Preparing for Halloween

 

 

Here is how our front porch looked when decorated for Halloween Day.  
We decorated our home in Red Bluff, California, from 1998-2017.  
Notice the five spherical white spectral (ghostly) visitors coming to "trick or treat" at our front door.    

"To all the ancient ones from their houses, the Old Ones from above and below. In this time the Gods of the Earth touch our feet, bare upon the ground. Spirits of the Air whisper in our hair and chill our bodies,  and from the dark portions watch and wait the Faery Folk that they may join the circle and leave their track upon the ground. It is the time of the waning year. Winter is upon us. The corn is golden in the winnow heaps. Rains will soon wash sleep into the life-bringing Earth. We are not without fear, we are not without sorrow...Before us are all the signs of Death: the ear of corn is no more green and life is not in it. The Earth is cold and no more will grasses spring jubilant. The Sun but glances upon his sister, the earth..... It is so....Even now....But here also are the signs of life, the eternal promise given to our people. In the death of the corn there is the seed--which is both food for the season of Death and the Beacon which will signal green-growing time and life returning. In the cold of the Earth there is but sleep wherein She will awaken refreshed and renewed, her journey into the Dark Lands ended. And where the Sun journeys he gains new vigor and potency; that in the spring, his blessings shall come ever young!"
-  Two Samhain Rituals, Compost Coveners, 1980 

  

"Tonight as the barrier between the two realms grows thin,
Spirits walk amongst us, once again.
They be family friends and foes,
Pets and wildlife, fishes and crows.
But be we still mindful of the Wee Folke at play,
Elves, fey, brownies, and sidhe.
Some to trick, some to treat,
Some to purposely misguide our feet. 
Stay we on the paths we know 
As planting sacred apples we go.

This Feast I shall leave on my doorstep all night.
In my window one candle shall burn bright,
To help my loved ones find their way
As they travel this eve, and this night, until day.
Bless my offering, both Lady and Lord
Of breads and fruits, greens and gourd."
-  Akasha, Samhain Ritual  

Samhain

Halloween,

The Day of the Dead

 

October: Poems

Quotes

Lore

  

The entrance to our front driveway in Red Bluff featured a seasonal display that Karen prepared from 1998-2017. 
Karen is petting our cat, King Tut, in the early morning hours. 

We now (2020) live in Vancouver, Washington.  

Tamastslikt Cultural Institute and Museum, Pendleton, Oregon

On Thursday, April 20, 2023, Karen and I enjoyed visiting the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute and Museum, near Pendleton, Oregon.  The museum was quite large with fascinating exhibits and artwork.  It featured the history, culture, and artifacts of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla Tribes of northeast Oregon.  

We stayed at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino, eight miles west of Pendleton.  There are also hundreds of new motel rooms off of Interstate 84 on a high bluff above the city of Pendleton.  

On our first day, we ate breakfast at the old Hood River Hotel Cafe.  It featured Scandinavian style breakfast foods.  For lunch, we ate at Mazatlán Mexican Restaurant immediately adjacent to the main large Pendleton Stadium for all kinds of large events, powwows, Pendleton Round Up, races, concerts, etc.  

The drive from the Wildhorse Resort's golf course out to the Tamastslikt Museum gave us some great views of the Blue Mountains rising up immediately to the west.  Interstate 84 from Pendleton 46 miles southeast to La Grande (2,700 feet), up and through the Blue Mountains  has some steep grade, and gets closed in winter storms.  

We intend to visit La Grande, Baker City, Boise and Walla Walla in a future four day trip.  

The City of Pendleton, Oregon (population 17,900) sits in a narrow valley along the Umatilla River at the eastern edge of the Blue Mountains.  

The Blue Mountains and the wide gentle rolling valleys filled with very Spring Green upcoming grains were a spectacular sight.  Cattle grazing in many places along Interstate 84.  The bright green fields covered with 6" plants were spectacular.  

As is always the case, the MAIN FEATURE of our trips to the East of Portland, is the drive along the Columbia River along US Interstate 84 from Troutdale-Gresham, Oregon, to Boardman, Oregon.  This is the famous Scenic Columbia River Gorge Area, preserved in various ways.  This is a spectacular 147 mile drive!  You drive by three Dams: Bonneville, Dalles, and John Day.  The views were very good as we drove twice through this scenic Interstate highway along the Columbia River with the steep basalt canyon walls to the south of the highway. 

I was impressed with the very large Amazon Data Super-Computer Centers in The Dalles and at Boardman.  Hermiston and Prineville are other locations.  They draw electrical power from The Dalles Dam and the John Day Dam.  

I purchased one book at the Tamastslikt Museum gift shop:

"Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country. Compiled and edited by Jarold Ramsey.  Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1977, 295 pages.  Numerous illustrations. VSCL, Paperback.  

"Beyond the literature of other regions in Oregon, these stories [from the northeast Oregon Coastal Tribes like the Tillamook or Nehalem] persistently dwell on the possibility of other worlds, other mediums of life, and strange travels and transformation from one world to another.  The imagination of the coastal Indian, living on the brink of the great unknown element of the Pacific, must have been deeply attuned to such possibilities ... Behind such weird episodes, there is always the compelling presence of the sea, both familiar and alien, indifferent giver of life, another, alternative medium of being, limitless - "the river with one bank," the Indians called it - the source of all change."
-  Jarold Ramsey, Coyote Was Going There, p. 127.

I sat for a long time in the Museum under a reconstructed Tule Mat longhouse.  I listened to recordings of Indian storytellers.  I thought of practicing my string figures at home in Vancouver.  I thought about the difference between communicating verbally and through printed text.  

"This modern long tent community structure is a cotton canvas-covered version of the original Tule Mat Lodge or Longhouse, which is a shelter or house that was constructed using mats made of tule (a type of bullrush or reed) that was abundant along rivers and marshes in the Plateau region of North America and Canada. The reeds were first dried and then woven into mats and used as coverings for pyramid shaped lodges like tepees. Tules were perfect for building temporary, portable structures as the mats could be rolled up and carried away. Tepees were covered with animal skins but the tule-mat lodge was covered with mats of strong, durable, tule reeds. While the Long Tent you see on Whitman College campus has a canvas covering, it still carries the original practices of the Tule Mat Lodge engineering."

A reconstructed Tule Mat Longhouse
Tamastslikt Museum, Pendleton, OR

Cowboys and Ranchers and Farmers and Workers
Rodeos, Round Ups, Powwows
Anglos, Indians, Mexicans, Tourists

Roundup Rodeo is BIG

Wildhorse Resort and Casino
Golf Course

Cabbage Hill
Deadman's Pass
Interstate 84 from Pendleton to La Grand

Passing Strange and Wonderful

"One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,
     With lips of lurid blue,
The other glowing like the vital morn
     When throned on ocean's wave
     It breathes over the world:
Yet both so passing strange and beautiful!"
-  Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Daemon of the World," 1816

Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture
By Yi-Fu Tuan
Kodansha America, 1995, 288 pages, Index, Bibliography