Review: The Dangerous Old Woman

October 22, 2021

When I was in my mid-twenties, I was introduced to The Secret Dakini Oracle, a deck of cards (unfortunately out-of-print) loosely based on the Dakinis, fierce Tantric goddesses somewhat analogous to the Crone archetype in Western culture. It was when I saw the card that incorporated this photo of an anonymous old spinster that I decided I had to have this deck. The young women in my cohort loved anything related to “The Crone,” mostly because we saw it as subversive. Too bad The Dangerous Old Woman wasn’t there for us back then. Clarissa Pinkola Estes correctly states that the stories about the heroine confronting the old woman are really recorded for the young woman.

This audiobook has actually been out for about ten years, but I only discovered it this year. I had mixed feelings about Dr. Estes’s first book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, and I can only relate my impression at that time, as I remember it, because I gave my copy away. On the one hand, I loved Dr. Estes’s retelling of Bluebeard and many of her insights about the tale. That alone was worth the price of the book. I was put off, however, by the Jungian flavor of much of her prose. I wasn’t alone in this assessment, even at that time. Recently, a young radical feminist book group chose to read Wolves and gave up in frustration, deeming it “too patriarchal.” I think they were probably reacting to Carl Jung and Dr. Estes’s training as Jungian analyst.

Because The Dangerous Old Woman is immediate, heart-centered, and personal, unencumbered by psychoanalytic definitions and terms. Dr. Estes draws on stories of women in her family, relating multi-generational and cross-cultural experience to fairytale and myth, making the wise woman tales refreshingly contemporary. Dr. Estes has a marvelous storytelling voice that feels conversational, even though the material is very focused. I found the stories from Eastern European immigrant culture fascinating and exotic, yet the stories from Latina culture gave me a warm nostalgic feeling from my years of living in the Southwest.

This is a recording to be savored. I would have loved The Dangerous Old Woman when I was a young woman and found it revelatory, yet as a woman now well into the second half of her life I could only nod and say “Uh-huh, uh-huh” to the lessons Dr. Estes draws from her material. This audiobook is a jewel. Even if you had trouble relating to the author’s earlier work, check this one out.

(Review) Rural Indigenousness: A history of Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples of the Adirondacks

July 2, 2021

Part One

I am finding this book by Melissa Otis challenging on three levels.

On the first, it is challenging my idea of Native American presence in the Adirondacks. Otis doesn’t refute the popular belief that most of the territory in the Blue Line (the boundary of the Adirondack Park) was hunting territory used by many tribes, but she asks the reader to reflect on what the word “hunting territory” means. I always pictured some guys killing big animals and bringing a few home to justify going off for a summer vacation with the boys.

But no. The concept of “hunting territory” needs to be picked apart. What were they hunting? Animals, of course, but also plants and fish. When were they hunting? It could be any season. Trapping in winter. Foraging in summer. Who was hunting? Young men, yes, but some women, or even the whole band together. If a lot of meat or fish was being harvested, women did most of the processing on site. The small groups could be Abenaki, Iroquois, or Mahican before colonization, but later they might be other displaced Native groups. Were they only hunting? No, there was trapping and fishing. And Mohawk women would sometimes plant and harvest during a long hunting season. Or Abenaki women would sow plants and return later that year (or even in subsequent years) to gather.

I’m also finding the book challenging because it is dense and difficult. A lot of names, dates, wars, treaties referenced. It’s slow reading, and sometimes I have to look up events that I’m not familiar with. This is a meticulously researched book, which is its strength and weakness. I wish this kind of information was available in a more readable form, but the book was only published in 2018. And of course people demand good documentation after so much questionable stuff has been around for so long.

The third challenging level has to do with absorbing the troubling details of the history of displacement through colonization. This displacement was not as dramatic as the forced mass relocations of Cherokee or Delaware, but it was traumatic nonetheless. The Abenaki and the Mahican faired the worst, being more itinerant than the Mohawk, who were settled and agriculturally advanced.

So I’m getting through the book slowly, but I recommend it to anyone interested in the early history of this region.

This picture was taken in Newcomb, New York last week. The High Peaks can be seen in the distance.

Mapping the Appropriation of an Island

December 11, 2020

I seldom review books on this blog these days, and never children’s books, but I wanted to discuss a few pieces of misinformation that I found recently in the (beautifully illustrated) book Manhattan: Mapping the Story of an Island, by Jennifer Thermes, geared to grade school children. Misinformation about the Munsee-Delaware Indians can be found many other places, not just in this book, but I’ll use it as a touchstone since it’s the latest perpetuation I’ve found of certain well-worked themes.

Manhattan’s original inhabitants are referred to in the book as “Lenape,” which, while not incorrect, is misleading in its imprecision. Lenape is often used for referring to groups speaking the Unami-Lenape language. Many groups of people originating around what is now the New York City area spoke a related language to Unami-Lenape called Munsee and referred to themselves as Munsee people. To make matters more confusing, both groups refer to themselves as Lenape (in different spellings) in their own language. The cultural demarcations between the groups, such as they were, have been blurred through centuries of dislocation and colonialization, but at this point there are still two distinct languages.

So Lenape isn’t wrong, exactly, but I would refer to people originally controlling Manhattan as Munsee, Munsee-Delaware, or Munsee-Lenape. This is how they refer to themselves today. Alternatively, there are even more specific words that could be used, though they are rather obscure. It seems like Lenape would be the anti-colonialist word of choice to use in place of Delaware, which comes from the name of an English colonial ruler, but when used by non-Natives it’s mostly just confusing.

On to another piece of misinformation, which is the etymology of “Manhattan.” The book says it comes from a Lenape word “mannahatta” and means “island of many hills.” That’s a lot of meaning to pack into four syllables, especially for a language from that island and those hills. Wikipedia derives Manhattan from another purported word, “manahataan,” and translates it as “place where we gather wood to make bows.” Both derivations, if true, involve speculation on root words and exceptions to Munsee grammar rules. It’s more likely that the Dutch mangled some other word, which may or may not have been Munsee. What I have heard from Munsee speakers is that the name Manhattan comes from the (verifiably real) Munsee word “munahan,” which means “island.” So the Munsee might have called Manhattan a hilly island, and European speakers may have truncated the place name and mispronounced it. But Manhattan does not mean “island of many hills.”

On to the sixty guilder question: how did the Dutch acquire “Manhattan”? At least the book equivocates “As the story goes” before repeating that the Dutch West India Company “bought the island from the Lenape in 1626 for approximately $24 worth of wampum beads and trinkets. For Native people, the idea of owning the land was as crazy as owning the land we breathe. More likely, the Lenape only thought they were agreeing to share the island with the Dutch.”

It was all a misunderstanding! Those Indians, too naïve or too spiritually enlightened, take your pick, just didn’t know what they were doing.

Think for a moment. If I were to buy a block of present-day Manhattan, I would not be able to call it the Manhattan Republic of Hearth and live completely by my own laws. I would still be subject to the laws (and taxes!) of New York City, not to mention New York State and The United States. If any of these governments decided they wanted the land for some purpose, they could purchase it from me (no matter who I bought it from) at a price they decided was fair. In virtually every country on earth, the land ultimately belongs to the nation that governs it. The Dutch West India Company was a private company doing business on foreign soil. The sale of land was an acknowledgement of that relationship. To me, this doesn’t sound like naivete or enlightenment; it sounds like business. It certainly was not a relinquishment of sovereignty, and the subsequent establishment of a European government on that land was not misunderstanding, it was theft.

As for the amount of money that changed hands, in present day dollars it was much more than $24, and Manhattan real estate has gone through the roof, but the price of the land is not a material point. The Munsee, like many Natives, wanted to trade with the Dutch, so if they wanted to give the Dutch West India Company a sweetheart deal to facilitate trade, that was their calculation. A poor calculation, as things turned out, but not an unreasonable one based on information available to both parties at the time.

This is a long complicated explanation for a children’s book, but the whole thing can be explained in simple words:

The people who originally lived on Manhattan are known as Munsee-Lenape. They are still around, though most of them live in other places. They left because the Dutch and the English stole the land. The name Manhattan might come from a Munsee word meaning “island,” but we don’t know.

And leave out the part about how many wampum beads. It really doesn’t matter, does it?

Review: The Rising of the Moon by Gladys Mitchell

June 12, 2020

This is a sweet mystery published in Britain shortly after the second world war. The moon creates an emotional backdrop as a serial killer claims young female victims under its surreal brightness.

The full moon is celebrated by lovers, poets, and Witches for its divine beneficence, but in folklore it is known as a maleficence, inciting violence, insanity, disturbing dreams, emotional disturbance, and general bad luck. The novel captures the contradictory nature of lunar energy by telling the story through the eyes of two boys, juxtaposing the innocence of childhood with the evil nature of the killings.

Simon and Keith are orphans living with a married brother, and their life circumstances make them closer than most brothers, while ensuring they are less closely supervised than most boys their age. Brother Jack and his wife are viewed by the boys as interfering, authoritarian, and No Fun, though the couple are young themselves to be saddled with responsibility for boys of this age in addition to their new baby. Probably Simon and Keith’s own parents would have paid closer attention to their activities, but the story also evokes a bygone age that emerged around World War II and continued until the nineties, when most children spent large amounts of time outdoors unsupervised, unshackled by extra-curricular activities scheduled by conscientious parents or onerous duties in farms, households, or industries. The imaginative, marginally acceptable, and faintly dangerous escapades of the boys are charming. Seen from their perspective, a dirty canal becomes a mystical landscape; a jumble of rejected items becomes a treasure trove. While adults in the story are sickened and horrified by the murders, the boys see them as high adventure. They do much of their sleuthing in the daytime after school and on holidays, when no one seems to be keeping track of their whereabouts, but they also sneak outside under the full moon to frighten themselves with dangers real and imagined. Childhood cannot discriminate.

The narrator Simon is the older brother, and at thirteen (the lunar number!) he is on the cusp of adulthood. We can expect that solving this mystery will pull him to the other side and make him an adult. The loss of childhood is something that is universally mourned, despite its near-inevitability, but most of us either grow up or die young. The moon emerges out of fantasy and horror as catalyst of maturity.

Is the Coronavirus in Your Story?

March 6, 2020

One of the big taboos of writing fiction (of which there are many) is reference to current events. Especially in mysteries, the conventional wisdom is that it “dates” your story in a bad way, plus it’s hard to know what people will remember about the time a decade or so later. Personally, I find it disconcerting to see events missing in a story that is otherwise dated by things like bell bottom jeans and primitive answering machines. A story that seems to take place in the early 1940s without a war in the background is downright jarring. I think part of the appeal of twentieth century historical novels, which are quite popular at the moment, is that real-world contextual details are included.

PD James went ahead and included the SARS virus in The Lighthouse to good effect. SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) was a 2002-2003 epidemic with life-threatening symptoms that appeared in 26 countries. The number of cases was considerably smaller than those that have already appeared in the Coronavirus. The quarantine on an island became a technique for keeping modern forensics out of the story, making it a plausible Agatha Christie-type whodunnit.

There are many many rules about what not to do in fiction (and narrative non-fiction). Show don’t tell. Don’t use adverbs. Avoid adjectives. Keep description minimal. You might think this a side effect of the cottage industry teaching “how to write,” with experts spouting these rules to seem like they’re teaching something that really cannot be taught. There’s a little of that, but professionals in publishing seem to have picked up some of these rules and are even guilty of establishing a few.

The Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith spends a lot of time telling the reader what’s going on inside the heads of his characters, a big no-no. Remember: show, don’t tell. I noticed recently that I read a LOT of British mystery authors, to the point where I know the streets of London and the universities in the small towns. I know enough about the food they eat that I could probably cook some of it. The draw is decidedly not the location. I’d like to go to Britain someday, but I’m not an Anglophile. It’s not my spiritual home (at least I don’t think so, never having been). So why do I prefer 21st century British authors? I think it’s because they don’t follow those rules so carefully. I don’t think they have to. Getting published in America is extremely difficult, and the publishing industry in New York seems to be sold on those rules. Otherwise, there would not be so much sameness in the 21st century American novel.

As I was at my desk writing earlier this week, reflecting on my dissatisfaction with the many rules of the game, I looked down at the street and saw a person walking a Smooth Fox Terrier, McCall Smith’s “Pimlico Terrier” in his Corduroy Mansion novels. I took it as a sign that it was time to stop letting other people tell me how to write. I’m not saying that I’ll necessarily write about a virus, but I won’t avoid it, either. The experts are teaching us all how to write the same novel, and that really isn’t healthy.

Dracula and the Human Brain

February 7, 2020

Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman’s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination.

Thus speaks Dr. Abraham Van Helsing in reference to the heroine in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I recently picked up this wonderful novel which I read as a child. I didn’t remember it at all, except that I recall thinking it rather boring in places. This reading kept me riveted.

I think if I were to get an advanced degree in English literature, I would love to write a dissertation on Dracula. There’s so much in this novel to dissect. But I want to explore here this comment by Dr. Van Helsing, because I didn’t understand it at first.

We are programmed, to the point of brainwashing, to think of the idea of “man’s brain in a woman’s body” in a certain way. This sexed brain idea, mistakenly called postmodernist, is that we must accept, without question or examination, what transgender people tell us about sexed brains and apply this concept. To do otherwise is transphobic and non-intersectional. Accordingly, a “man’s brain in a woman’s body” is a brain that hates the woman’s body inhabited by that brain. The body is experienced as a foreign object that must be changed through hormones, surgery, pronouns, or at least clothing.

Another acceptable view of the man’s brain/woman’s body concept, which doesn’t necessarily negate the body-hating one, is that a man’s brain offers a predilection for experiences and things deemed “masculine” by society: rough sports, trucks, the color blue, etc. In other words, sex stereotypes.

The interpretation of sexed brain as stereotypes can become difficult to apply in any consistent way, because these stereotypes differ across time and culture. The way around this is postmodernism, which posits that we not only can but must superimpose our subjective interpretation, steeped in our own times, onto any event, philosophy, or body of work. This rationale says that I cannot, really, understand what Stoker meant by man’s body/woman’s brain, because I am not a nineteenth century woman, nor am I Stoker. The only correct way to interpret Dracula is by affirming what it means to me.

To me the idea of a man’s brain in a woman’s body is a strange one, at least as it might relate to innate personality. As a psychiatric social worker, my understanding of the brain is that it is plastic, changing as a result of life experience. Learning a new language, taking up a new sport, being in a car accident (even without brain injury), will all change the brain. Thus, any difference in boys’ and girls’ brains at birth, even if it could be measured, cannot help but be overshadowed by life experience. Thus, a woman’s brain is the brain of a woman, reflecting her experiences in her woman’s body, including her experience of fertility and female sexual desire.

A woman’s brain is programmed to regulate a woman’s body, including her fertility, so in that sense it is different from a man’s brain. A woman’s brain recovers faster and more completely from traumatic injury, in general, than a man’s, so there’s another difference. But everything I know about the brain negates the idea that there can be a man’s brain in a woman’s body related to concepts of masculinity or femininity. If you define a man’s brain in a woman’s body as hatred of one’s own female body, that enters the realm of possibility (and also the realm of mental illness).

Not being a narcissist or a doormat, I do have an interest in what other people are saying. I am not a postmodernist. I make an effort to see through and around my preconceptions, and I do not accept unquestioningly the worldview dictated by the self-appointed priests of 21st century justice movements. So I was interested in what Stoker is saying here, once it dawned on me that it wasn’t what I assumed.

This brain that Dr. Van Helsing so admires in the character Mina is not male because it likes boy things. Mina does not appear to dislike feminine things or her woman’s body, and she doesn’t chafe against societal expectations of her. She does foray into activities normally associated with men, but she does so in an unselfconscious way. She most emphatically does not see herself as a man. Her brain is “male” because it is logical, consistent, insightful, and capable of drawing a big picture from a plethora of small data. In other words, Dr. Van Helsing sees her brain as “male” because she is smarter than he is!

Dr. Van Helsing also talks a lot about the “child brain” of the vampire Dracula. This also confused me at first, because of my conceptions of what a child brain is. I think of a child’s brain as being concrete and having limited capacity for abstract thinking. Capacity for abstract thought expands greatly during adolescence. This is empirically documented. A child’s brain is also more limited in its ability to separate fantasy from reality. I found the highly intelligent Dracula to not be hampered in these respects, so I was confused.

Finally, I realized that Dracula has the “child’s brain” in the sense of being self-centered. His personality is primitive and undeveloped. He hasn’t the ability to empathize with others or to understand that other people have different motivations and ways of seeing than himself. This is ultimately his downfall, because Mina and Dr. Van Helsing are able to anticipate Dracula’s movements by guessing at what he wants and what he will do, getting inside his brain so to speak. Dracula, with his “child’s brain,” is unable to anticipate the actions of the people hunting him, so in spite of his numerous special powers, he is at a disadvantage.

The “male” and “child” brains in Dracula illustrates how ideas about the brain are socially constructed. A postmodernist would say that this means the brain doesn’t exist at all, outside of a social or subjective construct. But then, the postmodernist brain has limited inclination to search for understanding outside pre-existing constructs.

I definitely had a child’s brain when I read Dracula as a child, although I don’t think I had a child’s brain in Stoker’s definition. The limitations of my thinking kept me from appreciating this novel when I first read it, despite my childhood fascination with vampires. I enjoyed the rediscovery.

Another glowing review for Divining with Animal Guides

March 8, 2019

In the March 1 issues of PaganPages, Susan Rossi writes:

” I was delighted to discover that Divining with Animal Guides is not a cookbook dictionary, concretizing the “meanings” of animal encounters. Author Hearth Moon Rising has created a manual for learning to observe and discern and ultimately, to shift our strictly human viewpoint. Only when we look at the context in which the animals offer us their messages are we able to fully understand their invitations and gifts. “

Read the entire review here.

Review: The Book of Plots by Loren Niemi

January 25, 2019

I picked up this book at the library and read it to the end, which is unusual for me for a nonfiction book I borrow from the library. I decided to write a review because it seems I’m the first person to crack the book since it was purchased by the library ten years ago. And it’s a useful book for people interested in storytelling.

The Book of Plots identifies nine plot forms which the author argues encompass all stories. Some of these plot forms are unique to oral storytelling; others can be used in writing or cinema. I identified one form that has the potential to be exploited through the Internet; I may write a story for the net someday using this form.

Plot forms are illustrated through stories of the author’s life and through a re-telling of the fable “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Each form structure is conveyed clearly and I had no trouble understanding the author’s logic. The pitfalls of the various forms are laid out, as well as the benefits of consciously choosing the best form for a particular story.

The book could have done with a better copy editor. Typos, word omissions, and grammar errors of the type missed by editing programs detract from the text.

I would recommend this book to anyone, not just professional storytellers, because we all tell stories, and stories are integral to our lives. We all can benefit from learning to tell a better story.

Indie Shaman Review for Divining with Animal Guides

May 18, 2018

Thea Prothero writes: “The book is brimming with wisdom and exceptionally well researched; this in turn guides the would-be diviner to access the natural world form a uniquely well-grounded and refreshing perspective.”

Indie Shaman is always a recommended read. The theme of this issue of Indie Shaman is “Shamanic Lands: The Otherworld,” and there are many in-depth articles about the worlds of the ancestors, from a breadth of perspectives and modalities. I have an article in this issue titled “The Weasel Underground.”

Isian News Reviews Divining with Animal Guides

May 4, 2018

Cover photo from Beltane 2018 issue of Isian News. Lady Olivia Robertson by Ishtar Klaus.

Review of Divining with Animal Guides in the latest Isian News, a Fellowship of Isis quarterly news magazine. Linda Iles says

The author, Hearth Moon Rising, is very attuned to the natural world and brings a clarity and dignity to the animals she writes about, that only comes from many years of observation, magical practice and a deep love of all beings, whether four-footed, winged, swimming, crawling or slithering.

The review is on page 13. Also of interest in this issue are articles about the goddesses Hestia and Sedna and an article about ley lines.