Building with the Lakota in Wounded Knee

TipJoy contributions this summer (2009) will help with all sundries as the building crew commences (from June 15) to build Gran'ma Claudia's cob house. As with previous years, much has been donated, from food to feed the builders, to tools and equipment necessary on-site. But cash-in-hand comes as a great relief each year, making sure that crews are not stranded without gas to get supplies as work proceeds. Some days the cash that WomenRise sent meant that we had fresh fruit to eat (can you imagine our delight in the dust & heat!). Sometimes, the cash meant the difference between having the right tool for the job or doing without. And, ultimately, the biggest single cost is the roof.  So let's see what Tip Joy can do for Lakota this summer!. 

So let's see what we can do this year with TipJoy!

TipJoy for the Builders

'Building With Lakota in Wounded Knee' movie captured some of the highlights of the 2005 building camp, thanks to filmmaker, Yinka Selley. Filming through 10 unforgettable days of a season spent with a Lakota family building the community's first cob house (building volunteers also participate in ceremony and the spectacle of horse racing commemorating the Battle of Little Bighorn).

Elmer Bear Eagle broke ground with us at Leola One Feather's, showing up every day in time for the first pot of coffee.. and staying 'til the last song was sung, if that be 2am (how ever tired we were from hauling dirt, we always had energy for a night fire and Maggi's guitar!)

The group pictured here is the very first ground breaking team that traveled out to respond to the Lakota request for sustainable homes; special kind of houses, 'cob houses', real homes to serve families through the extreme summers and winters of South Dakota.

Women from two continents helping and learning with friends and family.The original call went to the women of WomenRise for Global Peace (Santa Cruz, CA, natural builders being among them, who responded by sending a team to discover how this great and practical vision of thriving, sustainable community in beautiful simple homes was going to be accomplished.

1000 hummingbirds is a program of Natural Villages
Natural Villages is the 501c3 that has evolved out of building with Lakota
http://www.natural-villages.org/

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Greatness is not a destination, but a journey. What do you do for your family, career or community that you’re most proud of?
Sponsored by Nature Made.

"Let's raise children who don't have to recover from their childhood" ; That's a Pam Leo quote and anybody who has had the good fortune to meet that Lady knows that she is a gentle legend where children are concerned. http://www.connectionparenting.com/

I have worked in profound ways with children through decades, through years as a hospital play therapist, and years as a family counselor, but the weekend I got to spend with Pam Leo, I had at least five breathless wonder moments at what just walked out of her mouth! Now I will name "Pam" 3 times(!) as an embodiment of what I have taken to heart as central to my life purpose; to really listen to the children, in all the ways they are able to communicate, to honor their presence and purpose in OUR lives, to be moved and changed and softened and shaped by them.

Buckminster Fuller once said (at Lynne Twist's dinner table!) "Remember, your children are your elders in universe time"; (they will live to see more than you can imagine but also they come with their own raw wisdom).

So here's my big Love Song for Valentine's!

LOVE THE CHILDREN

Love the children, give them room to grow,
feed them, teach them, always let them know,
that the power that made the thunder and the rains
is in their bones and running through their veins,
is in their bones and running through their veins.

Show the children beauty in the skies,
beauty in the darkness, beauty in their eyes,
joy in its moment, sadness when it starts,
Let the children fill their boundless hearts,
Let the children fill their boundless hearts.

Listen to the children, what they have to say,
the world is changing faster every day,
but still the sacred Mystery goes on.
Help the children listen to its song,
Help the children listen to its song.

(by Mary Buckley, 1995, printed in Songs for Earthlings, published by Emerald Earth http://www.emeraldearth.net/. Mary said: "This was one of those songs that wouldn;t leave my head in the middle of the night until I got up and wrote it down. Several hours later I was invited to be interviewed for a New Dimensions Radio program on single parenting. I took it as a synchronicity and sang it for the music break in the radio program."

Love,

Corrina

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

"I can feel a powerful leveraging of Energy in being more deliberate about my thoughts" Abe

Polar-light-wikimedia-common-winner

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Medium Charcoal River Blue Haze yellow

PICTURED ABOVE are 3 one-off organic tees:

CHARCOAL - 1 MEDIUM

RIVER BLUE - 1 MEDIUM

YELLOW HAZE - 1 MEDIUM
These are ready to ship together or by the each, to the first person to share a hummingbird story and dollar amount commensurate with hummingbird economic model (below)

Note that we are working with our local eco-friendly printers with heat-transfer technology that allows us to order idiosyncratically in small batches and according to hummingbird requests received (no silk-screen set-up means our economics do not depend on large quantity mass-production). We are solidly committed to using Fair Trade, non-sweatshop, sustainable/organic fabric, cloths, sarongs and t-shirts (kind to air, the water, the Earth & all living things).

 Emergent orders are currently being submitted in approximately 3-week cycle: To help you with your choosing we offer that "Water Woman" is emerging most popularly on white, and "New Dawn Woman" on dark background (organic color availability includes Black/'City green'/red/navy blue).

Black white 2 tees side by side

 THE HUMMINGBIRD ECONOMIC MODEL
Send one hundred dollars to help support the Hummingbird Ceremony convening and we will send to you Hummingbird "Water Woman" or "New Dawn Woman" {ceremonial cloth/sarong, or tee}.

 "1000HummingbirdsNV" is PayPal verified.

 DON’T HAVE $100 TO DONATE?  Read this!: You may be a natural-born holder or embodiment of hummingbird medicine and you got chills when your eyes alighted on one of these images, but you do not have the means to pay such a premium. You should know that we will meet you at the appropriate price-point, one conversation at a time, so please do not be shy to bring your story, and name dollar amount that lit up in you along with the design. We will do our level best to honor every such submission without tipping the balance for the monetary needs of the hummingbird ceremony.

 Please know that we as Hummingbird conduits are committed, as far as humanly possible, to “no externalized cost” on any finished garments that passes through our hands. We have lived through an era of ‘externalized cost’, whereby the cheap fabric for t-shirt or sarong is at the cost of family wellbeing (growers & pickers not paid a living wage), and/or the fiber production literally costing the Earth; conventional cotton production ranks as one of THE most toxic mono-crops on the planet.

All this to say; that we do not deal in ‘bargain-basement’ t-shirts or bottom-dollar anything(!) and the prices we pay do of course reflect that. We wish to, in the words of the Water Institute {'Basins of Relations'},: "ensure that we and all species enjoy pure and ample water for generations to come.”
We recognize this abiding truth: "The water cycle and the life cycle are one." {Cousteau}

HUMMINGBIRD COUNCIL RE-CAP:
Towards CLEAN WATER and well being for all; from sea to shining sea to planetwide.

We are entering a 4-year cycle for rebirth and renewal; a four day, four year event that is passed from council of women to council of women, until we see profound well being restored.

Native women always took care of source and supply networks. Now hummingbird water woman council has convened to draw from the wisdom of traditional networks of need and supply sources, attuned to the newly emerging and within a ceremony framework for follow-through and success.

The All Nations Women's Hummingbird Rebirthing Ceremony for the Earth, while 'all women' and not a public event, nevertheless encourages people of every race, gender, and creed to lend their good spirit to this Purpose, Intention and Outcome: everybody counts, everybody matters.. and the 1% of available freshwater on the Earth is a non-negotiable right for every living thing on our precious Planet.

Hummingbird "Water Woman" {pictured above}, or Hummingbird "New Dawn Woman” {pictured below} can come to you on a ceremonial cloth/sarong, on a scrap of fabric for you to quilt or incorporate into other creations.., on a t-shirt.. {you choose}.

The actual Hummingbird Ceremony will take place over the 2009 April New Moon cycle. As you bring the Hummingbird Ceremony imagery 'Home' to your own sacred spaces and places, you focus your heart-mind for optimum evolution. We truly want to know how to "love all children of all species for all time."

“We Are Hummingbird Women in creation...

A nation of women with wings….”

 With All Our Hearts; we thank you.

Web Link: www.natural-villages.org/gaia

 ENDNOTE: Natural Villages is the 501(c)3 for the Hummingbird Ceremony:
www.natural-villages.org ~ Natural Villages knows that in a very real sense, we hold the World in the palm of our hands: - "If you want to envision a watershed, bring your hands together and cup them, creating a vessel. Imagine the rim of your hands being a water-parting divide with thumb and fingertips as ridge-line spires. Fingers become the mountain slopes, palms the hills and floodplains. Each wrinkle and crease a watercourse conveying flow...spilling forth towards the mouth of articulated wrists. We all hold the watershed in our hands, and in turn, we are all held by the watershed." {Brock Dolman in the book;  'Water Consciousness'; "Watershed Literacy: Restoring Community & Nature", Pub. Alternet Books, 2008} ~

 Natural Villages feels deeply privileged to be holding space for hummingbirds, for water, for Life.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I post below excerpts of an open letter from Rick Ulfik, Founder and Director of We, The World
Rick was beloved of our WomenRise for Global Peace Centenarian, Eleanor Wasson, who wrote a letter to Presidential Candidate, Senator Barack Obama on April 4, 2008, two days before she died..

Centenarian WomenRise Eleanor in Peace Jacket

Dear Senator Obama:
      Thank you for your wisdom in planning to appoint Al Gore as a member of your cabinet
 when you are elected our President.

      Extending such wisdom, I hope you will gain millions of votes by contacting my friend 
Dennis Kucinich, asking him to become Director for the Department of Peace when you are elected...

 ..My thanks and every good wish as you take our country and the world 
into peace and justice.

                                     Sincerely,              

                                     Eleanor Wasson

She got up and sat on the edge of her bed one last time, calling for pen and paper, and wrote her final letters;
one to presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, and one to Representative Dennis Kucinich.

Eleanor Wasson, lifelong activist-citizen, founder of WomenRise for Global Peace, and author of
28,000 Martinis and Counting: A Century of Living, Loving & Learning,
was renowned for her poignant and lucid letters to members of Congress.
It was her firm belief that Barack Obama, along with his wife Michelle,
represents a new paradigm in this experiment in Democracy, unprecedented in the history of the world.

Riding Waves of Hope - This is the Moment to Begin REAL Change

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Image001 Obamas Great Seal of America

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

29-Day Giving Challenge is a profound reminder that there is no separation really between Giving and Receiving..

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

"Just two years ago John McCain  himself stood in solidarity with ACORN, saying of our members, "they are what makes America special."

Dear Corrina Cop Rain, The attacks on ACORN are vicious and unfair. Losing campaigns and right wing media like Fox need scapegoats for their own  failures. ACORN is been around for many years and does crucial work in registering eligible voters and representing low-income people, when the gap between rich and poor is the biggest in many decades. Take a moment to support ACORN. Don Hazen Executive Editor, AlterNet.org

Dear Friend,   STOP the attacks on ACORN. Click here. To put it mildly, ACORN is under attack. The attack on ACORN (The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is shaping up to be the most vicious of the 2008 election. The problem is, we will have to suffer the consequences long after the election is over. We need your help, and we need it now. ACORN is accustomed to opposition. We've been educating, organizing, and empowering low-income communities for nearly 40 years. I can tell you that when you advocate with and for poor people against policies and practices that discriminate and keep communities from thriving, you make some enemies. But we've never seen anything like this. When John McCain's presidential campaign began sinking in the polls, they looked for a scapegoat. They picked ACORN. And now, in the past few weeks alone, ACORN staffers have received death threats in Ohio and Rhode Island, and offices have been vandalized in Washington and Massachusetts. Numerous threatening and racist phone calls have been made to ACORN offices across the country. And then there's FOX news, accusing ACORN of all kinds of criminal activity hundreds - HUNDREDS - of times during the past few days. You know what FOX news isn't reporting? This: Just two years ago, John McCain himself stood in solidarity with ACORN, saying of our members, "they are what makes America special." McCain's attacks have to stop. They are wrong, and the results for hundreds of thousands of people with whom we work will be disastrous. Please, take a moment today and ask John McCain to stop resorting to this deceptive, hurtful attack immediately. Click here. We hope you'll also spread the word. It will take millions of people to shut down the assault and stop the lies. Our friends at Brave New Films have made a fantastic video about ACORN, that debunks the outrageous lies, and we encourage you to share it. Thank you so very much for taking a moment to support ACORN while we're in the fight of our lives. Sincerely, Steven Kest, Executive Director, ACORN Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN P.S. We welcome your financial support as well. This fight is costing us in every way, including financially. Thank you for your generosity. ACORN is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, with over 400,000 member families organized into neighborhood chapters in 100 cities across the country. Since 1970 ACORN has taken action and won victories on issues of concern to our members. Our priorities include: better housing for first time homebuyers and tenants, living wages for low-wage workers, more investment in our communities from banks and governments, and better public schools. ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN's website is at http://www.acorn.org.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

A long long time ago I gleaned that my old father had a problem with people celebrating his birthday. From my young and limited perspective I formed the erroneous belief that 'men' in general, did not appreciate having their birthdays create a stir (what my father would call 'making a fuss' or 'a waste o' money').I know better these days, including that their was something much more profound going on in my dear Sire. Nevertheless, the vestiges of this early training remain, such that I have noticed it is often far more easy for me to apply whimsical imagineering to the birthdays of my female friends and sisters then for most of the men in my sphere.

For 19 years.. James has been my brother-in-law and I have never registered his birthday day. This year though, something about it seeped into me and this is what was born..

Love See No Color

  So to dear James let me say; I have cherished you along with your dear wife from the day I first met you. I fully celebrate the rich character that you are, the husband and father I saw when first I fell in love with your wife's brother, and the light in your eyes that plays through all the years of our changes and maturing. May you look back from the 2020s and be deeply deeply satisfied with the Summer to Autumn of our  Lives

 Happy Birthday James!

 May the Long Time Sun Shine Upon You

All Love Surround You

And the Pure Light Within You

Guide Your Way On

And Now (if he had let me embed it I would have but you have to go there!)...

I Give You: Dance Me To The End of Love:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIdZ-rRnUkg&feature=related

{With special thanks to my sister Maggi who sent me the YouTube video in the first place, which succinctly coalesced my James' birthday celebrating thoughts into this!).

Lyrics (for everyone who has ever been afraid, for everyone whose Love has grown..):

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

We love our toilet. We always deep-down, wanted it to be ceramic, shiny, super-clean feeling/looking. But once we got tuned (back) into our local watershed, we just knew it didn't make sense to be flushing drinking water down the privy.

And don't get me wrong; I LOVED LOVED LOVED it when we finally broke through on the eco-porta pottie front (so weird to be using chemical loos at the Big Green!!). But really, we wanted home toilets like the ones at the Bronx Zoo, and we trumpeted that human creativity/fun/play/ phenomenal breakthrough. Now that the Bronx Zoo toilet is building code standard, we all know how deeply satisfying it is to have that aesthetically pleasing receptacle at the top-end and a really fine process for shoveling shit at the other (all in the fullness of time).

It took us such a long time to get the toilets right. We used to just flush millions of gallons of drinking water down the drain... And all the while there were whispers that the next wars would be not over oil, but over water..; ominous murmerings which (thank goodness) gave us a start; A Start...!: Phew; we started to realize all the big under-our-noses things about the water.... and Ancient Future started to roll.

It's about the water It's about the water It's about the water: "Basins of Relations" means "We're all in this (watershed) together!!"*:thank you Brock!!

To my mind it took a man who could dance; a Burning Man man, a man who knew how to play, really, and how to laugh, and how to plant and nurture and grow... Just like the medicine of hummingbird is JOY, which is one of the most powerful medicine's I know in the face of DIRE.

WE WERE IN THE FACE OF DIRE... that much we knew.

who sent this to me....?

As Brock puts it, “The critical head-waters (human brain)
are in need of an ego-restoration project” and the 
“lifeboat in this restorative journey is our 
watershed.”  Poetically, our society must engage in a 
“Reverential Rehydration Revolution,” by adjusting our 
development and water management patterns away from the 
“problem-causing system of: Pave it, Pipe it, Pollute it” 
to a “solution-based system of Slow it, Spread it, 
Sink it.” Hope lies in world-wide “water literacy” 
and establishing a water management commitment 
to the four R’s of “Conservation Hydrology: 
Receive, Release, Recharge, and Restore.”  
As Brock likes to ask, 
“Do you know where your watershed is tonight?”

Read and post comments | Send to a friend