I am Like the Ant
That has gotten into the granary
Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I have been spending a lot of time behind the wheel again traveling all over Montana and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. I’m not complaining even if it is occasionally on the grueling side; the quick rest area nap has become a regular event that I even look forward to! Yet at some point I’m going to need to figure out how to make some space to write again and I’m in the very early stages of feeling mild alarm over that challenge. I hope, by the end of the year, to have a poetry manuscript in a production queue somewhere, and at least three or four chapters and an outline ready for the next nonfiction book. I’m super committed through June so far but not so bad in July. Maybe then I can I make some headway.
Meanwhile, August is IndigiPalooza MT!
The event of the summer is barely more than four months away and things are unfolding nicely. If you haven’t signed up for updates yet, you may do so at this page. There will be some new announcements early next week so now is the time! This Irritable Community has been incredibly generous with donations too but we still have a ways to go. You may donate HERE; just select IndigiPalooza from the dropdown menu. I’ll probably do a big funding push again in April or May as we enter the home stretch, but why wait?
I know things are tight for many people out there and fear is in the air. I’m talking to a lot of people – hundreds, if not thousands, this year alone – and if anything I want to remind people that nothing is over until it’s over, and we are far away from that. Your continued support keeps me out taking it to the people. You have no idea how much the support I get from this newsletter via paid subscriptions means to me. If you’ve got a spare $50 to throw this way for the next year, or can even scrape off $5/month, it is eminently helpful and appreciated.
Have you seen the movie Flow yet? I hadn’t even heard of it and then it suddenly crashed my radar multiple times in just a couple days so I decided I needed to see it. I watched it at home and was profoundly moved by it. It was one of those experiences where it lived in my head for days afterward and continues to. It is animated and beautiful. There are no people in it, or seem to be even in the film’s world, but there is evidence of them having been there and even that evidence is beautiful. The characters are all animals and, as more and more that is the company I prefer, I loved every one of them. This closing bit from THIS REVIEW by Carlos Aguilar brinks me to the brink of verklemptedness and I feel the urge to see the film again:
“It’s as if these animals reflect the noble qualities within us; in their reflection, we have an opportunity to reflect as well. In all their unspoken wisdom, they are trying to tell us we can only save ourselves if we see ourselves as part of a whole, and not as distinct factions warring over trivialities. As we confront our imminent climate crisis and the many other cataclysms that plague our reality, we’ll only have each other to make it through. “Flow” boasts a hopeful outlook; it suggests these storms won’t be permanent and that the deer will freely run through the forest again. Life, in all its splendor and blameless tragedy, will, indeed, flow.” – Carlos Aguilar
I’ve been taking a master naturalist class through the Montana Natural History Center.1 The classes are three hours every Tuesday beginning at 10am. I decided to take it because Tuesday is the one day every week I am guaranteed to be home because that is the night I teach at class at the university. One morning as I hastily prepared to leave the house to be on time for class I was feeling very frustrated. I was angry that I had decided to take the class – even though I enjoy it very much – because I just don’t have the time for it. Then I was even more angry that, with my semi-regular gatherings with friends around the gaming table an activity of the past, it seems the one thing I do just for the fun of it is something I don’t have time for. So I was doubly irritated and discombulated.
It turned out that day we took a field trip to the Butterfly House in Missoula. It was a profound experience. There is one little room that a path winds through among all kinds of plants and shrubs and a tremendous abundance of butterflies and moths. I was all but unmoored. I sat down on a bench and tried to hold back the tears. It was all so beautiful that I can’t even put it into words. Both because of the place and the care that went into it, certainly, and also because of the lingering energy in the aftermath of having watched Flow. I am grateful for the experience and now both encounters are traveling with me. This is what the world does to us if we are broken open to it, for better or worse.
There are a couple books I read from every morning. This one, Earth Almanac, has a entry every day of the year related to the natural world. I read through it once a few years ago and used the entries as prompts to write poems. Revisiting it again this year, the other day I came across this entry about gray whales:
After spending the winter in the relatively warm waters of Baja California, Mexico, gray whales begin migrating northward in March. Males and females without young are the first to depart Mexico, moving as far north as the Bering and Chukchi Seas for summer. As these giant mammals move north in the spring, they proceed along the West Coast of North America. Southern movements in the fall tend to occur farther out to sea. A roundtrip migration can be more than twelve thousand miles, making it one of the most spectacular treks in nature.
A gray whale’s gestation period lasts longer than a year, so breeding occurs in the warm Mexican waters. Whales then move north before returning in the fall. Females give birth the winter following breeding. Adults are about as long as a school bus, and at birth, whale calves can be fifteen feet long and weigh fifteen hundred pounds. Nursing whales can consume more than fifty gallons of milk each day, and initially calves gain between fifty and one hundred pounds every day.
When I read this it was the wee hours of morning and I wasn’t able to sleep. In the darkness I thought of these magnificent creatures, how they were out there living their incredible lives even as I was mired in my mental struggles. I wondered about their lives and imagined being in that mysterious ocean world. They are out there right now, even as you read this, whenever and wherever you are! And like my people they have overcome attempts to wipe them out. What a joy it is to be sharing this world with them, isn’t it? This joy is what I want to cling to.
Finally, another book I’m reading an entry from every day is this one, A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings by Coleman Barks. Don’t come at me with all the controversy with Barks’s translations, I know about them and, this year at least, I don’t care. When Mary Oliver died a few years ago, this wonderful little profile ran in Parabola. In it we learn Barks was Mary’s friend, and that she began every day reading one of the entries from this book. So if it was good enough for Mary, I decided, it would be good enough for me. Probably at least half of the daily readings are beyond my capacity to understand, but just the other day was this one … and I love it.
Here’s to all the spots of beauty we find on this epic experience we’re living, tiny or otherwise. May we carry them with us, difficult as it may be to lug them.
Upcoming March Appearances!
Minneapolis Next Week
On Monday I am traveling to Minnesota to do an opening keynote at the 2025 MIEA2 Conference, followed by a couple poetry workshops. I’m really, really looking forward to that3. But before all that goes down I’m going to engage in some vigorous fraternizing with my Milkweed friends, including THIS EVENT!
Details:
How are houselessness, deportation, and the landless Indians connected? Please join us for an evening with Chris La Tray, author of Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, to learn more.
Tuesday, March 18, 6:00 p.m.
Open Book Performance Hall
1011 Washington Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This event is free and open to the public. If you enjoyed hearing from Chris last fall at the Book Lovers Ball, we hope you'll join us next week! Please RSVP via eventbrite.
I hope to see some Irritable Readers there for all the mayhem!
In Conversation with Stephen Graham Jones in Missoula
A couple weeks ago my Blackfeet pal SGJ emailed me and asked if I had time to be in conversation with him for HIS BIG EVENT in Missoula in support of his new book. The stars aligned and I was happy to be able to say yes, and it is all going down at the People’s House on Sunday the 23rd.
You won’t see my involvement on any of the promo for the event because the last thing anyone in Missoula needs to know about is me showing up anywhere locally again. Except privileged readers in this space, of course. SGJ is a great writer and a great guy and magnificently prolific and I hope a mass of people turn out for him. I’m happy we get to spend some time together after little more than high fives here and there as our paths have crossed all over the country. In fact he’s going to be at the same venue in Minneapolis just a couple days after I am, a mere two days before we’ll wreak havoc in Missoula. What?!
Two Events in the South
And I don’t mean Hamilton. Do I have Irritable Readers in these vicinities? I hope so!
Montgomery, Alabama!
Thursday, March 27th, 5:30pm, at the NewSouth Bookstore! All the details HERE!
Jackson, Mississippi!
Saturday, March 29th, 2:00pm, at Lemuria Books! All the details HERE!
As for April….
Plenty happening next month too, which I’ll get to. A couple instances of private stuff, lots of school stuff, and some public stuff too, like a reading under the auspices of Northwest College in Powell, WY; a bloviation at the High Desert Museum in Bend, OR; something TBD under the auspices of Montana State University in Bozeman; then this obligatory debacle back at the People’s House in Missoula. Oof.
Another Round of NASfE Beginning in June!
I’ll be pressing for this more in the coming weeks and couple months, but if you missed the first edition of Native American Studies for Everyone via Chickadee Community Services, which is at its halfway-to-completion point right you, you may sign up for the next round that runs June 2 – August 10. Details and such may be found HERE. This is nowhere near my project but I’m pretty involved with it and I encourage as many people as possible to participate.
Everywhere I go I am asked by people, “What can I do to help?” This is as good a place to start as any because compassion and solidarity begins in education. So get educated.
Wow, this has been a lot. I’m grateful for your time and attention, my friends! I hope you are finding some beauty here and there for yourselves, wherever you are.
The second time I’ve taken one from these wonderful people, though the first time was entirely online, with one Saturday exception, because of COVID.
Minnesota Indian Education Association
Particularly an opportunity to see Star Wars as presented in Anishinaabemowin!
As usual, you pack a lot into your posts! Thank you.
I want to add that Native American Studies for Everyone should be Mandatory for Everyone . I thought I had a basic understanding of US history including Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, boarding schools, reclaiming language-- and have eaten so much fry bread, indian Tacos and Salmon at community events! So many issues I thought I grasped were just a windshield view. This class is a dive into our history from the people who lived it thank you for your conversations/ presentations in this course and for promoting it here.
I always feel too busy for "deep dive" reading when I have the courage to look at my email, but then I read through your words and find these little gems of life and blessedness and goodness. YES to the sacredness of being among a myriad of butterflies. YES to the mild alarm when one feels too pulled in too many directions to sit down and do the most important things. YES to the awesome wonder of whales, and the amazing fact that they continue, despite the craziness that is human reality right now. It suggests a whole different tempo and focus. And YES to just the cover illustration of that book. YES to the words of the Flow review. YES to Mary Oliver and Rumi and to the power of words that connect us to the quick of life. We need them more than ever.
Thank you for sharing yours.