Love Is On Its Way

Deviled Eggs, Love Is On The Way, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, April 2010, photo © 2010 by
QuoinMonkey, All rights reserved.

Wake Up! Winter Bones,
Celebrate the Rites of Spring —
Love is on its Way.

-posted on red Ravine, Easter Sunday, April 4th, 2010

-related to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day) and Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat — last year’s Easter post with info on the origins of the Easter Bunny

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egg-stravaganza haiku

easter eggs (two), eggs my niece and her three sons (tie)dyed for Easter, April 2009, photo © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

five color tablets
add vinegar and water
wa-la, egg-citement!

 
 

easter eggs series, (tie)dyed eggs by my niece and her sons, doodled eggs by my daughters and me, April 2009, photo © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

-Related to posts Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat and The Thing About Easter.

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Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat

Pulling A Rabbit Out Of A Hat, drawing by writer Ann Patchett, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 2008, all photos © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I was watching WCCO’s Good Question: What’s With The Easter Bunny? when it dawned on me that I had this old snapshot of a drawing by Ann Patchett on the front page of The Magician’s Assistant. The night we saw her at the Fitzgerald Theater, she smiled when I handed her the book — “I don’t get a chance to draw these much anymore,” she said, and from her pen flew this big-eared bunny poking out of a hat.

According to Darcy Pohland who covered last night’s Good Question (watch the video for some fun footage from kids on the subject), the Easter Bunny has ancient roots:

It’s part of a pagan tradition that started in Germany as part of a spring celebration. It honored Eastre (also Ēostre or Ôstarâ), the Anglo-Saxon goddess of dawn and spring; a fertility goddess who brought the end of winter.

One version of the bunny legend comes when she comes late one spring and finds a bird with wings frozen to the ground. She turns it into a snow hare with the ability to lay eggs in rainbow colors one day a year.

Snow hares with the ability to lay eggs in rainbow colors — you have to love that. I’m fond of the Snowshoe Hare because it’s directly related to one of my Totem Animals, the Lynx. They do a 7-year dance together and the Lynx’s ability to survive depends on the Snowshoe Hare’s abundant life and death cycle.

On this 53 degree Saturday in Minnesota, I’m longing for the end of Winter. Which means I’m jumping up and down for Eastre, the Goddess of Dawn and Spring. If you celebrate Easter, I hope you look glorious in your bonnet. Looks like tomorrow will be a good day for hunting those eggs. Or learning to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Rocky:  And now….
Bullwinkle:  Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.
Rocky:  But that trick never works.
Bullwinkle:  But this time for sure. Presto! [pause] Well I’m getting close.
Rocky:  And now its time for another special feature.

–Rocky & Bullwinkle Sound Clips

          

Ann Patchett’s Bunny, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 2008, photo © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, April 11th, 2009

-related to posts:

Ann Patchett – On Truth, Beauty, & The Adventures Of “Opera Girl”
Which Came First, The Grasshopper Or The Egg?
The Ant & The Grasshopper – Ann Patchett & Lucy Grealy
Book Talk – Do You Let Yourself Read?
My Totem Animal

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secrets of the passion flower (haiku)

Passion Flower, (Passiflora Incense), Augusta, Georgia, July 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

raw beauty rises
from pine needles and sandspurs
ground dry as a bone

purple passion blooms
not a flower but a vine
wilting Georgia heat

veined leaves swallow sun
digest light into flowers
one day of glory

Life Blood (Of The Passion Flower), Not A Flower But A Vine, Augusta, Georgia, July 2008, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Post Script:  I feel fortunate to have gotten these shots last week. I had never seen a Passion Flower up close; I found out later that many species only bloom one day a year (much like the Prickly Pear cactus). If Mom had not turned her head out the car window that day, I would have lived another year without experiencing this beautful flower in the flesh.

I am grateful that Mom knows her flowers. (Thank you, Mom. Oh, and Happy Birthday, Sis and Uncle B.!) Here are some other secrets of the Passiflora from different sites (the Wikipedia entry is excellent with photographs of many of the different species):

• ABOUT THE PASSIFLORA:  9 species of Passion Flower (out of about 500) are native to the United States, found from Ohio to the north, west to California and south to the Florida Keys. Most are vines, some are shrubs, a few species are herbaceous. The fruit of the passiflora plant is called passionfruit. The bracts are covered by hairs which exude a sticky fluid that sticks to insects. Studies have suggested this might be an adaptation similar to carnivorous plants.
• ONE DAY:  In Victorian times the flower (which in all but a few species lasts only one day) was very popular and many hybrids were created.
• HERBAL REMEDIES:  The leaves and roots have a long history of use among Native Americans in North America. Passiflora edulis and a few other species are used in Central and South America. The fresh or dried leaves are used to make an infusion, a tea that is used to treat insomnia, hysteria, and epilepsy, and is also valued for its painkilling properties. Some contain beta-carboline harmala alkaloids which are MAOIs with anti-depressant properties.
• POLLINATION:  Decorative passifloras have a unique flower structure, which requires a large bee to effectively pollinate. In the American tropics, wooden beams are mounted very near passionfruit plantings to encourage Carpenter bees to nest. Some species can be pollinated by hummingbirds, bumble bees, wasps; others are self-pollinating.
• WHAT’S IN A NAME?  Passion Flower does not refer to love, but to the Christian theological icon of the passion of Christ on the cross. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries discovered this flower and adopted its unique physical structures as symbols of Crucifixion. The radial filaments which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower represent the Crown of Thorns. The 10 petals and sepals represent the 10 faithful apostles. The top 3 stigmata represent the 3 nails and the lower 5 anthers represent the 5 wounds.
• KNOWN ACROSS THE WORLD:  In Spain, Passiflora is known as Espina de Cristo (Christ’s Thorn). In Germany it was once known as Muttergottes-Schuzchen (Mother-of-God’s Star). In Israel they are referred to as clock-flower (שעונית). In Japan, they are known as clock plant (時計草, tokeisō). In North America they are also called the Maypop, the water lemon, and the wild apricot (after its fruit). Native Americans in the Tennessee area called it ocoee, and the Ocoee River and valley are named after it.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, August 10th, 2008

-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC – NAMES OF FLOWERS, PRACTICE – Summer – 20min, haiku (one-a-day)

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The Thing About Easter

 

 -KitKat Bunny Ears, YUM!, photo by Sky Wire

Happy Day. I don’t want to do a long post on the meaning of Easter. But it would be a shame to let a controversial Holiday pass without at least commenting on the day.

Growing up, I was one of those stiff little girls headed to church wearing white crinoline, black patent leather, and a little flower trimmed Easter bonnet. Okay, the old photos from the 50’s and 60’s are kind of cute. But I hated dressing up!

In 2007, there are many American companies that give employees Good Friday off. It is a religious holiday to some; not to all.

There is great controversy surrounding the use of the word Easter in terms like Easter Bunny or Easter basket. If you don’t believe me, check out the What a Character! post on the Defend the Easter Bunny site about Walnut Creek banning the Easter Bunny from the city’s Easter egg hunts.

Or the Rhode Island public middle school that renamed the Easter Bunny scheduled to make an appearance at a craft fair, Peter Rabbit.

There’s an online AOL poll around the controversy. So far, 92% of the people that took the poll are against the Rhode Island ban of changing the term Easter Bunny to Peter Rabbit. The poll said that 87% of those same people celebrate Easter. That’s America for you.

These days I celebrate Ostara, the Rites of Spring, and the underlying current behind the modern day celebration of bunnies and eggs at Easter. Somehow over time, all the Pagan celebrations blended with the Christian celebrations. And what a crock pot stew of Holidays we have today.

What does all this have to do with writing? Semantics. It comes back to that old politically correct thing. The English language is loaded with offensive references. How far do we take censorship? It’s a real topic for writers. Something that tugs at me every time I write a piece.

But this morning, I want to lounge around in my PJ’s, break open the KitKat Bunny  (my second favorite candy bar next to Snickers) Liz bought at Cub the other day, and enjoy the beginning of Spring. And I think Wordraw mentioned he was going to feed his two cats rabbit for dinner.

May you celebrate as you do. We live in a country where religious freedoms are protected. There is no one right way.

Whoever you are, whatever you celebrate, enjoy the day.

Sunday, April 8^th, 2007

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