Driving Audhumla

Last minute costume suggestions?

A few years ago when I was in Tokyo, I spent part of a day at the Asakusa shrine, which is both Shinto shrine and the Buddhist temple of Sensō-ji. The broad pathway leading up to the temple is known as Nakamise. Ever since the Edo era , it has been a pleasure quarter and shopping street. You can often find things in Nakamise that you'll never find anywhere else, including hairpins for geisha wigs, hand-made rice crackers, and many small good luck charms. 

They don't celebrate Halloween in Japan, so these masks I saw for sale on Nakamise were not intended for any particular season. Ditto with the rubber samurai and Geisha wigs.  Do you think they'd pull together your Halloween/Samhain costume?

When I was pulling photos for Matthew's birthday blog entry, I came across this photo of my two oldest kids, David and Kristin, I would guess this was taken in about 1975. What do you think of Kristin's costume? Maybe it runs in the family . . . .

Japan Japanese Tokyo Temple Shrine Halloween costume family mask

Becoming American

My family emigrated to America from Selbu, Norway in 1922. They came to the small Washington State town of LaCrosse where they joined other Selbu immigrants as wheat farmers.   Here's a photo of the family shot in 1928, just six years after they've arrived. It's pretty clear from their dress that they've worked hard on assimilation. It doesn't look like they've hung on to a single vestige of their old-country clothes.

My father Bjarne Slind is the smallest boy in the front row. He was nine years old at the time. From the looks of everyone, they were probably all dressed up for Sunday services at the Selbu Lutheran Church outside LaCrosse.  My grandmother Ingeborg Klegseth--who is in the back row--died the following year, so this is probably her very last photo.  Dad said she never learned to speak English and was always dreadfully homesick for Norway. Because he was the youngest, he spent the most time with her, and learned many little folk sayings and rhymes that he can remember to this day.

The thing I find most amusing about this photo is that all the men and boys are wearing hats. I have never seen my father wear a hat at all except with his navy uniform and his red felt hunting hat.  But here the older boys--my Uncles Gilbert and Ole-- are wearing very snappy-looking summer straw hats, and suits that wouldn't look too out of place today.  Grandpa, who is in the middle of the back row, has a heavier hat, probably to keep the sun off his already balding head.

Many Norwegian immigrants Americanized their first names, but not my family. Dad said the school teacher persuaded his parents to change the spelling of my Aunt Christine's name from Kristin, but that's the only change that was made, as far as I know. Dad has gone through life as an unapologetic Bjarne even though few people can spell his name, much less pronounce it properly. And whenever I mention my Uncle Ole, everyone laughs because of the  thousands of Ole and Lena jokes. But I really do have an Uncle Ole, and a grandfather Ole besides. (They were not very imaginative in my grandfather's family. There were two sons named Ole and a daughter named Oline, which is the feminine form of the same name).

My Aunt Johanna--on the left in the front row--seems very stylishly dressed, with her dropped-waist frock and her bobbed hair. I think that in this photo, she's the one whose face reveals that we have some Saami ancestors. Aunt Christine, who had to drop out of school and take care of the family after my grandmother died, is at the right in the front row, wearing a flowered dress. Uncle John, who was Aunt Christine's twin is standing between Dad and Aunt Johanna.

I note that of the six people in the photo, only my father and my Uncle Ole are still alive. But the others have not been forgotten. As we sing at Samhain, what is remembered lives!

immigrant emigrate immigration assimilation Norway Norwegian Washington+state family genealogy fashion

My Samhain/ Halloween baby

My son Matthew Flor has probably received all the Halloween birthday cards that have ever been designed.  That's what happens when your birthday coincides with a popular holiday. I would say it's all my fault as I chose October 31 for a scheduled C-section. But labor started early in the morning that day anyway. So, all in all, he's supposed to have been born this day. Today is his 37th birthday, and he's become everything I could have hoped for in a grown-up son.

I thought I'd put a few of my favorite Matthew photos up on this blog today. Probably if you're not family, you won't find them all that interesting. If you are, you'll be amazed at how he's changed over the years.   Here he is the day he was born, in 1969.  I always thought he looked very determined in this photo and indeed he is a very goal-oriented person.

Here's the only photo of Matthew and his sibs that was ever taken with his great-grandfather Ole Slind. This was taken some time in early 1972, when Matthew was about two and a half. He's the little guy in the blue paid outfit with the big white collar, sitting between his sister Kristin and his brother David. His youngest sister Martha is sitting in Great-Grandpa's lap. Grandpa was close to 90 when this was taken and I don't think he ever saw the kids again.

Matthew was the most curious of the kids. He was always noticing things that everyone else overlooked, and was also always experimenting with media. Early on I could see that art was probably going to be his vocation. Here he is investigating a culvert in the Sammamish Slough, and showing off his self-administered haircut while he was riding his tricycle.

This is one of my favorite photos of Matthew. I shot it on the beach at Golden Gardens when he was about three years old.  He's playing with his favorite toy, the big yellow Tonka truck. Even now I can close my eyes and remember all the truck noises he was making as he pushed the Tonka through the sand. And here's one of his first school photos. He was, as you can see,  very blond as a child.

Matthew was a physically active kid. When he was at the Central Branch Preschool in Seattle, he was often found climbing this giant cargo net. And when we went on our frequent hikes up Denny Creek to Franklin Falls,  he'd often be the first one to get his feet wet. Here he is with his three sibs somehwere along the Denny Creek trail.

We had many foreign students stay with us over the years. Here's a shot of Matthew on the front steps of the house on Seattle's Cascadia Avenue, and he's wearing a t-shirt given him by one of our Japanese students. He got along fabulously well with all the foreign students, even those who could speak very little English. His generally sunny disposition and eagerness to share helped them feel right at home.

When Bill and I were married in 1989, Matthew was part of the wedding party, as were his two sisters. Here are all four of us after the ceremony.  Matthew was 19 at the time.

After he graduated from Seattle Prep, he took classes at Bellevue Community College  and worked at the Leschi Cafe for my Seattle University classmate Mick McHugh.  Eventually he found his way to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago  from which he graduated with a degree in photography. He's a wonderful photographer, by the way, as you can see from his website. 

He found Kim, who shares his love of travel and art, and earlier this year they were married on Florida's Sanibel Island. Here's a self-portrait he shot with Kim on one of their trips, and also my very favorite of the photos I shot at their  wedding. It's clear from their body language that he's found a life partner to whom he is deeply connected. And now they have a new house in Seattle, and Matthew's working for the Gates Foundation .

This morning when I was rummaging around through boxes of old photos, I found this photo I shot of one of his birthday parties. It was, I think, in about 1979. He's flanked by his sisters, and his brother David is standing right behind him. The others in the photo are two of our foreign students, one from Taiwan and one from Japan, and an old family friend from our years in  Bellevue, Washington.  His birthdays were always rushed when he was a child because everyone wanted to go out trick-or-treating. Now those days are past, but I hope he has an equally fun birthday today.

family photo children birthday Halloween Seattle

Once more we circle around

Last night I worked front-of-the-house at Reclaiming's  big public Spiral Dance at the Kezar Pavillion in San Francisco. This is probably the largest Pagan gathering of its kind in the nation. (Yes, there are huge Pagan summer festivals, but this was one event, one single ritual, under one roof in which everyone participated at one time).  By the time all the noses were counted, there were between 1200 and 1500 people dancing the spiral dance.

It's difficult logistically to put on a public ritual on this scale in a way that invites everyone to participate. Separate altars are set up for each of the directions--last year my coven and I created the East altar--and each direction is invoked by a large group of people. The Goddess was invoked through a ritual dance performed by dancers wearing the fabulous Goddess masks by Lauren Raine. (These are amazing works of art, and need to be seen in an additional setting where they can be viewed somewhat more reflectively). Here's what the San Francisco Chronicle's religion reporter had to say about the event.

Frankly, some moments of last night's ritual worked well, and some were less successful. The ritual opens perfectly with children running the circle deosil accompanied by a crone. Then the chorus enters, singing a version of the very ancient  Lyke Wake Dirge that is very beautiful.

The heart of this ritual is a guided meditation that takes participants to the Isle of Apples in the netherworld, where we meet our Beloved Dead. After a period of connection with them, we all join in the spiral dance in which the people circle, spiral into the middle and out again.  The chorus sings:

A year of beauty. A year of plenty.
A year of planting. A year of harvest.
A year of forests. A year of healing.
A year of vision. A year of passion.
A year of rebirth.

This year may we renew the earth.
This year may we renew the earth.

And then we begin the powerful earth-renewing chant ourselves. Imagine 1500 people dancing and singing this chant:

Let it begin with each step we take.
And let it begin with each change we make.
And let it begin with each chain we break.
And let it begin every time we awake.

I sat in the center with the crones and those with disabilities, so I was face-to-face with every single dancer at some point in the dance. It takes a long long time for this many people to spiral back into the center and out again and in again, chanting all the while.

During the guided meditation, I was thinking of my son David and how, were he still alive, he'd be turning 40 next month. I reflected on my very difficult and often estranged relationship with my surviving children and realized that David had tried to be the glue to hold us all together. I know that were he alive, he'd be a husband and father and I would have harmonious relationships with my grandchildren. One of my most powerful desires is for a granddaughter because of my wonderful connection with my own grandmother. So far I have no granddaughters, and it looks very likely that I never will.

So this was the thought on my mind and in my heart as the dancers circled around me, vowing with each step to make changes, to renew the earth. Then suddenly someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I could hold a sleeping toddler while her mom danced the spiral. There in my lap she set a warm drowsy little girl, her cheeks pink and her hands so soft, her body as limp as only a sleeping child can be. So I looked down into the child's face as the dance continued, and was reminded again of the connections that exist between all of us, the living, those who have gone before, and those who are yet to come. And I realized that I don't have to limit my grandmothering to my blood kin. Other little girls exist in the world who will want to learn to bake bread and dig in the garden and walk mountain paths with me.

The dance ended, as it always does, with the dancers bunched tightly around the center, everyone chanting a huge "Ohm" that extended on and on forever. The little girl still slept soundly with the wave of sound that washed over us, rose and fell and rose and fell.  I could feel the tears running down my cheeks, encapsulated as I was in all that energy and dedication to positive change. Although I was only sitting in the center--looking like the Grandmother crone that I am in my long black dress, my pointed hat with a peace sign, and a Mexican skull necklace--I know I danced the spiral dance this year as powerfully as I ever have.

Then the mother returned and picked up the sleeping baby. We said goodbye to the Beloved Dead, and a hugely gravid woman--who had portrayed Gaia when the North was invoked--called a blessing for all the new babies born and yet to be born into our community.  It was a potent reminder that the cycle of life continues. And so it does. And what is remembered lives.

Samhain spiral+dance Halloween Reclaiming Pagan Paganism San+Francisco  

Responding to the invitation

One of the key elements in my Pagan world view is that the Goddess issues a constant invitation to come join her as Creatrix, to participate in the process of creating, building and changing culture and the earth. Seldom do I feel this as strongly as when I am making art.  For some reason, Samhain, more than any of our other big holidays, gets those creative juices flowing.

Several years ago I made this noren for the front of the loft. I hang it over the door for our Samhain ritual, so that all who enter will have a visual reminder that we leave ordinary reality behind when we enter sacred space. (You should have seen us all in our pointy hats, ducking to get through this doorway last night).

This year in pottery class I made these two cabezas for the Dia de los Muertos altar. One is made from terra cotta clay and the other from a high-grog white clay that slumped a bit more than I liked. I've used sugar skulls on the altar in the past, but because our altar is outside, ants have been a problem. These clay skulls remain unmolested, of course. The skulls, by the way, are not intended to inspire terror, but to remind us of the Beloved Dead, whom we invite home for a visit this time of year.

We spent last Sunday decorating novena candles for the altar. We used tissue paper, Mod Podge, puff paint, photocopies of muertos images, photos of some of the Beloved Dead and, of course, way too much glitter. Here are a few candle close-ups.

 

The altar always includes marigolds (zempasuchil) and deep red Celiosa argentea. So far it's been very warm this year, so the challenge will be keeping the flowers alive through November 2. Here they are in all their glory.

I found this great muertos storyteller figure in Phoenix earlier this month, and knew she had to be the centerpiece of the altar. I've collected the other small muertos figures over the years, including la Catrina. The firefighter joined the altar in 2001, right after 9/11. The bride and groom were atop the kransekake (Norwegian wedding cake) when my husband and I were married in 1989.

Speaking of my husband, I always place a bottle of Jameson's Irish whiskey on the altar for him, and there's also a bottle of Samuel Smith ale from Tadcaster for my son David. (David liked the craft beers).  Last night at our Samhain ritual, everyone's Irish ancestors showed up, to our great surprise, and we ended up with a very raucous ritual, After we danced the spiral dance in front of the Dia de los Muertos altar, somehow we decided we all should have a little nip from the bottle of Jameson's. I know there was nothing the late Himself loved more than having the house full of people having a good time, so I know he would have been only too happy to share "a wee drop of the cray-ture" with us.

Here are a couple of photos so you can see the altar in its context on the patio.  Others who live in the loft complex also place candles on the altar and write the names of their Beloved Dead in the book we place on the altar. And Macha NightMare has several other photos of this altar on her blog.

Several years ago I made this large appliqued Catrina for a ritual. This year I decided she needed some music, so yesterday I made the musician to go with her.  My coven sisters have dubbed him "Hombre," so I guess this will be his name. Both are appliqued onto black cotton panels thare are about 80" tall. Next year they'll both go outside by the altar, but this year, they provided a backdrop for the indoor portions of our ritual. I think Hombre is not yet finished because his jacket needs a few more flourishes.

I hope you are all having a blessed and creative Samhain.

Samhain Halloween muertos dia+de+la+muertos day+of+the+dead altar art creativity goddess fabric flowers California Mexico folk+art Pagan Paganism

Dishonored no more

Last night at my coven's Samhain ritual, we read aloud the names of some of the witches who perished in the Burning Times. After each name was read, we chanted "what is remembered lives." 

The list is long, and we can only read a portion of it every year. So this year we omitted Lisbet Pedersdatter Nypan. She was one of the very last witches executed in Norway, burned alive by civil authorities in Trondheim in 1670.  She was one of about 70 witches tried and 15 executed in the part of Norway from which my family comes.

By most accounts Lisbet was some kind of folk healer, for the evidence against her included some of the prayers she  said for those who were ill. It was also alleged that she rode her broomstick to witches' gatherings on Dovre Mountain  A broom believed to have been her flying besom is on display at the Sandvig Collection in Lillehammer. Lisbet's husband Ole Nypan was also charged with witchcraft, but because he was considered to have committed a lesser offense than she, he was beheaded, rather than burned.

About 40 years ago, Norwegian writer Torbjørn Prestvik created a dramatization of Lisbet's trial. The plan is performed occasionally in Trondheim. I once saw some photos of the production, with a gorgeous red-haired woman playing Lisbet.  But Lisbet was 60 when she was killed, and in those days, people who were 60 looked and were considered very old, so there was a certain amount of artistic license in the casting and production.

In any case, Prestvik's play turned the tide for Lisbet, as he wrote that her only crime was helping people. In 2005, on Syttende Mai (Constitution Day, Norway's national holiday). a statue of Lisbet Nypan was dedicated at the Nypvang Elementary School  in Trondheim. Here's a photo of the statue taken that day. How cool is it that a statue of a real witch has been placed at an elementary school? Do you think we'd ever see such a thing in this country?  What is remembered lives!

   

Samhain Halloween Witch Witchcraft Pagan Paganism Norway Ancestors Trondheim

Welcoming them home

Today Becky, Linda and I set up the communal Dia de los Muertos altar on the patio outside my loft. We wanted to have it ready in time for the coven's Samhain ritual here tomorrow night. We'll leave the altar up through November 2, as is the custom in my largely Hispanic neighborhood. And on November 1 and second, in particular, we'll welcome the ancestors home.

I still have yet to go buy a new bottle of Jameson's Irish Whiskey to set on the altar for the late Himself, my husband who's now been dead nine years.  And I'll have to think of something to place on the altar that was a favorite of my son David's.  We've set up pages where people can write the names of their Beloved Dead, and many of the novena candles we decorated last Sunday are now on the altar. Some of them bear the names of people who know who died this year.  We have big vases of marigolds and celeosa, and a cloud of copal incense smoke is circling the altar.  And we've stretched bright papel picado  banners across the width of the patio.

I love this time of year of remembering those who came before us. We say "what is remembered lives," and I know the ancestors cannot but be glad to be remembered here this year.  Here are a few quick-and-dirty photos I shot tonight without a tripod. I'll post some better ones later, but I was in a big hurry to get these up tonight. 

ancestors remember Halloween Samhain dia+-de+los+muertos day+of+the+dead dead death memorial family Hispanic Oakland California Pagan Paganism

Terra cotta raven brings the sun

As we move through October, the days grow short and each day the arc of the sun that passes across my window is shallower. And soon daylight savings time will end and I will go into a major funk with the winter darkness. That's why my most recent project in pottery class was a terra cotta bas-relief of a raven with the sun in his beak. This image is, of course, based on the Haida story about how Raven stole the sun from the Sky Chief's lodge and tossed it up into the air where it remains today. I figured I need all the sunlight I can get in the wintertime, even here in Oakland, California.

The raven hangs out on a garden wall, right next to my sweet-smelling Mandevilla laxa, which is about go to into dormancy.  So he will be the wall's primary focus until springtime, and the vine sprints 25 feet up the wall again. 

Raven pottery terra+cotta sun winter depression light garden California Oakland

The parental units

It's an odd experience to look back at one's parents' wedding photo some 65 years after the fact.  The other day I got an email from one of my classmates mentioning that her parents had just celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary. So I pulled out my parents' wedding photo and realized that if my mom were still alive, they would have been married 65 years.

My parents, Bjarne Slind and Mary Kathryn Mead, were married in Ellensburg, Washington in April 1942. Mom was 22 and Dad was just 10 days shy of his 22nd birthday. They met because Mom was a medical technologist at what was then Providence Hospital in Seattle, and Dad's brother Ole was doing his surgical residency there.

This wedding photo shows everyone in the wedding party. Probably it was taken by Otto Pautzke, the pioneer Kittitas County photographer. (Someday I'd love to know if the Pautzke negatives survived anywhere, for he took all the formal photos of the family.  And almost all our photos perished in the fire that destroyed my grandparents' home in 1956).

The photo was shot in the "music room," where my grandmother taught piano lessons. The wedding party is standing in front of the grand piano.They were married at St. Andrew's Catholic Church in Ellensburg, which is the oldest Catholic Church in the Diocese of Yakima.  The church was established in 1884, but my family arrived earlier, with my great-great grandfather Jacob Becker starting the town's first blacksmith shop in 1872.

My mom is wearing a wedding dress made from pina cloth from the Philippines. The fabric was a baby gift when she was born. The patterns were already woven into the fabric, so there wasn't a lot of latitude about the design of the dress. She's carrying a bouquet of gardenias and maidenhair fern, with white rosebuds tied in love knots. She's also wearing a sunburst wedding brooch on a white velvet ribbon. This was a wedding gift from my dad.

The bridesmaids are her two sisters, and one of my father's sisters. The bridesmaids' dresses are rather random looking and were, I believe in different colors. I have no explanation for the rather unusual things they were wearing in their hair other than to note that this was still an era in which all women covered their heads when in church.   Dad's brother John Slind is his best man, and the other groomsman is my mom's first cousin James Mundy.  The flower girl is a cousin of my mom's and, according to newspaper reports, "carried the wedding rings in the heart of a lily." (This wedding account was written by my Auntie Ida, who did wax poetic on occasion).

They all look very young, as indeed they were. This photo was shot eight months and one day before the attack on Pearl Harbor that changed their lives as irrevocably as the attack on the World Trade Center 60 years later changed ours. Dad went off to serve in the US Navy, one of the aunts became a military bride, and the post-war educational opportunities provided by the GI Bill meant that no one in my mom's generation stayed to work the farm.

Of the people in the photo, only my two maternal aunts and my father are still alive.  Mom died of lung cancer in 1972, at the age of 53. Dad is now 87, and in assisted living on Mercer Island. The two aunts are doing well. And now, my parents' children and grandchildren look at this wedding photo and wonder what each person was thinking that day.

wedding family Ellensburg Washington photo genealogy pioneer war bride fashion

Literary reminder

For the past three days I've had my nose in a book every spare minute.  i checked all three books in Ivan Doig's Montana trilogy out of the Alameda Free Library and read them straight through. I can't think of when I've enjoyed a work of fiction more.  And I do agree with the critics that Doig is a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner in terms of the passion and power with which he writes about the west.

Doig's three books, English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and Ride with Me Mariah Montana are all set in a very precise region of central Montana, directly south of Glacier National Park and east of the Continental Divide.  They're the story of a family started by a young Scottish immigrant who becomes a sheep rancher, and of later family members who served as rangers in the US Forest Service in the Two Medicine area of the Lewis and Clark National Forest.  The family is fictional, of course, but Doig, who grew up in this region, writes of many real-life events, including fires, droughts, blizzards, and the liming out of the forest boundaries by some of the first rangers.   

I learned about Bob Marshall, a young forest ranger who founded The Wilderness Society  and who fought for the establishment of permanent wilderness areas, under The Wilderness Act of 1964.   One of the protected wilderness areas is named for Bob Marshall and plays a key role in one of the three books.

Anyway, Doig has reminded me again that I am a westerner to my bones, that I love the west, and probably could never again live happily anywhere else. He  powerfully evokes the open skies, the saw-toothed mountains, the rush of mountain streams, and the rugged people who populate the west. I'm not talking about the cowboy-movie view of the west, but simply the land of space, openness and infinite possibilities.  When I was driving from Sedona to Phoenix last week, I had not yet encountered Doig's books, butI  shot a few photos of those spaces that are so dear to my eyes and heart.

west books literature literary wilderness Montana mountains forest+service novel western westerner