Being a Light for Someone

Big Dipper by Barbara Blasius McHugh (2015)

buy and look at her paintings

Polaris Statistics
Also Known As: Polaris A, Alpha Ursae Minoris, Pole Star, North Star
Distance From Earth: 430 light years
Constellation: Ursa Minor
Star Type: F Class Supergiant
Mass: 4.5 x Sun
Luminosity: 2,500 x Sun
Diameter: 44 million miles (70 million km) - 50 x Sun
Temperature: 5,700C (10,300F)
Age: Unknown Rotation Period: 119 days

Citation: https://www.solarsystemquick.com/universe/polaris-star.htm
 




This past week we finally had an evening to see the stars.  It has been raining a lot, enough to bring the Ohio River to flood stages--the highest in 25 years--(my basement now has a small puddle in the center).  That night, I quickly survey the northern sky, and there it was the strongest point of light, the North Star.  Okay not the strongest, researchers rank it as fifty.  (How to find the North Star   http://earthsky.org/tonight/use-the-pointers-to-find-polaris)

Harriet Tubman, photograph by 

Horatio Seymour Squyer,

1848 - 18 Dec 1905 -

See it at National Portrait Gallery

When I think about the North Star, I always associate it to Harriet Tubman.  She used the North Star to guide herself to freedom.  Once freed from slavery, she returned thirteen times to the south and rescued other enslaved people.  Each time, Tubman risked her life and freedom, and she continued using the bright North Star as her compass.  I want to believe she used this same North Star spirit to be the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War.  The same bright spirit in the suffrage movement. 

Harriet Tubman was a woman who made a difference in people's lives then and now. 

Sarah Brown (1846 - 1916)

Learn more about Sarah

In her novel Mapmaker's Children, Sarah McCoy links the past and present together by paralleling two women's stories around a doll’s head. The reader learns of the characters (Eden and Sarah) struggles around infertility and how they become a beacon for other people in their lives.

The past narrator is Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown. McCoy uses Brown's personal letters and historical documents to support Sarah story. Sarah, we learn is also an abolitionist and an artist. She used her art to create cryptic picturegrams (maps) to help enslaved people find their way north to freedom. Historical evidence shows that some of her maps were hidden within dolls. McCoy uses the doll as a device to link her two character.

Eden Anderson, is the present-day character. She and her husband have moved into an old house in West Virginia in hopes to save their marriage. Eden is grieving over another miscarriage. The reader learns that this has become a cyclical: hormone injections, invitro-fertilization and miscarriage. She is the one who finds the doll’s head in the root cellar.

McCoy quickly shows us that Sarah also struggles from infertility due to an illness. As a result, Sarah chooses to never marry and devotes her life helping others. Thus, becoming a gifted mapmakers for the Underground Railroad.

Eden’s path to be a light for another isn’t clear cut as Sarah’s. For Eden, the pattern must be modeled by others.  In turn Eden's acts aren't great as Sarah's, but they do make a difference in the lives she touches.  

~~~

Oriflamme
by Jessie Redmon Fauset


“I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old 
              mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at 
              the stars and groan, and I would say, ‘Mammy, what makes
              you groan so?’ And she would say, ‘I am groaning to think of
              my poor children; they do not know where I be and I don’t
              know where they be. I look up at the stars and they look up at
              the stars!’” —Sojourner Truth


I think I see her sitting bowed and black,
Stricken and seared with slavery’s mortal scars,
Reft of her children, lonely, anguished, yet
Still looking at the stars.

Symbolic mother, we thy myriad sons,
Pounding our stubborn hearts on Freedom’s bars,
Clutching our birthright, fight with faces set,
Still visioning the stars!

~~~

I have always been taught that one of my roles on this earthly plane was to serve.  I don't envision that my work will be as dynamic as Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, or Sarah Brown.  But, I can do small things.

This past week I was called up by a friend.  Her niece had suffered yet another miscarriage.  My friend was looking for resources.  See, I too had experienced several miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy.  My friend was concerned, because the doctors had not offered any mental health care.  I was able to provide several support groups and a Japanese (Buddhist) ritual that helped my spirit.  I believe that day I was a shining star for my friend.


Artual:  (ART + Ritual)


Recipe for Stjerneskud: Danish Shooting Star open sandwich

1. Sliced, toasted and mayonnaise smear rye bread

2. one leaf of lettuce

3. fried fish fillet (your choice)

4. pile of shrimp

5. pile of steamed asparagus

6. wedge of tomato

7. garnish with lemon and dill pickle twist.


Mary Chaplin Carpenter: Between Here and Gone

Mary Chaplin Carpenter: We're all Right