Equanimity
“Calmness is the voice of God speaking to you through the radio of your soul.”— Paramahansa Yogananda
A temple in Khajuraho, India at Dawn
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For contributions and an introduction to the children at Michael’s Makindye Foundation providing a home for street children in Uganda click on the link below. Michael and Angie appear in a photograph below the link.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
Good Grief
It is Springtime and I am doing my annual Spring cleaning– maniacally giving away old and unused clothes and items that no longer serve or never did. Some things I remember as I go through the linen chest– others are totally forgotten as to origin and use. And then it hits. In the corner of the chest is a neatly folded piece of green check cotton cloth. I immediately know its source. It is the cloth my Mother used to make curtains for her kitchen. Mom was always making curtains. When my husband and I were married she made curtains for our first apartment. Seeing this green check cloth brings me back to a hard period in my life when seeing my Mother was my only joy… we are sitting at the table in her kitchen having tea and laughing. It is a happy meeting… So many years ago.
And now with the sun shining and the birds singing and fresh air wafting in through the windows I am struck with a clutching stomach of grief. Tears that feel they could go on forever when I was in my fifties now are gone some 20 years later. Loss has hit again since then… a few times and those times are more sore. I let the sun beat down on me to soothe the memory.
Grief is not just a human phenomenon. Elephants will stand over the dead body of one of their herd, in some way showing respect for the departed spirit. And I think of examples close to home. The doe we saw one day going over to the dead body of a fawn on the side of the road. Or the baby rabbit we saw crossing into the middle of the road where a large mass of flesh with fur lay. And even closer to home– my husband and I adopted my Mother’s dog once Mom got too sick to care for her. Ko-ko had stayed with us many times in our house and loved being there. We never took her to see Mom again because the parting was too hard on both of them. We did take her toys though, from Mom’s house one night, and put them in our bedroom, among them a corroded rubber Santa. We were sitting at dinner that night and Ko-ko went into the bedroom. We heard a blood-curdling yelp and then whimpering. We went in and found Ko-ko with her old Santa in her mouth. The Santa was her version of my green check curtain. A stabbing wound and tears.
Clearly animals feel grief. Some die of grief just like humans. Grief binds us together, human and animal, and perhaps provides the special appeal of the new life in Spring. Yet when Spring inspires happy faces and a general feeling of well-being, and flowers are blooming everywhere, the contrast can be cruel. As T.S. Eliot so eloquently put it: “April is the cruelest month.” But once it is May the new life has settled in and we can go out in the yard and bake in the sun– the universal giver of life. And then with June… “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days…” (James Russell Lowell)
We humans have no prerogative on grief. Our lives entwine with happy moments and tragic in this vast web of existence, and Spring and loss are just two facets of possibility.
For contributions to Michael’s Makindye Foundation providing a home for street children in Uganda click on the link below. Michael and Angie appear in a photograph below the link.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
The Return of the Animals
I confess to being a springtime scrooge. When everyone else is oohing and aahing over the warm weather, welcoming it and delighting in it, I cringe, knowing that, despite the fact that there are some magnificent days in April, May and early June, Spring is the harbinger of the dreaded hot-humid-hazy, lazy days of summer. Admittedly, this is a terrible attitude and a worse way to think, not living in the present at all.
April may be the cruelest month as T.S. Elliot writes, and I concur in many aspects, except for the return of the animals. Why? Because the animals work their unique and miraculous magic on depressed souls and bring joy. I once read that animals were natural anti-depressants… a very astute observation. How a child’s face lights up with joy to touch an animal or observe one up close. Adults, too, are wooed by their innocence. Animals bring enchantment, enrich our lives. That is why therapy dogs and other animals do such good work in hospitals, prisons, hospices for the dying, wherever there is misery.
The return of the animals brings music to the air, replacing the ominous gale winds of winter and the blanketed silence of snows. Insects hum and buzz. Birds sing and chirp. Windows are opened wide to allow sweet- smelling, soporific breezes to blow through our houses. Little green shoots become beautiful flowers in our gardens, along side roads, in the fields. Trees come to life again, gods of greenery. Fat, red-breasted robins perk up the lawn in their search for worms. And we no longer have to worry about animals starving. The deer we see mid-March in groups, scavenging for food are thin and weak. And the squirrels have run out of their stores as well, raiding the bird feeder which they normally leave to the birds. A late Spring means animals will starve and die with no edible items.
And yet, with all the pleasure the return of the animals brings us, do we welcome them with open arms? No, we fumigate our land and spread pesticides all over their territory. Many species of birds are heading towards extinction due to our use of pesticides and, generally speaking, our “development” of the land. We destroy vernal pools, thinking them mere puddles rather than the breeding place of frogs and salamanders. We take the babies of spring– the lambs, the calves– away from their mothers and slaughter them. Sometimes with abject cruelty, in full view of the mothers. The mothers wail in anguish. We break bonds stronger than the supposedly solid bond of human matrimony that nowadays fails as often as it succeeds.
In The Letter Writer, famed author, Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote: “In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who because of him, had left this earth. “What do they know–all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world–about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
This is how we repay those who bring us such joy, such love, such purity– those who uplift, save lives, care for us. It has been said that a dog is the only creature who loves his caretaker more than he loves himself. Dogs have it over us in this.
Spring is almost here and, with it, the return of the animals. Let us open our hearts to our fellow creatures and show them the appreciation they so deserve, for without them there truly will be, as Rachel Carson direly predicted, a “silent spring”.
For contributing to Michael’s home for street children in Uganda, click link below picture of Michael and Angie…
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
Last of the Informal Show
These photographs are the last to go to Michaels Makindye Foundation for street orphans and homeless children in Uganda. See reference at end for information and donations…
Some of my India pictures are going as well… see “India” on the blog. One appears below…
Delhi Market
Makindye children
Michael and Angie
Click on link below to see Michael’s charity:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
Informal Show… paintings and photographs
In May the art work below will be going to Michael’s home for homeless and street children in Kampala, Uganda, The Makindye Foundation. For more picture links and information on donations etc. click on link below…
http://www.gofundme.com/f/sustainability-support-for-the-makindye-foundation
(Click on all images to enlarge)
“Bontecou Lake”, Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Wildflowers by the Roadside”, Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Weeping Willow”, Lucasville, Ohio (Photograph)
“Reflections of Hills” Millbrook, New York (Abstract watercolor)
“Sunny Hills” Millbrook, New York (Abstract Watercolor)
“Trees in Winter” Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Moonlight” Millbrook, New York (Photograph)
“Sunlight over Trees” Millbrook, New York (Watercolor)
Some of the children in Michael’s Makindye Foundation…
(see link at top)
MOONSIDE 
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