It’s been quite a few years since the release of America, Simon and Garfunkel’s popular tune about a young man and woman traveling by bus across country in search of the soul of America.

To be precise, it’s been 43 years.

The couple never found what they were looking for. In the song, they were left lost and hopeless. Now, 43 years later, the same quest has been ignited in the hearts of many Americans, be they in New York City, Milwaukee, Denver, Seattle, or Oakland:

Who are we as a people and what does the future hold for us?

Outskirts of Winnemucca, Nevada.

In September, my husband and I headed east to the nation’s Capitol – driving for the most part off the interstate and whenever possible along state byways – hoping to get a pulse on what is happening across this big country of ours. We were on our way from California to participate in the opening days of Occupy DC, which, together with Occupy Wall Street and other Occupy groups throughout the U.S., is seeking truthful answers to these pressing questions.

What we witnessed as we traveled were not new discoveries. We’d read about people commuting from rural areas to urban centers to work, shop, and play, and about small towns losing ground to their nearest metropolis. We’d read about U.S. industries moving to China and about the collapse of our manufacturing. We’d been saddened by rising unemployment figures and the millions of families losing their homes to foreclosure and bank thievery. We’d watched the corporatization of our society, from private interests buying up community resources, such as municipal water systems, to running lunch services in the public schools (where pizza may soon be considered a vegetable!) – by the same interests that have taken control of all levels of government. We’d lamented the demise of family farms and the homogenization of our food supply by agro conglomerates.

Vineyards of San Luis Obispo County, California.

However, being hit with irrefutable evidence again and again – as we drove mile after mile after mile – that had a deep, visceral impact. That was new. Statistics and facts became palpable.

From the outset we observed a staggering amount of roadwork underway. Good for the economy, we thought. Huge bridge projects, interchanges, repaving, massive highway expansions – some going on for 25 miles or more. Expensive equipment and vehicles idle. Hundreds of thousands of orange plastic road barrels (averaging $50 a piece) from sea to shining sea, but strangely very few workers! We’d assumed that with the country’s high levels of unemployment, great numbers of people would be out on the job. Not the case. The network of prisons, military installations, and fencing was also ubiquitous.

Snapshots

Cape Charles, Virginia.

Houses along Main Street for sale or in foreclosure. An elderly woman we approached for directions spoke of better times. Not another soul walking the streets that afternoon in Cape Charles.

Cape Charles, Delmarva Peninsula. View facing Chesapeake Bay.

Okawville, Illinois.

Neatly trimmed lawns. Well-maintained homes. Quiet. Empty. Residents work in St. Louis, we were told. The gas-mart employee couldn’t name a locally-owned spot to get a cup of coffee although she pointed out the Burger King, Subway, and Dairy Queen along the Interstate. Or did she mean McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’ Donuts, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, or KFC? That’s generally what’s available next to America’s superhighways. Similar story regarding accommodations. A litany of predictable choices.

Veranda of Okawville's Original Springs Hotel and Bath House.

Winchester, Kentucky.

We pulled off the road for a bite to eat. Pleasant, historic downtown with businesses boarded up left and right.

Main Street, Winchester, Kentucky.

Lone surviving diner: Stinky & Coco’s (named after the owner’s cats). Three young guys running the place were trying to “do it right” by buying from local organic farmers and ranchers (their spinach feta cheese omelette with crispy home fries still makes my mouth water). I like to think theirs is the new direction we’re heading in, but they’re struggling right along with their community fighting for survival.

Stinky & Coco's Diner.

Biloxi, Mississippi.

Shoreline 90% wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. Biloxi’s scenic route along the Sound has been attractively redesigned. Its marina is new. Some flood damaged homes were reconstructed in the antebellum style. Others were never rebuilt, leaving beachfront real estate patched with vacant lots. A good number of Biloxi’s large casinos had reopened after Katrina, although its population has dropped 10% since then.

Gulf Coast. Biloxi, Mississippi.

New Orleans, Louisiana.

Evidence of Katrina’s flood damage in the city still remains. At the French Market we introduced ourselves to preacher Charles Garrison, who recited a poem he’d written that likely speaks to many in these times of uncertainty:

The dawning of a new day
A new day has come my way
Full of joy or sorrow
I know I cannot say
But whatever be the challenge
I know that if I pray
I’ll have the power that I need
And the Strength to Face the Day.

New Orleans' French Quarter.

Long time resident of New Orleans, Charles shared his personal survival drama with us when we asked. He explained why many of the poor did not return after Katrina: a substantial number of condemned properties were not rebuilt; this decreased available housing, causing prices to double or triple. The “market” had rendered coming home impossible.

Charles Garrison, spreading hope through poetry.

Tombstone, Arizona.

We couldn’t figure out why the hard sell from the venders of this iconic town:

When you catch our buggy ride, you get a discount on the “Good Enough Mine” Underground Tour. Don’t neglect to see it.

If you buy a ticket to the Rose Tree Museum now, we can offer you a reduced price on the trolley.

Tombstone, Arizona, on the eve of the 130th annniversary of the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Until we struck up a conversation at Four Deuces Saloon & Grill with a local horse rancher who told us over a beer that this was a common complaint of visitors to Tombstone.

Four Deuces Saloon, Tombstone.

Most attractions around here are owned by private corporations, he related. They pay people $50 cash a day to dress up like in the 1880′s. To walk the streets of Tombstone, ride the teams, make it all look real. Heck, some of these folks are still living in the Old West.

Back in the 1880's.

Hearsay? That requires more digging.

Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a 44. No Les. No More.

Maybe not much has changed since the days of Lester Moore.

Williamsburg, Missouri.

Marlene’s is an American classic, still able to draw in a fair number of clients from the freeway onto Old U.S. Highway 40 in spite of its modest sign, dwarfed by enormous billboards, one after the other, advertising standard fast food fare. Marlene serves honestly priced home-cooked meals. Homemade pies. Service is friendly. Her restaurant adjoining the family’s museum displays artifacts going back generations.

Crane's Museum, Williamsburg, Missouri.

We met Marlene Crane and her husband Joe, who spun out fascinating yarns replete with local history. Wandering through their impressive collection of Americana, I could see how inventive and resourceful the old-timers were – as we Americans still are once we loosen the grip of standardization and corporate control of our lives.

Joe and Marlene Crane.

This is what the Occupy Movement is about. It’s about freedom and choices and a return to our values of democracy, opportunity, tolerance, fairness, and justice.

Raging Grannies, singing for peace.

These year-end travel pictures come at a time when the darkest days of winter are upon us, an auspicious moment the I Ching calls a Darkening of the Light:

The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration.

At the Winter Solstice, let us greet the Light’s Return with renewed and dynamic hope. Let us walk together with the shared vision of restoring and sustaining what is most honorable in our culture.

Año Nuevo (Sp. "New Year") State Park, California.

Image ~ above right ~ Freedom Plaza, Washington DC. October 6, 2011.
Thumbnail image ~ Occupy Austin, TX. 

What is your source of perennial joy? Do you have one? What thought, memory, image, or understanding can you rely on, do you trust to rekindle the wonder and magic for life you once felt as a child?

An apt question to contemplate as the year draws to a close and we look back upon the last twelve months, pondering what we’ve learned, how to deepen our connections with others and the world around us, and to engage the full extent of our humanity.

My answer resides here in this exquisite bouquet assembled by a flower lover (for who else could have gathered such a magnificent variety of color and kind?) and created by Nature for the enjoyment of all.

Nature ~ intrinsically democratic, effusively giving, a source of perennial joy.

This month’s featured image ~ PERENNIAL JOY ~ is available as a 8″ x 10″ photographic print for $20. Professionally processed with a luminous, iridescent finish. Free shipping.

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Greetings With Heart
245M Mt. Hermon Road, #307
Scotts Valley CA 95066

Please contact Viktoria if you have any questions.

Along Route 17 near Mount Pleasant in the region north of Charleston, South Carolina, you’ll find by the roadside small wooden shacks that contrast sharply with the skillfully crafted sweetgrass baskets displayed in them. Traditional weavers who learned the art from their ancestors sit inside, seeking shade from the hot sun while passing the time weaving their wares to the sound of cars speeding down the highway.

Brought to South Carolina by the Atlantic Slave Trade from the Rice Coast of West Africa, the original sweetgrass basket weavers suffered extreme hardship under slavery. In spite of their difficult life, they continued to create objects of beauty as a way to remember their homeland as well as to provide a source of income for themselves.

Sweetgrass basket weaving requires a great deal of patience and imagination. There are no established patterns. Each piece and style is unique. Baskets are made using a combination of sweetgrass, long leaf pine needles, and/or palmetto.

As Arthuree explains (at right), she learned the art from her aunt whom she promised to carry on the tradition. Arthuree’s beautiful baskets serve many useful and decorative purposes.

To learn more about sweetgrass baskets, read Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art.

Delicate branches
like fingers reaching to sun
touch my heart instead

~ Nancy Yeilding *

[Image: Oak tree, Santa Margarita, California.]

This month’s featured image ~ SANTA MARGARITA OAK ~ is available as a 8″ x 10″ photographic print for $20. Professionally processed with a luminous, iridescent finish. Free shipping.

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Kindly place your order through Paypal or mail your check/money order to:

Greetings With Heart
245M Mt. Hermon Road, #307
Scotts Valley CA 95066

Please contact Viktoria if you have any questions.

* Nancy Yielding currently works as an editor and a business and personal coach. Her teaching activities are expanding via the Internet, which provides a contemporary medium of sharing ageless wisdom with students anywhere in the world through e-study groups, as well as through workshops in various gurukula centers, East and West.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to read Platanus Orientalis.

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
~ John Donne

Pink, rose, magenta, light blue, medium blue, dark blue (pictured here), blue-violet, violet-lavender, purple, and near-white, Love-In-A-Mist (or Fennel Flower and Nigella damascena) summons a subtle charm from damp, secluded patches of the garden.

The perennial’s aromatic seeds and leaves have been used in eastern countries by both cooks and physicians. Its pods can be cut for drying while still green (or allowed to dry on the plant) and attractively added to autumn floral bouquets.

This month’s featured image ~ LOVE-IN-A-MIST-BOUQUET ~ is available as a 8″ x 10″ photographic print for $20. Professionally processed with a luminous, iridescent finish. Free shipping.

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Kindly place your order through Paypal or mail your check/money order to:

Greetings With Heart
245M Mt. Hermon Road, #307
Scotts Valley CA 95066

Please contact Viktoria if you have any questions.

You must give birth
to your images.

They are the future
waiting to be born.

Fear not
the strangeness you feel.

The future must enter you
long before it happens.

Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Our greatest inspirations come naturally, quietly, suddenly when our mind and soul are at ease and when our observing eye is alert to nuance and detail.

Riding on the wings of these imaginings are thoughts, searching for form, struggling to be born in language. The language of art.

With patience and love, the artist creates.

Joyful the day when creation is true to its source.

Images for this post are from Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi, Italy.

I used to imagine him
coming from his house, like Merlin
strolling with important gestures
through the garden
where everything grows so thickly,
where birds sing, little snakes lie
on the boughs, thinking of nothing
but their own good lives,
where petals float upward,
their colors exploding,
and trees open their moist
pages of thunder -
it has happened every summer for years.

But now I know more
about the great wheel of growth,
and decay, and rebirth,
and know my vision for a falsehood.
Now I see him coming from the house -
I see him on his knees,
cutting away the diseased, the superfluous,
coaxing the new,
know that the hour of fulfillment
is buried in years of patience -
yet willing to labor like that
on the mortal wheel.

Oh, what good it does the heart
to know it isn’t magic!
Like the human child I am
I rush to imitate -
I watch him as he bends
among the leaves and vines
to hook some weed or other;
I think of him there
raking and trimming, stirring up
those sheets of fire
between the smothering weights of earth,
the wild and shapeless air.

~ Mary Oliver ~ “Stanley Kunitz“

This month’s featured image ~ SUNFLOWER PROFUSION ~ is available as a 8″ x 10″ photographic print for $20. Professionally processed with a luminous, iridescent finish. Free shipping.

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Kindly place your order through Paypal or mail your check/money order to:

Greetings With Heart
245M Mt. Hermon Road, #307
Scotts Valley CA 95066

Please contact Viktoria if you have any questions.

On my very first evening in Greece, my friend and I were walking through the main square of the charming seaport town of Nafplio on the Peloponnesian peninsula, enjoying the soft air and the sights and sounds of children playing a makeshift soccer game, weaving around the benches where the town elders relaxed, laughing as they chased the ball, dodging the couples strolling arm in arm or pushing baby strollers. In the growing dusk the lights of the restaurants around the square glowed a welcome, which was extended by the banks of chairs and tables cozily arranged under canopies, conveying more of a feeling of a living room than a formal dining area.

I was soon to discover that this is a typical scene and feeling in the Peloponnese—life lived in the open and with a palpable sense of community. In all the towns and villages we visited, shopkeepers (in between serving their customers) sat outside their doors, in avid conversation with their neighbors or shopkeepers across the often-tiny lanes. Restaurant owners and waiters stood at the edge of their terrace or banks of tables, inviting us in as if to their own home. And, if we accepted, they then invited us in to the kitchen to see and choose from what had been freshly prepared. Or, at other times, we would enter a restaurant where there would be a convivial table, obviously of family members and friends, from which the waiter or owner would rise to serve us, confirming the sense that we had just been “welcomed home.” Children—groups of two or three or bands of them—roamed freely in the village squares, their parents knowing that they were being safely watched over by the whole town.

As we walked across the Nafplio square that first evening, soaking in all these sights and sounds, a lovely fragrance caught my attention. I paused, looking for its source, but saw nothing obvious, and so we continued on down to the waterfront. There, looking back, we could see the lights of the town rising up the steep hillside to the remains of the ancient castle at its crest. It told a story of earlier days, not so friendly, when Nafplio had been an embattled place, its pre-classical fortifications added to by the Byzantines, and later by occupying forces of the Franks, Venetians, and Ottomans. It became the first capital of modern Greece—and the scene of the assassination of the new head of state—before King Otto moved the capital to Athens in 1834. But each of the occupiers had also added some of their art and architecture to the town, contributing to the charm of the streets we wandered.

As we walked back toward our hilltop hotel, we crossed the square once again, and again the sweet fragrance caught my attention. I peered into the darkness, trying to find its source. Finally I became aware that it was coming from the tree I stood beneath, though I could see no flowers. The next day I asked around about the tree and learned that it was a plane tree, Platanus orientalis. I also learned that in the nineteenth century the square had been named Platanos, because of this tree, one that is well loved by the Greek people.

As we visited one town square after another, throughout the Peloponnese we discovered that each was the center of community life, inevitably graced by one or two or several plane trees, generously sharing their redolent shade with the townspeople in the hot summer months. Over time, more facts emerged about this kindly tree. I discovered it has a long history in Greece. According to Pliny, the first century Roman naturalist, a plane tree on the grounds of the Athenian Academy founded by Plato had roots fifty feet long. It is thought to be the tree under which Hippocrates, known as the “Father of Medicine,” taught his students. That is apt, as Platanus orientalis has several medical uses: the leaves are astringent and vulnerary and decoctions are used to treat dysentery and to heal wounds. The bark, too, is used in the treatment of diarrhea, dysentery, hernias, and toothaches.

Platanus orientalis loves water and often is found growing naturally alongside rivers. One reason plane trees are found in so many town squares is that they grew near what became the village spring, around which people naturally congregated, which grew into the center of the growing village. Many of the old springs have been captured, but their presence can still be discovered in a water tap or fountain. In the center of the village square of Mystras, just below the ruins of the ancient Byzantine town, stands a majestic old plane tree, bedecked with climbing roses that rise many feet up into its branches. And at its base, coming right out of its trunk, a small pipe continuously offers fresh water to passersby.

I also learned that human beings have valued this tree around the world for a long time—for its welcome shade, rejuvenating fragrance, graceful shape, fall color, and healing and cleansing properties. It is the famed tree of ancient Persian gardens, known as the chenar. And the beloved chinar trees of Srinagar in Kashmir are the same Platanus orientalis. The chinar often has an inner hollow, making a shelter for a meditator, or even for a whole dinner party, according to one of Pliny’s anecdotes. Well-rooted plane trees can be very long-lived. One in Chatargam, Kashmir, is reputed to have been planted in 1374 by a Sufi mystic; a five hundred year old Platanus orientalis stands in Kos, at the site where the Tree of Hippocrates grew, and may be its descendent.

Platanus orientalis has a Western relative, Platanus occidentalis, native to North America, where it is known as a sycamore, plane, or buttonwood tree. The hybrid of the eastern and western plane trees is the London plane tree, which not only offers its shade to many streets of London (and many other large cities, such as Buenos Aires, New York, Paris, Madrid, Melbourne, Mannheim, Shanghai, Chicago, and Sydney), but also absorbs air pollution in its bark, which it then cleverly sheds!

The lovely spreading arms of the plane tree are like an embrace, reaching from village to village, continent to continent, from antiquity to today and on to tomorrow, reminding us of our intimate connections with each other, in our towns and around the globe, and to the web of life of which we are a part, all sustained by earth, water, air, and light, and given space in which to be. These connections speak to us all the time, but we need to listen to their message, which can come to us from our heart’s response to playing children and companionable adults, from the way our steps naturally gravitate toward shade and the sound of trickling water in midday heat, or from a simple fragrance that calls to us at twilight.

Contributor Nancy Yeilding, under blue Peloponnesian skies.

After being born in Washington D.C., Nancy has been fortunate to live in many places on our dear Earth-home, including Burtonwood, Fairborn, San Bernardino, San Clemente, Palo Alto, Beutelsbach, Louisville, Fiuggi, Tahoe, Huelva, Portland, Manoa, Sydney, Udhagamandalam, Tellicherry, and Bainbridge Island.

Education: B.A. English, Stanford University; M.A. Education, University of San Francisco; B.L.L. (Blessed Lover of Life), East-West University of Unitive Sciences.

Nancy has been a devoted student of Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati since the early ’70s. She has facilitated the publication of several of his numerous English books and articles through dictation, transcribing, and editing. In the early ‘80s she was appointed Registrar of the East-West University and continues in that position.

In 1981, with the Guru’s blessing, she founded a gurukula (literally, “home for dispelling darkness”), a universal contemplative center, on Bainbridge Island in WA, which also functions as the Western Headquarters of the East-West University of Unitive Sciences. Throughout the years since then she has taught weekly classes in living wisdom and creativity, and edited and published a quarterly magazine for most of that time.

Currently she works as an editor and a business and personal coach. Her teaching activities are expanding via the Internet, which provides a contemporary medium of sharing ageless wisdom with students anywhere in the world through e-study groups, as well as through workshops in various gurukula centers, East and West.

All images for this post are courtesy of Nancy Yeilding.

]]> http://www.imagesforrenewal.com/guest-writers/platanus-orientalis/feed/ 6 http://www.imagesforrenewal.com/general/spirit-of-summertime/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=spirit-of-summertime http://www.imagesforrenewal.com/general/spirit-of-summertime/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:30:06 +0000 Viktoria Vidali http://www.imagesforrenewal.com/?p=10583

O Spirit of the Summertime!
Bring back the roses to the dells;
The swallow from her distant clime,
The honey-bee from drowsy cells.

Bring back the friendship of the sun;
The gilded evenings, calm and late,
When merry children homeward run,
And peeping stars bid lovers wait.

Bring back the singing; and the scent
Of meadowlands at dewy prime;—
Oh, bring again my heart’s content,
Thou Spirit of the Summertime!

~  William Allingham (1828-1889), Irish poet and man of letters.

This month’s featured image ~ SPIRIT OF SUMMERTIME ~ is available as a 8″ x 10″ photographic print for $20. Professionally processed with a luminous, iridescent finish. Free shipping.

Click here for enlarged view

 Kindly place your order through Paypal or mail your check/money order to:

 Greetings With Heart
245M Mt. Hermon Road, #307
Scotts Valley CA 95066

 Please contact Viktoria if you have any questions.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. Why does Thomas Carlyle say this? Because it is in loving that we learn life’s most difficult and important lessons.

We learn that we cannot force our will, but we can offer our love.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We learn about loss and how love endures beyond time.

The time that has gone with happiness does not come back with grief, and nothing the future may bring can wither a day or wipe out an hour in the life that has been lived. Niels Lyhne, Jens Peter Jacobsen.

We learn that love ~ in its own course ~ transforms the lover and the beloved.

We learn that loving teaches patience and is its own reward.

We learn that love quenches our deepest thirst for connection and meaning.

Man can no longer live his life for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship with the universe. ~ Albert Schweitzer

We learn that without love, life is empty.

Unless you love, your life will flash by. ~ Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life.

Indeed, we learn life’s supreme purpose:

For one human being to love another is
perhaps the most difficult task of all,
the epitome, the ultimate test.
It is that striving for which all other striving
is merely preparation. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke