From Mexico to Australia and back again

Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) by Diego Rivera, 1924

Now this is how to build close to water! The Sydney Opera House. This may be entirely fictional, but isn't it neat?

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Asheville Flood 24 photo by Victoria A. Ifatusin

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All my images were available on the internet, except these from my TV.

I'd say some good water management is needed here! Not just the way the engineers built dams and dykes along rivers, but some use of the newer knowledge of how to make communities more healthy for the need for water and incorporate trees and smart use of buildings. My friend Robertson Work has some good ideas. He's worked with many communities all over the world, and is now retired and I met him at Swannanoa Watershed Action Network (SWAN) a couple of years ago. He has wise words in his many publications.

It's time for a new model, as Bucky Fuller would say. Work with the needs of our people, and stay aware and attentive of the needs of nature, to avoid this kind of catastrophe happening in the future. SWAN has a good start in helping groups of people make these decisions, where climate change is included from the start of the process.

My favorite coffee shop hasn't reopened yet. Soon, they say. Probably when potable water is easily available. 

Today's quote:

Walt Whitman said, “The English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.” 

Remembering my Dead, Dia de los Muertos

 I think our local Mexican restaurant will put up some deocrations, oh, they already have, for Halloween. There are skulls all over the place!!

This post will share some of my dear loved ones. So if it's kind of dull for you, I understand. 

For me, I have a personal altar, which celebrates my relationships with friends and family, whose spirits are close to me. I remember them with love, laughter, and the enjoyment of our lives when we were together...and think how in not too many days/months/years, I will be joining them.

My dear grandmother (seated in the middle here among her sisters) has been gone many years. I hope she can remember all the fun she gave me and my little sis "way back when"...just after my first date at 16.

No, none of these serious women in 1939 Mississippi who worked on the quilt at a quilting bee, are related to me.,,but I know my mother did make some quilts on her own, using a big circular quilting frame.

One person quilting by herself. Not my mother...

Here's my mother on the right and my grandmother Ada, my father's mother. I think they didn't get along that well later in life, but at one point were very close. I wonder if their spirit selves ever sit for a cuppa somewhere...

Much love to my father, here with all of his grandchildren - the little one on the right in the red shirt has also transitioned to the other side. I'm holding my youngest son, while older two sons stand by me. Little blond niece has disappeared from my life, living somewhere in Europe.

My dad's dad, George Rogers Sr. He left this life the year I graduated from high school.

Here I am on the right, with my little sister on left, and my other grandmother in her Sunday best to be a reader at the Christian Science church in Houston, TX. They are on the other side of the barrier of death, without the trouble of what they look like or what they wear any more.

Of course I also must include Panther and Muffin...

I had Panther from September, 2012 until June 23, 2018. I loved her free spirit, and her beautiful coat.

Panther and Felicia at Ramya's house...

Ramya at Flat Creek July 2011. She transitioned in Sept. 2012 and Panther came to live with me then.

Phil left this life on Oct. 19 2021...and I didn't say goodbye in person, but sent him lots of love and a few laughs on his FaceBook posts.

Muffin was born on my birthday on my front porch in St. Augustine FL, and I cared for her as we moved to Tampa then Black Mountain NC. I said goodbye to her in 2015.

One of her last visits to the vet before the final one.

My sister, Mary, as an adult...

And the two PrinSisters who shared emails with me as I moved through jobs and apartments from 2001 to 2018...Jinni and Rosemary. I'm sure they (spirits must be able to read)  read everything I post if it's at all interesting.

Here's Jinni on the left, Rosie on the right, at one of our after school meetups in one apartment or another...high school or maybe still middle school.

Jinni had MS for years, and rode around in her scooter, but still found ways to have rituals for the holy days of Pagans. She lived till she was 70.

Rosie after she had cancer, which she beat for 5 years, dying in 2018.

Rosie on left, her hubby George, then me, 2007 when they helped me move into apt. in Black Mountain NC.

Rosie and George, and at bottom I'm in a rocker next to Rosie, about 2010.

OK, that's all I'll post here, and I may be the only person who has tears in my eyes remembering all those good times. But I know whenever you think of those you've loved who've gone beyond this life, the same sense of sadness as well as joy can be experienced. That's 'cause we're human.

Today's quote:

THOUSANDS OF CANDLES CAN BE LIGHTED FROM A SINGLE CANDLE, AND THE LIFE OF THE CANDLE WILL NOT BE SHORTENED. HAPPINESS NEVER DECREASES BY BEING SHARED.

THE BUDDHA

Happy Halloween - Samhain!

 

Thanks to young friends making the scary pumpkin above...

I'm hoping kids of all ages have fun dancing and prancing and getting treats...no tricks this year. Wearing masks under masks must be pretty weird.

I just saw a notification on Facebook that there are drive through treats for kids being done at the town offices building in Black Mountain. That's nice, but nobody will see the kids prancing in their costumes. Sad about that.

I've had my hands full this week...with deadlines and rehab, and a kind of distant family member who was hospitalized. Then his wife collapsed after he went home, and she was hospitalized and died within a few days. I am too distant to be given information until time has passed...but in my meditation I was pretty sure she had died. There's the thinness of the veil between our material world and the spirit world at this time of year.

If you grew up in Mexico, or have friends who celebrate Dia de los Muertos, you would know that the spirits of our ancestors and dearly departed may be aware of us as we celebrate their lives. There are many who take flowers to graves on the 2nd of Nov., and sit and have a feast in the honor of those who have passed.

So though I know her friends and family are sad to not have her among us, there is also the sense of her continuation through whatever her beliefs might have been...her soul or spirit travels on.

And here's my favorite costume of the year! Ruth Vader Ginsburg!

Or maybe this image...

Oh, I almost forgot...the Rehab folks had seven dwarfs or something costumes...

Tonya as Fiery (very appropriate!) the head Respiratory Therapist of Pulmonary rehab, David, who was the only nurse around and is wearing little whales on his mask, and Carolyn as Spunky...our rehab physiologist.

A rehab friend had dressed up in fun costume, and had this stilly black cat! It mewed cute for a minute, then it's head spun around crazily as it yowled. We all cracked up!

Happy Samhain (Sow-ain)

Happy new year, from the old ways (Celtic, Irish, Scot, British, Mexican, Guatemalan, Native American). The end of a farming year on Oct. 31, and the next day is the beginning of a new one.

"Visioning" Susan Seddon Boulet, 1987

The veil between the living and the dead is thinnest at this time of year.  Which ancestors would you honor? Which ones would you like to ask a question of?  Perhaps there's even a famous one who would be wonderful to go for a walk with in the woods, or talk with for an hour besides a fire?

Ruins of Native Americans' buildings, (see PBS show Native America at 9 pm EDT Tues.)

Many people honor an ancestor or more for the Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which is on Nov. 1.  There are candles lit and altars prepared with the favorite foods of those dearly departed, and their pictures, and perhaps things they gave you.

So it is celebrated by many who say they are Pagan.  The spirits are not to be feared, but welcomed.  They are warned to keep pranks to a minimum.  They are celebrated for having given us life.  And if any malevolent ones should appear, they are perhaps listened to, then banished.  No one is welcome that would do the living any harm.