mystery. ~ Thomas Berry

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity… that’s all there is. That’s the whole economy. That’s where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world. ~ Gaylord Nelson

Fiona and Riley watching the sunrise this morning

Sunrise, Ducks, Bridge, River 076 — Double-Crested Cormorant

Practices for Earth Day to feed the spirit.

Happy Earth Day, and for tomorrow: Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday!

Becoming, Daily Round, Environment, Full Moon Cottage, Gardening, Gratitude, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Poetry, River, Snow, Spring, Teacher

Spring’s Winning

April 16, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty10 Comments

March

A blue day
a blue jay
and a good beginning.

One crow,
melting snow —
spring’s winning!

~ Elizabeth Coatsworth

When I worked as a teacher, I looked forward to spring and the enjoyment offered by the poetry units I shared with my middle school students. This poem, by Elizabeth Coatsworth, was always a favorite of my sixth graders, and the spring poems they created and illustrated in response to the many we studied were equally lovely.

Yearning for blue skies, birdsong, and sweet green earth is nothing new after a long Wisconsin winter, but this year our winter-weary hearts have been sorely tried, indeed. We received snow last Sunday and are told “a dusting” will return again Friday, accompanied by another week of rain.

After last year’s long thirst, I’m only happy for the moisture in whatever forms it arrives, but today’s sunshine and the chance to inspect the gardens and see (hooray!) that last year’s tulips and daffodils survived the drought, has been pure gift. The river is high, the birds are singing, and—even though we’re sliding towards the end of April—spring, I can tell, is finally winning.

Gentle peace to your week…

Daily Round, Farmers' Markets, Gardening, Home, Organic Food, Spirit, Spring, Winter, Wisconsin

To Market, To Market

March 15, 2013March 15, 2013by Kitty21 Comments

I can tell it’s almost spring, though continuing snowfalls are no indication that this is so. But these days, the birdsong is all about spring, the sandhill cranes and red-tailed hawks are returning, and the inner time-keeper that heralds earth’s green abundance is causing me to shift from soup-making to craving salads and fruits and icy teas.

This is the time of year I countdown the days to the opening of farmers’ markets, in our local communities and in Madison, where the largest outdoor producer-only farmers’ market in the U.S. will open on April 20th. My own garden’s vegetables and fruits, local CSA’s’ offerings, and all these glorious farmers’ markets…such lovely, healthy bounty, and it’s almost here, near enough to smell!

The first 20 years of my adulthood were spent in Milwaukee, which is not a huge city, but at a population of 600,000 or so, the largest in the state. And since it’s the home to several universities and colleges as well as (still) many ethnic communities, shopping for produce, spices, and groceries was always a possible adventure. In the early 70’s, the first “health food” stores brought the additional availability of whole wheat and other grains still absent from grocery store shelves. We could prepare and eat healthy meals, and fairly cheaply.

Then I married Phillip and moved to the “country.” I couldn’t adjust to the scarcity of fresh produce and lack of ethnic foods and spices. I drove 40 minutes to Madison to find healthy ingredients. I remember an older teacher sitting beside me in the staff lunchroom and commenting on the “funny-food” I brought for my lunches (probably something with garlic and spinach). It all brought home to me that a move of 50 miles had brought me back to the wretched dietary habits of the 1950’s and 60’s: better eating through chemicals, processing, excessive sugars and fats, and meat, meat and more meat. It really made the newness of the community and our marriage all the more challenging not to be able to cook, bake, and eat foods that fed our spirits as well as our bodies.

The Farmers’ Market in Madison, and growing and preserving as much food as we could, helped a lot every summer. And, as the years have passed, an increasing awareness of the health benefits derived from fresh, organic foods and ingredients, as well as a shift towards greater variety and sophistication in tastes, has altered the local food landscape for the better. Several community farmers’ markets are close and affordable, and also provide wonderful opportunities to connect with friends and hear updates on everyone’s stories.

And when the cold winds do blow and shut down access to fresh garden produce, local groceries now stock organic choices. A few years ago, a woman opened a wonderful bulk goods store in our area, working with local and Midwest Amish and Mennonite suppliers. A short, beautiful ride in the country and I can stock up on inexpensive organic grains and spices that keep our meals varied and healthy all winter. I’d never tried some of these before (spelt; kamut; rye berries) and have enjoyed experimenting with new recipes.

This week I met with a friend at the indoor Milwaukee Public Market, a place I’ve enjoyed visiting since it opened in 2005. While not the most affordable place to shop, it’s a wonderful resource for specialty “treats,” people-watching, and to pay homage to the history of Milwaukee’s Third Ward. Years ago, when I worked downtown, I’d walk to the Third Ward over lunch break just to watch men unload crates and crates of fresh produce and fruits. It’s always good for my spirit to be back in Milwaukee and to share a meal with a friend, but now it’s also good to come back and cook up a healthy meal from ingredients I can buy here, at home.

My friend Bob, and I, at The Milwaukee Public Market

Time to bake some whole-grain organic soda bread for our St. Patrick’s celebrations…Joy to your first day of spring! May it bring a season of fresh and blessed health to your mind, body, and spirit, and may there be enough green in your pocket, on your plate and outside your window to make your life rich and your spirit merry!

Daily Round, Environment, Gifts, Gogebic Taconite, Home, Nature, Open Pit Mining, Penokee-Gogebic Range, Photography, Politics, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Legislature

The Gift of Water

March 7, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty12 Comments

Snow, ice, fog, and rain: within a week’s time, we’ll experience all of these in massive doses: March in Wisconsin. The juxtaposition of winter and spring is marked and remarkable, and painted with water in all her varied media.

Two days ago, we received 8 more inches of snow and today, icicles are melting and birds are again energetically singing their spring songs. Rain is forecast for the weekend, and snow returns on Monday. After a long season of drought last year, we’re very grateful for water in any form, as well as the music, smells, and images each form creates.

I’ve been contemplating the gift of water these past few weeks. Turn the handle of the faucet and out comes water fit to drink, or bathe, or clean our food, or wash our clothes. The quality and availability of fresh water is a gift to be treasured and conserved.

Our state is bordered by two Great Lakes, including Superior, the largest fresh water body on earth. Just south of Lake Superior is the Penokee Range, which runs southwest from the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan to southeast Bayfield County, Wisconsin.

A 22-mile iron ore vein runs through this range, and was mined with shaft-mines from 1868 until 1965, when they were closed, due to the advent of the cheaper open-pit mines, such as those in Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range and Michigan’s Marquette Iron Range. The competition from inexpensive foreign ores also contributed to the closing of the shaft mines. Wisconsin became, over the next several decades a leader in environmental protection, nationally and at home, creating stringent laws to ensure our precious resources would be safeguarded for generations. Or so we believed.

Running along the surface of the Penokee Range, for example, are lakes, trout streams and the head waters of many rivers. Downstream is the Bad River watershed and the reservation of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. The Bad River watershed contains 40% of all the wetlands in the Lake Superior watershed.

This land provides essential habitats for bald eagles, wolves, plants, songbirds, fish, and humans, and is regarded as some of the most environmentally-sensitive land in the state.

The current Republican majority in our state government have chosen to prostitute the Penokee Range, however, selling it to Gogebic Taconite (a subsidiary of The Cline Group owned by billionaire Christopher Cline, and headquartered in Florida. His mining operations in Illinois have pillaged and polluted the land and water.)

Our noble politicians rushed a bill through the legislature, holding only one, brief, public hearing, that allows this corporation—one of the nation’s largest mining companies—almost free reign in destroying the land, the habitats, and the groundwater, so it might extract taconite, at great profit to Mr. Cline, called “New King Coal” by Bloomberg.

Long-standing and environmentally-sound mining laws have been re-written by our current legislature so Chris Cline can hurry up and start extracting taconite; he’s paid for these exemptions, after all.

I don’t know how much more abuse our mother earth can take, and it saddens me, deeply, that the state I was once so proud to call home will be complicit in her further destruction. The legislature is calling it a “job-creator,” but I’m not sure people will want to work in a place where the land and water are poisoned.

Perhaps it could be the Republican version of a tourist attraction, to replace the one they’ve destroyed. Come one; come all! See the largest open pit mine in the world!

But don’t drink the water.

Daily Round, February, February's like a Swedish Movie, Home, Humor, Irony, Nature, Photography

There’s Irony for You

February 13, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty18 Comments

Year ago, I was teaching my 6^th graders various literary terms and concepts, and asked them to incorporate some of these into a short written piece. One of the boys created a story about prisoners in Alcatraz painstakingly plotting their escape. One, “Pierre,” had dreams of tap dancing. When they finally broke out and swam towards freedom, a shark sidled up and devoured Pierre’s legs. The story ended with the line, “There’s irony for you.”

February has been so watery and pale that on many days the horizon has eerily disappeared. The snow and ice-covered land has seemed to dissolve into a sky emptied of color, as though some cosmic vampire has sucked all the earth of its blood. Even the birds evidence their ennui. The shortest month has become the longest

February has become Life as a Swedish Movie. Everyone moves about in his own little sphere of tortured suffering: Hand to forehead; deep sighs; endless gazes into the distance; depressing non-sequiturs about spoiled grain, virgin springs, strawberries and dying butterflies exchanged without eye contact. Everything black, white, somber and funereal. If Max Von Sydow entered the room and ignored me, it would seem entirely predictable.

I headed out for an eye appointment yesterday afternoon and my little VW Bug slid and ricocheted off the icy rims of the endless-as-February driveway, heedless of my efforts to steer. I began to doubt reaching the road in one piece was a likely goal. I was navigating some nightmare carnival ride and damn near gave up to plod back to the safety of the house and resume gazing out the window and sighing.

But I forbore, steadfast in my determination to give myself a change of scene.

But the scene changed not. Except that the endless hills of white and gray gave way to the dirty puddled streets and buildings, and cars corroding from layers of salt.

I entered the optometrist’s office and my own forced smile was met by the receptionist’s frozen grimace; brittle attempts at dialogue were made, briefly, before we lapsed into silence. I may have choked on a sob or two.

Across the street, I saw a woman half-heartedly try to talk a man down from a window ledge. It was only a foot or two above the street, but I understood his despair.

I was summoned to the back room for my eye exam, conducted in mutual and muted grunts, varied only by long sighs. I looked at the gray carpet and thanked my doctor, who stared at the white wall and muttered that death is our ever-present companion.

But then, as I reached for my coat, and scarf, and sweater, and mittens, and hat, and boots, a strange light filled the sky. I looked out in wonder. Shadows, colors, and the illusion of warmth magically swept across the cityscape. Pedestrians ceased plodding and their steps became buoyant. I heard music. I turned and smiled towards the receptionist and she smiled towards me. Light bounced back and forth between the lenses in our glasses and we laughed and spoke of gardens.

Across the street, the desperate man leapt down from the ledge and executed a complicated but nonetheless merry Swedish folk dance. Melting snow fell from the roof of the building, covering all but his feather-tufted Tyrolean hat.

There’s irony for you.

Sunshine and Happy Valentine’s Day to you!

Becoming, Centering, Daily Round, January and February adventures, Listening, Meditation, Music, Nature, Noticing, Relationship, Silence, Slow Life, Spirituality, Stillness, Transformation, Winter, Wisconsin

The Space Between the Notes

January 9, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty10 Comments

“Music is the space between the notes.” ~ Claude Debussy

The long inhalation of excitement and joy that begins in September and lasts through the Christmas holidays has been exhaled over the past week or so. The decorations are almost all put away—a few are “wintry” enough to last through February, along with a few that foretell Valentine’s Day—and my energy has settled deep within.

We attended a post-holiday-holiday-party and several guests mentioned their dislike for the months of January and February.

I nodded sympathetically but remained unengaged with the conversation, because I tend to love the months for their stillness and gifts of time for sifting through recent experiences, re-gathering my spirit, noticing little regressions and evolutions, and seeing clearly where I am on my journey, before heading into the new year with renewed energy. Each new year is like a musical composition my little spirit co-creates with Spirit. Twelve measures of music, or possibly 52, or 365; each a movement of its own. I’m grateful it begins–somewhat non-traditionally, I suppose–with a long rest, so I can hear the music shape itself and its themes for the coming year.

Many of the other guests at the party were teachers, however, and I could empathize with their post-holiday weariness and return to classroom routines.

January and February can be cold and the days are still brief. Their passage can be slow and uneventful and they’re rather anticlimactic, following the long season of holidays and traditional gatherings with friends and family. The crescendo diminishes to silence.

But what an invitation to be creative and start some new traditions!

Phillip and I tend to use these slower winter months to get out of the weekend routine and go on day trips. Last weekend, we traveled to the Wisconsin River area and combined an eagle-sighting adventure with a visit to a well-established and award-winning winery.

We have a few more adventures planned between now and spring break, and I’m looking forward to them. Sometimes we’re surprised by the fun a new place or experience offers and even if it’s less than stellar, we’re together and, usually, laughing.

This week, I was surprised with a visit from my nephew and his family, a true boost to the spirit. One of the gifts of working at home is being able to say yes (or, as we say in Wisconsin, “You betcha!”) to spontaneous visits.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to schedule gatherings with close women friends during these months, to share spiritual stories, practices, books, and films, and to reinforce each other’s spirits and affirm our journeys. We become so busy when the days grow longer. It might be helpful to get together once or twice a month in January and February to transfuse each other’s spirits with renewed energy and share a very-mini-retreat, helping each other get our spirits in tune for the months ahead.

Traveling through the year’s music, its rhythms and beats, its familiar melodies and new improvisations, invites greater intentionality and sensitivity from me than I was prepared or wise enough to offer when I was younger. Letting Spirit be the conductor is easier, however, and I welcome her gift of an initial multi-measure rest, because it allows me to hear her deeper song, the one she sings in my heart and bids me to dance when the music of the year continues.

(Murphy says, “I crawl under my blanket, watch Downton Abbey, and take a two-month retreat.”)

Full Moon Cottage, Fungi, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Politics, Web of Creation, Wisconsin

A Separate Kingdom

October 29, 2012March 25, 2020by Kitty11 Comments

The sudden warmth and recent rains fed the mycelia of several fungi, their “fruit” decorating the earth and trees along the trail.

It seemed the trees, stripped of their leaves, had donned sweaters and waistcoats, using the various fungi as buttons. Or maybe the fungi are badges of honor awarded the trees for surviving the summer’s drought.

This one looked like a trumpet, playing music from another world, or perhaps an ear for whispering one’s secrets to the fairies…

The truth-according-to-Western-science tells us fungi are neither animal nor plant, though closer kin to animals, having separated from animal origins and pursued their unique evolutionary path some 500 million years ago. They have been accorded their own scientific classification kingdom, separate from plants, animals, archaebacteria, eubacteria, and protists. A fungus can be microscopic or develop into an organism covering thousands of acres (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus).

Fungi break down the world and continually recycle her matter; they may be perceived as beneficial or destructive, offering a “Shiva” kind of energy for our world. Without fungi, we’d lack wine, beer, cheese and yeast breads, many medicines, drugs, and, of course, the ability to live on the planet. But they can also poison us and destroy plants and other animals we value.

They remind me of Good Witch Glinda’s question to Dorothy: Are you a good fungus or a bad fungus?

Perhaps, as with people, and that other unique kingdom known as “political candidates,” whether the answer is “good” or “bad” depends upon one’s perspective.

The temperature has dipped; cold winds do blow, and the fungi fruit has already withered and blackened.

Locally, that other kingdom’s inhabitants, the political candidates, are still very active, though I expect their noise and presence to recede, somewhat, by November 7^th.

Happy Full Moon; peace and safety to all life along the hurricane’s path; and may the spirits of Halloween bless you with sweet surprises!

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Community, Daily Round, Politics, Recall Election, Relationship, Spirit Level, Voting, Wisconsin

Losing Home

June 4, 2012March 25, 2020by Kitty5 Comments

The recall enables the people to dismiss from public service those representatives who dishonor their commissions by betraying the public interest. ~ Robert La Follette

For the last year and half, my state has been flooded with negative energy and anxiety regarding our political leadership. Regardless of the leadership favored, one couldn’t escape the discord and angry rhetoric, which, of course, has become increasingly perpetuated and repeated in robo-calls and divisive television advertising as the recall election date has approached.

Tomorrow’s recall election represents a struggle some feel (and I believe) is between outside wealth and Tea Party extremists dictating what happens in our lives, and having a state government that’s localized, encouraged by our voices, focused upon our land management, workers’ rights, quality of education and other issues germane to this state, its people, and its resources, both natural and economic.

I’ve engaged in this struggle by attending rallies and informational meetings, canvassing for my candidates, posting links, and sharing with other concerned voters. I’ve donated my time and what little money I could afford to support those candidates I believe will re-establish our integrity, and I’ve spent a lot of time in silence, discharging negative energy and becoming re-centered.

It’s been emotionally challenging and, at times, greatly dispiriting. I’ve been politically active since I was in high school, but I’ve never been so attached to a political outcome as I am to this one, nor so worried about my state’s and family’s direction and choices if the present governor remains in office. Wisconsin looks no place like home anymore, and it’s breaking my heart.

You would have to know some of the history of my state to understand my responses to the relatively recent and abrupt changes the current governor has enacted. For example, I’ve always been proud that John Muir spent his formative years in Wisconsin, and that Aldo Leopold’s belief in nature conservancy and environmental protection came to fruition during his years as a professor at the University of Wisconsin and during his time at his home in Sauk County, writing A Sand County Almanac. Senator Gaylord Nelson launched the nationally-observed Earth Day while serving as our state senator.

Now, we have a state government inviting mining corporations to write their own environmental negligence into law just to “provide jobs,” while satisfying their greed and destroying our resources, as well as breaking our treaty agreements with native tribes and entirely discounting their voice at the table.

In 1911, Wisconsin was the first state to legislate a Workers’ Compensation Act. In 1932, unemployment compensation was enacted in our state, and in 1937, the Wisconsin Employment Relations Act was passed, adding critical state support to workers’ right to organize.

Now, we have a state government that has destroyed collective bargaining rights, broken union strength and protections, and is encouraging, even laying the groundwork for, the transition of Wisconsin to a right-to-work state.

For over 30 years, following the brief, dangerous misery known as Joseph McCarthy, William Proxmire served as our state senator, refusing campaign contributions for his last two terms, and earning well-deserved fame for exposing government waste, especially in regards to military spending, through his Golden Fleece Awards.

Now, we have a governor who has raised almost $31 million in campaign contributions, largely from out of state PACS funded by millionaires and billionaires like the Koch Brothers, with specific and special-interest agendas. How many hours of non-stop negative advertising and lies do you think this has spawned? His challenger has raised under $4 million, in much smaller increments, and almost all of it from in-state donors. (http://www.wisdc.org/)

Wisconsin was home to “Fighting Bob LaFollette,” who, as a U.S. senator, advocated progressive reforms like child labor laws, social security, and women’s suffrage, and lived from a moral center that led him to protect the rights of the voiceless when others preferred feeding the personal greed of a ruling elite.

Now, we have a governor with an immense legal defense fund (that grew by $100,000.00 just this past month), who advocates secrecy votes and who misrepresented his goals when he ran for the office of governor. Only later was he clearly exposed as a pawn of corporate interests and out-of-state power centers. He has repealed the state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

Once, and for decades, our state ranked near the top of the country for the quality of the public education provided for its students.

Now, we have underfunded schools, overcrowded classrooms, and a state government that participates in and encourages the vilification of teachers. Many of our seasoned and most talented teachers have taken early retirements to ensure they’ll receive even part of the retirement benefits they were promised and worked for these past thirty years or more. I worked as a teacher and I was a good one, but not the first year, or the second…it takes time to manage a classroom and the flow of lessons, to enhance and enrich them and to become sensitive to the energetic currents in a classroom. We’ve lost a lot of depth in our classrooms these past two years.

These are just a few of the reasons I’ve been involved in the recall effort and care deeply about the results. Decades of environmental, employment, and educational progress, reforms and protections are disappearing, rapidly. The place we’ve called home is disappearing.

And still, after all of these lies, and power-grabs, and repeals, and reversals, there are people who refuse to participate. I met a woman yesterday who told me, “I just don’t vote, usually…I wait and see what my neighbor says and does, and then I might do what she does…” She laughed as she told me this; expecting what? That I would join in her merriment, tickled by the rampant vacuity of someone surrendering her power so blithely?

Here’s the thing: I haven’t undertaken canvassing door-to-door because it’s a keen source of enjoyment or even self-satisfying. I haven’t donated time and money because I had nothing better to do or money to burn (hardly that). I haven’t read countless articles, listened to debates, watched informational programs and asked questions because it wouldn’t have been more fun to read a book, take a nap, or watch a mindless movie…And I’ve done very little compared to countless people who have given most of their energy to the recall election for months and months and months. But this is (or used to be) a democracy: of, by, and for the people. If we’re not involved, if we’re not self-monitoring and paying attention, and participating, then we’ll lose rights, and quickly. And if we don’t question the smiling lies, and legal defense funds, and out-of-state money pouring in by the millions, then we’ll get the government we deserve. Run by special interests and serving them, not us.

Our votes absolutely have power, whether we use them or not, but perhaps not the power we would have preferred, in retrospection. Power corrupts in the hands of those more focused on personal gain than the welfare of all. And all it takes for the corrupt to rule is for good people to sit back and do nothing.

If home is where the heart is, where is home for a heart that’s broken? I want my heart healed and my home back, starting tomorrow.

Change, Community, Dialogue, Politics, Spirit Level

Tipping Points

March 9, 2012March 25, 2020by Kitty5 Comments

A year ago this weekend, my husband and I attended a rally in Madison to protest changes made by our then-new governor and a state government whose Republican majority supported him. That Governor Walker won the election with only a 52% majority perhaps foretold the divisiveness to come, but I don’t think many of us anticipated the cataclysmic changes or acrimonious conflicts ahead.

Over the past year, the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public sector employees (with the exception of police and fire fighters), the draconian cuts to public school funding (in the neighborhood of 900 million dollars), the implementation of voter identification requirements, and dozens of other measures taken to ostensibly “manage the money” of our state, have split its people and created an atmosphere of such vitriol and mistrust that friends and families have parted company and once-strong professional alliances have broken beyond repair.

Whatever merit existed in these changes and whatever “good” they have contributed to the state budget, they have come at too great a cost to the spirit and people of the place I have called home most of my life. I continue to protest the manner in which these changes have been enacted and I am anguished by the attitudes of disrespect and indifference with which those in the majority have flouted their power. But I am equally affronted by much of the oppositions’ language and inability to focus on policy rather than the individuals with whom they disagree.

Over a million signatures—540,208 were required–were collected to force a recall election of Governor Walker and his lieutenant governor, and other signatures have ensured the potential recall of other state legislators, including our own district’s senator, the majority leader of the state senate.

These recall elections will take place within the next few months. I’ve joined thousands of others in supporting the recall elections, but I dread the anger, distortions, and noise the campaign advertising will likely spew and the bitterness they will engender. My conscience led me to protest the choices and to participate in what I felt were just actions to stop those in power from creating further damage, but I’m so disappointed it’s come to this, and I’ve tried to proceed cautiously. I want to remain hopeful regarding the outcome.

What continue to sadden and perplex me are the perceived and dangerous changes in our degrees of dialogue, courtesy, and compromise that have shadowed this entire process, a reflection of the larger national shifts in political and social discourse, and in the sensationalized way they are presented and reported by our media.

I wonder a lot these days about lines that are drawn with humorous intent that then becomes sarcastic, then cynical, and then hate-fueled…when do these lines become too dangerous to cross? When do they become walls?

At what point do words incite action and then violent action? Are there a given number of rally cries, or decibels, that convert a crowd into a mob? When does a discussion become an argument and an argument a war? When does a perceived threat overtake reason?

What creates the necessary energy to make me forget my connection to everyone in my community and align myself with only those who think as I do?

What, finally and irreversibly, causes us to see each other as enemy?

When did some Germans, or Poles, or Hungarians look at their Jewish neighbors and begin to see them as expendable? And how did “some” become “more” and then “enough?” What shift allowed Rwandan Hutus to pick up axes, and knives, and spears to murder their lifelong Tutsi neighbors? How could the English elite turn away from my own ancestors’ starvation? How could they ignore Irish people eating dirt and families dying in fields? How could anyone ever consider anyone else his property? How were the United States shaped by justifying the destruction of those who were already settled here? Is it possible to freeze the moment when my vision alters, my self-awareness fades, and my heart turns?

We’re always walking on see-saws and there are tipping points everywhere.

People read historical accounts of human atrocities and shake their heads. How did that happen; what were they thinking; how could they allow it? But I doubt those living into such times conceived what they would become. We must always be aware of our words and their power, our energy and what it can harness, our shadow and where its neglect may lead us.

The usual suspects: greed, power, fear and ignorance are like liquid mercury, and only mindful attention to the direction they’re flowing and ways they’re joining forces—within and without–works in our favor. So we must slow down. See the human frailty in ourselves and the other. Be brave enough and energetic enough to counter injustice before it overwhelms.

We must never be willing to sit back in silence when there are people and governments who must be held accountable for their behavior, but we have to focus on the behavior, the flawed thinking, the likely damage, not engage in hating the individuals. And we must be willing to take a long and penetrating look at our own motives and behavior. Make apologies when necessary. Proceed with care.

Begin and end with love.

A news program I admire for its maturity and impartiality is The News Hour on PBS; an added attraction is that women guests, reporters, and newscasters are as prominent as men. I especially enjoy David Brooks and Mark Shields for their respectful way of presenting opposing views: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/politics/political_wrap/

4-legged companions, Daily Round, Nature, Spirit Level

On the Path

December 6, 2011March 26, 2020by Kitty3 Comments

Phillip sent me a link to an article from The Utne Reader with a note saying, “…but you knew this already.” The article, titled “Mother’s Care,” speaks to research and therapeutic success in using time spent outdoors to heal the mind-body-spirit, and is excerpted from a new book, The Nature Principle by Richard Louv. (You can read the article here: Mother’s Care.)

The bike trail we live beside is about 50 miles long, and over the last 15 years, it has become my church, my sanctuary, and the place where my greatest healing has taken place. I have biked through hundreds of miles of grief and joy along this path; I have photographed and walked the same ten miles through every season; I have served as sacristan and cleaned the trail’s littered desecration; I have harvested raspberries and mulberries, and saved wildflowers from reckless mowing and destructive snowmobiles.

This bike trail was once a railroad track; her old mile markers and bridges have become hugely metaphorical for me in the years I’ve walked her. I know the trees; I note the dates that species of birds and wildflowers return each spring. I witness evolution: one year the wild roses are plentiful; the next year Queen Ann’s Lace overwhelms all the other plants (though the past several years, it’s been the invasive garlic mustard). I count the blue herons and mourn their diminishing numbers. I stop to watch turkeys, deer, squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, raccoons (and skunks!) dance their own lives along, or across, the trail. I hear the mournful cries of coyotes at dusk. And all the while, as I observe, and photograph, and walk, and walk, I have been healed and I am healing.

I call my journal “On the Path” after my heart’s home. It holds many reflections from healing lessons offered to me while walking the trail. My cat, Sally, died just as I was feeling balanced again following my father’s death. I had lived with her longer than I’d lived with another sentient being and was staggered by the weight of her loss.

June 5, 2004

Sally died Tuesday…it is now Saturday, a glorious June morning with all the light, sparkle and promise one would wish of the 5th day of June. Happy brides are anticipating their weddings and gardeners are eagerly tackling their many chores in fragrant and beckoning gardens…I miss Sally every minute; I see her everywhere…or rather, look for her and sometimes find myself calling or singing one of our many songs. So many rituals—21 years’ worth come September—have been abruptly halted.

But grief so easily slips into self-indulgence, the country of sadness and inertia, an excuse for disengaging from responsibilities and the daily round of details that keep one connected to life, a moody rejection of the joys life offers by the armful every moment. It becomes a selfish feast for the ego rather than a tribute to the life of the freshly departed. “Look at me: I’m sad and bereaved and separate from all humanity and special for the pain I’m feeling. Unique in my loss.”

The night after she left, Phillip took the puppies for their walk and I chanced upon a quote I’d posted where I’d always see it and therefore am blind to it and never see it at all… St. Francis de Sales: “Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit; for without being seen, they are present with you”…and right after I sat with those ideas for a moment, P. came in with two lovely and rarely discovered cardinal feathers he’d been gifted right in the middle of the trail—where they hadn’t been a few minutes earlier, on the way out—we both felt they were from Idgi and Sally, a message in feathers—our family code for spirit and communication from places far away and unreachable—“See ya soon! We’ll be waiting. All’s well.”

And on we go to Love, not yet, but soon, our home.

Less than a year later, I was mourning the loss of my mother. My journal and the trail again offered healing.

March 11, 2005

Journeying with the loss of Mama: (one month)

I agree that life is strange and new and I’m making it up day by day. Some days are easier. Yesterday was gray and cold, and a 12-hour snowfall was gorgeous, but the silence and darkness yanked me down into depression after a while. The birds are singing their spring songs, which is heartening. Tomorrow is Mama’s birthday. I miss her very, very much.

I wish I could FEEL her essence is somewhere, still, recognizable, and as happy as I want so much to believe she is…Other days, I’m more able to see that blessings accompany even one’s grief. My capacity for joy is strangely enhanced, perhaps by my psyche’s attempts to keep me emotionally balanced so that neither the depths nor heights are tipping the scale—or perhaps because of the relief that accompanies a loved one’s death. I no longer have to fear it or dread it, and Mama’s suffering is over. Or maybe because my own mortality is finally irrefutable and so why NOT take extraordinary pleasure in a cardinal’s mating song?

For the past 10 years, our 4-legged companions Riley and Clancy have walked the trail with me. Their happy spirits and canine approach to life have blessed me with deeper healing and an ability to live utterly in the moment. We celebrate our time together on these walks.

Long walks also take me deep within my spirit, allowing my imagination to parade its gifts and magic across the stage of my mind. There are days we head out for our five-mile walk and the next thing I know, we’re home again. This means I have to bound upstairs and take notes, because I’ve been “living within” some story plot and solved a problem or two, or written a poem, or outlined a new development/character/idea that needs to be tethered before I leave the deep meditative consciousness yielded by time on the trail. As John Muir noted, “…going out, I found, is really going in.”

Other days we wander and spend time staring at the river, or, as we did this morning, observing great horned owls and hawks dueling along the river, and another immense flock of sandhill cranes bleating their way southward.

Nature is our home; she is the great Mother who welcomes, heals, nourishes, teaches, and celebrates our spirits. Her gifts are threatened when we are not regularly engaged with her, and able to feel and benefit from her touch, smell, sounds, and mysteries. “Outside” becomes foreign rather than part of us, and nature quickly devalues to another source of profit, regardless of the permanent destruction and loss this causes. This is happening right now, in Wisconsin, where mining laws may quickly be changed to allow the devastation of precious geological formations and habitats, all in the name of income fueled by its usual sources, power and greed.

What we don’t value, we surrender, and so we forever lose connections vital to our well-being. If a part of creation meant to heal us has been destroyed, we’ll never be healed as we might have been, but rather, continue to accrue losses and brokenness, which will ultimately be reflected in our people and the institutions we perpetuate. What’s fed, thrives; what’s neglected, dies and disappears.

Physical healing can happen through drugs and machines; spiritual directors may help us guide our spirits to greater wholeness; skilled therapists may help us restore our emotional balance, but nothing replaces the deep mind-body-spirit mending and healing offered by nature.

Give yourself the gift of time outside.

Tell those who would destroy the earth to take a hike.

Catherine O'Meara, Daily Round, Family, Politics, Recipe

Recall and Kitchen Wisdom: Creating a Table Where all are Welcome

November 14, 2011March 26, 2020by KittyLeave a Comment

The one area of domestic creativity that has intrigued me from an early age has been anything connected to cooking and baking. My mother was very capable in the kitchen, but didn’t enjoy her time there; I speculate this was largely because producing family meals day in and day out without much of a break became a dull routine. I recall her deep pleasure in my father’s midlife interest in gourmet cooking, and the way it freed up her weekends so she could relax and enjoy time away from the kitchen.

One glorious Christmas, Santa brought me an Easy-Bake Oven, with its miniature stove, pans, utensils, and boxed mixes. It conjured little layer cakes, muffins, and quick breads through the magical heat of a light bulb. It entertained me and kept my brothers content for a few minutes after the Lilliputian cakes were frosted, but I soon tired of putzing around on such a small scale: I wanted to enter the arena of the real kitchen and manipulate the enchantment of chemistry on a grander and more sophisticated stage.

My mother was only too happy to encourage this, and I am eternally grateful for the trust and freedom she granted me as she left the room with her own pile of books and a sigh of contentment.

Her list of rules was brief. She expected me to clean up whatever mess I created, which I thought a fair exchange for the pleasure provided, for creation—both the birth and death necessary for it to occur—is a messy affair indeed. She also asked that I share my results with my brothers, which taught me that while indulging one’s creativity is vital, the sharing of one’s creation, art, and self is the purpose.

I’ve been pondering these lessons lately, as I return to the kitchen with the great excitement of holiday baking adventures, new recipes, and family gatherings tantalizing my imagination. I love all the seasons, but there is none better for me than that grand culinary and guest-welcoming stretch of the calendar year between October and January. Friends, family, food and its accompaniments: what’s better? Imagining how this or that creation will please someone we love is a lovely impetus for our artistic endeavors.

And so, in the kitchen, I still create wildly and clean the mess as I go along, and I still—mostly—share what I create. I’ve been wondering lately, though, if I apply these rules as wisely to the rest of my pursuits in the grander and more sophisticated arena of life outside of my kitchen.

It is no secret that Wisconsin, the state where I have lived most of my life, is experiencing a political crisis and that divisive laws, choices, and use of power have been more in evidence this past year. We are living through an intensely concentrated and tempestuous version of the larger international and national socio-political chaos that is the hallmark of our time, and there are days I can enter the fray with energy and clear vision, and others, when I desire silence, peace, and a Canadian refuge. Life and choices are not black and white, as they were when I was younger; they are rather a formless gray and we are invited, especially in a representative democracy (if we truly are that anymore), to co-create our society’s shapes and patterns, institutions and laws, taxes and their use…and we are expected to participate fully in the operation and integrity of these systems, ensuring that our creation is fashioned to include and honor everyone justly.

I am filled with doubt when asked to support an “us/them” mentality, and yet the divisions between the opposing political worldviews seem more and more distinct, and I am increasingly unable to perceive enough common ground where I may stand and hold hands with those on either side of the arguments. I am concerned that all of us are creating messes without attending to them and have no well-formulated plan for how our new creations will be shared among all the state’s, or country’s, or world’s residents, including the non-human.

I fear we may act without forethought, fueled by anger and reactive impulses rather than reason and compassion. How will we reconstitute the relationships we are dissolving and repair the connections we have destroyed? How will those we oppose be invited to contribute their gifts if we become the party in power? How are we living into the change we desire?

It seems the earth is straining more violently these days, and the hope flickering at my core is that these are birth pangs as well as death cries, and that the spirit of love is present, working earnestly to help us midwife a time of greater peace and equity among all earth-dwellers. I can’t go on without such hope, despite the preponderant evidence that we never, really, learn how to accept and love the stranger.

Hate is a dangerous fuel, energizing and strengthening a journey of division. It can change the faces of power without altering the balance. Discord is not a reliable or sustainable diet. And I cannot be fooled into believing myself, and therefore my pursuits and methods, any less selfish and partisan than those with whom I disagree. Listening, reflection, and circumspection are more important practices than ever.

I’m trying a new recipe today and as excited as ever about creating something new and sharing it with those I love.

Tomorrow I will sign a petition that seeks to recall our current governor.

May we proceed cautiously and with mindfulness regarding the energetic sources that inspire and motivate us; may we take time to tend to our messes as we go along; and may we finally create a life-giving system for governance served at a table where all are welcome and all are fed.

Tag: Wisconsin