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« Older Entries Newer Entries »San Geronimo Day, Part III
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
After lunch, we walked from Amitola’s home through the back of the pueblo and apologized for being intrusive; a man responded: “that’s all right. It’s your day.” Eight sacred Tricksters or clowns painted with black and white horizontal stripes emerged over the top of the five-story pueblo. They came across the top on all fours, like menacing, prowling animals. Feathers sprung from their headdresses and from their loin clothes. A magical sight. With graceful stealth they move through the crowd, teasing, whooping, touching. In the middle of the plaza, scores of vendors from the 19 pueblos quickly cover their wares so that the Tricksters wouldn’t take their jewels and blankets. On top of the cover, however, the visiting vendors placed a gift for the Tricksters—food, water, a small bracelet—any such gifts bringing blessings upon the givers.
Morgan and I took turns mingling with the crowd and witnessing the pranks. A quite rotund, comical Trickster approached a woman and took her hand, motioning that he wanted to take her to the mountain. She resisted, but eventually agreed to kiss him as a consolation prize. Out of the crowd came another man, significantly larger than the Trickster, looking disapprovingly at him. He, perhaps a husband, took the woman’s hand and pulled her away. The Trickster ran after them trying to get her back, but failed (he was no competition for the husband, who pushed him away). To resist the will of the Trickster is a bad omen. He sullenly returned to the crowded, stomping and raging, picked up his bottle of orange soda, shook it and sprayed it on the laughing crowd.
For nearly two hours, the Tricksters stirred up trouble: throwing “bad boys” in the river, pulling women into a circular dance, an impromptu soccer game. One of the Tricksters found a heavyset woman lying asleep on the ground, and lay down to mimic her, then put his leg across her body. She was embarrassed, but played along and patted his leg. The marauding Tricksters climbed the grandstand covered with woven fall branches and tore it apart (including the cross), handing limbs of gold to nearby Indian women.
By 3:30, several Tricksters gathered at the base of the 80-foot greased pole that is erected every fall for this celebration. At the top, there were 2 thin poles inserted through the larger one and bags of gifts containing products made by the pueblo people hung on each; the first man to attempt the climb (there is a heavy rope looped part way up) got to the top, then began to slide down and lost his footing, getting rope burns, then fell the last 10 feet or so. The next man made it to the top and used the rope to lower the gifts. Success means health and prosperity until next year’s events. The crowd cheered, then scrambled for the contents of the bundles.
Next: The BBC produces “Lawrence in Taos.”
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San Geronimo Day-Part II
Saturday, October 8th, 2011
Being invited to the home of an Indian family on the Pueblo for San Geronimo Day is quite an honor. It began last April when I met Amitola (meaning butterfly, but not her real name) at a ranch and agricultural conference here in Taos. Her intelligent question drew my immediate attention, so I approached her and explained my project. After two long conversations at her favorite coffee shop and a couple of letters in between, she invited me to join her and her family on this special day.
I called her the day before to ask if my husband could come along and she said in her dry humorous style, “I don’t allow men in my house, but perhaps he could stand in the back.” Clearly the intervening months had not tarnished our playful relationship. After the morning races, we sought out her traditional Indian adobe home down a dusty road behind the Pueblo plaza to leave off a ham, cookies and lemonade, then returned later for lunch. As we arrived, her daughter invited us to sit in the backyard—it was a beautiful, warm day and visit; Amitola and another friend joined us. We were told of the history of this 1945 family home built by her grandfather when he returned from WWII. Set among the red willows, replete with carved wooden columns and artwork, we felt as though we had move back in time.
The lunch was a feast. Turkey and dressing, salads, chili stews, homemade breads, posole, cakes and lemonade. Great coffee, homemade biscotti. Luscious. Family and friends—including many children—gathered in shifts around a table in the kitchen sat for ten. As one group finished, the table was replenished, then another group arrived, reminding us of the race. The seven-year old grandson, who had shown his readiness to be part of the community by racing that morning, said the prayer.
Next, San Geronimo Day, Part III
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Journeying back to Taos….
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
With the release of the second novel in the Cairo Trilogy, Etruscan Evenings, Morgan and I enthusiastically return to Taos at the end of this week to pursue research on the third novel, Taos: Song of the Loom. We are eager to reunite with friends and enjoy the beauty and culture of New Mexico. While there, I will be discussing Etruscan Evenings at the La Fonda Hotel in the Lawrence room on October 2 from 4-6, arranged with exceptional skill by Mary McPhail Gray and co-sponsored by The Friends of D.H. Lawrence and the bookstore, Moby Dickens.
It is a breathtakingly rich period in Taos. On September 28, film producer Mark Gordon will be present his film-in-progress about Mabel Dodge Luhan at the Harwood Museum with Ali McGraw reading from Mabel’s Edge of the Desert. On September 30, San Geronimo Day at the Pueblo draws Indians from all 19 pueblos and hundreds of visitors for the rituals and crafts of the southwest. Liz Cunningham, curator of the website “Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Remarkable Women of Taos” gives us stories of the artistic community and alerts us that 2012 will be the “Year of the Woman.” BBC and author Geoff Dyer (Out of Sheer Rage: the Search for DH Lawrence) will be researching a new film on Lawrence. The twenties are very much alive in Taos…reminds one of Woody Allen’s new film, “Midnight in Paris”! How delicious.
More from Taos….Linda
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Upcoming Book Talks-Etruscan Evenings
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
Four-Eyed Frog, Gualala-September 14, 5:00
La Fonda Hotel, Taos, New Mexico, October 2, 4:00-6:00
Home of Mary Gardner, San Jose, CA, November 18, 5:00-7:00 (e-mail me for directions)
Il Pero, Arezzo, Italy, April 28, 2012, time to be announced
More to come…Linda
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Longing for Limerence
Monday, August 1st, 2011
In the Social Animal, our favorite Republican, David Brooks, tells us about the glorious concept called Limerence. “Limerence” is the yearning for harmony in which external and internal patterns are meshing and flow is achieved. It can also mean being in harmony with our surroundings, our work, our talents. “A surge of pleasure when some clarifying theory clicks into place.” A feeling of oneness, or connection. Sensing another’s joy. A strong desire for reciprocation.
Brooks argues that we spend large parts of our lives trying to get others to accept our patterns and trying to resist others’ patterns, which we may see as a form of mental hegemony. We need to let go of seeing ourselves as self-contained entities with boundaries that exclude and define others. In reciprocity we do not need others to accept our patterns; yet, curiously, when we let go of that need, it happens: our patterns gracefully seem to mesh. We come to realize that the joy that others feel, we feel also; that the success that others achieve, we do also; that the insights that others acquire, we do too. We call this friendship; we call this love. What a useful notion.
Our happiness—bliss, as Joseph Campbell reminded us—may just lie in limerence.
Linda and Mary
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A Narrative of a Friendship
Friday, July 29th, 2011
Mary Gardner and I have been here at The Sea Ranch for a week working on a couple of our books, trying to solve the debt ceiling problem, shopping and cooking, laughing, planning marketing strategies, walking along the bluffs…we’ve revisited Joseph Campbell’s “Power of Myth” in preparation for Taos: Song of the Loom, Linda’s third novel in the trilogy. Last night we saw the excellent local play “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and recognized the parallels with our current political situation. But perhaps the most striking insights about our friendship reaffirmed our mutual acknowledgement in Women’s Ways of Leading:
“First, we want to thank each other for continually deepening our understanding of reciprocity and friendship. During the last two decades, we have worked on two other books together, but it has been this study of women’s leadership that has woven itself into the fabric of our relationship as well as the fabric of our lives. We listen to each other, construct knowledge together and accept responsibility for mutual decisions. Within a landscape of laughter we realize that a lightness of spirit is like a shared secret, a magnetic circle sometimes blurring lines of separateness. We often laugh at ourselves as well, making fears and hesitations buoyant and fleeting….”
Wishing you deep friendships, Linda and Mary
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Women’s Ways of Leading is now an e-book!
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Check it out!
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Young Women of Egypt
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
My readers remind me that it has been two weeks since I’ve posted on this blog. As soon as we returned from Egypt and Lebanon we were involved in the glorious graduations of our grandchildren Dylan Smock and Catherine Lambert. We are so proud of them and their plans for the future: UC Santa Cruz and CSU Chico, respectively.
This interval has also given us time to reflect upon our recent journey.
One of the most enlightening experiences in Egypt was our opportunity to spend time with many old friends, especially several young daughters (and one 12 year old granddaughter and 9 year old grandson who knowledgeably discussed the comparative strengths of presidential candidates and constitutional changes).
For each of the five daughters—from three Moslem and one Christian family—we noticed a remarkable change in their personal sense of empowerment, confidence and engagement in politics. Pride. Four of the daughters (one was a new mother) had been full participants in Tahrir Square during the revolution. They had witnessed it all: the mutual excitement and support, the endurance and resilience, the abuse and violence. Now they hold strong positions about the future of Egypt, including the Mubaraks and their crimes, the military, the youth council and constitution, the presidential candidates.
And, there was something else. A thrilling venturing out—risk taking. One young woman had left a high level human resources position with Coca Cola to open her own personnel agency; another left a secure translation job to open her own independent consulting business. Another, a journalist, left her position and joined creative youth to produce a film about the revolution. Yet another young woman accepted a new position to design policies for the disabled (a neglected area in the Middle East). The youngest of the women, equally engaged in the new politics of Egypt, will spend her next college year at UC Davis in California where we will be her “parents away from home.” Such independent mobility on the part of women is symbolic of a society cracking open with opportunities and young women stepping forward without the necessity of having men at their sides. I find the emergence of women the most promising aspect of the Arab Spring.
Tomorrow—July 17—women in Saudi Arabia will demonstrate for the right to drive. More on this movement over the weekend.
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The Sheikh and Me
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
(NOTE DEAR READER, THIS ENTRY AND THE FOLLOWING TWO WERE ALL POSTED TODAY.)
On the first day of the TAMAM conference, a young man from Dubai handed me three books from his mentor and friend—an elderly Sheikh, a holy man, of renown, now living in a tent and shepherding his goats in the desert. He asked that I read the books and tell him what I thought of them the next day. The Sheikh wanted my opinion.
On the next day—having been up late the night before—I had not done my homework. The young man talked with me and said the Sheikh had called and asked for my report.
Now duty-bound, that night I read as much as I could of the books, noting several positive responses. The Sheikh is truly an accomplished scholar and entrepreneur—well educated and the founder of two women’s universities and a number of businesses. The books were well and respectfully written. When he refers to a person, he uses “he/she.” One book concerned the Ten Commandments and his premise that we are all Moslems, although some of Christians and Jews have not yet “returned” to the fold; another spoke of the stages of a man’s life and a type of memoir; and the third discussed the first stage of life. At dinner on the last evening I shared my positive reactions, then began to tell him what I didn’t agree with. He stopped me. The Sheikh told him that if there were anything I disagreed with, he would want to talk with me personally. He asked that Dr. Monera, the assistant director of the Arab Thought Foundation, make the arrangements.
This morning, Monera called to say that the Sheikh had called her at home and that she was to hear my disagreements and relay them to him. So I talked some of them through with her and she called him back.
Later in the day, I met the young man in the lobby of our hotel and he had talked with the Sheikh once more after he had heard my criticisms. Through an interpreter, the young man extended the Sheikh’s invitation for my husband and I to visit him in Dubai.
Why me? she asks. Linda
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TAMAM continues…
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
We found it intriguing that the challenges and concerns voiced by the attendees at the excellent TAMAM conference were not unlike those heard in many other places around the world. Among those issues were:
• How do we motivate people who don’t want to change?
• In a country where power in distributed among a few, how do we create equitable relationships in school communities and teams and between coaches and those coached?
• How do we keep from deferring excessively to those in authority?
• Many women now in the profession went into teaching when they had few choices. Now things have changed (even in Saudi) and women can choose among many professions. Many women who were forced into teaching see it as a job, a burden, not a profession—how do we awaken them?
• How do we change a culture in which the principal is supposed to know everything?
• How do we develop new relationships with the ministries and directories so that they will support rather than contradict our initiatives? (note the discussion in the last post).
• Can everyone lead? And, if so, what does that mean for us?
For you educators out there…sound familiar?
One of the many lengthy conversations I had with a woman was about these very issues—particularly how we can change cultures in order to cause people to accept and initiate change. She related what she tells her daughter about empowerment. Her eyes were warm and smiling as we spoke; that is all I could see of her face as it was buried within her full burka.
Linda
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