This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities. Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.
The Stories with the Images, Part 2
So far I have completed four woodcuts in the "Ancient Wisdom" series. Last week I highlighted two in the series of four. Here are the stories associated the remaining two so far.
1. "Wa-Maka-Skan"
Wa-Maka-Skan is a Lakota word for all the moving things of the Earth. This woodcut print depicts four types-- the winged peoples, the crawling peoples, the four-legged peoples, and the two-leggeds. The concept and the word reflects a more biocentricworldview, a more life-centered approach to viewing humans' place among other "moving things."
2. "Storyteller's Circle"
In an earlier time, before the recorded word, cultural knowledge was passed from generation to generation through stories told by elders to children. The advantage of the oral tradition is that the stories may be modified by those with experience and insight to fit the changing circumstances of the people. The disadvantage of this mode of cultural coordination is that as the storytellers fade away or are displaced by the written word, both the language and the lessons fade away also. The oral tradition is flexible, but it is extinction-prone. The recorded word has the advantage of "permanence," but the disadvantage of archived error.
