Love Lies Bleeding

"Take more time, cover less ground."
Thomas Merton Dancing In The Waters of Life

Minnehaha

Sometime over the past few years I started experimenting with taking some of my more ethereal watercolors and ripping them up and putting them onto another sheet of paper as a mosaic. For this collage I did that as a background and then arranged various elements from catalogues and magazines.
When I was a little girl I was involved in (what was called back then) The Campfire Girls.
We had to pick an "Indian name" and I chose Minnehaha. One translation of the name is "Falling Waters".
In my 8 year old mind, I most likely chose it because I was a giggler and had gotten into trouble many times in school for laughing out loud in class.
This summer I remembered that name and started looking it up on the internet.
I am still not sure if such a character even existed but while doing this research, I worked on this collage. She is probably a combination of two women in American Indian folklore, Minnehaha and White Buffalo Woman.

If you look at every human being as a Divine mirror, you will know yourself and understand life.
Sherif Baba

We need Bats!

These are illustrations done by German biologist, artist and philosopher Ernst Haelkel ( 1834-1919) that were in a book called "Art Forms in Nature" given to me by a dear friend years ago.
I am putting it on my blog today (Dover gives permission for 10 or less) because 'tis the season that bat images appear all over America as a method/attempt to scare, horrify or otherwise signify Halloween.
As an Environmental Educator-Naturalist, I spent many years trying to play down the various stereotypes regarding bats to children and adults that were hiking with me on trails in various programs. A folk musician/singer-songwriter , Steve Van Zandt that I knew in the Pescadero-LaHonda area ( who as part of "The Banana Slug String Band") wrote a song that we sang with kids whose refrain goes something like this:
"Bats eat bugs, they don't eat people, bats eat bugs they don't fly in yer hair, bats eat bugs, they eat insects for dinner, that's why they're flying up there".
As a naturalist in a program based in the Great Smoky Mountains back in 2000, I was fortunate to have witnessed a huge amount of them (200 hundred or more) flying out of the mouth of a cave in a remote location there. The NPS had been wise enough to bar up most of the entrances of the known cave entrances to protect these beings from you and I.
When I lived in Austin, Texas I would go watch the colony of Mexican free-tailed Bats living under the Congress Avenue bridge. Nowadays "Bat fans" everywhere come from far and wide to witness them. The population there is estimated to be in excess of 1.5 million...so they have grown since I left there in 1998.
Via education, folks are learning to dispel the old stereotypes and erect "Bat houses" in various places to attract them into our parks, farms, neighborhoods and communities. But still we need more education. About a month ago I witnessed an employee of the Meijer grocery chain in Grove City trying to hit a baby bat off of the wall. It was high on a very flat surface clinging to the brick face . I saw what he was doing and asked him why. He replied that it was "his job" to knock them down as he thought they might freak out a customer. I stayed around for a while (not preaching or condemning as I know that doesn't work) and tried to convince him to give it a little time to warm up as it was a chilly morning and the baby bat was obviously traumatized. Eventually I had to leave to go back to work but still wonder about the fate of that little bat.
In many traditions, including the beliefs and stories of some American Indian tribes, bats are sacred and should in no way ever be harmed. I believe this myself.
Next time you see a bat, Thank him or her for the valuable services they provide... pollination of fruits and vegetables, bat guano for an amazing fertilizer for plants and population control of mosquitos being only a few.