Author Archives: Myke Johnson

What Is Hidden

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gray day photo, snow covered ground, dark green bird feeder on pole, bush branches nearby, faintly visible tracks in the snow

At 4 a.m. this morning, I woke in the dark of the night to pee. On the way back to bed, I saw a shadow outside the window. It was a bright night, with white snow on the ground, and a clouded sky backlit by a full moon. I opened the curtain and saw that the shadow was a small deer by the bird feeder. It was investigating the seeds on the ground below, and perhaps the water in the heated bird bath. Then it walked toward me and made its way through the orchard, passing over to the side of the house and then toward the road.

So beautiful. Things that are hidden, and then revealed. I had seen deer tracks since the snow fell a few days ago, but we rarely see the creatures themselves as they pass through our yard. What a thing to be awake at 4, and gazing toward the windows. As I lay back down in bed, I wanted to remember the blessing of the moment, not lose it to sleep. So I fed phrases to my mind, like “that which is hidden” and made associations, like, “I should pull up the small green fence around the licorice patch, so the deer won’t get caught in it if the snow covers it.” I took this photo this morning. Of course, the deer is gone, hidden again. But some tracks remain, reminding me of all that I cannot see.

All of this also made me think of a photo I recently discovered, that I had never seen before. One of my relatives had posted it. It is a picture of my grandmother Yvonne (née Tremblay), with grandfather John Hochreiter and their two oldest children, about 1921. I had seen a photo of Yvonne when she married, in 1916, and a photo when she was holding me as a baby, sometime before she died in June of 1954. But this one brought to life a young woman in her early twenties, surrounding by her family. So much of her life was hidden from me, not by any conscious decision by anyone. My mother was the youngest of eight children, so perhaps this time before her birth was hidden from her as well. What a gift to get a small glimpse into their lives, over one hundred years ago now.

sepia toned photo of young woman and man seated on a park bench, holding two boys, one next to woman on the bench, and one on man's lap.

Last night before I fell asleep I prayed to the Spirits I have known. The moon, the cardinals, the frogs, mother Earth. Is seeing the deer a sign of connection? That my prayers are heard? Spirits, thank you for the gift of seeing that which is usually hidden. May we always remember that so much is hidden.

No Kings

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Three inflatable frog people standing in front of a building at an anti-ICE demonstration in Portland, OR. Text: Exodus 8:2-6 "But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs... The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials."

In the midst of cruelty and oppression, where does hope emerge? For me, it was seeing the protesters in Portland, Oregon dress in inflatable frog costumes, exposing the lie that Portland was a war zone, or that protesters were violent. In the face of armed and masked ICE agents, people responded with this creative and playful spontaneity. First there was one frog, and then it expanded to many frogs, and other silly costumed beings. Then someone else remembered this quote from Exodus about the plague of frogs. Perfect.

October 18th is NO KINGS day, and thousands of peaceful protests are planned for across the country. I can’t go out to one, but I can voice my support here. Support for democracy, support for the beautiful diversity that can make our communities full and alive, support for immigrants, support for trans siblings, and all queer people, support for disabled people and black people and indigenous people, Asian and Latino/a/x people. We need to keep expressing our vision of a multi-cultural country bound together by equality, justice, and full participation.

May the frogs multiply and spread the good word. Keep hope alive!

Green frog sitting in pond water, nearby there is a bee on a rock, and black tadpoles swimming around, and maple seeds floating.
Three frogs sitting on slate rocks
three more frogs on rocks and in water

September Musings

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Four huge turkeys in the shade of some green grass, behind leaves of zucchini in the front corner of the photo

The summer garden had some successes and some fails. And it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. This turkey family visited the yard many days, and walked through the garden beds in the back. They mostly left the veggies alone, except they liked to eat the tops off the bean plants. We still got a few beans even so. And they left alone the zucchinis, which did well, the cucumbers which did fair, and the broccoli, also fair. We appreciated their visits–we want to support wildlife after all.

However, we tried to lessen our support for the chipmunks and squirrels that became such little rogues. Despite netting over the blueberries, once they figured out they could squeeze holes into it, they got the rest of the blueberries, though we did get a bunch before that. I am happy to say that the baffle on the bird feeder totally worked. They never got up to the feeder after the baffle was installed. So I am hoping that without all that extra food to stash, the population won’t explode like it did this year. The long game. And the birds keep coming back to the feeder.

In the front yard, we never had monarchs lay eggs on our milkweed plants, despite their visit. Maybe next year? The netting on our kale and carrot bed was a great success. It protected the kale from cabbage moths, and no one tried to get into it. We have a ton of kale harvested and still to harvest.

Rectangle garden bed filled with green kale of two kinds, covered over with a translucent net on white metal supports.

The robins never came back to their nest on our back porch after the babies had been attacked. Still so sad about that. We’ve had some lovely visits with human friends out by the pond. The pond water level went down with the drought, but this weekend’s rain helped, especially after adding water from the newly filled rain barrels. Still a few frogs, though I am not sure about the tadpoles. They hide under the lily pads, and it’s a lucky day to see them.

And… and… and… Gaza is still being attacked night and day, and starved by blockades. International resistance is growing but too slowly for the people killed each day. I keep bearing witness, and praying. It’s the same with the rising fascism of our country, and the attacks on immigrants both documented and undocumented, and citizens who are brown or black or speak Spanish. The only thing that gives me hope are the multiple levels of resistance from huge demonstrations to lawsuits to governors who slap back. Here we do the best we can to get by, day by day, accepting our situation as elders and those who are chronically ill. In the face of so much cruelty and hate, we add our little love to the mix, hoping to be part of the larger Love which is our only real hope.

Feeding Each Other

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female hummingbird flying near red feeder

This summer, we’ve been blessed to feed hummingbirds in our yard, both through flowers like bee balm, and also through our little red hummingbird feeder that we fill with a sugar solution. Earth creatures feed each other. Everyone needs to eat. This happens through the incredible natural chain of life, some animals eating plants, other animals eating animals. But the deepest natural order is that all animals must eat. The interconnected circle of life. We participate in this circle, by what we eat, and by how we feed others.

Perhaps this is why forced starvation is such a horrific crime. To cut off a people from food is a crime against humanity, and also a crime against the natural order of life. I have been daily bearing witness to the forced starvation of people in Gaza by the Israeli government. There is food aid literally waiting at the border being denied entry. My heart is breaking every day. As the starvation goes on, it becomes impossible for people to heal from the damage it does to their bodies, even if they survive. Every day more people are dying and more people are reaching a point of no return. One action that is being organized is to pressure mainstream media to cover the fact that Israel is starving Gazans, which should be headline news everywhere in the world. You can find a template to flood media inboxes at https://writersagainstthewarongaza.com/action.

I also want to bear witness to the starvation happening in Sudan. I am not seeing so much about it in the news. When the current regime in Washington closed the doors on USAID, the situation there became dire. According to an article today in Closer to the Edge:

“The U.S. was once Sudan’s largest humanitarian donor. USAID funded almost half the international aid reaching the country. Then, with the flick of a legislative pen and the grinning cruelty of budget hawks who will never see a famine up close, that support was ripped away. Community kitchens—lifelines for displaced families—shut down. Nutrition programs vanished… The numbers are so obscene they should scream off the page: 25 million people acutely food insecure, over 770,000 children under five on track to suffer severe acute malnutrition this year, and nearly 100,000 cholera cases since last summer. ” 

We are all connected. I am remembering that the very first moral imperative according to the parables of Jesus, was simply this: “I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”

Fighting with Squirrels (and Chipmunks)

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White netting draped over two blueberry bushes, using fence stakes

The intent of our permaculture gardening is to create a mutually beneficial relationship with the earth and all her creatures. But lately, it feels like a little backyard battle. The squirrels have literally eaten all of the green peaches off our peach tree. (Last year there seemed to be enough for all of us.) They have been also eating raspberries, hazelnuts (still green) and mulberries, but I sort of gave up on all of those. I have tried to protect these two blueberry bushes by covering them with netting, garden-stapled down, and using clothes pins to close the side opening. I have actually harvested some blueberries. But the last couple days, they’ve pushed their way through holes they make in the netting. When I see them, I run out yelling and clapping, and they dart around the edges to find their way out and run away.

To be fair, there is another variable this summer. I stopped filling the bird feeder some weeks back because the chipmunks would immediately climb up, fill their cheeks, climb down, and transport the seed to their underground lairs; and then repeat until all the seed was gone. The squirrels also took a fair amount. I wonder if the sunflower seeds were the tribute I had been paying to our little neighbors that ensured that they’d save us a few peaches? But yesterday, perhaps I upped the ante, because I installed a baffle on the feeder, and coated the pole with coconut oil. I really do want to feed the birds, not all the greedy chipmunks and squirrels. So here is the new set-up, (the bush is at least five feet away–I pruned it to make sure):

Green metal bird feeder with clear plastic baffle a few inches down, in front of a green bush background.

Margy and I have a little side bet going as to when they might be able to breach these new security measures. It has been up for twenty-four hours so far. No squirrels, chipmunks so far. But the birds haven’t come back yet either. The next few days will tell. And in case it isn’t easy to see, the original bird-feeder is also “squirrel-proof,” with a weight dependent bar that drops down to close the seed opening. But they figured that out long ago. They are so smart, and acrobatic. In many ways I love them. But I don’t love that they take all the fruit in our garden.

Anyway, I just needed to write about this other side of gardening. I am so impressed by the work farmers do! If we relied only on our own gardening skills, we would go hungry. But perhaps this is one of the lessons I am learning about how to be in a mutually beneficial relationship with the earth, and during climate warming too. We are all under a lot of stress, trying to survive. We don’t have complete systems in place, we don’t have our own ancestral knowledge, we are trying to recover from great imbalance. So we keep showing up, keep going outside, keep being grateful for the gifts of the earth.

And these days, I can’t write about anything food-related without also expressing rage at the intentional starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza by the state of Israel. They destroyed their farms and gardens, and destroyed access to water, and access to help from outside. How many more people will die before the world powers stop this genocide?

Living lying down

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mussed up light blue sheet with two cat paws peeking out, black and white fur

I’ve been trying to figure out what it all means. I mean my life these days. What does it mean to be ill, to be mostly fatigued, to be compelled to rest most of the hours of my days? I wasn’t sure what photo could go with this question, and then I happened to see this photo of Billie from five years ago, her body hidden under a sheet on the bed, just her little paws sticking out. Somehow that fits. These days I am mostly hidden, lying down somewhere, sometimes under a sheet, and just a tiny part of me emerging into the world now and then.

I used to admire the elders who were out on the picket lines into their eighties and nineties. It makes me sad, but I don’t think that can be me. I still care about the things I used to care about. I hunger for justice, for human rights, for kindness, for peace. I still rage against cruelty, oppression, violence, and genocide. I scroll on Facebook and try to bear witness to all that is happening out there. I share posts that document the atrocities, in the hope that bearing witness is better than silence. I share posts that document the resistance, in order to foster hope in the face of so much despair. But is that diminished activism what my life now is meant to be about? Is it what it means?

Spoon theory is a method of managing energy for many people with disabilities and/or chronic illness–if we only have so many spoonfuls of energy, we have to ration our activities to match the spoons we have. Lately I am always running out of spoons before I can finish the tasks of daily living. I am lucky if I can keep up with the dishes in the kitchen sink, keep up with cleaning out the litter box for the cats, keep up with watering the vegetables I was so bold to plant. Are these tasks of daily living what my life means now? Do I need to cultivate that Zen approach to being fully present in each moment, however mundane?

Meanwhile, I spend many hours lying on the couch watching tv shows on Roku. Sometimes I have to manage my energy for that too. I can’t handle too much drama. British mysteries are about right, especially if I have seen them before and they are well done. Nature shows are usually okay, unless there is too much about how we are destroying it. Sometimes I nap during the shows. Lately, I’ve been watching “Would I lie to you?” on Britbox for laughs. It all feels rather pathetic actually, but this is the unvarnished truth.

I don’t have the answers to my questions. I don’t know what it all means. But I feel like I have to wrestle with this reality I am living in, wrestle with the meaning, because that is also still who I am, a wrestler-with-meaning. I can look out on the world, but I must also look into this intimate space under the covers. I believe that each human being has inherent dignity, each life has ultimate value. I believe that we are all connected. So how do I find the ultimate value in this life of mine, right now, not based on what I have done or who I have been, but right now. Still able to write sometimes, but about to lie down for the rest of the day.

Monarch and milkweed

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Orange and black monarch butterfly is flying above milkweek plants with green leaves and pinks flower clusters.

Today a monarch butterfly finally found our little milkweed patch in our roadside garden bed.

Last year, three plants appeared there on their own, and in late July we saw a caterpillar. In the spring we scattered some fluffy seedpods in the soil hoping to expand the numbers. This year we have a patch of about a dozen. As they grew and then bloomed, I’d look out the front windows, hoping to see a monarch. But nothing until today. It is amazing that the monarchs can find such tiny patches of milkweed, scattered in city neighborhoods.

In the midst of all that is heavy, it feels good to support these far-traveling little migrants.

A Little Gift

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I don’t have a new photo to share, but this afternoon, I saw a young robin pecking the ground in the orchard. It had the slightly mottled chest coloring of a juvenile. It didn’t stay long, it quickly flew away, but it brought me a moment of hope. I can’t prove it, but I think it might be the young robin that I tried to help last week. That’s why I am resharing the last photo of that fierce baby, taken on June 21st. I feel that witnessing its presence in the garden is a gift.

Today has been a day that needed a little sign from heaven, a little miracle. The Senate passed by a tie-breaker vote its version of the big horrible bill that will kill so many people who lose healthcare, if it is now passed by the House. I don’t want to say anymore about that right now, but every call, every email, every public witness is like a prayer for hope, for goodness, against cruelty and greed. We are facing so much destruction and pain. But I feel the presence of Spirit with all of us who do whatever we can for our common good, for our intertwined life here on this planet.

Kindness or cruelty?

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White woman on left of phot with tan baseball cap and rust shirt, just visible at hands, holding a phone facing pebbled shoreline with horseshoe crabs in the water mating, and huge boulders on the other side.

The other day, Margy and I went to Maquoit Bay to see horseshoe crabs that had come to shore to mate. Margy especially loves horseshoe crabs and has learned a great deal about them. It was shortly after high tide, and we noticed that a few of the crabs had wandered behind and between big boulders placed on the site, in a way that they were trapped. (Much worse than what can be seen in the photo above.) As the tide continued to go out, it was likely that they would be stuck high and dry. So we very carefully lifted them out by the sides of their shells, (never lift them by their spikey tails!) and placed them in the water where they were free to move where they wanted.

To us, it felt like a simple act of kindness for a fellow creature on this planet. We see someone in a vulnerable position, and do our best to be a helper.

I have been astonished and horrified by the cruelty I’ve witnessed (as reported via social media) of people in positions of power in our government. Separating families as they come out from immigration courts. Detaining a young child with leukemia. Sending migrants to horrible prisons in countries to which they have no connection. Terrorizing people as they garden, or shop, or go to work, while wearing masks and refusing identification. Detaining a pregnant woman and offering no medical care. Such is the state of DHS and ICE activity in our country. Cruelty seems to be the point.

I am thinking also of the people in Gaza, who are still being starved and bombed, and shot by IDF soldiers even as they line up to try to get food. Some soldiers even admitted that they were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. I feel so helpless to stop the harm, to stop the genocide.

It seems there is no end to cruelty. It has been troubling me greatly. And I wonder why? Why be as cruel as a human can be to fellow human beings? Don’t all religious and ethical traditions lift up our common human bonds and encourage us to love our neighbor, and love the stranger in our midst? What does it do to the human beings behind the masks or the guns to act with violence and cruelty every day?

Are the people in charge in our country trying to instigate retaliatory violence to justify further oppression? Is it some oligarchic strategy of conquest? Is it a way to convince themselves that some human beings are not really human beings? Are they truly this cruel and this evil? And then, how can they convince ordinary people to follow along? Ordinary people who might value kindness over cruelty.

All I can do is to keep speaking out about it, to share the daily reports of the people who have been detained or killed, to see their names, to weep. I recently decided to do one more thing, to purchase a keffiyeh from Palestine. This traditional scarf was worn as a headdress or face covering, and in recent years has come to symbolize the Palestinian yearning for freedom. For those of us who are not Palestinian, it symbolizes solidarity. For me, I am moved by the fact that it was made by Palestinians in the West Bank, touched by their hands, their hopes. And now it is touched by my hands, my hopes for them. I feel that spiritual and physical connection. I wear it for the children being starved in Gaza, for the families being bombed in their tents or apartments. I wear it for all the helpers who do whatever they can to help, in the midst of so much cruelty. I wear it as a symbol of connection between human beings,

Myke, a white woman with reddish gray hair, wearing a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh wrapped over her shoulders.

On June 14, Margy and I couldn’t go to one of the thousands of No Kings rallies to protest the usurping of power that this regime is attempting. (This is life with chronic illness…) So we decided to sit in our own driveway with a sign, and bear witness in our neighborhood. During that hour and a half, we had about 20 positive responses from people driving by or walking by. A few people looked away but no one was angry or negative. Because we were out there, we also learned that a few neighbors had gone downtown to the rally as well. This photo was taken by Margy… it is her empty chair on the right. So we were two of the millions who protested that day!

Big cardboard sign saying "no Kings" held by Myke, seated, wearing keffiyeh, resting on second chair.

I hope that if I keep speaking up, it will inspire others to speak up as well. I think of the Ella Baker quote in the song by Sweet Honey in the Rock: “I want to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny.” Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our kindness. Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our sense of human connection.

Robin survivor?

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This morning there was more excitement concerning the sole surviving baby robin. It had walked out from the nest onto the nearby beam, even into the next section of beam. So it was alive! But the parents went back and forth calling several times. I was watching through the glass of the back door, hoping that they would find it and feed it. Then, finally, one of the parents brought the baby a big mouthful of worms–and just as it got them it its mouth, it fell down to the deck below. There it sat, seemingly stunned for a long time. I kept watch, not wanting it to be gotten by some predator, but also not knowing what to do. I even put in a call to Avian Haven, but it was before business hours. (8:30 a.m.) I wondered if it was injured.

Finally, I went outside, and went near to it, and it started to walk away. It seemed able to walk, but it never flapped its wings like it was trying to fly. Too young I think. Only 9 days old. So I gently picked it up and put it back up into the nest. And it seemed like that might work, and the parents came back and forth, and fed it up on the ledge, where it had once again walked on to. The parents were both very solicitous and sometimes called to the chick, and sometimes scolded at me. When Avian Haven called back (after I had put it back in the nest) they suggested that if the parents were still attending to the chick, it was best to leave it with them, and not take it away.

However, would you believe it? It once again fell or jumped from the beam and landed on the deck again. It was lying on its side but then righted itself quickly and literally walked over to our glass door and looked up at me. As if to say, “help, here I am on the deck again.” So fierce its little face!

Margy was here by now, and we knew a grocery delivery would be coming soon to the back porch, so there was that pressure. So finally I went out on the deck with a shoebox, thinking to put it in that for safety, but it quickly walked away along the wall and jumped off the deck (about 2 1/2 feet down maybe) and was in a little side corner near the steps with no way out. I thought I’d try to get it to jump in the box–but by now it was acting more lively. When my hand came over its head, though, it opened its beak as if I might feed it. I was able to shoo it toward the open box, but once in the box it did not like that at all, so I quickly brought it over to the other side of the porch steps and set it onto a patch of ground cover plants. Then it decided to walk under the deck, out of my sight.

The whole morning I was never sure what to do, to leave everything alone, or to help, and in what way. I don’t know why the parents kept calling to the chick. It reminded me of when they were trying to get their previous set of chicks to fledge, but this one was obviously too young to fly. I wondered if whatever trauma had happened the night before, that left two chicks dead, and one missing, might have freaked them out so they wanted to get their chick away from that nest. Or maybe they were giving protective warnings to whatever might have disturbed the nest before. (For example, the chipmunk that frequents the area.) As a human neighbor, is my presence helpful or harmful?

The parents have come back now and are calling repeatedly, but at least one of them was down on the ground, so maybe they’ve figured out that the chick is underneath the deck. I hope so. It is too dark under there for me to see. So I may never know the fate of the chick. But I do take comfort in how fierce it was in those last moments of our interaction. It probably only needs a few more days to grow before it would be ready to fly.