Encouragement for the Reluctant Gardener

February 22, 2013

 

If you read my “Peter Rabbit” blog a few weeks ago, you know that gardening does not come easily to me, though genetically, it probably should.  In truth, I am a reluctant gardener, easily discouraged.  I have blamed the rabbits; the rocks, boulders and 7 tablespoons of sand per cubic yard that I am required to accept as tillable soil in my backyard have set me back too. But it was delightfully warm and spring-like early last week and I was fired up, ready to take them on.

I will tell you that I have spent the past two years off and on clearing and cleaning up my backyard. Hacking, digging, pulling and chopping at my veritable jungle of dead, ugly, and weed-like flora with a fearsome gusto, I have at long-last achieved what to my eyes looks like something I can work with and which my husband views as a moonscape.  But now with the deliciously mild weather fairly begging me to begin, I decided that I would lay some irrigation line, dig a few holes, and start planting.

My cutting and chopping had admittedly given us a rather perfect line of sight to the ugly brown slump block brick wall that separates our yard from the neighbor’s. My immediate goal, then, was to put in something leafy, green, and fast-growing that could soften and eventually obscure that view. Full of energy and purpose, I commenced digging.  It took all of 16 seconds before I hit the first rock, but I was undaunted.  With my new pick-axe, I felt invincible and indeed; I pried it out in nothing flat, but there was another one   underneath. A few more thrusts and it too came away, revealing yet another rock – bigger this time.

Well, I’m sure you can see where this is going.  I pulled out rock after rock, each one wedging in another just below or to one side or the other.  Oh, and one boulder of mammoth proportions which alone outweighed me three times over. It took some doing to roll that bad boy out of the way. Sisyphus came to mind, but I managed. Two hours later, exhausted but victorious, I was standing in a hole up to my elbows; deep,

beautiful, and satisfying.  The bush I could plant there, why it could be sizeable to start with; full and lush in no time.

I was so excited! It was only mid-afternoon; there was still plenty of time to run down to the nursery to pick up something to plant. But which nursery?  What plant? Well aware of my limitations as a gardening novice, I called my more experienced friend, Dave to give me some recommendations.  Luck was with me – he picked up on the second ring.

“Hey Dave, I just dug a huge hole in the backyard and I’m ready to put in a bush.  Got any advice?  Where to shop and what to put in? I was thinking of that nursery down on River Road. Would they have anything good?”

“Linda, it’s February.”

“Well yeah, I know.  But it’s beautiful out.  I don’t think it will freeze again, do you?”

“Linda, it’s only February.”

“Well yeah, I know.  But I just dug this hole – it’s all ready to go.  I’m fresh from the fight.  I want to put something in NOW! Whadaya think?”

“Linda, may I remind you that it’s FEBRUARY?  The nurseries don’t even have anything now – it’s too early.  Mid-March is the time to plant here, when the danger of frost has passed. There will be a good selection then, but next to nothing before. Where do you think that hole is going to go?  It’ll keep.”

“It’ll keep.”  What kind of encouragement is that?  And to think, I call that man my friend…

 

Contributed by Linda for Beyond Borders/It’s Cactus

Owls of a Different Feather

February 18, 2013

 

Written for  Patrick, because he asked…

 

Back in October, when I was in Haiti, I was looking at an intricate sculptural depiction of the voodoo ceremony at Bwa Kayman that set off the Haitian Revolution.  There was a lot of symbolism worked into the scene, every detail fraught with meaning, so I was taking my time, looking it over very carefully and asking a lot of questions.  When I spied an owl sitting in a tree, I asked our translator about its significance. Roosevelt’s face visibly darkened as he replied, “Oh owls are bad – very bad. Evil.”  Then, he shook his head, “An owl has powerful black magic. You don’t ever want to mess with that.” I made a mental note to look into it further, and so here we are:

There are two different loas (Voodoo spirits) associated with owls.  The first and by far the most ominous is Marinette, who takes the form of a screech owl and is clearly the one to whom Roosevelt referred. She is believed to have been the Mambo priestess that sacrificed the black pig at Bwa Kayman.  Cruel, vicious, raging, and vengeful, she is greatly feared.  She metes out justice with a powerful, violent hand and possesses the ability to free people from bondage or send them into slavery, at her pleasure. Knowing that after the Bwa Kayman ceremony, slaves slipped their chains to freedom while French slaveholders were slaughtered by the hundreds, it is clear that Marinette is not to be trifled with.

The second loa associated with an owl is named Brise, guardian of the hills and woodlands. Though he appears to be fierce, with large, dark, exaggerated features, he is actually quite gentle and loves children.  Brise seems to be the basis of a widely recognized children’s folktale, which is elegantly retold in English in Diane Wolkenstein’s book “The Magic Orange Tree.” (For more on her book, click here http://dianewolkstein.com/projects/haiti-and-the-magic-orange-tree/ )

In the story, a shy owl encounters a lovely young girl in the woods at night.  They talk and agree to meet again and again and during the course of their encounters, fall in love and agree to marry.  The only problem is that the young girl has never seen the face of the owl and he is afraid to show it because he is ugly.  He ends up flying away, alone, ashamed, and unwilling to believe that he could be worthy of a lifetime of love. The girl eventually finds a new love, but her happiness is forever shadowed by the melancholy of her previous loss. Far from being fierce and powerful, the owl in this story is self-effacing and unsure. Pretty significant contrast, I’d say.

Then on the other hand, across the Carribean and a good bit of land mass are “my” owls; wise and all-knowing. What likely formed the basis for my line of thinking is a simple British poem written in the 19^th century that I learned in second grade.  Bet you did too:

“The Wise Old Owl lived in the oak

The more he saw, the less he spoke.

The less he spoke, the more he heard.

Why can’t we be like that wise old bird?”

How different my impression of owls is from those depicted in Haitian lore! It has nothing to do with the bird itself and everything to do with the stories I was told as a kid. Cultural heritage.  Pretty interesting, isn’t it?

 

Contributed by Linda for Beyond Borders/It’s Cactus

Cloudy with a Chance of Rain

February 7, 2013

It is a blustery day in my corner of the world and the weather can’t seem to settle on any one thing.  Dark clouds sail overhead, opening up occasionally to spill a little rain. Then they scurry on, and the sun makes a brief appearance, not bothering to stay long enough to warm up much of anything before it tucks itself back behind another onrushing cloudbank. There was a saying back in the Midwestern town where I grew up, something along the lines of, “If you don’t like the weather, just stick around for a half an hour.  It’ll change.”  Though I am far removed from there in both space and time, it is an apt description of what is going on over my head at the moment. What kind of audacity does it take to try to predict the weather, anyway?

The audacity of such as Robert B. Thomas, for one, who in 1792 began publishing what was then known as “The Farmer’s Almanac.” By studying solar activity, astronomy cycles and weather patterns, Thomas used his research to develop a secret forecasting formula, still in use today and kept under lock and key in a black tin box at the “Old Farmer’s” offices. Realizing the potential benefit of reliable weather information to the burgeoning agrarian population of the newly founded United States, Thomas set out to create an almanac that, “strives to be useful, but with a pleasant degree of humor.” In 1848, John Jenks succeeded Robert Thomas’ 50-year tenure and renamed the publication, “The Old Farmer’s Almanac,” reasoning that it had earned the title by outlasting numerous other upstarts who had entered the field and departed again.

Over time, “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” has had its moments of historical note.  Take for instance it’s being cited in the case against William “Duff” Armstrong by his defense attorney, who was none other than

Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln used an almanac to refute the testimony of Charles Allen, an eyewitness who claimed he had observed the crime in progress “by the light of the moon”. The almanac stated that not only was the moon in the first quarter, but it was riding “low” on the horizon, about to set, thus laying to question the veracity of Allen’s statement. (“The Old Farmer’s Almanac” proudly claims their part in the story, and though it cannot be absolutely ascertained that an “Old Farmer’s” was Lincoln’s source, there is little evidence to the contrary, and thereby it remains solidly in the company lore.) Years later, during World War II, a Nazi spy was apprehended with a copy of

“The Old Farmer’s Almanac” in his pocket. From 1943 through 1945, to comply with the U.S. Office of Censorship’s voluntary Code of Wartime Practices for press and radio, the Almanac featured weather indications rather than forecasts. This allowed the Almanac to maintain its perfect record of continuous publication.

And so how good are the “Old Farmer’s” prognostications, made as much as 18 months in advance?  In addition to Robert Thomas’ initial formula, state-of-the-art technologies are now employed in solar science, climatology (the study of weather patterns) and meteorology. (the study of the atmosphere) Forecasts emphasize temperature and precipitation deviations based on 30-year statistical averages compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By “Old Farmer’s” own assessment their forecasts are 80 per cent accurate, though independent observers have judged them to be a whopping two per cent better than a random guess.

Think it will warm up tomorrow?

Skip To My Lou

January 31, 2013

When new sculptures come into the warehouse, Casey often calls up and asks me to help name them. “Skip To My Lou,” quickly came to mind for this one and she said, “Oh, that’s exactly what had popped into my head, too!” We chatted for a while longer and after hanging up the phone, I noticed that the tune playing over and over in my head that morning was indeed, “Skip To My Lou.” How did the words go again?

Fly’s in the sugar bowl, what’ll I do?

Fly’s in the sugar bowl, what’ll I do?

Fly’s in the sugar bowl, what’ll I do?

Skip to my Lou, My Darling.

Did we ever skip rope to that song? I can’t say for sure.  I remember the “Minnehaha” rhyme and “Miss Mary Mack,” and another one that was something along the lines of a grocery list that finished up with an emphatic “And don’t forget the RED, HOT PEPPERS!” When you got to the “PEPPERS” part, the casual whirls of the rope instantly became furious revolutions; each one faster than the last until the girl jumping rope couldn’t keep up and missed, thereby ending her turn.

Nostalgically, I continued thinking of those silly rhymes and the countless elementary school recesses my girlfriends and I spent skipping rope.  Years later, the appeal still held. At our daughter’s sixth birthday party  all of the little revelers got jump ropes.  Somehow, the jump-rope event got juxtaposed with a round of dress-up and we had cowgirls and princesses and Red Riding Hoods all taking turns in the backyard.  Lots of giggles and maybe one banged up knee.  Missing the rope did have its consequences, but nothing a dusting off and a cool Sock Monkey Band-Aid couldn’t take care of.

Fast-forward to a not-so-far gone summer afternoon in Salinas, with a new jump rope for the youngest Riddell.

“Bluebells, cockle shells, evie, ivey over!”

And who says the girls get all of the fun?

Peter Rabbit – He’s not that cute

January 24, 2013

In this morning’s mail, yet another gardening catalogue arrived.  I puzzle over this, wondering how I ever got on garden catalogue mailing lists because, you see, I don’t garden.  It is not that I am completely bereft of talent in that regard.  Everyone in my family gardens with skillful style.  It is in my genes to garden, of that I am certain.  So why am I not a gardener?  I blame the rabbits.

They aren’t that cute, you know.  Remember Peter Rabbit?  I don’t know why I should be sympathetic.  Farmer McGregor was the not the bad guy the illustrious Mrs. Potter made him out to be.  There was Peter, munching away on everything that the toil of Farmer McGregor’s broad shoulders and the sweat of his brow had brought forth.  Remember how Mrs. Bunny had bread and milk and blackberries (someone else’s, no doubt) for little Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail after Peter returned from his escapades? His family wasn’t going hungry.  Peter was just the kid in the candy store, caught with his hand in the jar and for my money, the true antagonist in the story. I was in Farmer McGregor’s corner from the get-go.

Everything I put out is apparently rabbit food.  It doesn’t come labeled that way.  I bought a bowlful of potted pansies once.  It was labeled “Color Spot,” but it was a misnomer. It was rabbit food.  Lasted a good four hours, before it was nibbled down to two leaves and a stem.  I found that experience pretty discouraging and several growing seasons went by before I tried again. With great hope, I went to the nursery and purchased a couple of jalapeno pepper plants and two different types of basil, but they were as before, gone in a twinkling.  The sun rose the next morning to reveal the meager remaining nubs.  But the kicker came when I saw a rabbit,

SAW HIM, eating my first beautiful pink cereus cactus blossom of spring, one rich, luxuriant petal at a time.  The plants had been a gift from my sweet neighbor, who had given them to me just before she died the winter prior.  HOW DARE HE???

Clearly, the time had come to consult the experts.  I went online to a gardener’s forum website and asked, “What do you do about rabbits?”  It turns out there are a number of possible solutions to the problem, and the online discussion was lively to say the least. There’s cayenne pepper, black pepper, and garlic – though I am unsure as to whether this is to be mixed with water and sprayed onto plants or worked into the soil and there was a considerable uproar over the potential damage to mucus membranes of small mammals, guilty or innocent.  Someone suggested getting a cat; another said used cat litter is a sufficient deterrent.  On this point I am uncertain as to where one without a pet cat comes up with used cat litter.  Do you borrow it?

Others weighed in on leaving it to natural predators, such as hawks and coyotes, but I have personally found that my local predators are either lazy or just not keeping up, leading me to wonder about the necessary ratio of coyotes to rabbits and further, how I might successfully relocate said coyotes to my backyard. Wouldn’t I just be exchanging one set of problems for another? In fact, digging and howling doesn’t seem to me to be a good trade-off. At the tail end of the discussion was “Don,” who said, “This is all well and good, but I suggest using a .22.”   Though they maintained an online silence, I wondered how the defenders of mucus membranes really felt about that one…

Madam Sara

January 17, 2013

Some of my favorite Beyond Borders sculptures are those of market women. The sculptures are based on women we’ve seen in Haiti, women our artists know well. With

her basket-laden head, steadily severe gaze, long, even gait, and impossibly upright posture, a market woman is beautiful, dignified and fascinating. But who is she, really?

Well, at the risk of going too academic, and thereby ruining the mystique, I will tell you that there have been cultural anthropologists who have written hefty tomes in their study.  Market women are not merely quaint and colorful features of the landscape. For one thing, they are communication transmitters of no less importance than a satellite beam.  Market women aren’t known as “Madam Saras” for nothing.  A “Madam Sara” is a variety of weaver bird, introduced to Haiti from sub-Saharan Africa and thereby sharing a curious similarity with the country’s historic human population. It is busy, bustling and above all, noisy. Madam Sara carries in her kerchief-wrapped head news of all variety.  With greater range and reception than a 4G cell phone, she dispenses information political, meteorological, seismic, and societal.  My new favorite Kreyol word is “teledyol,” literally, “telemouth,” describing the time-honored means of Madam Sara transmission. You can laugh, but this is a truism of Haitian cultural organization.  She is broadband.

Madam Saras are also an economic force, with operating hours running from dawn until dusk, seven days a week.  Bearing their goods in baskets on their heads, they carry produce from rural fields, which may be a day’s distance walking from city markets.  More prosperous women, known as “Gran Saras” may have the use of a donkey or truck, though their utility must be weighed against operating costs. Goods rarely flow in both directions, a fact which surprised me.  The profit margin in Port-au-Prince is generally 100% greater than that realized up-country, and goods turn over an average of 15 days more quickly in the city. These women don’t have the luxury of 15 days’ time to sell out, especially not if the product is perishable.

They come to the city, arriving on Thursday night or early Friday morning, selling from their blankets all day

long, and sleeping in place at night.  When the weekend is over and Monday morning arrives, they return to the countryside to renew their supply of merchandise and begin the routine all over again.

Though their collective literacy rate is somewhere in the basement, their business acumen is indisputable. With success defined as being able to feed her family for another week, a successful Madam Sara has a mastery of working capital, long-term supply costs, zero opportunity costs, marginal utility, and arbitrage.  She may not know them by those names, but she absolutely knows the concepts. The goods are on her head, the market savvy is in it. No wonder she doesn’t smile very often. There are heavy matters to consider, and heavy burdens to be born.

The Grandes Dames of Port-au-Prince

January 9, 2013

In Haiti at the end of our first day, when we’d ridden back into Port-au-Prince and I’d sponged off most of the village sweat and grime that I’d accumulated over the past several hours, I sat in the courtyard of our hotel, cold beer in hand, and realized that I was being quietly seduced by the charm of the gingerbread architecture surrounding me.

The Kinam Hotel where we were staying is one of Port-au-Prince’s grandes dames of Victorian-style gingerbread architecture in the city.  Miraculously, of the nearly 200 gingerbreads in Port-au-Prince before the 2010 earthquake, nearly all survived.  Their wooden frames and structure had the just enough “give” to withstand the tremors, whereas rigid rebar and concrete buildings crumbled, 40 percent of the total being reduced to rubble. Having withstood the ravages of time and weather for over 100 years, what was a little 30 second rumble?

Gingerbread Victorian homes became popular in Haiti in the latter part of the 19th century.  Native born, Parisian educated architects returned to their Caribbean homeland and plied their trade with relish.  The style was florid, communicating the good life.  Painted in vibrant tropical hues, they nonetheless had their practical elements. High ceilings and turreted roofs directed hot air above the inhabitable space, windows on all sides created a cool cross-breeze even during seasonal stretches of blistering heat, and the frame’s tractability enabled them to weather powerful storms. The only drawback was their combustibility.  Fires ravaged the city of Port-au-Prince not infrequently, and the gingerbreads added a great deal of fuel to the flame.  So much so in fact, that in 1910, new construction of gingerbreads came to be forbidden by mayoral decree.

In the ensuing years, the gingerbreads remained an iconic symbol of gracious living and were treasured by tourists and the local populace alike.  However, as the economy faltered and the Haitian diaspora came into full swing, those with knowledge of gingerbread construction took it with them, leaving a void in the ability to keep them maintained and viable.  Complicating matters further was the diminishing supply of hardwood material leaving little with which to repair them. Consequently, the lovely gingerbreads of a bygone era are falling apart, collapsing not by a single catastrophe, but bit by bit, plank by shingle.

There is a movement afoot to preserve the remaining grand dames.  Ironically, three months before the

2010 earthquake, the gingerbreads were put on a “watch list” of the World Monument Fund.  This guarantees the interest in and support for their restoration by the global community.  Several

Haitian heavy-hitters have also rallied to the cause, among them the former president, Michele Pierre-Louis and Jean-Julien Olson, the former cultural minister.  In the gingerbreads they see potential for restoration not only of their beautiful forms, but of the national cultural history they represent.  Backing by the current Haitian government, in the form of legislation blocking demolition, is unfortunately, yet to be enacted.

(Go to the website below and click on the video for further insight)

http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2010/08/2010823746741174.html

Still, there is hope.  Says Olson, “These old homes are a reflection of the Haitian people.  Just look how they stand facing the street. They provide space for people to meet and greet each other. That’s the way our society works.  We need to remember that. We talk about building back better, but the whole key to that success is to remember our past.”

Contributed by Linda for Beyond Borders/Its Cactus

Voodoo Inspired – The Elephant in the Room

January 3, 2013

I wasn’t going to do this.  I was going to do four articles on Voodoo.  Four.  No more.  But to ignore the whole idea of zombies in four articles on Voodoo would be to ignore the elephant in the room.  OF COURSE THERE ARE ZOMBIES IN VOODOO!  I just wasn’t going to go into zombies because I thought they were too creepy and “out there,” running contrary to the kinder, gentler side of Voodoo practice that I was trying to convey.  But then I read an article entitled, “A Zombie is a Slave Forever,” in the Oct. 30, 2012 edition of the New York Times by Amy Wilentz. A journalist and professor of literary journalism at UCal-Irvine, Wilentz described zombies so reasonably that they became, to me at least, more historically interesting than creepy.  So here we are, with a fifth and absolutely final article in the “Voodoo Inspired” series.  (Really.)

According to Wilentz, zombies are the very logical offspring of New World slavery, combining old African religious beliefs and the pain of the merciless, cold-blooded French colonial  system of slavery in seventeenth century Saint Domingue, now Haiti. In the slaves’ view, the only escape from grueling servitude on sugar plantations was death, which was seen as a return to Africa, or ”lan guinée,” a phrase which even today means “Heaven” in Haitian Kreyol.  Thus, death became a desirable means of attaining freedom and suicide became morbidly commonplace.

Naturally, the death of a slave was very costly to slave owners, whose accounting ledgers would reflect not only loss of productivity, but also of property.  To ingratiate themselves to the owners then, slave drivers – themselves slaves and often Voodoo priests – put down the practice of suicide with the threat of zombification.  Zombies, being soulless wanderers, are unable to get to lan guinee, the lush, languorous African heaven, and are thereby stuck in eternal bondage on Saint Domingue. Logically, the threat of becoming a zombie was an effective deterrent from self-inflicted death, as evidence of “real zombies” could be observed in the blank stares of

broken slaves who toiled in the fields in endless, unresponsive misery.

In traditional Voodoo belief, the soul is transported to lan guinee at the discretion of Baron Samedi, the Loa of Death.  To offend the Baron is to be doomed

to a zombie state in which the actions of the soulless body are entirely dictated by a mortal master. Baron Samedi is represented by a male figure in a black suit and hat with dark glasses.  He is low, foul-mouthed, and vicious.

Centuries later, it was no coincidence that “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Haiti’s notorious dictator from 1957-1971, used the imagery of the Baron and zombies to instill fear in his own people. Like the Baron, he often dressed in a black top hat and business suit, and wore dark sunglasses.  His secret police, the Tontons Macoutes, maintained order with a violent, seemingly blind obedience and were taken by the populace to be zombies under the dictator’s control. Of course, this assumption was used to Duvalier’s advantage and no pains were taken to reassure the public.

As can be plainly seen, zombie-ism in Voodoo has roots that are both historical and credible and it is pop culture that has applied the hyperbole.  Amy Wilentz does a superb job of giving clarity to the subject and her forthcoming book, “Farewell Fred Voodoo” promises to more of the same on the broader topic of Haiti’s day-to-day struggle for survival.  It comes out on January 8^th but is available now for pre-order here   http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Fred-Voodoo-Letter-Haiti/dp/1451643977/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355325883&sr=8-1&keywords=farewell+fred+voodoo

Order up – we can do cyber book club!

Last in the series, “Voodoo Inspired”

Contributed by Linda for Beyond Borders/It’s Cactus

Voodoo Inspired – Bwa Kayiman, Revolution and Haitian Independence

December 27, 2012

A couple of months ago when we were in Haiti, Casey and I saw some intricate and complex sculptural renditions of what we were told represented events at Bwa Kayiman.  Though very different from each other, each piece had constant elements of composition: a tree, a man and a woman, bottles, snakes, and various anthropomorphic figures.  But what did they signify? We sensed a good story…

Deep in the forest, in the Morne Rouge region southwest of the colonial capital of Cap Haitien is the sacred and historic cradle of the slave uprising that lead to revolution against the French and ultimately to the establishment of first free black republic in the New World.  That place was known in French as Bois Cayman, Bwa Kayiman in Kreyol.

According to legend, a maroon, or fugitive slave by the name of Dutty Boukman organized a meeting of 200-300 slaves at Bwa Kayiman in August of 1791.  Boukman was a Voodoo

priest, and assisted by a priestess, Cecile Fatiman, the two performed a ceremony under a raging thunderous sky, invoking Erzulie Dantor and requesting

her help in freeing the black slaves of Saint Domingue.  A black pig was sacrificed, and its blood was drunk, lending the slaves a mystical sense of invincibility and emboldening them to unite in revolt against their French oppressors. (A concise, informative clip about the events at Bwa Kayiman can be viewed here by clicking here:      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WZiXpdaGF8  )

In the days that followed, the slaves organized themselves and began putting plantations to the torch and the slave owners to the sword. Larger than life heroes began to emerge, such as Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines.  Hugely outnumbered and defenses in disarray, the colonial government of Saint Domingue was eventually forced to capitulate.  On January 1, 1804 the free Republic of Haiti was born.

Today Bwa Kayiman is a protected National Historic site.  Haitians visit throughout the year, as well as attend events commemorating the slave revolt each August.  Independence Day is marked along with the New Year on January 1^st with music, dancing, fireworks, and eating lots of soup joumou – a hearty pumpkin soup that was a luxury reserved for the French and forbidden to slaves during colonial times.  Eating the soup on New Year’s Day represents communion and brotherhood, peace and freedom. Click here for the recipe:

http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=98211  To our friends, in Haiti and beyond, we wish you peace and freedom.  Bonne Ane – Happy New Year!

 

Fourth in the series, “Voodoo Inspired”

Contributed by Linda for Beyond Borders/It’s Cactus

Voodoo Inspired – The Sum of Our Ancestors

December 19, 2012

The other day, while perusing the website, I came upon this fantastic piece by Jean Eddy Remy.  Its complex body, composed of several arms and faces and snake-like appendages struck me as a superbly representative image of Haitian Voodoo culture.  The highly stylized sculputural form artfully captures the essence of Voodoo practice; that of spirit worship.

The Loa are, of course, the spirits of Voodoo, and within their ranks are prominent, universal Loa, such as Papa Legba, Erzulie Freda, The Marassa Twins, etc.  However, there are other, less “famous” though equally important Loa to those that follow the practice of Voodoo: the Loa of the individual’s ancestral family.

At the head of this ancestral family are Damballah Wedo and Aida Wedo, the oldest ancestors.  They are the mother and

father of all things powerful and good, and together they possess the ancestral knowledge that forms the foundation of Voodoo. They are both symbolized by serpents and from them,  the ancestors of the individual are descended.

According to “Sosyete du Marche” an American Voodou society, there are two sources of holy truth:  the universe around us and the universe within us, passed down from our ancestors as instinct, emotion, predisposition, and memory.  Ancestors are like their descendants but more powerful; living, loving, understanding, and communicating on a plane of reality that is beyond death.  Communion with the ancestors is a means of maintaining continuity and a basis of transcendence between life and the afterlife.

The individual, as the flesh and blood sum of his ancestors, is a synthesized version of all those who have gone before.  To fail to honor them then, is to court disaster and to put into jeopardy the lives of those

family members yet to come. It would be as if the lifeline were broken. In fact, by this philosophy, recently deceased family members

must have a ritual performed on their behalf by a hougan, or priest, to ensure that their souls can go peacefully to the place of eternal afterlife. Later, the deceased can be consulted and entreated to bestow wisdom and blessings upon the family. Conversely, the dishonored soul, aimless and restless, will

wander the earth, leaving illness and destruction in its wake.

With all of this in mind, it seems as if many of the pieces contained within the “Voodoo Inspired” design section are sculptural celebrations, not only of Voodoo spirits, but of Voodoo Spirit.  See if you agree…

Third in the series, “Voodoo Inspired”

Contributed by Linda for Beyond Borders/It’s Cactus