Month: February 2023

Even the Muse Needs Time Off

The Creative Process, Uncategorized

We are in the doldrums of winter here in Oregon.  Inspiration has alluded me and I am more inclined to curl up with a good book by the woodstove rather than settle down to any creative projects.  This has led to a certain amount of guilt and frustration on my part…

But then I got to thinking, dormancy is a normal part of nature. Most of the plants in my garden have died back to the ground.  The bulbs have been sleeping waiting for the right time to come up and bloom.  Fruit trees are resting before the growing season.  Dormancy in the winter leads to flowering in the spring. Even farmers let their fields go fallow to give them a chance to regenerate.

So we humans must rest as well, particularly those involved in creative pursuits. Sometimes the muse just needs a break.  So I am bidding Daphne, my muse a nice holiday.  I’m to go about cleaning and sorting my long-neglected house and workspacen and catch up on my mending. interesting that during my most mindless moments, my best ideas manifest.

Rest up Daphne…

MUSE

Come out & play with me

you my best of friends

I am happiest when we hold hands

& dance our secret dance.

Whisper in my ear

& fill my head until it is overflowing

with sparks & flowers

of inspiration.

Let’s bring forth from the cauldron of the ethos

a new incarnation of matter & thought

an offering of our magic

to the altar of the earth.

A Portal to the Past

memoir, Photography, Uncategorized
A great great grandmother?
My great aunt and uncle

My mother passed away last June at the age of 93. The family house is up for sale. I drove down from Oregon to do a final sort and bid goodbye to a long chapter of my life. Part of my task has been to go through the family archives such as they are unsorted and unlabeled in boxes and tattered photo albums. I’m most interested in the old pictures from my immigrant roots. The record is best documented on my mother’s side.

Images started to show up in the late 1800s after arrival from the old country, mostly from Vilnius, Lithuania, considered the new Jerusalem after the diaspora. The Jews from that region emigrated to escape Russian oppression. My father’s side of the family had a respite in Scotland and my mother’s in England before they immigrated to the US. Both families were Ashkenazi Jews. It is just by chance that my parents met and married with a similar past.

My mother’s grandfather Nathan Davis was born in Vilnius and that is where my photo record starts. He married Leah Silverman Bernard and they settled in the gold rush country of California where he opened a dry goods store that served the miners. He did quite well there and had one son, Charles, my mother’s father. Unfortunately, Nathan was murdered in Elko, Nevada where they retired. They never found the murderer. I did find a record of his gravestone however on gravestone.com (who knew?).

Great Grandfather Nathan Davis

Charles married Anna Alpert. He opened a curio and Mexican goods shop in Colfax, California, driving down to Mexico occasionally to bring back stock for his store. After the war, where he served in the signal corps, Charles opened an electronics and radio shop in San Francisco. They had two children, Elaine (my mother), and Robert (my uncle). Anna tragically died in her 30’s from cancer. Charles passed at age 54 from leukemia

My grandfather Charles Davis, Charles (right) and friend (at the World’s Fair? Charles in front of his curio shop in Colfax, CA

What times they lived through- religious oppression, immigration, the Depression, World War ll. Despite their hard times, they survived and prospered.  I see my face in theirs even though we are strangers in time.

Maternal Garndmother Anna Alpert Davis
A school picture from my mother, Elaine Pass. She is 5th from the left middle. Check out the faces of these kids! Find Waldo.

Six Years Gone & the Blog Goes On

ARTifacts, The Creative Process, Uncategorized

Happy birthday dear blog, albeit two months late.  Although I have not been as attentive to you these past two years, let me tell you how much you mean to me…

Thank you for being the virtual scrapbook of my adventures, musings, and ramblings.  Thank you for providing a platform for my essays and poetry and for connecting me with other like-minded people.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity be my own publisher and editor.  Thank you for making me a better writer.

I may not get to complete memoir in my lifetime, but you are there as my proxy.  You are an essential thread in my life and for that I am grateful.  In the coming years, I will strive to be more focused and more timely.  May I also acknowledge my dear readers for their commitment to reading the meanderings of my mind.

Now, let’s blog on, shall we?

Tune into my other blog onesweetearth.blog on sustainable living.

Artwork by the author