not native fruit

beautiful berkeley...and conversation

  This is what I think of as a typical Berkeley house of the type I particularly like.  Note the lapped siding, painted simply, with some sort of faux-corinthian decoration, bay window, small porch with somewhat overgrown bougainvillea - all of this is quite typical of the older homes of the area.  I'm wondering if these kinds of houses are rentals to students, perhaps graduate students, as they have a certain 'unlived-in' look; they often look almost abandoned.  The fence in front is not typical of Berkeley, but home-made fences are not uncommon.  Note also, please, the branches of a large spreading tree arching over the street and house in the upper left-hand corner of the picture.  Large trees lining the streets and overgrown shrubbery are also typical of Berkeley, and this look hasn't changed much since I first moved here thirty years ago.

This type of housing perhaps led me to believe that Berkeley was going to be a place of personal reflection and intimate conversation, but it hasn't turned out to be that, at least not as much as I expected it to be.  Or perhaps it's simply the case that I haven't located as many connections at that level as I expected to.  I think, though, that the  real explanation is that Berkeley is such a transient place.  People come here to study, usually with the specificgoal of advancing their careers.  They may be here for ten years, studying, but then they leave.  I've met many very ambitious people while I've lived here.  And while they are here, they are busy thinking, talking, reading, writing about whatever subject they are studying, and perhaps leading some sort of personal life among their own colleagues and friends.  More often people are here for shorter periods of time, a year, two or four.  Sometimes I think Berkeley represents something new, intense or different for folks, so people are coming here for novelty, not for greater intimacy.

I've always been a journaller.  Hence the appeal of the weblog.  People who keep journals, who engage in spiritual practices such as meditation, contemplative prayer and so on, are interested in relationships of intimacy - with nature, with themselves, with 'God' or some spiritual dimension of life, with other people.  Most of the friendships I've enjoyed here over the years - often with people who are now gone away from the area - included a great deal of conversation, one of my favorite things in life, and often some degree of spiritual orientation and exploration.  I shouldn't make it sound like there has been 'no conversation' here for me, because that would be a huge lie.  I've had some of the best conversations of my life here in Berkeley.  I've also been alone here enough to have had some very interesting conversations with myself, with various books, with flowers, animals and so forth.

I came here from philadelphia, a place I experienced as having a high intimacy-quotient.  Friendship and sharing seemed to hold a high value there, probably not unexpectedly given it was founded by the Society of Friends . Maybe I thought that kind of valuation was going to be common throughout the world.  We almost always make the assumption that the values we take for granted are somehow universal.  But I haven't really found the same value system here in Berkeley.  There used to be a very strong radical political orientation here, and while I have watched that change over the years, I would say that people's consciousness here is still very much ideological, although the ideologies have changed since the 1970's.  I would imagine that these ideologies bring people together so that they share on a personal, reflective level around those ideologies.  That's been true for me, too, as I've moved through the different stages of my own spiritual odyssey.  There has to be some organizing principle that brings people together.  maybe the organizing principle for me in philadelphia was that we were all from philadelphia, were doing very well in school, and it was, after all, an 'epoch' in time, the vietnam war era.  the organizing principles for me here in Berkeley have been different, mostly arranged around education, spiritual orientation, and personal preferences, like enjoying walks in the hills and writing.

anyway, i've enjoyed the novelty and intensity of this area, too.  For me the novelty was the discovery of nature in the west, and the intensity is part of the weather and climate here.  Part of the terrain.  And part of my experiences too: intense personal and spiritual experiences. 

I do love it here, but I sometimes get tired of feeling like a stranger.  I'm a stranger among strangers, as far as I can tell, and I suppose that is some kind of commonality after all.  What I know is, that the building pictured above calls me, draws me to solitude, reflection, mesmerization by roses, tea and conversation, pillows near the window with a book.  Yeah, Berkeley.  It's been beautiful to me. 

So, what have I learned by writing this post?  I've learned that even though I thought I was perhaps somewhat out of step with Berkeley, because of my penchant for solitude, my not belonging to the more popular ideological movements (for example, while I read Buddhist texts and did some buddhist practice back in the early 1980's, I haven't 'espoused' a buddhist path despite the popularity of buddhism in berkeley today; when feminism was happening, I was a married feminist, a supposed anomaly, did not long for a career, etc etc; am not developed as an artist, etc), it has turned out that I am more in synch than I realized, since my life here has been characterized by novelty and intensity.  I've enjoyed solitude and yet had many opportunities for the kinds of conversation I have desired: intimate, personal, spiritual and contemplative.

 

berkeley love

i'm just feeling once again how much i LOVE berkeley.  to love berkeley means you have to love books, learning, and a university environment.  you have to love young people, but also fusty old scholars as well.  to love berkeley means you love pedestrians and people on bicycles, expressives - there is a 'tun' of art going on here - and introverts as well. and also you must love mucho much diversity.

i love the physical environment of berkeley.  it's full of wonderful old trees and berry bushes, bougainvillea, all sorts of sprawling unkempt-looking shrubs and plants, uneven sidewalks pushed up by large tree roots, old houses and fences slumping or spiffy, eaves, porches, cottages and bungalows, all painted different colors, most of the paint pretty good, some of it shabby. 

this year, the new crop of students seems energized in a way I haven't seen for a very long time.  Not only that, they are all smiling!  At each other, at me.  My friend Gary says it is due to the influence of Mr. Obama.  Thank you, Mr. Obama!  Enough with the super-serious, I'm mad at the world attitude.  That attitude has been appropriate and effective, but it has made its potential changes, and it is time to move on to a place where we come together more again.  Togetherness and positivity can also be a very potent place for change.

flag of flame

California, good-night. 

backpacking trips

G. is going on two backpacking trips this month.  He just returned from the first one this evening, and he has some beautiful photos, which I will share in the coming weeks.

He went on this first trip with an old hiking buddy who is starting with Alzheimer's - he seems pretty much the same as before, perhaps a bit dispirited - and the buddy's 30-year old son. That was the young man's first time backpacking.  The three had a good time. 

history of bucks county/early spanish presence middle atlantic states

i'm finally reading 'the history of bucks county,' one of the resources i downloaded in the past two and a half years since i've begun researching my mother's family's background.  my great-great-great grandfather, william whittingham, is listed on the 1790 census as residing in bucks county.  his wife, rebecca livezey, is a descendent of the original Quaker Thomas Livezey, through his son Jonathan, who were 'First Proprietors' in Pennsylvania, so the history of bucks county is partially my family's history as well.  i'm interested in their history, and especially in the intersection with the local native american people which occurred, at the very least, when my great-grandfather, Alfred, married Mary Carney, a 'Moor' in 1872.  his parents were both deceased at that time, but alfred's brother refused to visit the home of alfred and mary, according to the civil war pension deposition filed on her behalf.

the so-called moor indians are usually given very little credence even for having existed in the past, so i've found it interesting to look into it a little.  i've found evidence for their existence in brewton berry's 1961 classic 'Almost White,' and also in 'Delaware's Forgotten Folk' by C.A. Weslager.  Weslager also wrote a book called 'The Delaware Indians' and in that book he states that the southernmost clans and bands, who spoke a Lenape (Algonquian) dialect similar to Unami, disappeared early by being absorbed into 'many peoples.'  In 'Delaware's Forgotten Folk,' Weslager makes the educated guess that the Moors were actually a remnant of the Lenape (Delaware) Indians, and I would assume he means the southern people, the Unalachtigo.  So, why was this remnant population known as 'the Moors'?

keeping all this in mind, it's interesting to read in different sources that there was a fairly strong Spanish presence all along the eastern coast of North America, at least as far north as the Hudson River as early as 1513 and throughout the 1500's.  In most of the American historical tradition and literature, a claim is made for the pre-eminent presence of the Dutch and English in these areas, but as we say, history is written by the victors, and I guess that's how the English wanted it to look.  An anti-Spanish, pro-Anglo bias has dominated American culture up until very recently, so I think it's important to keep that bias in mind.  Apparently, the Spanish - and their 'Moors' - were more present in the middle-Atlantic states than has been acknowledged up til now.

Paula Gunn Allen writes that Jamestown was situated 40 miles up-river in order to avoid Spanish ships as late as 1609.  According to the 'History of Bucks County,' the mouth of the Hudson River was first glimpsed by Verrazana in 1513, also a few years later by Stephanus Gomez who called it 'Rio de Gomez.'  "Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch East-India company, discovered [for the English] Delaware bay August 28, 1609, but he made no attempt to ascend the river.  Captain Cornelius Jacobson May ascended the river some distance in 1614, and two years afterwards Captain Hendrickson discovered the Schuylkill.  In 1616 three Dutch traders struck across to the headwaters of the Delaware, down which they traveled to the Schuylkill.  Here they were captured by the Minquas (Susquehannas) but were rescued by Captain Hendrickson at the mouth of that river."  All of this takes place a full hundred years after the Spanish first began exploring the region.  The Spanish also had two aborted colonies in the Chesapeake Bay region in the 1500's.

Historical record shows that many people came to the area and it is likely that there were more whose recorded names have been lost to the corrosive effects of time or who were never noted down in records to begin with.  The people we have records of are mostly those who were associated with one of the big trading companies who were all excellent record-keepers.  "About 1624-25 the West India company established a trading house on a small island (in the Delaware River) just below Trenton Falls, and located upon it three or four families of French Walloons.  The post was broken up about 1627, and the Walloons returned to New York.  In March 1685 Peter Lawrensen stated in a deposition that he came into that provice a servant of the West India company in 1628 (and) that in 1631, he, with seven others, was sent into the Delaware, where the company had a traditing house, with ten or twelve servants attached to it; that he saw them settled there.  A considerable body of Waldenses and Huguenots were sent to the Delaware in 1656-1663, but it is not known what became of them."  These are just people we can keep some kind of track of, thanks to the written record of these trading companies, but how likely is it that there were more who did not come under the auspices of an official institution?

For example, between 1623 and 1634 there was a group known as "The Albion Knights" who settled along the Delaware.  "Colonists were actually introduced and made their homes on the Delaware, but neither the number nor exact location can be told." (p.9)  This group is sometimes referred to as 'Plowden's Colony.'  William Rawle, who has studied the colony, "believed that some of those who welcomed Penn to the shores of the Delaware, were the survivors of the Albion Knights." (p.10)

It's no secret that these early Europeans started mixing their stock in with the Indians.  "During the early period, the river of the Sickoneysincks at Lewes, Delaware, received a new and vulgar name - Hoeren Kill (Whore's Creek), "From the liberality of the Indians in generously volunteering their wives or daughters to our Netherlanders at that place." (p. 294, Weslager, Dutch Explorers) "Evidence of miscegenation was soon to be seen in some of the Delaware villages when dusky-skinned females gave birth to lighter-complexioned, blue-eyed infants.  The process of Europeanizing the Indians had a subtle beginning, and unplanned cross-breeding preceded the technological changes." (p.109 Weslager, The Delaware Indians)  This sharing of the bed was part of Indian hospitality.  The Europeans were, by and large, Christian men (with the exception of the early Moors in America) and due to Christianity's emphasis on the sacredness of virginity, and their patriarchal slant on monogamy, there was very little understanding of a society where sexuality could be more liberally shared. Certainly such an offer implied a very close tie, a real acceptance of the Dutch or the Moors into the tribal network, and not just 'casual sex' which was more likely to have been the assumption made by many of the sailors or their captains. The name the Dutch gave to Lewes reflects their distorted view of what was going on.  But the subject of sexual distortions in Christian society could be a lengthy discussion, as we all know by now.

If people-making was happening among the Dutch, why not also with the Moors? 

primordial fourth of july

my partner, g, and I went for a hike this morning in wildcat canyon park.  i won't name the trail, because i don't want it to be swarmed.  it was pure magic.  the trail was embedded in a tangle of eucalyptus, flowering buckeye, live oak and bay trees, many of them slithering across the ground like mossy snakes.  their ancient boles were twisted, gnarled, buckled, gapped and crazed.  We came upon a large hole in a tree with a shelf of scalloped white tree lichen inside the size of a cake-dish, and the shiny sap-sided hole was abuzz with busy honey-bees. 

As we hiked along the trail with blue sky visible in a thin path directly above our heads, we occasionally noticed brightness in the distances beyond the trees - sunshine on the grassy hills around us, dry in july and brilliant with the sheen of sun on straw.  Under our feet we turned up ocean-rolled black stones and the layer directly below the surface of the trail was pure sand. 

Later on our stroll we came upon a sort of natural amphitheatre on a miniature scale.  The lower half of the terraces were papered in large deep green ferns and black rocks.  The upper layer was dark with criss-crossed and roiling boles and boughs of trees with heavy canopies of leaves.  Through the ferns and boles of the thick tree cover roamed unfettered cows, eight of them, some of them with young.  We never think of cows as primordial, but of course they are - sacred in many cultures - and these beautiful bovine presences, gigantic and rounded, surrounded by forest, ferns and vines, seemed ancient and majestic in my eyes.  Black, chestnut brown with white, golden and pale, they were slowly, gracefully making their way along a narrow switchbacked trail down the arboreal slope to the creek below for water.  A community, yet each one clearly individual in its motion and consciousness.

In the warm air above us, buteos hovered for many minutes before flapping briefly to move on in their hunt.  We saw a group of five wild turkeys, two adults and what looked like three teenagers, in the brush.  On our return walk we sniffed the sweetly fragrant blossoms of the buckeye tree standing near the short overgrown bridge across the tiny creek near the trailhead.  Our noses pressed on either side of the blossom, it only made sense to kiss beneath the blooms.  What a sweetness~!  You should definitely try this sometime.  I recommend it. 

paula gunn allen

I”ve just discovered – or re-discovered – the feminist author, Paula Gunn Allen, who is widely credited with inventing the field of Native American Literary Studies, but who viewed herself as a multi-diverse person, with recent ancestry of  Laguna Pueblo, Lakota Sioux, Scots and Lebanese.  Sounds like my family.  And yes, I do relate to a great deal of what she has to say.

I think it’s interesting that she approaches the Native American literary tradition (oral in its origins) from a mixed-ethnic perspective.  In so many ways, I think this makes it easier to be a bridge-builder, a peace-maker, and we still need people who can do that, even in this age of Diversity with a capital D.  Thank goodness for the blends (who acknowledge they are blends - in realtiy, we are all blends, of course).

I started with her book on Pochahontas, which may be her most recent one.  She starts off by saying that we can’t just look at the facts if we want to know Pochahontas, because for one thing, there simply aren’t that many.  Rather, “a biography of Pocahontas must tell her life in terms of the myths, the spirits, the supernaturals, and the worldview that informed her actions and character.”  (p.2)  We don’t look at her as somehow standing above others, whether in terms of achievement or in terms of victimhood, because that would separate her from the “entire life system: that community of living things, geography, climate, spirit people, and supernaturals – (because) what is (to be) emphasized is the interactive nature of that person’s life.”  (p.2) 

For me, all of this makes perfect sense, because that is most certainly how I understand my own life.  Of course, as I get older, I want to understand my life even more than before, and I do understand it more than ever.  I’m interested in Pocahontas because she is a First Contact Native American, and member of a tribe that was closely related to my own native ancestors through my mother’s paternal grandmother, and possibly maternal grandmother as well.  I’m interested in that period of contact, and especially in that part of the east-coast’s First Contact story, which differed so much from either New England’s or the territories south of Virginia.

Here is something Paula Gunn Allen wrote that I particularly like: “A life comprises all the currents that flow through it and that it flows through.  Nor is it ever finished.  A person, like life itself, has neither beginning nor end.  It just is, here and there, self and other, present and absent.  In that way, Pocahontas’s life continues on, as the books, poetry, songs, dramas, and films centering on her prove.”  (p.2)

I really feel this way about my great-grandmother who seems to have been quite a powerful person – in my eyes, her life is continuing on, and she has some kind of unusual power to let others know about herself and who she is (was).  I seem to be the chief vessel for that transmission, but some people get a direct transmission from her photo.  She was a ‘Moor Indian’ from Delaware, who lived most of her adult life in the Pennsylvania mountains and the end of her life in Philadelphia.  I’m trying to get something published about her, but if that doesn’t work, I will have a whole page available about her on-line soon.

Anyway, I’m sorry to have to report that Paula Gunn Allen, a voice for many, has passed on from this plane of existence – last year, in May of 2008 – but she certainly is a living being in my consciousness.  I hope to continue to pass on to you what are, for me, thought-provoking passages from her work, as I discover them.

philadelphia rowhouses, the irish and the savings and loan

i'm reading a great little book called 'The Irish in Philadelphia,' by Dennis Clark, loaned to me by a friend who is a fellow-Philadelphian ex-pat living in Berkeley, California.  Of course, there were loads of Irish-Americans in my life growing up in Philadelphia. My mother's mother was supposed to be part-irish, but I wonder now how much of it was Irish by marriage.  Her grandmother's sister definitely married an Irishman, so perhaps that was the connection.  Or maybe, just because they'd lived up in the mountains for so long, they'd lost some of their connection to the Irish, and didn't feel quite in the same league with the more recent Irish immigrants we lived around in Philadelphia.  I don't know, but our own Irish heritage seemed to be under-emphasized, even though so many of the people around us - including one of my mother's best friends - were Irish.

Perhaps the neatest thing about this book for me is that I am learning more about the working-class people of Philadelphia.  For example, there is a whole section on the row-house.  Philadelphia was and is a veritable warren of row-houses.  The kids who lived in them used to make fun of them, but the truth is they did provide affordable housing for working-class people.  Instead of being always in the power of the landlord, something the Irish in particular despised, the Irish working poor - and other working class people too - in Philadelphia could experience pride-of-ownership.  I feel certain it did endow all of us with a certain self-esteem we might not otherwise have had.  True, these little, somewhat windowless dwellings crowded up against one another may have all looked alike on the outside, but inside each one was unique.  I think it was a wonderful alternative to tenement buildings and apartment-living, especially for families.  It makes me feel proud of Philadelphia to realize how unique our housing situation was for working-class people.

"Laborers in Newburyport, Massachusetts, were paying between $60 and $100 a year in rent in 1850.  This surpasses the average Philadelphia rent of $53-$68.  Rentals in the Fort Hill area in Boston (were) $1.50 per room per week, and (there were) equally exorbitant rents for attics and cellars.  While unskilled immigrants to Philadelphia no doubt faced similar gouging, the fact that the city was able to expand its housing supply and make more working-class houses available was some relief.  Rental housing simply was not as large a portion of the Philadelphia housing market as it was in Boston and New York.  As early is 1851 Patrick McKeown was writing home to his sisters in Ireland that 'almost every family has a house to themselves let it be large or small and a great many working people own the houses they live in."  The opportunity for a workingman to obtain a home of his own was really there.  Whereas a two-story house in Ireland was a mark of notable affluence, in Philadelphia such a structure could be had by a thrifty workingman.  An examination of bequests of Philadelphia Irishmen of the 1850's indeicates that it was not uncommon for members of the city's Irish community to own houses and real property.  True, some of the property was in slum areas, but some was in other areas as well." p. 54

The book makes many unfavorable comparisons between Boston's Irish poor and Philadelphia's.  Even New York City's economics do not compare favorably with Philadelphia's when it came to the Irish working-class. 

Another key to the success of the working Irish in Philadelphia was the building and loan associations, sometimes called Savings & Loan - our family banked at the local Savings and Loan until I moved my parents out to join us in Berkeley - which were "a sort of people's bank.  Sincle it was difficult for ordinary working people without collateral to obtain credit, groups of them began to develop their own credit systems.  Each person deposited a small sum, usually weekly, until enough equity was established to warrant an extension of credit.  If a man could pay the nominal ground rent on a lot, he could after a time borrow perhaps $1,400 from his local building and loan association, have a house built, and repay the loan over a period of years.  This original mortgage system in the city grew spontaneously and extensively.  The first such associations were begun in the late 1840's, and by 1875 there were 600 disbursing a half-million dollars a month.  The depositors were the only stockholders.  The overhead was low, since usually only the secretary of the association drew a salary.  These building associations became one of the vehicles for improvement for Irish families intent upon achieving better housing and a modest respectability.  With some of that dogged thrift that could often be found among the extraordinarily penurious Irish cottiers in the old country, the Philadelphia Irish took to the building and loan associations." pp 56-57

I remember my mother had no time for banks and only wanted to deal with the savings and loan associations in Philadelphia.  I got the impression that banks were kinda 'the enemy' and the savings and loan was your friend.  Knowing what I now know about my family, it makes sense that, for my family, banks existed for 'another class' of people.  Maybe those people were 'better' but we were quite all right too.

butterfly people

  This bracelet represents the four directions (on the left) and the butterfly.  I like the white color because it represents the Will of Heaven in Chinese lore, black represents wisdom, yellow abundance and red life.  I chose this bracelet, because when I was going through all my ancestry blues, I finally realized that people came to the Americas from many different directions, from all 'four directions,' and they morphed into something new: the American peoples.  Some people resist this process, but eventually someone in their family will marry someone outside their ethnicity of origin and eventually all those streams merge into the stream of the Original People, just like mine did.  My father came from Europe and fell in love with the indigenous people of the Delaware River area and married someone from that heritage, and they produced me. I feel an appreciation for all the streams of my lineage - they are all represented here - and I just wanted to share this image with you.

california

i am so moved by the beauty and texture of our environment.  i grew up in philadelphia and i think when i first came to california with my partner in the early '70's and saw my first redwood trees, i must have felt as if i were living in 30,000 b.c.  it seemed like a completely new and different world.

i sense that many people come here to live in berkeley because they want something different, but it ends up being about eating at certain places, getting a good latte down on fourth street or something.  but really all we need is to tune in to the land here - the land, water and sky.  it is pure magic.

The colors, the shapes of the land - the contours of the coastline and of the hills - the shapes and textures of the trees and shrubs - camphor, manzanita, madrone, buckeye, live-oak - the presence of wildlife, birds, foxes, coyotes, deer, raccoon, possums, skunks and squirrels - the clarity of the sky, bright stars at night, clean mineral blue in the daytime, or crystal silver-gray with rain, white with fog.  Rock outcroppings, granite mountains, obsidian chunks, lakes, rivers, the blessed ocean. 

This land reaches out to touch you, it enters into you with its fragrant breath, it makes its home inside you, and all its textures become yours.