Psalm 100

Southwest On My Mind

And now?

The month is almost ending.

Maybe it's the sweet April showers promising to bring some May flowers.

Maybe it's the upcoming merry month beckoning to chase bees, recall past trusts and past vows, and capture anew moments of tenderness.

Whatever.

However.

NOW IS THE TIME to cap this series with a southwest blessing.

PSALM 100, A Paraphrase For The Southwest

Written for the Shepherd of the Valley UMC Disciple Class, January 1993

1 Beat your ancient drums to the Great Spirit, from the Bridge of Coming and Going, to the paths of the sun and the winds.

2 Kneel before the Venerable One in the great Hall of Worship; fall on your knees before the spirit table with chanting for your heavenly gifts.

Needlepoint: Navajo Yei Rug. By ATV. Yeis are the supernatural 

beings that allow communication between the Navajo

and their gods. September 2021

3 Revere the Great One with the echo of bronze bells. It is He who made us mighty hunters and virtuous maidens, and we are His; we are His people whom He keeps safe beneath the ancestral tepees

 

From the DeGrazia Apache Collection,
Superstition Mountain Museum

4 Enter the Mesquite Gate and the courtyards of the Mighty Buffalo with gratitude to our illustrious Ancestor. Give thanks to Him for prosperity, harmony, piety, and peace; bless Him whose name makes everything harmonious.

5 For the Patriarch is good; His love is as pure and as constant as the water from the Laughing Brook, and His Eagle shadow hovers all generations.

Aho.*

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*Aho is Lakota and has been borrowed into many other North American languages. It means, Yes, I agree. It is used in prayers in somewhat the same way that Amen is used.

Storyteller

Southwest On My Mind

Have you ever walked into a rummage sale and find something you didn’t know you were looking for?

I do. 

Every.Time.

Look at this terracotta storyteller.

This is one of my favorites. EVER.

Because it is very southwest.

I cannot even begin to tell you how perfect it is. I was grinning from ear to ear when I saw it.

Storytelling has been an inherent part of many indigenous cultures today. Way back when we were in our Phoenix home, I had obsessed to have a figurine like this, but forgot about it. 

And now, Victory! 

It found me.

When I gaze at my storyteller, I can envision him and children gathered under the great wide canopy of a shamel ash tree. Some are perched on his lap. Others are sitting back on a flat tapestry-woven rug or just squatting on their haunches.

The storyteller strokes his chin at first. Then his frown of concentration smooths out into a smile. He begins to narrate the origin of entire nations, why animals look or act the way they do, and where or how entire cultural traditions originated.

Giggles fill the air. Or the children gasp when they hear about the sky that looks like it is on fire with sunset. When the horizon appears like the edge of the world. Or when a star falls on earth.

Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

I think that applies to stories, too. They are like old friends.

And for me?  My life is full of stories. That’s why I write my tales and pen my words.  I want to keep them close.

So now I step back and look at our home.  

My kachina grins at me, the pottery on the deck sparkles, the gourd vase whispers spring, and the storyteller eagerly waits to tell another tale.

It looks like home.

(To be continued)

Gourd Vase

Southwest On My Mind

This one isn't from our southwest home, but when I saw it at the Goodwill store, I didn’t think.

I didn’t say a word. 

I simply grabbed it and took it home.  

It’s not fancy. 

Just a dried-up, naturally hollow gourd. Its simple, graceful lines make it perfect for use as a vase. With line etchings of the sun, a turtle, a mountain, gecko, a deer. 

Very southwest.

I just knew that it would be an amazing centerpiece.

Here was what I did. 

Start with a doily made from Golden Tips of Darjeeling Tea packaging. 

Add faux feathers, fuzzy cattail seed heads, and brown berry picks.  Then tuck in straw-like leaves, letting them bend whichever way they want.

Or adorn with feathered yarn and style it on a tumbling block riser (both DIY-ed).

Let spring do the rest.

It’s so simple that it takes my breath away.

And the message?

Life is simple. 

You thrive on maize corn that is cultivated in irrigated fields in river bottoms. Women gather wild plants to eat. Men hunt deer and antelope. 

Harvest is plentiful.

Life is beautiful.

And rain comes when you dance.

(To be continued)

Talavera Pottery

Southwest On My Mind

So we moved across states and rivers and valleys and mountains and deserts.

We moved away from family and friends and all I knew.  

We moved to a Midwestern state in the Great Lakes region. 

The Buckeye State.

This was a new adventure.

This was the start of our new life.

And I surely brought with me a few more mementos of my southwest roots. 

I loved them and when I loved something, I just didn't love them. I obsessed. They came home with me as well.

If I were stranded on a desert island and I could bring along one thing, what would it be?

Yes, please to my talavera-tile pottery urn and terracotta pot. A colorful heritage of the Old World. 

When I gaze at them, I see the art of a Spanish colonial period in the intricate blue and white design.

I could hear the voices of native American warriors dancing to the sound of a drum. 

(To be continued)

Kachina

Southwest On My Mind

Dance in the rain. - Anonymous

Sometimes when you realize you can’t go home anymore, you discover something even more important.

Wherever you go...

Wherever you land...

Wherever the journey takes you...

You can always bring a little bit of home with you along the way.

That's the reason that this kachina napkin holder tagged along when we moved to our home in the Midwest some ten years ago. This, and a few more knickknacks.

I love the kachina because of what it stands for.

A spirit being in the religious beliefs of pueblo Indians.

The bridge between the spiritual world and mortals.

A rainmaker who dances between raindrops, without umbrellas.

I can imagine the kachina with his elaborately painted headdress adorned with turquoise beads.

In a slightly forward-tilted posture, forward raising of the knee, and a flat-footed stomp, he starts a petition for rain.

His feet are painted yellow, a color that represents the eagle’s yellow feet to enable him to dance lightly throughout the day.

He continues to beckon the rain gods in their cloud homes in the north, west, south, and east. He gyrates, his torso flexing.

Looking up, the people sense the rain before it comes in raving clouds that are humming with charged energy. 

The rain begins almost immediately. Like the sky just opened up. Hard rain. A downpour. 

Rolling over them in thick, warm sheets.

(To be continued)

For My Ding

EDUARDO LL. TORIO

February 5, 1951- March 27, 2022

There may be pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning. - Psalm 30:5

God had mercy and took away my brother Eddie's misery from illness on a Sunday morning.

I can't believe he's now walking upright.

Leaping for joy.

Third Brother hosts a Philippine visit

My brother got his gift of final healing.

For that, I am grateful.

Flowers For Ding: Easter lilies that bloom every spring in our Columbus garden

I had looked back for signs that across the seas, my brother somehow let me know of his moving on.

And I remembered.

At around 8 pm, First Granddaughter and I were doing our usual YouTube after-dinner perusing. She suddenly stopped and said, Grandma, do you hear that? Someone’s throwing up. We both looked out the window but saw nothing.

In my later conversation with the sibs, they had told me that Ding threw up just immediately before he expired. It was at 8 pm Hawaii time.

Hubby and I had our usual morning walk today and were regaled by a flock of white tern birds on a banyan tree branch.

Then a fat one flew down on the grass. So elegant and delicate, with immaculate all-white plumage.

I knew it.

Ding came to tell me that he is free.

He is flying through the air and living in the sunlight.

My brother lives on.

STOP | END

My Life As A Professional

STOP: logical end of a Fortran/Basic computer progam

END: last line in a main computer program 

Retirement: when you stop living at work and start working at living. - Anonymous

After 27 years, the end of my professional life was near.

I'd begun to feel the stress of a looming deadline, gotten tired of watching the same office scenes day after day, and became simply grumpy in the mornings since I had to switch out of PJs and slip into a proper dress.

Work fascinated me. I could sit and look at it for hours.

Now older and wiser, I'd discovered that there were six things that I really loved about my job. Pay day, lunch time, quitting time, vacation time, holidays, and of course...

Retirement. 

When I finally retired, I didn't want pomp and circumstance, just a quiet no-party day of unscheduled drop-ins from co-workers who wanted to say goodbye. But I did prepare a retirement speech just in case the event became a gathering.

This was what I wrote.

********************************

RETIREMENT SPEECH, March 2010

For nearly as long as I've worked here, I've hoped that I might one day leave for good. As each semester rolled by, I kept asking myself the question: If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pit of the HTC?

Thus, early this year, I did a quick math of all the license plate numbers on the northwest parking lot of campus, divided the total by GCC's spring semester FTSE, then multiplied that by the total number of open lab hours in the HTCs - and determined with the result that I got that retiring early seemed about as right as it could be.

I will admit that I had thought about the downside to retiring. 

For one thing, retiring means I can no longer call in sick so I can shop at the mall. The second most important thing is that I will have to drink coffee on my own time. Thirdly, I will have to come to terms that doing nothing will be very hard to do because... I will never know when I'm finished.

Now that this dream to escape... er... to be released from my working career is finally going to be a reality, I cannot help but be melancholic about the things that I will miss.

I will miss sprinting to get to my office door to log in to the Employee Schedule Board lest it emblazon my name with the shameful scarlet message, Not checked in.

I am going to miss dealing with Error messages and hearing the squeals from unplugged audio cords on the iMacs.

I will miss the High Tech clients who think that with ESP, we can guess what course they are registered in and who their instructor might be; and more so, those who think that we have PHDs in biotechnology and calculus and therefore are able to assist them in their computer course assignments.

I will miss meetings of all kinds - which, by the way, I am more convinced than ever, are the true culprits to the non-achievement of our full potential as an organization.

I don't expect that you will want to continue communicating with me, but if you do, to access LIVE CHAT WITH DORIS I will need to issue you a username. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 15 characters - with 5 uppercase letters, 5 lowercase letters, and 5 numeric characters. 

To authenticate initial usage, you will need to answer 3 security questions, after which you will receive a temporary password that you can then change using the secure account wizard website that will be set up for that purpose. After you enter your message in the textbox and click on Start Chat, a popup window will appear indicating your position in the queue and an estimated time frame for an answer. And not to forget, it will cost you ten cents per ink side to a get a printed copy of my response.

I'd like to thank you for the Soleri bell and lovely card. Every time I look at them I will be reminded of how all my hard work got me this one reward.

In closing, I'd like to pass on my condolences to my friends whom I'm leaving behind.

To others, may I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous semester.

My prayer is that I may be granted the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to see the difference.

Thank you. 

STOP | END

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P.S. I was asked to write a history of micro-computing at the college. I complied and entitled it, Not Everything You Want To Know About Micro-Computing at GCC... But It Is A Start: A Spotty History 1983-2010.

It's a good read. Funny. Not computerese. I should reproduce it as a blog at a later time.