Little Winters

Flowers of Redbud and Dogwood are two 'Little Winter' stories ...
Artist: Minisa Crumbo
Title: 'Little Winters'
Size: 13" x 13"
Medium: Oil

RedBud Winter

This one comes first, when the redbud trees bloom ... when spring has truly seated sometime in the third week of January. Then a warm spell.

Dogwood Winter

The second little winter comes when the dogwood trees bloom. Then a warm spell.

'Anishnabe Star Knowledge' by Minisa Crumbo Halsey:

Bozho Nikon, Hello. My bone, 

Let us, Anishnabé, begin by ‘making a prayer’ of gratitude and thanks for all of the gifts: 

Nengosek: the Star Beings 

Sekmekwe: our Mother Earth 

Gizes: our Father-Sky Sun 

Debek-Gizes: the Grandmother Moon 

Mamogosnan: Creator … we pray that we might see clearly and be seen clearly … and walk the straight path laid down for us in the Seven Grandfather’s Teachings, which give us the Good Ways by which we might live ...

To read entire article:  Anishnabé star knowledge - Potawatomi.org

Hownikan-March-2024-Digital.pdf (potawatomi.org)

'Anishnabe Star Knowledge' by Minisa Crumbo Halsey:

Bozho Nikon, Hello. My bone, 

Let us, Anishnabé, begin by ‘making a prayer’ of gratitude and thanks for all of the gifts: 

Nengosek: the Star Beings 

Sekmekwe: our Mother Earth 

Gizes: our Father-Sky Sun 

Debek-Gizes: the Grandmother Moon 

Mamogosnan: Creator … we pray that we might see clearly and be seen clearly … and walk the straight path laid down for us in the Seven Grandfather’s Teachings, which give us the Good Ways by which we might live ...

To read entire article:  Anishnabé star knowledge - Potawatomi.org

Hownikan-March-2024-Digital.pdf (potawatomi.org)

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk': It is from the unified and receptive language interaction of our mind, heart, body, and spirit languages that we are able to communicate with the realities and even messages from denizens of the natural world – refreshing and newly emerging spirit beings in the forms of plants, animals, the Grandmother Moon and Star Beings, the Wind, Fire, and Water Beings, and even the heartbeat of Mother Earth, the pulses of Father Sky-Sun, and the mind of the Prime Creator, the Master of All Breath …

The Medicine Wheel 4 X 4 wagon is building its wheels. The finely meshed and recognized gears of language that carry our loads, provide a center and direction, are beginning to be directionally and seasonally purposed to function as an inclusive true home and spiritual sanctuary. The home is under final construction and livable … always a dance and a song in the process of becoming at spring, or any given time. Welcome home traveler and seeker …  

Spring Equinox: The east-west arm of balance is the ‘hard road of life’. The east-west axis provides the essential cross balance with the north-south cross balance – spinal axis of harmony – the Good Red Road … This mental spring arm extends forward and out from the center, joining with the introspective, medicine autumn arm of the autumnal equinox. The Medicine Wheel is in an active and visible building process.

Three Little Winters of Spring - an earth wisdom story ...

From April 4, 2020:

Bozho! Greetings all, from the Spirit Horse Ranch!

Smiling talks: let us gather together and think on a medicine wheel tale.

It is a windy day, here on the land ... which recalls an earth wisdom story told to me many years ago. It is the story of the three little winters of spring. Now, even though stories are traditionally told in the winter when we are are spending more time inside by the fire, our time now, seems to describe now. In many ways this is truly a little winter with accompanying vision quest qualities. Our collective retreats at this time bring opportunities of deep rest and healing. The spring medicine wheel season continues to radiate rays of inspiration and illumination which can and will penetrate and permeate all historic, tender and even hardened layers of memory and condition, all the while delivering the benison of light and love, capable of stimulating mental processes for future plans (and present), and able to plow the deepest furrows of every fertile and fallow field, be it of day or night, dream or vision.

The Winds
These are some of the gifts of spring. Ordinarily, there is more outward movement but spring this year, seems to be temporarily holding onto the hands of winter for a few more weeks ... at least the hands of: the little winters of spring. Let us give them our full attention, sit with them and allow the strong winds of spring to reach back, on and into aspects our innermost being, loosening and tearing away those limbs of our sacred flowering trees that may be dead, dying or diseased; no longer wanted or needed, winds which are scattering green winds of pollen, and driving southern rain clouds to the fields, forests, ponds and gardens.

RedBud Winter
This one comes first, when the redbud trees bloom ... when spring has truly seated sometime in the third week of January. Then a warm spell.

Dogwood Winter
The second little winter comes when the dogwood trees bloom. Then a warm spell.

Blackberry Winter
The third and last winter comes when the blackberries bushes bloom. It can seem to be the coldest and most unnecessary of the little winters ... but it is the last.

The Rains
The cold, hard, male rains come ... drumming the Mother alive and calling upon the return of her heartbeat to bring send sap rising, invite sprout and shoot, unfurling bud and leaf..softening, melting ice, moistening and warming the world once more..and so, the world is renewed once again and life begins anew with us in the northern hemisphere and reversed, down under.

Provisions and activities for personal ceremony come forward as we visit the shelving of memory and practice, selecting this or that according to interest or need, that we fashioned through decision and discipline for just such times as these. Provisions and activities, sacred all, fashioned in solitude or circle...to bring solace, lift the heart and lighten the mind, are our proven and worthy tools. We will sit in circle once again. Review these things and add to them ... there will be new stories to tell ... reach out to our brothers and sisters ... and in these times of relative inactivity for some of us, remember: BEING IS A DOING. Prayers and blessings to all who are or have ‘walked on’, to the caretakers and ones most heavily burdened, may they and we know good health and the restoration of balance and harmony, all ways, all days, now and forever more.

Migwech
That’s the way it is with me.

Curiosity, restlessness, patience
Inventiveness, endurance and bravery
Remembering, being breathed alive and a sun ceremony
Water song, traveling song..silent prayer songs and groans of the heart are all heard.
The drum..redbud singers and dewebenkwe rock!
A purification fire, inside on a cookie sheet or outside, w/ sema offering
Smudging and fanning off, self, others and the room, remembering to open a window
Basketry
Sage, ginger and sassafras teas..green tea, chaga thunder, miso
Wild onions and eggs, dandelion greens in salads, corn soup,  fry bread ‘n salt pork
Moon time
Collecting and drinking clean rain water
‘Putting Down’ some sema, tobacco.. tobacco down-prayers up
Offering plates
Being breathed alive
And always, the inner vision quest of:
Gratitude

Migwech, Mamogosnon, prime Creator for ALL of the gifts.

Dawn Woman

From 'The Eagle Dance' by Woody Crumbo:

The Eagle Dance, like most American Indian dances, was inspired and conceived by one person through a dream or vision. Such a spiritual manifestation was considered a sacred gift of the gods. The blessed recipient of the dream would call about him his fraternal brothers or clan -- in some cases the entire tribe -- and demonstrate the dance while relating the significance as revealed to him by the "spirit world" ... in this, the Pottawatomi Eagle Dance, the ceremonial significance is to depict certain actions and evolutions the American Eagle. It was first revealed in a dream which came to one Kiowa, a Pottawatomi brave. 

Title: Eagle Dance

Artist: Woody Crumbo

Culture: Native American; Citizen Potawatomi

Date: mid-20th-Century

To the Stars Through Art: A History of Art Collecting in Kansas Public Schools, 1900-1950

Art Bytes: 'Moccasin Makers' by Archie Blackowl (MKBMA)

Best Practices for the Care of Art in Schools (MKBMA)

SJC Educators Conference (MKBMA)

Voices of the West pgs. 46-49 (MKBMA)

Woody Crumbo (MKBMA)

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk':

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk': It is from the unified and receptive language interaction of our mind, heart, body, and spirit languages that we are able to communicate with the realities and even messages from denizens of the natural world – refreshing and newly emerging spirit beings in the forms of plants, animals, the Grandmother Moon and Star Beings, the Wind, Fire, and Water Beings, and even the heartbeat of Mother Earth, the pulses of Father Sky-Sun, and the mind of the Prime Creator, the Master of All Breath …

The Medicine Wheel 4 X 4 wagon is building its wheels. The finely meshed and recognized gears of language that carry our loads, provide a center and direction, are beginning to be directionally and seasonally purposed to function as an inclusive true home and spiritual sanctuary. The home is under final construction and livable … always a dance and a song in the process of becoming at spring, or any given time. Welcome home traveler and seeker …  

Spring Equinox: The east-west arm of balance is the ‘hard road of life’. The east-west axis provides the essential cross balance with the north-south cross balance – spinal axis of harmony – the Good Red Road … This mental spring arm extends forward and out from the center, joining with the introspective, medicine autumn arm of the autumnal equinox. The Medicine Wheel is in an active and visible building process.