a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Honoring
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
She had to take her nursing infant
with her to her final exam
because the babysitter hadn’t shown up.
The professor threw her out,
but she completed her degree
and has been teaching for thirty years.
Now she is facing another exam,
one called cancer.
We, as mothers, daughters, and grandmothers,
are connected through our wombs.
We will stand with her, all of us together.
No one will throw her out.
Filed under Uncategorized
Article Appearing in Nine Wisconsin Newspapers
This above article is about my newest book, Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings. John Looker wrote a great review of the book too:
Filed under Uncategorized
Podcast About Leadership
Christine Reidhead has just informed me that The Los Angeles Tribune has put a second podcast I did with Christine on leadership on its website’s front page. We did ten of these in total, and the Tribune has told Christine that they have reviewed all ten and will be running all ten of them. How Christine talks me into these things sort of mystifies me, and then how she manages to get major national coverage for them amazes me even more. Her work at Navajo Technical University in the Navajo Nation as the head of the business department is amazing. Her list of scholarly publications in business journals keeps growing. Her founding of Afrika Rising!, a non-profit that works in Africa, has earned her multiple significant honors. She is much more extraordinary than I am. I have no idea how many magazines have had her on their front cover. I just know that it has been a lot of them. The Tribune also ran a long article about the second podcast in the ten podcast series to accompany the podcast’s availability. Here’s the link:
https://thelosangelestribune.com/2020/11/10/tom-davis-reveals-qualities-of-leadership-in-the-latest-podcast-with-christine-reidhead/?fbclid=IwAR1H9d1M8hatVEdg3XfJknSloDRnLouuZSuLou-thP0PBa3x8DxH0jHvbDU
Filed under Uncategorized
New Logo for a new website
Ethel and I have put up a new website for the small publishing effort, Four Windows Press, we keep developing. Our granddaughter, Phoebe Wood, has come up with a logo for the website, which is located at http://www.fourwindowspress1.com. Ethel likes the logo as a work of art!
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Whipped Cream
after 11 inches of new snow
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography, Uncategorized
Little Bird
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
for April Chischilly
Little bird,
with wound on her chest,
comes to my water
each day.
Other birds
push her back,
but she is steadfast and stays.
She reminds me of you.
The first sunlight
that warms my body
in the early spring
after a long, cold winter
reminds me of you.
This morning, as the red, glowing mushroom
shone out from the dark forest floor,
an orange- red like no other,
it, too,
reminds me of you.
Filed under Uncategorized
Beneath the Red Cliffs
by Thomas Davis
for April Chischilly
Beneath red cliffs as first morning light reflects fire
into an impossibly blue sky,
a Navajo woman, aging, calm, long black hair and black eyes
a part of high desert juniper and pinion trees,
walks as beauty stirs backwards and forward in time.
The medicine man in his Hogan’s darkness
sees a woman he doesn’t know through an ancient crystal
handed from medicine man to medicine man
through thousands and thousands of years.
He feels heart-strength, spirit-strength,
sees her facing what is beyond the light’s weaving,
her beauty-song echoing and echoing
into the song of women, the spirit of women
who have forever given birth
and lived through the everyday turmoil of everyday
without flinching, trying to find the courage that is who she is.
Courage weaves a blanket from light out of the woman’s heart
into the texture of red stone.
It rises from the moment when sons were born,
patience was worn away as dreams and hopes were deferred,
as self honesty penetrated weaving consciousness
that tries to protect itself in the interest of shuttling
strength and goodness into the sinews and spirits of children.
Speaking softly, singing beauty, the Navajo woman walks
beneath cliff fire ignited by first light
beneath an impossibly blue sky.
The Navajo woman walks beneath red cliffs
in an impossible blue sky
as first light sets sandstone walls on fire.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis, Uncategorized
What Kind of People are We?
By Ethel Mortenson Davis
Many people are hired
to view disturbing pictures
on Facebook in order
to take them off.
The video is so disturbing
that the people viewing these
cannot continue in their jobs
because they take home
these images in their heads,
and ghosts haunt them
throughout the night.
These are pictures
of rapes of men, women, and children,
and the killings and torture
of women and children and men
along with animals.
People viewing the images
have to leave their jobs with PTSD.
What kind of people are we?
What kind of people do we want to become?
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Uncategorized
fourwindowspress 