Title IX kicks in

I took this photo last August in anticipation of an autumn reunion with my high school field hockey team in Cleveland. Those are my cleats. Yes, they still fit and I wore them to the reunion.  The embroidered 55 was salvaged from my practice vest and repurposed on a pillow by my dear mum. Of course, the reunion was a gas. Still undefeated, the SHHS varsity team of 1968.

August 2016 I watched the Olympics with awe for the great athletes coupled with huge, unfettered pride for ALL those American girls.  Title IX kicked in. It took a generation +. You go girls! GO, GO, GO.

Title IX states that: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Effective June 1972.

Repositioning a porch

My decision to refresh the core business of Centering Porch LLC required consulting with neither a lawyer nor a marketing guru. I only needed to be centered on the porch long enough to receive Spirit's clarifying presence. It was not a moment's epiphany, but rather weeks of discerning in stillness, surrounded by abundant life.
Don and I will continue to keep these porches open for others seeking a site for quiet contemplation. See www.centeringporch.org. But the central business at CenteringPorch LLC is on to greater loving. Healing Touch for Animals.
The shift may indeed require a lawyer, marketing guru, and allies of many stripes. Community. Thanks, all.

Three divine smacks to the head

 

In late winter, early 2016, I came out of some dark months and dark moods. Animals in need of a healing boost drew me back to the light. Three in particular. All were in very bad health and their owners were floundering as their animals declined. Spirit opened these owners to allow me to provide complementary care in addition to the veterinary care they had already sought. I was able to help relieve pain and restore enough vitality to make a big difference in the last weeks, days and hours for each animal.

Each animal opened a pathway for me. It became clear that it was time to focus or at least pay daily attention to Healing Touch for Animals [HTA]. Since April I have taken one step, tiny or grand, each day to lift my HTA business. Today, a blog post.

A logo to love

Diane Muse, my down-the-road, round-the curve neighbor designed this logo in 2012. Imagination and artistry. It’s striking, inviting, and mysterious. I love it because it captures relaxing in an abundant garden under celestial influence. I love it because Diane made it- BY HAND- no computer involved- cutting plastic as if she were in the first stage of generating a silk screen. Hence, it might be just a tad off-center. That’s just another point of perfection. It always evokes conversation. It serves on multiple levels for multiple businesses- farm, contemplative retreat, and now Healing Touch for Animals and their People.

Global sky Global healing

I have been away from center, spun out by waves of global violence, overwhelmed by their scale. Despair unbalances me. I go outside. Big sky is the first tiny relief for big hurt. I just stand there. I can begin to reclaim the power of healing.

June's crimson canna

D-Day was a momentous event for our parents, who both served in the US Army during World War II. They worked in military hospitals, first in England and then France. Growing up I heard lots of stories about life in the army. Although I was shielded from horrific details in my childhood, the significance of being a WWII vet was clearly visible, honored, held in high regard. It sticks with me even now and especially now for my brother. God bless the vets.

Sibling heart thuds

On Memorial Day I mundanely wrapped cheese at the food co-op as my brother wrapped his head around a momentous decision. He is taking himself off the Appalachian Trail.  www.walkingoffthewar.org
I let him tell his own story. I listen. I do not need a cell phone tower to hear his pain.

May b:link

Camouflaged hunter
on silent wings, the Barred Owl's
easy to miss.
I got close enough
to politely request
"Please, no cat snacks. Thank you." He blinked
and glided away. We see him around often these days.
The cats are still here too.

  

The lusty month of May

Blossom on the bough

Shagbark's sexual frenzy

Exuberant May

Hooray for the Big Backyard

I’m a bit addicted to my daily dose of the Writer’s Almanac form Minnesota Public Radio, compiled and narrated by Garrison Keillor. It’s broadcast here at 9 AM and I try to catch it on the radio in the van when I finish chores. If I miss that, I can catch it online. As can you. It’s writer’salmanac.org.

Today Garrison briefly noted that on this day in 1789 George Washington took the oath of office to become our first President. He continued at length about Annie Dillard.

“ It's the birthday of writer Annie Dillard, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1945). She studied English at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia, and after her sophomore year she married her poetry professor, Richard Dillard. She earned her Master's with a thesis on Walden by Henry David Thoreau. 

After she finished her master's, Dillard became a "faculty wife." She played a lot of softball and some pinochle; she wrote poetry and read books. One day, an alumna returned to campus to see Dillard's husband, but he was busy. So Dillard took the woman on a stroll near their house. They lived in a suburban development in Roanoke, with a backyard leading down to a little stream called Tinker Creek. While she was showing her guest around, she realized that her boring neighborhood was actually full of wildlife, and beautiful in its own right. She began taking daily walks near her house. In an attempt to quit smoking, she took up journal-writing. She filled journals with observations from her walks, her thoughts on books, interesting facts, and anecdotes from her days. She eventually filled 20 journals.
One day she picked up a seasonal memoir called The Northern Farm (1949), which she found disappointing... She thought to herself that she could write a better book, and immediately decided that she should try. She was excited to take the leap from poetry to prose; she said, "Poetry was a flute, and prose was the whole orchestra."

She began sifting back through her journals, taking out the lines, ideas, and images that struck her most. Eventually, she had filled more than 1,000 notecards, which she moved around, trying to find an organizing pattern for her new book. She also struggled with her image as the narrator, since she was trying to follow in the footsteps of writers like Thoreau and Edward Abbey, solitary men alone in the wilderness. She said, "All of the books I took as models had been written by men," and she agonized over whether anyone would be interested in the reflections of a suburban housewife. In the end, although she didn't make up anything, she did leave out some major things, including her husband, and the fact that she lived in the suburbs and not in the wilderness.

In 1973, Dillard sent an essay - an excerpt from her new book - to Harper's magazine, and it was pulled from the "slush pile" of unsolicited work and published. When she finished her book, Harper's Magazine Press accepted it for publication. The editor in chief said, "I never expected to see a manuscript this good in my life." Dillard was 28 years old when A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) was published, and it won the Pulitzer Prize later that year. Because she had not explicitly stated that she lived in a suburban neighborhood, many reviewers assumed that she had spent a year by herself in the wilderness...
 

I too was stunned to discover that Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is not the memoir of a woman in the wilderness but a woman in her big backyard. In less than 10 seconds I went from stunned to “I’ve been duped” to “OK, poetic license” to
“BRILLIANT!
Beautiful
Bully for Annie Dillard.
Hooray for the Big Backyard!”
Chuckling to myself, my smile broadening by the moment to a full-bore grin.

Reclaiming the porch

It happens incrementally for weeks in April, but today we pulled the chairs out of storage and proclaimed SPRING on the west porch. It's what we wait for all winter. Come, pick your color and take a seat. Leave your frenzy at the gate.

Follow Our Paths in 2016

This snap of my brother, Mike, from a day hike we made in 2013 turns out to be a harbinger of something much bigger. In 2016 Mike intends to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. His mission is to raise awareness for PTSD veterans. He is campaigning for a non profit, Warrior Hike.org.
    If your life has been touched by a veteran’s- and really, isn’t that
 all of us?-  please join the journey. Mike, a Vietnam vet who turns 70
 in 2016, starts his story at walkingoffthewar.org
    Over 40 years ago I hiked the southern half of the Appalachian Trail. Mike’s trek will be completely different in motivation, equipment, strategy and length. And totally the same in its capacity for inevitable transformation. My challenge is to support and accompany him as creatively and authentically as I can. You can come along.