Mary Beth Danielson’s
Prairie Dog Quadrilateral
November 9, 2013 Volume 40
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Douglas Adams
Quadrilateral: “How do we know if something is true?”




Scripture – Whatever document we hold as True. For most Americans, that is the Bible.
Tradition – The history of how people have handled themselves and structured their comings and
goings in situations of ordinary and extraordinary life.
Reason – The logic of the world around us, i.e. the Sciences.
Experience – Our own paths through life; what has and has not worked for us.
1
Dear Friends,
Guess who feels healthy and filled with
energy because I have hours of November
in my soul? Those whiny health experts
aren’t all wrong.
Holy Cow! Three weeks until Thanksgiving
and already I feel bursts of Seasonal
Activity. Gusts of Agenda are blowing into
my life; I am being sucked into gathering
swirls of Stuff to Do.
(Also, who else do you know whose face is
getting tan? In Wisconsin? In November?)
To be fair, three of the things I “jammed
into” the next few weeks are routine
medical appointments and a haircut. Not
exactly glittering activities. And yes, this
year there is a tad more MayaWorks to pull
off than usual because Intrepidly Generous
Pat is sick and can’t do everything like she
usually does.
Here’s the thing. This is what still surprises
me about the way life feels.
When I was 16 I loved posters. (That was so
long ago that posters were nouveau.) My
mom and I sometimes visited my sister
Karen at her apartment in Chicago. We’d
occasionally go to the Art Institute where I
saw this painting, then bought the poster
for my room. (Song of the Lark, Jules
Breton)
(Idea: Maybe you could “pay” for your
Prairie Dog Quadrilateral “subscription” by
going over to MayaWorks.org and buying a
thing or two for yourself or someone else?)
My health insurance company woke up like
a leviathan in the past few weeks. Suddenly
the HR coordinator at my company is
strongly (and kindly) URGING people to
garner points towards something called
Silver Vitality Points. It enough of us do this
it might make our premiums (across the
board) be less in the coming year. Just as
suddenly I have a fancy-dancy pedometer
with its own built-in thumb drive. Every day
I plug it in and if there are more than 10,000
steps, I get points towards the Magical
Helpful Silver. Guess who has walked an
hour a day every day the last week?
Including the day I also worked 10 hours at
my job?
I woke up to this image every day of high
school. I would lollygag in bed on Saturday
mornings, studying this beautiful, hardworking girl who, I realized, was about my
2
age. I would wonder when I would ever be
a soulful and clear-visioned as I was sure
she was. I remember wanting, so badly, to
have another poster that would be as
evocative and inspiring to me as this one. I
tried to make my own poster. I still have it
and I am not going to show it to you
because it is heartfelt and badly done. I will
tell you the “motto” I made for myself, after
a great deal of thinking about what I
wanted from my life.
And with that, I am going to look for as
many good photos as I can find, stick them
in here, and call it a night.
I want to make brownies with walnuts and
raisins. We are going to see all of our kids
tomorrow and I plan on having a very fine
day.
Have a good week,
Mary Beth
My poster said, “Realization is Sweet.”
What I meant was I wanted someday to be
as pure, clear, and onward-walking as the
girl in the poster.
And here I am, 45 years later. Now
(humorously) I can see that a good painter
paints what we hope for, not necessarily
what we will get.
Because I still get bamboozled by too much
to do, too many cool and dumb ideas, too
many people I want to spend time with, too
many opportunities and not enough time.
Fair Trade makes the world more Fair. Buy
some Fair Trade this gift-giving season, OK?
I wouldn’t mention this unless I thought this
was likely quite true for you, too.
So if you think that all you need is a better
system, to be more organized. To have
more energy or to simply to grit your teeth
and get it all done – maybe the thing is that
this your life is not out of sync. That this is
just the way life is.
Do what we can, laugh as much as possible.
Think less about getting organized and
more about how to live well in whatever
moment we are in.
3
Do you think Moses saw a Burning Bush in
the wilderness?
Tomato pies for supper.
And finally, I read this, this week.
“What an African woman nurtures in
the soil will eventually feed her family.
Likewise, what she nurtures in her relations
will ultimately nurture her community. It is a
matter of living the circle.
Look closely. Not only do we have beauty
here, in the background there seems to be a
beast grilling something for my dinner….
“Because we have forgotten our
kinship with the land…our kinship with each
other has become pale. We shy away from
accountability and involvement. We choose
to be occupied, which is quite different from
being engaged. In America, time is money.
In Kenya, time is relationship. We look at
investments differently.”
This is a conversation between the
writer and a Kikuya (from Kenya) friend of
hers, who also lived in Utah. The book is
“Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and
Place” by Terry Tempest Williams. Written
1991. Williams is a gorgeous writer and
powerful environmentalist.
Suunaabaa is the gray guy who is our
greeter cat. If you have been to my house,
you’ve met him. Lulu is our shape-shifter.
Only three people outside our family have
ever seen her. This is proof we do, in fact,
have two cats. And they like each other.
4