Articles from the Archives — M. A. RSS

The Inimitable Being of World-Renowned Pomo Basket Weaver and Medicine Woman of Greg Sarris's Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream   Her entire life people wanted for Mabel McKay, world-renowned Pomo basket-maker, traditional Pomo medicine woman, and the last Dreamer of the Cache Creek Pomo tribe in Northern California to explain the inside so that they could understand the mechanics of a healer and Dreamer who had miraculous things happen around her.  In many instances Mabel would say, "You have to know me."  This sounds like an oversimplification that if one got close to her one could have comprehended the "secrets" of this basket weaver who was known as the best of the Pomo basket weavers, and whose designs with coiled reeds, patterns and feathers...

From the Undivided Spiritual Realm to the Physical Symbol: Recognizing Depth and Resonance Through Robert S. McPherson's Dinéjí Na `Nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History   For the Navajo, the world and all being are first conceived and created in the spiritual realm. According to author Robert S. McPherson who has studied the Diné for over thirty years, listening to their lives and stories, the gods first “formed the earth spiritually . . . before it was made physically” (4). The physical realm conceived by these “holy people” is then an expression of that original, constant and real metaphysical expanse that continually operates as the universe. To them, these holy people are present with only a slight separation. What is known physically is a literal...

California Music and Personal Transformation of True Nature From Vulnerability to Artist Leading the Way:  Joni Mitchell In Her Own Words: Conversations with Malka Marom   Originally published 25 October 2014 [Note from On Being (2019): "They were desperate to take down that wall, in so many ways, as the documentary Both Sides Now: Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival 1970 demonstrates. Joni's realness in her Songs in that very moment will send chills through your body. She is the very Moment of change that through this Being even the institutions would be altered. Even in vulnerability, Joni's Being never wavers.It is more formidable than Ben Hur, far more powerful than armies. With an unshakable spirit she sings, 'We've got...

The Glorious Happenstance of Destiny in All Place and Time The Art of Mapping Real Life in Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City:  A San Francisco Atlas and Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker’s Unfathomable City:  A New Orleans Atlas     Originally published 16 October 2014 In the great flux and flow of life, the western mind since the time of Aristotle has divided each and every thing into categories and given permanent labels from a language which itself is divided. From its “religion of exile” that began in a moment of great split, the Fall from the Garden,¹ intention became separate from knowing, good became an opposite of evil, light separate from dark instead of a natural cycle of it, judgments of right...

Completing the Story of Richard V. Francaviglia’s Go East, Young Man:  Imagining the American West as the Orient “The lives we live depend upon the stories we tell.”  Lee R. Edwards (paraphrasing Joan Didion) “The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake . . . but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.  It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one’s own rules.”  Joan Didion “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become...