OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Fifty One RESOLVE

Shit always falls in your path.   What you do with it is what matters.   You can rail against the "stupid dog owners" who leave it for others to step on.   You can hate the "big dumb dogs" who make it.   You can also pick it up, look the other way, or look at the sky and the trees instead of the shit on the trail.   The choice is really yours. 

This has been a year when lots of shit has fallen in our paths.  By this I mean political and media shit.
Frankly I am grateful.    2017's piles of shit have lead to resolve and political awakening, a new women's movement, the "Me Too" movement and less fear of disclosing abuse. I personally have had a wonderful year filled with new discoveries, awakenings and art.   I look forward to 2018's arrival and the bright new path ahead - shit and all.   We have much work to do and boundless energies to marshall.  Let's go!

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Fifty DUST OF SNOW

I am so grateful for the gentle dust of snow today.  It is a gift to be graced with a Christmas week with real winter; to bundle up and be warm at home.   Our trips to the city during this bitter cold brought us in contact with many homeless.   I am grateful for shelter and pray for their safety.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty Nine DAY OFF

Today I could finally relax and take a day off.   So I headed to the museums.   At 14F and 200 hundred people waiting to get into the Guggenheim, I skipped the China show there and headed to the MOMA for the Louise Bourgeois show.  These were mainly her focus on printmaking later in life.
There were two impressive bronze spiders, but frankly I was underwhelmed.

What was worth the trip was a show called The Long Run, which features new experimental work by long established masters like Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Gerhard Richter and others.   Most inspiring were the towering quartet by Cy Twombly called The Four Seasons which he painted in Italy.

Well worth seeing are two side by side shows at the MET as well.  Michelangelo's drawings - a rare collection from as many as ten countries of 500 year old fragile sketches showing the great artist's artistic development and process.   My favorite however is the retrospective of David Hockney's work from his days in art school to his more recent forays into digital art.   Most spectacular are his room size portraits of friends like Christopher Isherwood and then his monumental multi-panel landscapes of the British countryside.   They are breathtaking for their scale, their color and their tender love and reinterpretation of a much studied landscape.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty Eight MEXICAN BIRTHDAY FEAST

Today I give thanks for twenty-five years with our wonderful son.   I did as I always do and made him I cake, but I also embarrassed him with a Mexican feast complete with sombreros and a pinata  for his birthday.   This I suppose is to make up for all the years he refused a party because he didn't like having a Christmas birthday. 

He's begun to realize the celebration is more for his mother than for him!

May there be many more!

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty Seven CHRISTMAS READING

The tree was filled with packages underneath it this year.   Many of those were books and we have much to read and think about in our leisures hours this week.

On Tyranny byTimothy Snyder was perhaps the most important.  We all received a copy from my sister and her wife.   It's a must read at this crucial time in our history.

“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.” A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better. Democracy” 
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timothy Snyder will be speaking at the Yonkers Public Library at Getty Square on Sunday January 7, 2018 at 12 noon to the CD16 Indivisible Group.  Buy a copy and come have him sign it.

We also received "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn - another essential read to support resistance to tyranny.

We also received The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman and Sibley Birds East - a birding guide as Dean and I have become fanatics because of our feeder and suet cages behind our kitchen window.
Also:   Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil in the Blues Tradition by Adam Gussow and Ali: A Life by Jonathan Eig.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty Three EAST VILLAGE MEMORIES

Last night brought me to the East Village - Ave A and 6th Street to hear music in a little hole in the wall.   I remember years when I first moved to the city hanging out in such bars around Tompkins Square Park, playing pool and hearing music.  Staying lofts for all night parties and running into friends in the morning to go for breakfast.    The years of my youth.   How fun to travel back in time to hear my own son playing music.

Here he is at The Sidewalk Cafe - Ave A and 6th Street

Below is a link to a Woody Guthrie protest song which he recorded in conjunction with a request for donations to benefit immigrants and working class poor.

His words:

"This is my arrangement of a Woody Guthrie ballad called 1913 Massacre. It's about an Italian community of striking copper miners in Calumet, Michigan, whose Christmas Eve celebration was interrupted by anti-union forces with fatal consequence.

Over 100 years later our society continues to reap profits from the pain, suffering, and exploitation of immigrant and working class communities.

Donate now to these nonprofits fighting for human rights.

Rural & Migrant Ministry: "We act to overcome the prejudices and poverty that degrade and debilitate people within rural New York by building communities that celebrate diversity, achieve true mutuality and fight for dignity and opportunity to all." http://www.ruralmigrantministry.org/

Make the Road New York: "MRNY builds the power of Latino and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice through organizing, policy innovation, transformative education, and survival services." http://www.maketheroad.org/"

www.facebook.com/wetherelln/videos/10156111519475337/

https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/yyEswKWf3C

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty Six FAMILY SINGING

This morning I woke early to the sight of a gentle snow.   It was a day filled with the light of our beautiful Christmas tree and laughter at the giving and receiving of gifts and the excitement of an oven fire!! as we prepared our roast and Yorkshire pudding.   All well worth it for the most delicious of Christmas feasts attended by family and friends at a candle lit holiday table.

Most memorable of all was our singing carols as a group - starting with our prayer which is sung in a round.

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!

We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant,
And pray that Thou still our Defender will be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

Theodore Baker 1849 - Dutch Reform Church

OGT DAILY Day Four Hundred and Forty Five LESSONS and CAROLS

For Christmas Eve we went to the 5:00 pm service at Grace Episcopal Church in Hastings. A service we have not attended since our own children wore cotton ball covered costumes as sheep in the annual pageant.   We traditionally attend the 10 pm "Midnight Mass," but this year it was a treat to see the young families out in masses as their children conducted a mass of lessons and carols all read by the kids.

We sang many of our favorite carols and including my all time favorite by Christina Rossetti:

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan;

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter

Long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him

Nor earth sustain,

Heaven and earth shall flee away

When He comes to reign:

In the bleak mid-winter

A stable-place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty —

Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom Cherubim

Worship night and day,

A breastful of milk

And a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom Angels

Fall down before,

The ox and ass and camel

Which adore.

Angels and Archangels

May have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim

Thronged the air;

But only His Mother

In her maiden bliss

Worshipped the Beloved

With a kiss.

What can I give Him,

Poor as I am? —

If I were a Shepherd

I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man

I would do my part, —

Yet what I can I give Him, —

Give my heart.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty Four YOGA for the HOLIDAYS

Amidst the bustle and rush to be ready for Christmas day I have opted to attend a Saturday morning yoga class with my beloved teacher Hasita Nadai in her home.

How grounding to come back into my own body rather than going to the mall.

We did numerous sun salutations in honor of the winter solstice and the return of the sun.   The greatest  holiday gift is to remember our connection to the light.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty Two SOLSTICE

Today was the day when the sun stood still at 11:28 am and reversed course from tilting away from the sun to tilting toward the sun.    Solstice means to "stand still."    We had a nice sunny day to celebrate the return of light.

Triskele (triple spiral) sun symbol in Newgrange passage tombs north of Dublin.

Ancient cultures from Stonehenge in England to Newgrange in Ireland and Tulum in Mexico all celebrated the light's return as they were entirely dependent upon it for warmth and crops and life.

From now on the days will get longer.  February the sun won't set until  5:00 and the breath of spring will be on its way.    

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty One NATURAL COLOR

I am a colorist; naturally sensitive to the color around me and the desire to make my world out of color that pleases me.   As a painter that's not so unusual.  Many painters even mix their own paints or pastels from pigment and various binders.

But creating dyed wool from things I found in the earth or the woods brings it to a whole other level.
Color is vibration as it has its own energetic frequency in terms of physics.   I know this on a spiritual level related to the chakras and the energetic body we all have.

This act of creating oranges and green browns and soft tans from living things I've touched and transformed through alchemy was a strong vibrational exercise.   And the colors.....

So soft - a gentle palette, which makes for a gentle perspective on the world.   Going back to my hippie roots.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Nine EVERGREEN

Dean picked up a dainty little balsam for our tree.   We are filling our home with greenery.  Two weeks ago we trimmed our holly and have piles of branches which are now hanging from our doorway.   The refreshing scent of evergreen is everywhere.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Forty PLANT MATTERS

I am grateful for the bounty of my garden and the woods around our home.   I've been harvesting roots and nuts and flowers all fall.   These are the results:    

Burdock root, goldenrod, and marigold in Merino wool and homespun. 

Burdock root from our garden soaking 

Black walnut from the woods

Marigold and sumac dye baths

Burdock, marigold and goldenrod 

Sumac, weld and  pokeweed 

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Six SNOWFALL

So I've gotten my wish, more snowfall.   Never mind the icy patches or the need to scrape clean the windshields or the biting cold on my hands.  I am thrilled by the cold and the quiet whisper of the falling flakes.   The whole world settles down, moves more slowly and breaths a sigh of relief.   A taste of real winter after years of global warming winters with soggy lawns and grey but warmish skies; now devastation in Texas and Puerto Rico and hell on earth in California with the fires.   Snow fall for the holidays is a gift of immeasurable value.

If you are considering traveling this winter and want warm weather, consider Puerto Rico.  Our brothers and sisters to the south need our tourist dollars and would welcome our company.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Seven HOT GLASS

Today I made snow flakes out of rods of Pyrex glass!    A flame torch mixing gas and oxygen, glass cutters and a pair of safety glass.  Yikes - was I scared, but I did okay despite a few 2nd degree burns on my fingertips from not waiting long enough before picking up my works of art.

The process involves fusing rods of glass together under extremely hot temperature until it is glowing white.   Then you let it cool and move onto the next point to fuse.   Not so hard to build a star shape out of glass rods - except before I knew it five hours had gone by.   In seven hours I made two.

The instructor is my friend Ashley, a glass artist who teaches at UrbanGlass on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn.    I think I've found a new addiction.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Eight BOILING VATS

 I am boiling up vats of dyes and with weeds and nuts and roots from the garden in the basement.   Macbeth's witches have nothing on me.   Steaming murky colors....   We'll see if my natural dyeing experiment pans out.

 

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Five RESILIENCE and BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

Tonight was my last class of the semester and I like to end the class on a positive note.  I give my students old books from a second hand store that would otherwise be thrown out and let them "alter" them by ripping the pages, collaging etc.... It's a great stress reliever after an intense semester fraught with adolescent issues.

I also tell the the story of a group of homeless women who make dolls for boys in foster care and how the boys then make home's for their dolls made by homeless women.    It's a story of resilience among individuals who are often considered dependent and unable to even take care of themselves much less give to others.  Both the boys and the women gained a lot of joy and self esteem from giving to each other. 

All semester long my students hear cases about teens who experience trauma and how teens are more vulnerable to trauma because their brains are changing.   What is wonderful to be able to remind them is that the sullen teen who won't talk at 14 and seems like they're going over a cliff - will by 18 begin to speak about wanting to study philosophy and learn to meditate and take an interest in other people.
Young people do grow up and out of their uncomfortable moments.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Four CHRISTMAS HOUSE

The Warburton is dressed and ready for Christmas.  Serious Christmas elf action going on inside.   Shhh!   Top secret...... all we need is snow....

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Three FAITH

This is about keeping the faith.

As Jeff Flake tweeted:  "Decency won today."

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty Two STONE WALL

In the back behind my house there is a stone wall of such age and character that you believe it has been there for eternity.   I know this can't be true as it is clearly built by human hands, but its surface is slick with water and moss and cascading ferns and other weeds which catch their footing in the cracks and crevices of its stone bricks.   It has the quality of a rock wall in the Shawagunk Mountains two hours north from here and why not as the stone is probably shale and not too dissimilar?

The wall reminds me that all this stuff in my head, all this about the Russia Investigation, all this about further sex scandals, all this about special elections and tax bills - is nothing really.  The wall, though maybe not eternal, will be here after I'm gone and was here long before I got here.  It's a thing of beauty and it doesn't care a bit about me or anything I think about.  It just is and keeps me grounded and present in this moment, in this house, in this yard, just for now.

Mending Wall 
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty One RECOVERY and GINGERBREAD

All week I have been baking little batches of gingerbread.  First to send for St. Nicholas day on Dec 6, then to give as gifts to my clinical supervisor, my chiropractor, people who nurture and save me through out the year.  These are bursts of my love and care for my fellow humans in the form of spices, dough and sweetness.

The memory of eating and giving gingerbread is a restorative one which can evoke a sense of security for me.  Such memories are vital as tools for resilience in what can be a brutally cruel world.

Yesterday I learned about a model of treatment called Recovery for people struggling with severe mental illness like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  These are people whose lives are derailed by adverse stressors and chemical imbalance in the brain.  For most people such a diagnosis means the end of a meaningful and productive life and the beginning of a life as a dependent on drugs, institutions like hospitals and family who are often ill equipped to help.   What I learned with the Recovery model is that there is healing power in the language and approach with the severely mentally ill, which does not automatically assume they are incapable of making their own choices.
Even being given agency and control over medication choices can make a sea change for someone who doesn't believe they can do anything.

Much of the model advocates for reliance on internal resources; the natural resilience that even the most indigent and disabled persons can show if given the opportunity.   The memory of gingerbread baking or being given as a gift is a sweet internal memory.  I wish that sweetness to all those whom I know struggle with mental illness.   That is my gift to you for the holidays.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Thirty SNOWFALL AND CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!

What a delight to return home this evening after a long day in a training to find a blanket of white snow and starlike Xmas lights surrounding my home.   Thank you to the climate gods for giving us a hope of real winter.  So refreshing after the filth and stench of the national news.

Thank you to my faithful husband for doing his annual diligence with the lights.  Come January they will seemed faded and tired, but right now they are perfect as we enter this magical season of light.

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Twenty Nine VIETNAMESE SOUP

High on my bucket list is a visit to Vietnam, the country of my childhood imagination since it was splashed allover the grainy black and white TV images due to the war and constant body count of the late 1960's and early seventies.   Vietnam is also a partially French speaking country due to its colonial history and what ever Romance language skills I have are Francophone. 

There also exists a thriving weaving and textiles culture which I would love to see first hand.  Apparently the Valley of Jars in the north contains giant neolithic ceramic vessels of still unknown origins.   These are interspersed with land mines so the visit could be dangerous, but I am compelled to visit this lowland culture bounded by the sea and filled with jungle and rice fields and mountains.
Ideally such a trip would include excursions into Laos and Cambodia for visits to ancient temples there.    We are saving up!

In the meantime I slake my thirst for this new culture by having Pho the classic Vietnamese noodle/broth soup.  It's hot and tasty especially after you add fresh ingredients lime juice, basil leaves, bean sprouts and radishes.   Nothing like it on a cold night.

Our favorite spot for this is Saigonese, a family run place on Central Ave in Hartsdale, NY but we just discovered Vietnam Central a little further south in Scarsdale.  They have generous sized and delicious summer rolls.   

OGT DAILY Day Three Hundred and Twenty Eight MONGOLIAN DINOSAURS

Is there anything we say that is positive?   California is literally burning like some circle of Dante's Inferno.    Trump has declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel against the advice of all of our allies except the hardline conservative Jews.   People have been incited to violence as a result.  It surely seems the world is headed for hell.

Well from far away Mongolia comes a newly discovered dinosaur - Halszkaraptor escuilliei - which is a duck like creature who prefers fish to raw meat unlike its fellow raptor pals.

Who can resist a dinosaur especially one from billions of years ago which makes all our present travails seem like little blips on the timeline of the universe?

Thanks to my friend Hana for the tip!

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-dinosaur-species-was-one-odd-duck