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The Baboon Congress

Adventures in Smudging

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Header image of sage from lebensmittelfotos on Pixabay

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

I must start out by apologizing to the Baboons for the obtuseness of the following post. I had to leave out some details so that I could tell you the substance of something I did without incurring all manner of rannygazoo for my furtive act.

I recently went somewhere (I can’t reveal where, for reasons I can’t divulge) which is usually full of people, but was deserted during the time of which I write.

It is a place I really like going to. It is also a place, however, where I have experienced a great deal of interpersonal strife, some of which goes back more than a decade.  The strife ended suddenly and unexpectedly a short time ago. My purpose for going to this place was to heal myself and the place by smudging.

Smudging is something our Native American friends do to ceremonially purify and cleanse themselves and their surroundings by burning fragrant plants and wafting the smoke all over.  I consulted with some Native friends about my smudging idea. They thought it was quite appropriate and supplied me with a shell, sage and bear root that they had harvested from their Reservation, and a  braid of sweet grass.

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The sage and bear root purify and heal; the sweet grass provides a blessing and counters negative energy.

Early one morning I took my supplies to the place I needed to smudge, all the while thinking peaceful and healing thoughts and good Lutheran prayers. It was just sunrise. I lit the sage and bear root in the shell, got them smoldering, and wafted the smoke all over myself. I then went from area to area in the place that were heavily associated with the strife. In psychology terms I would say that the areas were “deeply cathected” or full of negative energy. There was very little smoke but incredible fragrance, especially from the sage.  I then lit the sweet grass braid and repeated the process. The whole procedure took about 30 minutes. I left the place and went  home.

This is one of the goofiest things I have ever done. I told  a few non-Native people what I was planning, and one of them said “That is so weird, Renee! I was just thinking, what would a shaman do to help heal this place?” Well, I am no shaman, but I took this as an affirmation from the cosmos that what I had planned was ok.

I had to smudge in secret because smoking and burning candles aren’t allowed at the place I smudged, and many people wouldn’t have understood why I needed to do this. Anger and strife are killers, in my experience, and I needed to put as much of them to rest as I possibly could.  I feel more at peace now, and that is a good thing.

How would you nullify bad feelings associated with a significant place?

The Baboon Congress, Travel

The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

I am not much into dream interpretation, being a Dust-bowl empiricist sort of psychologist by training. My dreams are pretty understandable, not scary, just annoying and mundane, usually fueled by anxiety. My most recent stupid dream concerned the band in which husband and I play doing a gig at the Vatican, and I couldn’t get my bass guitar amp to play loud enough during Mass. How dumb is that?

Our sojourn into Indian Country has taught me, though, that when a person has a dream concerning American Indians, it is wise to sit up and take notice. Dreams are important means of communication in the Native community.  I have heard many a Native person say to someone “I had a dream about you last night. Thought I better come and check if you are ok.” I had a very strange dream a while back about Linda, one of our Native friends we were going to meet up with at a pow wow. The dream, which seemed strangely real, involved Linda, in great distress, trying to contact me to tell me that she wasn’t going to make it to the pow wow because she was ill.  In the morning we drove up to the pow wow grounds. I asked about Linda and was told that she was ill and was staying home. That was a really odd experience.

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The photo attached to this post is of the Hopi Corn God.  We purchased him at Mesa Verde, in the National Park gift shop. He isn’t made by the Hopi, but by Apaches for the tourist trade. I think that Kachinas are too sacred to the Hopi to make and sell. I set him in a place of honor in the living room when we got back home. One night I had enough of husband’s snoring (this was pre-CPAP) and I bunked up on the living room sofa. That night I had a horrific dream that the kachina was really, really angry. It seemed very real, and it was again hard for me to decide if it was a dream or if it was really happening.  He was about 50 feet tall and was moving toward me, stomping and stomping with his big feet.  It felt that he was going to stomp me to jelly. I woke up and found some dried field corn we had for the squirrels and sprinkled some around the kachina’s feet.  I haven’t had any more dreams about him, but I wonder what it was he was trying to tell me that night.  Probably that even Apache-made Hopi Kachinas are too sacred to be used as an ornament. I probably need to ask some our Native friends what I should do with him and how I should properly dispose of him if they think that necessary. Be careful if you have an opportunity to purchase Native artifacts.

You may have dreams.

What is your most worrisome artifact?

The Baboon Congress

The Dust Suckers

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My apologies, Renee and Baboons.  I was away from e-mail and the blog all day yesterday, and did not realize there was no comment box in spite of several polite attempts made by diligent readers to call my attention to that fact.  

I blame the dust.  In my brain. 

Comments are now open on this post, which will remain up through the weekend. 

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

Husband has terrible airborne allergies, particularly to dust and pollen and cat dander. I had hoped that when we installed new siding and windows in the house last year he would find some relief, at least inside the house, but it didn’t happen. We have HEPA filters running all the time and have dust mite proof mattress and pillow covers, and new carpets, but he still downs Sudafed and Allegra like candy and is always sneezing and clearing his throat.

I noticed that even when our new windows were shut tight, there was always a thick layer of dust on furniture and other surfaces. I know that it is dustier out here than in other places because of the winds we have, but, honestly, a person shouldn’t  have to dust twice a week when the windows haven’t even been opened.

It occurred to me that we must be recirculating dust whenever we ran the furnace or the central air conditioning. I replace the furnace filter at the approved intervals, but that didn’t help, either. We decided to call in the dust suckers, or, more professionally, Peterson’s Furnace and Air Duct Cleaners. They arrived today and spent 7 hours removing more dirt and objects from our furnace and furnace ducts than I thought possible. They have a 600 lb vacuum that gets connected to the furnace and cleans out everything. The hose is more than a foot in diameter.  They also go from the vents back to the furnace to make sure nothing is in the ducts, and then sterilize the whole duct system. Some of the more interesting things they removed included:

    • Pieces of lumber, presumably left by the construction workers who built the house in 1978
    • Chunks of drywall-ditto
    • Cassette tapes
    • Cat toys
    • Spoons (not soup spoons but spoons for feeding babies)
    • gargantuan dust bunnies

Mr. Peterson is a local, and his able assistant is from New Jersey and has the most delightful accent. They tell us that this procedure should be done about every 10 years. It evidently hasn’t ever been done here in the 37 years since the house was built.  It remains to be seen if husband’s allergies will remit somewhat, but getting rid of the dust certainly can’t hurt. I need to ask my children which of them stuffed cassette number 4 of Harry Potter and The Goblet of FIre down the heat vent, and why. Alas, though, now I know that none of my missing soup spoons are in the duct work.

What long-missing item might be hiding in your air ducts? 

 

The Baboon Congress

Finding the Sacred

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

One thing I appreciate about the Baboons is our tolerance for one another’s opinions and beliefs. Oh, sure, we have our occasional tiff, with brief howling and hurling of poo, but after a bit we regroup and run happily together down the Trail to the next topic.

I have long wanted to post this, but hesitated, with the hesitation that many people have when discussing their religious beliefs. I know most Baboons are quite spiritual, some in less traditional ways, but spiritual and thoughtful. I have trust that the Baboon community will consider this in the spirit in which it is intended (which is to elicit comment and discussion).

I am privileged to be a member of a committee of the western ND Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that approves people who wish to become rostered leaders in the church. This means that if you want to be an ELCA pastor in western ND, you have to jump through a whole lot of hoops and have the qualities that we need for our clergy leaders. Anyone can go to seminary, but if you want to be called and ordained, you need our blessing. This means that we walk with  applicants for several years, attending to and encouraging their growth and maturation, even those who start the process later in life. Some start very later in life, but the process is still the same.

It always fascinates and moves me the first time we meet with an applicant. They are frequently teary. They have incredible faith stories and are so relieved to take the first step to answer what sometimes has been an internal urging that they have tried to ignore for years, but find that they cannot. Some have had incredible heartbreak and trauma, but persevere to answer what they hear as a direct call from God to serve the Church. After one particularly moving interview, a fellow member of the committee said to me “The Holy Spirit was in the room with us tonight”. That statement made the hair stand up on my neck, for I knew that she was right, and let me tell you, the thought of kind of makes me stop and feel humble.

After our June meeting last summer, I left Bismarck and travelled to the Twin Buttes Pow wow in Twin Buttes, ND. We have dear friends from Twin Buttes who are tribal members, and the Pow wow is always so much fun with them. I love watching the Grand Entrance and all the dancers in their gorgeous costumes and intricate dance steps. In the center of the Pow wow grounds is a pole that the dancers circle around, counter-clockwise. Our friend’s mom, now passed, had brain cancer for years, and her only request each year was to see the pole and get pushed up to the pole in her wheelchair so she could touch it. She was also a devout Christian, but that pole was also sacred to her.

It is fun to walk around the pow wow grounds to see the vendors, and the people. I notice children and adults tapping their feet to the rhythms of the drum circles, hearing the traditional songs, also sacred, and I am reminded that the sacred is all around us, in meeting rooms and on pow wow grounds, in churches and in our everyday encounters.

Where do you find the sacred in your life?

The Baboon Congress

Cattle Drive

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

Husband and I travelled to Newell, SD a couple of weeks ago to pick up some lambs we ordered from the Tri-county Meat Locker. It was a beautiful day for a drive, through some pretty isolated and rugged terrain, past the Slim Buttes, Custer National Forest, and Castle Rock, past Hoover, ( a former stage-coach stop that now is a ranch with a convenience store), with Bear Butte (sacred to the Lakota people) in the far distance near Sturgis.

We were about 20 miles into SD near a very small “town” named Reva, when we had to stop for about 15 minutes to allow the last of  about 200 head of Angus cattle cross the road to their winter pasture closer to their rancher’s home place. They appeared to be cows with almost full-grown calves. We arrived at the very end of the parade, and we could see the cattle that had already crossed the road winding their way far ahead.

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The cattle were pretty placid and calm, mooing quietly, trudging resolutely, herded by two teenage girls and a much younger girl about eight years old, all on horseback. The little girl didn’t look too happy about it. There was a mom-type with two preschool-age girls bringing up the rear on an ATV.

As we continued on our way we noticed fresh cowpies on the highway for about 10 miles, and we could trace where the cattle had started out in a pasture just below the Slim Buttes. Husband and I were so happy we got to see this, which we found out was pretty common this time of year. It is a lot less expensive to drive them to winter pasture than to truck them. I thought about the teens and younger children involved in the drive and I hoped they understood just how fortunate they are to experience this.

The cattle were not visible from the road on our return trip later that afternoon. I like to think they were munching away on  good grass on the other side of the hills. I suppose they will travel back to their summer pasture in  the spring, this time accompanied by new calves.

It was a really good day.

What unexpected sight stopped your road trip?

 

The Baboon Congress

Baboon Redux – Puggi Lives!

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Header photo by Christina Nöbauer  

A Repeat Guest Blog from Renee Boomgaarden, originally posted in 2010. 

Recently we discussed our feeling about news stories, and I noted that there was very little in the news that I could tolerate, with the exception, I now must confess, of stories about animal rescue. I don’t mean shows about animal welfare officers rescuing pets from abuse and neglect-those shows just make me angry and upset. I mean stories about helping animals out of predicaments of their own making. You know the kind-goats stranded on bridges or with their heads stuck in fencing, bears who wander into town, get treed and tranquilized, and fall sleepily into the waiting nets of patient rescuers who transport them back to the woods, ducklings retrieved from storm sewers as their mother quacks anxiously nearby.

I think my favorite stories are those told friends and family. The story about the dog who decided it would be a good idea to roll vigorously back and forth over a decomposing porcupine (both smelly and painful) stands out, as does the tale of the poor, bored, Lakeland Terrier who spent hours independently chasing a ball back and forth over a paved parking lot until it had worn the pads off its paws.

My dad and my best friend tell the most memorable rescue stories. My friend grew up on a farm, and one day after checking the cattle she came upon a Great Grey Owl sitting on the ground under a telephone pole. She was able to walk quite close to it and saw that one pupil was quite dilated. It looked kind of stunned and she surmised it had had a head injury. She somehow managed to get it into a tall box in the back of her car and drove three hours to get it to a raptor center at the University of Minnesota. She never heard what happened to it after that.

My father loves dogs and has had his share of trauma with them over the years. He still speaks with sorrow over a favorite dog he had as a boy-a Rat Terrier named Diamond-who went down a badger hole and never came back up. It still bothers him. His all-time favorite dog, however, was Puggi the Pug, a dog he had after he retired. One day in early Spring, Dad and Puggi went to the city park in Luverne, right along the Rock River, to see if the ice had broken up. The river was still frozen over, but barely, and before he could stop her, Puggi ran out on the ice to get to some birds on the other bank.
A portion of the ice gave way and she went through and was pulled under the remaining ice by the strong Spring current.

She was gone.

Dad said he walked down stream about 100 feet and just stared, thinking to himself that he had lost his dog for good. His eye was caught by an old ice fishing hole in the middle of the river, and to his joy, up popped Puggi. She couldn’t scramble out of the hole on her own, so Dad laid out flat and advanced across the ice on his stomach. He grabbed Puggi and slithered back to shore. He figured she saw light coming through the hole as the current took her down stream and she swam toward it. He took her home and put her in a hot shower to warm her up. My mother was appalled at the risk he took, I don’t think he thought twice about going out on that ice.

When have you come to the rescue?

History, The Baboon Congress

Hummel, Hummel-Mors, Mors

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

Clyde’s recent posts about DNA and birch logs made me think about these little carvings I have that came from my mother’s family from Hamburg, Germany.  

The crabby water carrier and the farm animals and other figures were in my house all throughout my childhood.  Mom would never let me play with them. I think some of them were children’s toys. Mom said she thought that some of them were sent from Hamburg by family in thanks for the food packages my grandma sent them during the war.  She was pretty vague about it.  She couldn’t even tell me  how long she had them, or why she had them instead of my grandmother or other family members.  

She also couldn’t tell me much about the water carrier. She said he had something to do with Hummels. I always thought she meant the porcelain  child figures designed by the nun, Sr. Maria Hummel.  

Well,  That isn’t quite the whole story.

I now know that the water carrier figure was a real person who worked as a water carrier in Hamburg in the mid-19th century and who was noted for his nasty temper. He was given the nickname “Hans Hummel”.  The word Hummel sometimes is used to refer to a bumblebee. Hamburg children would follow him through the streets as he carried water, yelling “Hummel Hummel” and he would respond with “Mors Mors” which is low German slang for “Kiss my a**”.  

People from Hamburg often greeted each other this way long after Herr Hummel went to meet his maker. The water carrier is a popular symbol for Hamburg.  Now, why didn’t my mom tell me this? How did those cute child figures get mixed up with this?  I don’t even know if mom knew the whole story. If that is the case, why didn’t her mother or her grandparents tell her the story?

Since my parents have both died I find I have lots of questions that I will probably never get answered. I wish I could go back in time and ask my great grandparents and other ancestors just what is up with all this stuff.  Husband and I are tentatively planning a May trip  to Bremen and Hamburg, so maybe I will find some answers.

What question would you ask your ancestors?

The Baboon Congress

Marital Ballistics

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota.

We live on a very “married” block/street.  It was that way when we moved here in 1988 and it remains the same, although “married” status has changed to “widowed” for a couple of the residents. Of the twelve houses that line both sides of the street on our block, ten are owned by couples and two by widows. There has been very little turnover as well.  Gary and Sue, Ken and Rhonda, Elsie and Leonard,  the Maershbeckers, the Knopics, the Lenos, the Kovashes, the Dvoraks, and us have lived quietly and politely close to one another for more than two decades, (but not too close), admiring each other’s lawns, vehicles, gardens , flowers, and children, visiting in a neighborly way, keeping mostly to ourselves but knowing lots of things  about all the others while pretending to mind our own business.

It used to be that the sight of a police car on the block signaled that someone had found a stray dog and had called the city to come and take the animal home. Things got more dramatic a couple of years ago when Ludwig and Martha died. They were a sweet old couple with thick Czech accents who lived directly across the street from us. The Knopics, who lived a few houses south, bought Ludwig and Martha’s home and sold their home to a couple in their late 30’s, oil field people with an aggressive Dachshund and no children.  They are not a quiet couple. They are heavy drinkers who argue and taunt each other loudly and publicly in the front yard, and who have visits from the police.  He has been in the local paper in the District Court proceedings, convicted of simple assault. He always ends up back home and then we see them washing their vehicles, trimming the hedges and mowing the lawn as though nothing has happened.

It has been quite a while since the police have been called or he has shown up in the paper. I was tickled the other day to see them in their front yard, each with a lariat,  roping a horned metal steer head.  They looked really happy and were encouraging and giving pointers to each other.  I wondered if they were  participating in team roping, which is a pretty popular sport out here. If so, I can’t think of a more appropriate activity for a heavy drinking couple who ends up in slugfests.  If you are going to win you have to be sober and you have to communicate well with your partner.  Maybe they can refine their technique by trying to rope the Dachshund. I don’t do marital therapy, but if I did, I might recommend lassoes  and metal steer heads as tools to find marital bliss.

What sort of hobby helps keep the peace at home?

The Baboon Congress

Peeing in the Gladstone Cemetery

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Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

My husband occupied the office next to mine for 10 years. It was nice to be so close and to have someone to talk to. I hit the jackpot, though, when they moved my coworker, Janelle, into husband’s office after he retired. She is a Developmental Disabilities Program Manager and is a few years younger than I am. Our children are about the same ages. Her job involves making certain that people with developmental disabilities get the services they need, and that their service providers get paid. She is a local, and grew up with six older brothers on a farm between Gladstone and Lefor, both pretty small communities about 10 miles from Dickinson noted for their German-Russian and German-Hungarian settlers. She has a very loud giggle, and she giggles and laughs most of the time. She is very energetic, despite having MS and a heart condition. I believe she has ADHD. She is also one of the funniest and most irreverent and foul mouthed persons I know. Everyone in her family calls her Toots.

Janelle has a way of noticing the comic and absurd all around her and is a great story teller. She is also very good at imitating the German patois of her neighbors and older relatives  (“Ya, that Jakey Frank died. He just woke up dead one morning”.)   Her mother (aka Crabby Lavonne) is in the nursing home, and the other day she was visiting her mom when her Aunt Rose, also a resident, came charging down the hallway, waving her cane around. Aunt Rose exclaimed “I am DEEsgusted”. “Why Aunt Rose, what is the matter?” “Dos dem kids anyway (the PT’s and OT’s). They eggspect me to jump around. I am too olt for dat!” Janelle then asked her aunt if she wanted to sit down. Janelle’s mom then piped in and said to her “You dumb ass! Don’t you know that when Rose is DEEsgustetd she doesn’t want any help”.

A few days ago Janelle and her husband were driving around out in the country near Gladstone looking at some land to buy, when she found that she had to pee. She asked her husband to drive up a fairly deserted road to a place she knew where she could relieve herself and no one could see. To her dismay, she found that someone had put a mobile home up on the very spot, They were near the Catholic Cemetery, so she asked her husband to drive there. She did her business, and walked the dog around and visited all the family graves, leaving only two small tissues as evidence for what she had done.

Later that night, someone went to the cemetery and vandalized head stones with hammers and knocked over other head stones. Janelle was both horrified and delighted, horrified at the damage and delighted  by the fact that she had left tons of DNA for the police to find and pin the vandalism on her. She is friends with several police officers and I am sure they are all going to hear her “confession”. I told her I would start baking pans of Scotcheroos to sell to raise money to bail her out of jail..

Janelle is a day brightener for me. I just wish I could convey better her essence, her bounce, and her liveliness.

What happened when you couldn’t hold it any longer?

The Baboon Congress

Tomato-zilla 2

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Today’s post is from Renee in ND

Well, as I promised, here are my photos of our tomatoes, plants and fruits. You can see that the plants are as tall as I am. They are ripening quickly, and I think I will be up really late the next few nights canning and making tomato sauce. So there, Sherrilee!

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We planted 16 tomato plants this year-far more than any couple with grown children who live hundreds
of miles away should ever plant. 8 Brandyboys and 8 San Marzano II’s. Husband likes to roast and then freeze the San Marzanos. Daughter has a particular tomato sauce that she likes me to make and freeze.

The two largest tomatoes in the photo each weigh over a pound. I have lots more, just as large, ripening as we speak. I am a quietly competitive person. I want to win, but I rarely admit it. I wrecked my right foot in a 2k run-walk several years ago because I was determined that I would reach the finish line before the heavily pregnant marathon runner. I had bad shoes and pushed myself and now I have a large bunion on my right foot that gives me twinges at times.

I want to grow the most and the biggest tomatoes. It was nice to see the variety of tomatoes that Sherrilee grew, though, and maybe I need to rethink my priorities. Maybe I need to grow unusual tomatoes. Hmm? We’ll see.

At what do you have to win?