I am attending a prayer service tonight at the St. Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine and Historic Site to commemorate orange shirt day.
Indigo Book Stores in Canada have highlighted several books relating to Indigenous, First Nations people and Truth and Reconciliation. I’d recommend checking out their website as well as the Haudenosaunee page to find out more about today.
I watched a video by a pediatrician debunking the nonsense the president and his HHS secretary claimed about the amount of liquid in vaccines that go into a child’s body. Spoiler alert! The President doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Link here (it appeared on Threads).
The following graphics are the recommended vaccination schedule from the American Academy of Pediatrics:
You may notice that I’m not giving any advice other than what the experts are saying. That is because I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on the Internet. I can tell you what we did with our own kids, what my parents did when I was a kid, and what I do as an adult for myself.
In other words, follow the advice of your doctor.
A few weeks ago, I spent a couple of hours at the St. Kateri Shrine and Historic Site braiding sweetgrass for their gift shop. Sweetgrass is one of the four sacred plants of the Haudenosaunee and it is used along with cedar, sage, and tobacco in their sacred ceremonies. The shrine grows it there among other native-to-the-land plants. I tried to describe the sweet smell of it and all I could come up with is that it smells like sweet grass. Not grass clippings, or freshly mowed; it’s different, but that’s as far as my olfactory vocabulary would cooperate.
During St. Kateri’s weekend, they had a sweetgrass demonstration that I participated in with one of the elders from Akwesasne, one of the Mohawk communities in upstate New York, on the border with Canada. She showed us how to pick and clean the blades and then we braided some and she taught us how to make a bookmark.
The materials couldn’t be simpler, although I couldn’t tell you where to source them: wood splints – these are shaved birch bark, I believe and freshly grown sweetgrass. You’ll need a bucket of water as the sweetgrass is easier to manipulate when it’s moist. You will love the smell that permeates throughout the space and on your fingers.
It was a fun and educational experience, so when I was sent this video on how to make a sweetgrass bookmark, I thought I would share it here as part of my ongoing writings about St. Kateri Tekakwitha.
In honor of today’s holiday, a photo of a statue of Harriet Tubman (with William Seward), video from Blackish, and a link to my most recent Juneteenth post.
If one person’s not free, none of us are.
Link below.
Note: I just subscribed to Wired for one year, $12 digital subscription. They have excellent current events articles.
https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-rescinds-policies-on-care-of-pregnant-women-infants/
This is the feast day of St. Kateri Tekakwitha. She died on this day in 1680 at twenty-four years of age. Since that time, miracles have known to have occurred through her intercession. In two more days, is the anniversary of my own conversion.
The photo above is at her tomb where her earthly remains rest at the St. Francis Xavier Mission Church in Kahnawake, Quebec. This is at the National Canadian Shrine of St. Kateri Tekakwitha.
I’m looking forward to the celebration of her feast day in the US in July, and my visit to this shrine and her tomb in June, partly for intensive research, but also hopefully to attend mass while we’re there.
St. Kateri, pray for us.
We have 105 days to get this right!
REMEMBER: There are NO POLLS until the one on November 5th.
Start by watching Heather Cox Richardson’s video that was sent to me:
Then check your news sources. Don’t let the media screw this up for us. 105 days.
A sample of quotations from a diverse group of LGBTQIA and Allies.
- “Gender is who you are, and sexuality is who you want.” — C.N. Lester, “Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us”
- “Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.” — Julie Anne Peters, “Keeping You a Secret”
- “When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.” — Barack Obama
- “Love is never wrong.” — Melissa Etheridge
- “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” — E.E. Cummings
- “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” — Brené Brown, “The Gifts of Imperfection”
- “Where there is love, there is life.” — Mahatma Gandhi
- “We declare that human rights are for all of us, all the time: whoever we are and wherever we are from; no matter our class, our opinions, our sexual orientation.” — Ban Ki-moon
- “To realize a world of equality and dignity for all, we will have to change laws and policies; we will also have to change hearts and minds.” — Rick Parnell
- “Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”— Ernest J. Gaines
- “What I liked about the rainbow is that it fits all of us. It’s all the colors. It represents all the genders. It represents all the races. It’s the rainbow of humanity.” — Gilbert Baker
More quotes can be found here.
I thought this was the perfect way to close out 2023’s Black History Month (although I have a few more posts that will appear throughout March – black history month is every month).
Slate article by Aisha Harris and Dan Kois: The New Black Film Canon
Their list begins in 1920 and goes through to 2022. They also include a list of the voters who helped create this list of the seventy-five greatest movies by Black directors. They also share where these great films can be viewed on streaming channels.
I wish I’d seen this during winter break!
International Book Giving Day Website
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Books are a uniquely portable magic.
Stephen King
Books I Would Give to Everyone:
Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else.
George Saunders
Others Recommendations:
The whole world opened to me when I learned to read.
Mary McLeod Bethune
I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else’s story, the delicious ache of a last page.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Download and color your bookmark today!
