These Were My 2015 Storytellers: A Year of Books

"Sometimes when Rose was reading, she would catch a whiff of the musty smell of her book. She put her nose down in the fold and inhaled deeply so that wonderful smell, the smell of adventure in faraway lands, would fill her up. She rubbed her hand across the pages to feel the velvety surface of the paper. When she closed her eyes, her fingertips could even feel the words that were printed there, each letter raised just a little, almost like the special language that her blind aunt Mary could read.
To Rose, a book was as real and alive as if it breathed and walked and spoke." - From Roger Lea MacBride's "In the Land of the Big Red Apple," a novel of Rose Wilder Lane's childhood in Mansfield, Missouri with her yet-to-be famous parents, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder

My nearly two-year-old daughter Grace is fascinated with books. She often plucks my own books from my hands and flips through the pages as if trying to decipher a mystery. No fancy images, just words. There's magic in here, I tell her. I love the feel of a real book too, and the adventures they bring me on. How I miss traveling, I told my husband Steve, as we've taken day trip staycations with Grace for convenience and budgetary reasons the last two years. I miss those road trips, just being out there with the land, an almost religious experience. But I travel in time and space through the portal of books, and they invoke memories of past travels too.

With all of the award season hoopla given to films and those who participate in them, I wish we had a public equivalent celebrating authors. Michael Punke, author of The Revenant, doesn't seem to get the glory Leonardo DiCaprio is receiving, even though he was the one who brought the story to life. As much as our society and politicians talk about education, it seems like we value materialism and sports far more than pursuits of intellectual betterment. For me, reading is an essential part of lifelong education.

One of my favorite scenes in the film The Age of Adaline starring Blake Lively is when Adaline is being courted by Ellis and he says he is going to bring her flowers. He surprises her with a trio of books with flower names: White Oleander by Janet Finch, Daisy Miller by Henry James and Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. When I looked up Dandelion Wine on Amazon, I noticed customers who purchased it also bought the other two. I guess I wasn't the only one smitten with this scene. The film was poorly reviewed by critics, but I loved the magical feel of it, the time travel, the fashion, the San Francisco setting, and of course the nod to books.

I don't have a reading goal, just to have books, and the beauty of words, in my life, just as I want the beauty of nature to never escape my notice. I am including passages of favorite quotes from my year-end storytellers. Thank you storytellers, for bringing this magic into my life.

"You may hate being pregnant, but the minute the baby is born, she is God's precious child, given to you as a gift." - A Quilt for Christmas by Sandra Dallas.

A major reason I haven't been blogging, aside from caring for Grace, is I am expecting another daughter due in late May or early June. I've simply been too tired or not feeling well to get onto the computer to write, or when I'm not taking care of household matters, want to purse other interests in my free time when Grace is sleeping, like reading, of course.

Tulips and bleeding hearts returning to my garden each spring. Isn't the miracle of life amazing? I cannot wait to meet the little soul that is growing inside me this winter, waiting for her spring.

"It would seem she has everything she could want - she is fed, carried, she is rocked, put to sleep. But no, walking is the thing, the consuming urge to seize control. She has to walk to gain entrance to the world. From now on, she will get from here to there more and more by her own effort. As she goes, she will notice worn grass, shops or snow or the shapes of trees. She will walk for reasons other than to get somewhere in particular. She'll walk to think or not to think, to leave the body, which is often the same as becoming at one with it. She will walk to ward off anger in its many forms. For pleasure, purpose, or to grieve. She'll walk until the world slows down, until her brain lets go of everything behind and until her eyes see only the next step. She'll walk until her feet hurt, her muscles tremble, until here eyes are numb with looking. She'll walk until her sense of balance is the one thing left and the rest of the world is balanced, too, and eventually, if we do the growing up right, she will walk away from us." The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year by Louise Erdrich

Walking along New York City's High Line. With all the craze over gym memberships, exercise equipment, DVDs and fad diets this time of year, isn't there something so wonderful in the simple beauty of just going for a walk?  Not to mention it's free. I believe so firmly in the merits of walking, for body and mind.

 

 I can't resist including another quote from The Birth Year.

 

"Full of the usual blights, mistakes, ruinous beetles and parasites, glorious for one week, bedraggled the next, my actual garden is always a mixed bag. As usual, it will fall far short of the imagined perfection. It is a chore. Hard work. I'll by turns aggressively weed and ignore it. The ground I tend sustains me in early summer, but the garden of the spirit is the place I go when the wind howls. This lush and fragrant expectation has a longer growing season than the plot of earth I'll hoe for the rest of the year. Raised in the mind's eye, nurtured by the faithful composting of orange rinds and tea leaves and ideas, it is finally the wintergarden that produces the true flowering, the saving vision."

 

At the show of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo at the New York Botanical Garden this fall. We have a family membership here and also recently saw the holiday train show. I have such a euphoric feeling being here, and it's one of my favorite places in New York. With such a mild winter we've been experiencing thus far I know I have no right to be daydreaming about gardens so often, but I can't help myself.

 

"Rose carefully and gently pushed the growing pile of rosy-golden apples around each time another crate was dumped into the wagon.

She waded carefully through the apples without lifting her feet, so she wouldn't step on a single one. Soon the whole wagon box was a sea of red and yellow, full almost to the top. She wanted to dive right in, it looked so inviting. She picked two of the reddest ones she could find, gave one to Mama, and they each took a bite.
"Delicious," said Mama through a mouthful, the juice running down her chin. "If there were no other food in the world, I think I could live on apples alone."
Hers was the sweetest apple Rose could ever remember eating.” - In the Land of the Big Red Apple by Roger Lea MacBride.

Pictured above a bin of apples from an apple picking outing at Twin Star Orchards in New Paltz, New York. We took a day trip here in October and I am including some photos for memory's sake. Travel, even just an outing for a day, is on an equal level of books as a great passion and pleasure in life.

I agree with their motto of "ugly apples taste better." Nothing is worse than a perfect looking red delicious apple from a supermarket. Give me an ugly apple any day.

 

Wood fired pizza with apple cider, the smell of pine and apple wood burning in the air, an idyllic outdoor seating area away from the harried pace of modern life. There's so much to love here. Nothing fancy, nothing modern, nothing expensive. Just timeless, simple pleasures.

 

 

 

 

"You showed me there is something in the forest to cure most anything that bothers you." - The Constable's Tale: A Novel of Colonial America, by Donald Smith

In Muir Woods in California on our honeymoon. I believe in the magical and healing properties of the forest, for mind, body and spirit.

"Old age. I don't know when it really starts, and I'm not interested in finding out. Julia pretty much ignored the whole thing, and that may be the only real lesson there is for the end of our days. Just pretend like it isn't happening, until you have no choice but to accept reality. If you're lucky, like Julia, you'll die peacefully in your sleep after having enjoyed a dinner of onion soup." - Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life by Karen Karbo

An onion soup at Pigalle in New York City, an old lunch haunt when I worked in the city. I turned 40 this year and I look forward to all the days ahead granted to me. I'm thrilled if I make it to old age.

"It's a great idea to analyze how screen time has changed your life and how it alters your behavior. If you don't like what you see, implement changes. Get comfortable again with real human connection and don't give so much power to the screen and what is behind it. Real life is in the present moment, happening right now. We never know how many days we have in front of us. Let's live them fully, not virtually." - Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic: Lessons in Everyday Elegance by Jennifer L. Scott, who also pens one of my favorite blogs, The Daily Connoisseur.

Have you seen the Rashida Jones advertisements for Verizon? One features her visiting her mother who ignores her when she tells her daughter to turn off her Wi-Fi. Her mother cannot wait to sit down and look at her tablet. Another has Rashida running out on a friend on movie night since the film isn't downloading fast enough. Apparently conversation must be a thing of the past.  The most recent has her mother and two others visiting Rashida and they get carried away on how fast her network is. She tries to engage in conversation over a hot drink, but everyone is glued to their devices. The ad ends, "Get out of the past. Get Fios." Meant to be humorous, these commercials do not leave me laughing. I want to run back into the past sometimes. While there's so much that is wonderful about technology, the anti-social behavior of teens and adults and the addiction to these devices is a serious matter. What values are corporate America selling us?

No one was glassy-eyed, looking at their screens, scrolling mindlessly, when my mother brought over a homemade plum tart we enjoyed with coffee on the patio one warm day. The only tweets at that moment: birdsong.

"On the following morning the little hut on the Alm opened wide its doors and windows as if to drink up the early sunshine. Days went by. The warmth of the spring sun woke up first the little blue gentians - those with a white star in the center; then, one by one, all the other lovely flowers opened their petals. There were jonquils and red primroses and little golden rockroses with thorns on the edge of their petals. They all bloomed in their brightest colors while Peter watched the miracle taking place, as he had watched it every spring since he could remember. He had never quite seen the beauty of it, however, until Heidi had come to show him." - Heidi Grows Up by Charles Tritten, the first of two sequels written by Johanna Spyri's translator

Wildflowers in Rainier National Park in Washington state. My mother introduced me to the beauty of flowers as I have childhood memories of her garden, and I remember my grandparents' garden in Switzerland too, with pictures of my grandmother and mother if front of their blooming geraniums and my grandfather standing by giant sunflowers. Our society is so materialistic and we so emphasis "stuff" and upgrading, but we forget about what can be most fulfilling to the soul.

"She turned away, after a long moment, still speechless. It seemed to her that at last she had seen such splendour that, wherever she went, it would stay before her eyes. No matter what happened, she had lived through this moment. Even if she should go to the dismal old chateau there would still be something - something to which she could turn when she needed courage."  - Heidi's Children by Charles Tritten

A courtyard in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I recall many of our travels fondly, and so often find my mind returning to the sacred, enchanting lands of the Southwest. That's what I love about travel, even if you are there for a short while, and maybe only once in your life, the memories linger far beyond. The same holds true for books.

"Still, who knew how the old mountain took retribution for having its insides clawed out.” - Whiter Than Snow by Sandra Dallas, a novel set in 1920 in a Colorado mining town

In Colorado, driving on the road from Durango into the mining town of Silverton. An oil spill caused by an EPA cleanup crew at a mine near Silverton has devastated the water supply, something we take for granted until it's tainted. Have we treated the mountains fairly in our nation's short history? Hardly.

"They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it." - Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

At the New York Botanical Garden, a reminder we must care for our earth.

"Lincoln's heartbeat picked up a little, the way it always did when he rounded that last bend in the road and saw home waiting up ahead.
Home." - A Creed Country Christmas by Linda Lael Miller

Home to me always evokes happy thoughts of my husband, daughter, our two dogs, our wonderful neighbors, a place for a cup of tea, a comfortable bed, a fire on the patio, my cherished garden.

A storyteller at the Ramapough Powwow. Whether in written or oral form, let the wonder of stories fill your life with a little magic.

Goodreads is a favorite site to keep track of my reading lists (read and to-read) as well as quotes. I loved my storytellers and want to seek out more works by many of them, although Linda Lael Miller, whose books I read from library displays, isn't my cup of tea so I don't think I would read her again. Since we're a one-income family as I'm a stay-at-home mom, I'm using the library more than ever now, and we rarely see movies in theatres, enjoying the privacy and sanctuary of our own home and the frugality of free library DVDs.

These were my 2015 storytellers:

Gifts: (I requested the von Arnim and Scott books.)
At Home With Madame Chic: Becoming a Connoisseur of Daily Life by Jennifer L. Scott
Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim
Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic: Lessons in Everyday Elegance by Jennifer L. Scott

Gifts for Grace:
Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales
Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne
When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne
Christmas in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck
A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

Loan from a friend:
The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

Thrift Shop:
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, 50 cents from the C.A.T.S. Resale Shop in Westwood, New Jersey

Better World Books, my favorite go-to online used book retailer for great prices, efforts to promote recycling (many books are library discards) and promoting literacy around the world.
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown, $4
Frightful's Mountain, by Jean Craighead George, $2.50.
The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth Von Arnim, $4
The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year by Louise Erdrich, $4
Whiter Than Snow by Sandra Dallas, $4
Charlotte in New York by Joan MacPhail Knight, $4, a gift I bought for Grace's first birthday for her library.
Charlotte in London by Joan MacPhail Knight, $4, also for Grace,

Local Book Shop:
When Calls the Heart by Janette Oke, from The Well Read book store in Hawthorne, New Jersey, about $15.

Library
Brookfield Days, Caroline #1, by Maria D. Wilkes, from the Little House Chapter Books series, from the library
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Springwater by Linda Lae Miller
Living the Farm Sanctuary Life: The Ultimate Guide to Eating Mindfully, Living Longer, and Feeling Better Every Day by Gene Baur with Gene Stone
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression by Clara Cannucciari
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
In the Land of the Big Red Apple, by Roger Lea MacBride (library book sale)
The Constable's Tale: A Novel of Colonial America by Donald Smith
Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life by Karen Karbo
Heidi Grows Up by Charles Tritten
Heidi's Children by Charles Tritten
A Creed Country Christmas by Linda Lael Miller
A Quilt for Christmas by Sandra Dallas

Celebrating Traditions at the Ramapough Powwow

 

"Nokomis took her bean seeds from the little pouch she had carried across Minnesota. Even when most of their things had been stolen, she'd saved a few seeds. She loved to make gardens, and had a nose for whom to ask for seeds. She'd added to those few seeds with others that she traded from the people of Garden Island, in Lake of the Woods. All around that great and complicated lake, there had been women who planted corn, gourds, beans." - From the chapter, "Makoons," Louise Erdrich's Chickadee

Nokomis is the wise grandmother to Omakayas, part of Louise Erdrich's four part "Birchbark House" children's series of a fictional Native American tribe displaced by the white settlers in the 1800s.

I think of the wisdom of Nokomis and the fiery Old Tallow in Erdrich's stories. In our information age, I wonder about how we are obtaining and retaining knowledge from the older generations.

Did you, or do you, gather knowledge from your grandparents? Mine lived an ocean away in Switzerland, my paternal grandfather dying before I was born, and I only spent time with my grandparents on summer visits in my youth. Even then we were separated by language barriers. How I wish I could have spent more time with them to gather those seeds. My parents are speaking in their Swiss-German dialect to my infant daughter Grace, hoping to plant the gift of language within her, something I, quite regrettably, resisted as a child myself.

I attended the Powwow of the Ramapough Lunaape (also Lenape) tribe held in Ringwood, New Jersey, where many members live. Ringwood is a town you might mention and people will talk about how beautiful it is, with the hiking trails, lake and all its natural beauty, but it holds a dark understory. Toxic paint sludge from a Ford Motor Company plant was dumped here in the 1960s and 70s, and local residents, including the tribe, fight decades later for its complete removal. Ramapough Lenape Chief Dwaine Perry estimates in Ringwood the tribe has lost 30 percent of the elders, "the corporations, namely Ford at this point has robbed us of our elders, which in essence is robbing us of our culture, because if you have no one to share it with it dies out."

I'm grateful for traditions like the Powwow are kept alive, to celebrate this beautiful, too often repressed, culture.

A storyteller here tells children of catching fireflies in the summertime and wanting to capture the magic they held, and how children's imaginations are so magical.

I recently saw a commercial, I believe for Samsung, that enables parents to control the content on their handheld devices so it is kid-friendly. The parent hands the very young child their phone and off they are in the car. Shoving these gadgets in front of the youth of America horrifies me. I believe these corporations are targeting children as consumers-in-training and I can't understand why this is so common. I think children, as do adults, need to let their minds run free and wander instead of constant distraction. In an article in NorthJersey.com on the New Jersey Storytelling festival, Carol Titus, co-coordinator of the event says, "I think people are kind of wising up to the idea that imagination is being stifled by our looking at somebody else's images and not really coming up with their own. Teachers tell me that kids don't know how to pretend anymore. We have our own stories. We don't need other people's stories to tell us who we are. We need to tell our own stories to remember who we are." A storyteller Bernie Libster reflected, "In the electronic age, things are so impersonal. To me, there's nothing personal about Facebook, or the social media. Storytelling is human contact, without a screen."

 

While there's so many wonderful things about technology, on the flip side, do you worry about it stifling imaginations of both young and old? I do.

I pondered all this as I waited in the long line of Many Sisters for nourishment.

Most people were getting the "Indian tacos" (fry bread with meat or vegetarian chili, cheese and onions). I nearly got a vegetarian one in a nostalgic mood for my trip to the Southwest. A reader enlightened me in my travel diary to the Four Corners and Utah about this not being an authentic Native American food.

Blueberries are a local berry for New Jersey and corn is in abundance, so I gravitated toward the corn cakes with blueberries, four sisters soup (white bean, corn, peppers, potatoes with onions, celery and spices) and fresh mint iced tea, all heavenly.

"Out back, the seeds that Nokomis had saved so carefully were now sprouting. The corn leaves were sturdy and fresh. The dark potato leaves curled down from their mounds of earth. Tendrils of squash and bean vines had begun their searching climb up the poles Nokomis sank near each plant." - From the chapter, "Touching Earth" - Chickadee

There was such good energy here. The smell of sage burning in the air. The artisans selling their products. The dancing, storytelling, music and proud display of outfits.

I wonder how our United States history would have looked if we would have integrated the culture of the native people who were already here and co-existed peacefully, instead of the tragedy of segregation, displacement and often murder and death by disease.

I cannot wait to one day share Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books with Grace, but I too will read Erdrich's wonderful tales. Like Laura, young Omakayas enjoys the delights of the seasons, like maple sugaring, and the nights of storytelling, especially in the cold, stark days of winter.  I imagine a world in which Laura and Omakayas could have been friends.

"Nokomis and Omakayas arranged the food they'd brought. There were packets of split, dried fish, a makuk of special powdered fish, moose meat, a little manomin traded for with deer meat, smoke fish, and a bag of dried pumpkin flowers to thicken soups."
"Neshkey," said Nokomis, happy they had so much. "We'll have a good feast."...
For two days they prepared, knowing that the sap was just about to start running. There was a feeling to that time before the sap began, a quietness that had the going-out taste of winter. All that happened in the snow and cold, the storytelling and the sadness, too, was left behind. Omakayas opened herself to the warming wind. Before them, the sweetness of the maple waited, the warmth of the sun." - From the chapter, "Maple Sugaring Time," Louise Edrich's The Birchback House.

""Here, Laura and Mary," Pa said, and he gave them each a little round package out of his pocket. They took off the paper wrappings, and each had a little, hard, brown cake, with beautifully crinkled edges.
"Bite it," said Pa, and his blue eyes twinkled.
Each bit off one little crinkle, and it was sweet. It crumbled in their mouths. It was better even than their Christmas candy.
"Maple sugar," said Pa.
Supper was ready, and Laura and Mary laid the little maple sugar cakes beside their plates, while they ate the maple syrup on their bread.
After supper, Pa took them on his knees as he sat before the fire, and told them about his day at Grandpa's, and the sugar snow." - From the chapter "Sugar Snow," Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods

Western Time Diary: Yosemite National Park

When the government shutdown was in the news, I couldn't help but feel for all the little businesses that depend on travelers visiting the national parks. We like to patronize these smaller establishments as often as possible when we vacation. For our Yosemite trip, we stayed at the charming Meadow Creek Ranch Bed and Breakfast Inn in Mariposa.

The adorable chicken coop. I felt like I was in a little Irish cottage.

A clawfoot tub invites a soak. There was brandy, tea, fresh coffee and dark chocolates in the room.

Two of my favorite words to describe a home (or in this case, a home away from home), invoked so often by Laura Ingalls Wilder, are "snug" and "cozy" (or cosy).

All the little details make a place homey to me.

A cozy and snug home for fine feathered friends to seek shelter from the elements.

Homemade blueberry and black walnut pancakes (black walnuts grow on the property), with fresh fruit (including figs, which we found so much more abundant in California), orange juice and vanilla chai tea.

The Meadow Creek Ranch served Mariposa Coffee, and we stopped by to take a pound home.

When driving to the bed and breakfast at night, we  pulled the car over and turned off the lights to take in the stars. Recalling when Laura and Charles, her Pa, on the premiere of Little House on the Prairie viewed the majestic starry filled night sky,

Charles, "Hear that?"

Laura, "Hear what, Pa?"

Charles, "Stars. They're singing Hallelujah."

It's hard not to want to sing Hallelujah when seeing Yosemite.

   

  

 

 

  

 

 

Even in the busiest national parks, one can find moments of solitude. Hiking up to Sentinel Dome, we were the last two left to enjoy the views.

 

 

Ansel Adams capturing Yosemite's beauty so memorably.

 

 

Annie, at age 14, wrote here, "Yosemite is a place of timeless beauty that will never be affected by the greed and woes of humans. Here we can rediscover ourselves, others, and the bonds that connect us with everything. Here is where we realize the incomparable essence of nature."

 

 

 The author Willa Cather so missed the abundant trees of lush Virginia when she moved as a child to the Nebraska plains. Trees were so rare in the plains, she wrote, people would feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were people.

 





We should treat them with sacred awe, for they are a life force.

I feel anxious we are not concerned enough about protecting our lands. For instance, there are so many ads on television from gas companies trying to convince Americans how good natural gas is. I said to my husband, if natural gas is so wonderful, why are these corporations spending so much time and money to convince people in feel-good commercials? Whenever I see warm and fuzzy advertisements from oil companies, I immediately question.


The film Promised Land portrays how natural gas companies get landowners to sign over their land to extract natural gas through fracking. Frances McDormand plays Sue and Matt Damon is Steve, who are trying to do just that. Sue tells an anxious mother about the better school her daughter can go to. "Everything to me starts with an education." An education is correct, but who is doing the educating? Those that seek to benefit?

When Sue and Matt arrive, a store clerk is so happy to see them. He says, "We can't sell the scenery, can we?"

I think we can (the parks experience is about scenery, but then the greater lesson is of stewardship), and it's time to introduce a word that has gone missing: conservation. Steve says, "Unless we talk about cutting consumption and so far that's a conversation none of want to have." We simply must conserve as much as we can. The land cannot give more. In J.J. Brown's  Brindle 24, a cautionary novel about fracking, it was wisely stated, "We had paradise. We threw it away." Let us not throw our paradise away.

The naming of Yosemite has a dark story with roots in the gold rush, according to Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea. In 1851, a group of white men calling themselves the Mariposa Battalion were armed and looking for Indians to drive out of their homelands from the western Sierra Nevadas. Lafayette Bunnell, so awed by the landscape here, thought they name the place they came upon, and suggested Yosemite, which he thought was the name of the tribe they were displacing. In fact, Yosemite refers to people who should be feared. It means, "They should be killers." Watch the clip here.

"We signed a paper that said they could take the trees, signed a paper that said they could take the copper from the earth," said the old chief Bizhiki, disturbed, "We didn't say they could take the earth.

Who can take the earth?" - The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich.

Erdrich penned a series of books, beginning with the Birchbark House, about a tribe whose main focus is Omakayas, a young girl living not long before Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you read the Little House books, they are a wonderful comparison, especially for children, as these are tribes the pioneers would displace. Disney adapted a film version of Little House on the Prairie, and there's a moving scene when Charles Ingalls passes the Osages. Their chief tells him,

"This land knows our stories. The wind knows the names of the children before they're born. But this should all be yours. Why do you think so? Do our memories matter less? Does our laughter not lift its way to heaven as yours does?"

In an interview, the mother of Tori Amos, who has Eastern Cherokee roots, was asked if she felt different growing up because of her background. She recalled not knowing a difference until she went to college and observed of her classmates, "They didn't have the same respect I suppose or love for the nature I was taught and for the animals and spirits."

Tori Amos recalls,

"As I was researching for this record [Scarlet’s Walk], a Native American woman came back to see me on the last tour and she said to me, “The people that hold the land and the white brother that owns the land must come together for the sake of her survival.

And I said to her,

"But so much has been taken from you and your people already."
 
There were tears rolling down her face, and she said “Sadly enough my dear the white brother only took the land. Now he needs to take more.”
 
This woman, older, no fanfare, but her commitment to building bridges to a people that has not integrated her stories, her people’s culture. She still is compassionate and holds a space by the fire. When you stop holding a space by the fire, then there’s no chance for the people that own the land to know what they really don't have access to. It isn't taught in our schools. Their culture is segregated. They are marginalized. Yet, they are still willing to share, even though they've lost so much. Yet still not pretend that agreements weren’t broken, that there wasn’t betrayal.

So I learned a lot in this woman's activism that she carried a torch and she carried a tomahawk but she carried compassion in her other hand."

 

I wish we had a modern day John Muir to advocate for the land. We need a space at the fire to talk about these issues. I hope to see you there.