Monthly Archives: October 2021

The 1970s

Posted by Oct 31, 2021 Family 4 Comments

As a child of the 70’s I confess I am LOVING seeing the fashion pendulum swinging back around.  Of course there would be no way I could fit into my old jeans because I was a little kid.  Still, it makes me happy to see wide-legged pants coming back into vogue, little black girls either wearing their hair natural or sectioned off in braids and topped by those lucite ball hair ties I can still remember.  In the fourth grade, the same age my little girl is now, our elementary school got “busing.”  This was where they would take (black) kids from one side of town and bring them to another (white.)  I had a best friend who would “plait” my hair at recess everyday and she’d take her own different colored hair barrettes out of her own hair and put them into mine.  The next day I’d bring them to school and we’d switch.  She had barrettes in all in different colors, shapes, and styles.  My mother disliked my grandmother braiding her hair so she hated how I came home.  I can still remember sitting on the steps while Peggy divided my hair with her comb down to the scalp in precise little squares.  She would then braid each section and secure it with one of her cool barrettes.  We would sing “Ring My Bell” by Anita Ward and she would call me her “Honey Child.”  She always had candy and would share her Now & Laters with me.  It was such a happy time.  I’m not sure if it’s because my father was half-Choctaw and always had a foot in both the “colored” and the “white” world, but times were changing and suddenly I was playing tether ball on the black top and jumping rope Double Dutch style.  We would sit on the ground and play hand clapping games like “Down Down Baby,” “Miss Mary Mack,” and “The Slide” to name a few.  Ironically, I had a half-white/half-black girlfriend who was adopted into a white family and the black kids were merciless to her.  She looked “black” but she didn’t know how to do her hair, she talked “too white,” etc.  Frankly I never understood why I felt so at home with my black girlfriends with my strawberry-blonde hair and green-blue eyes.  It didn’t seem fair.  Of course Joy was the best friend I had in our apartments and I always stuck up for her.  Our parish recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and the theme was the ’70s.  Our now ten-year-old recently had a rollerskating birthday party at my childhood skating rink.  To an outsider, it’s like stepping back in time.  For me, it’s like reliving a bit of my childhood.  But I miss the carpet and the “toadstools” where everyone would would sit back to back in a circle to lace up their skates.  I miss the bi-colored streamers that would flutter from the paneled ceiling and how all the white globes alternated colors in time with the music.  The great big disco ball is still there, though, and turning in all its glory.  For me, being born in 1970, the decade meant “The Brady Bunch” and “Good Times” on TV.  I looked more like one of the Brady girls but growing up in apartment, watching my father always trying to get ahead, I related much more with “Good Times.”  I can still remember running down the hall of our elementary school and shouting, “School is out!  Out of sight!  DYNOMITE!!!” at the end of the year.  Nicholas Kristof, an American journalist and political commentator, is quoting as having said, “Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America.  Inequality has soared.  Educational progress slowed.  Incarceration rates quintupled.  Family breakdown accelerated.  Median household income stagnated.”  In a lot of instances, I feel I must agree.  Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has described Kristof as an “honorary African” for shining a light on neglected conflicts.  For me “African-American” means a first generation “African” who became an American citizen.  I believe I have said before it was America’s 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who barred the hyphenated nationalities from describing race.  I whole-heartledy believe this:  to hyphenate is to separate.  Our family decided to keep the ’70s “staying alive” by dressing up from that time for Halloween.  This picture I snapped of my husband makes my heart flip!  “Grease” was my favorite movie growing up and I still love it.  My formative years were a time of great change for this country; for American Indians struggling to be heard, for women whose voices were just coming into play in both the workforce and sports, and for so much more.  I do not wish to gloss over our nation’s painful past.  However, it is my hope that we can not only all acknowledge our history’s truths — but to press on toward a more perfect union … just like I learned about from the “School House Rock” cartoons I grew up watching every Saturday morning before rollerskating in the 1970’s.

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October

Posted by Oct 17, 2021 Nature 4 Comments

L.M. Montgomery, otherwise known as Lucy Maud Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for writing a series of novels beginning in 1908 entitled “Anne of Green Gables.”  A very favorite quote of mine comes from her which says, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”  I am not sure if it is because I was born in October, but it has always been my favorite month.  For me the fresh scent of mown grass still hangs heavy in the air, only with a promise of slightly chilly evenings and mornings, full moons, bales of hay, pumpkins, giant mazes of corn stalks, and the anticipation of the holidays to come.  My father was born in October and every year he would tease my mother that she just couldn’t wait eleven more days to have me.  (So we would have had the same birthday.)  Like a joke with no end, she would fall for it every time, and my petite, Irish/French, red-haired mother would instantly flush red.  Then my daddy would turn around to wink at me as I struggled to keep a straight face.  I am not sure at this point whether I have mentioned it in past posts, but my father died when I was just 28.  However it was his birthday, rather than the day he passed in March, that became so tremendously sorrowful for me.  I have spent more than twenty years grieving over the loss of my beloved father.  I live in Texas, which as a child, I recall having four actual seasons.  I like spring but the trees are still bare.  Summers here are hotter than Hell’s front porch.  Winter can be depressingly mild or fraught with treacherous ice.  While it seems magical to be blanketed in a couple of inches of snow, Dallas is just not equipped to deal with harsh winters like they are up north.  And then there is autumn.  For me it is a precious scant measure of time where trees still have their leaves and are turning several shades of glorious colors, from green to yellow to orange to red.  In addition the mornings and evenings cool off a bit and are not pizza oven hot.  It is a time for celebrating the harvest, although most modern folk are so far removed from farming I’m not sure they really know what that is.  I decided to look up what was celebrated within this month.  Of course there is the Feast of St. Francis and the Blessing of the Animals.  I am probably one of the few to know National Wolf Awareness week falls within this month.  All Hallow’s Eve on October 31 marks the day before All Saints’ Day and comes from an ancient pagan festival celebrated by Celtic people for over 2,000 years meaning “summer’s end.”  In the northern hemisphere it is about half way between the autumn equinox and winter solstice.  Historically is was widely observed throughout Ireland and Scotland.  I realize it has great significance in many cultures, as “Coco” is our favorite late October movie and involves the country next to Texas that was of course once part of Mexico.  Anyway, regardless of how one looks at it, I hope everyone reading this from wherever there are in the world enjoys the month of October.

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Big D

Posted by Oct 3, 2021 Wolves Leave a Comment

Yes, I am writing a birthday post to my blog about my only baby boy!  Dakota is a wolf hybrid mixed with Siberian Husky and Malamute and he recently turned twelve!  I have found people either love animals or they pretty much do not care for them.  Of course he is no regular dog and I get that some can become upset by that.  For the record, I believe wild animals belong in the wild.  My conservative husband wisely pointed out to me that in order for that to happen we must work to preserve the world’s deserts, prairies, mountains, plains, islands, oceans, and forests.  Even our skies must be preserved.  I have said before I consider our wolfdogs ambassadors for their brethren in the wild.  Since wolves have been grossly maligned for millennia, it makes me feel great to see people awed, smiling, and asking if they can pet them!  I got my first wolf hybrid in college and she chose me.  I’ll never forget this pup with bi-colored eyes (that was the husky in her) came loping straight to me in this big enclosure that was surrounded by a lot of other people.  She licked me on my cheek and my heart was taken.  Nashoba lived to be about fifteen.  In the wild wolves have heartbreaking survival rates.  If heart worms from mosquitoes don’t get them, there’s mange.  On a human side, people poisoning a wolf mother’s den kills the nursing mother while their babies are left to slowly starve to death.  There are traps which at best leave them without a limb (if they can manage to chew it off and escape) and there are actual “sportsmen” armed with machine guns running them into the ground with exhaustion from helicopters.  I try to keep posts on my blog light, but wolves are my passion, and many people have no idea what all has and IS being done to them.  They are shot by ranchers the second a paw leaves protected national parks (like wolves can make that distinction) and, despite having tracking collars on them to show they’re being studied, they STILL wind up being shot.  Hunters claim they thought they were coyotes.  Of course coyotes are much smaller and redder, whereas most of our wolves today carry colors of white, black, and gray.  I shall not delve into the (no pun intended) grey area of coywolves.  Just know they are not only coming to a neighborhood near you: they are already here!  That’s what happens when wolves have no one left with whom to mate.  They will be smaller and and guess what?!  They are NOT out to eat your baby!  Pure wolves are inherently incredibly shy.  I cannot fathom why they have always been demonized.  In Native culture coyote is called “Survivor,” so do not bet on them just “going away.”  Much like their cousins, the fox, they have simply learned how to adapt.  Wolves have been annihilated almost into extinction worldwide, so their journey has been even more difficult.  Owning wolf hybrids are not “cool” like owning some kind of dog breed.  They need INCREDIBLE amounts of attention and activity.  I do it knowing my love for them is greater than my love for my “things.”  Dakota and his sister Cheyenne (who passed away from cancer last year) literally ate our beds, sofas, rugs and pillows just as appetizers.  My husband and I were their pack and they became quite anxious whenever we left.  Their claws and jaws went straight through sheetrock, wood, and they managed to peel up our metal door to the garage like it was a can of tuna.  I do have a theory:  people with lots and lots of children may have one pet.  People with no children most often have a couple and they will be considered family.  Despite how hard my folks worked, as an only child I will tell you that whenever I had ANYthing going on growing up:  a talent show, a swimming competition, a spelling bee, a play, or being in my high school drill team:  BOTH of my parents were always there for me!  I have always found it sad that people who adopt more than two animals are considered borderline nuts.  I just wish animal lovers were afforded an equal amount of respect versus being labeled “crazy cat lovers” or whatever.  The professional American distance runner Sara Hall is quoted as having said, “We all have our preferences – some people go for birds – but for me, there’s just something about the wolf; the design of it is really aesthetically pleasing.”  Just look at how the reintroduction of wolves completely transformed Yellowstone National Park!  It is nothing short of miraculous.  We need our apex predators to keep earth balanced.  Removing them is not the solution; preserving them is.  And preserve them in the wild we must!  Happy birthday Big D.

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