Home >> Legendary Mud Puds >> Pioneering Thinkers >> Wangari Muta Maathair

Wangari Muta Maathai

Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai is an environmental and political activist. In 2004 she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”

Being Beneath the Dirt

Active on both environmental and women’s issues, Maathai has been imprisoned several times and violently attacked. She fought, for example, to end political corruption and tribal politics. In another instance, her husband of 11 years divorced her, claiming that she was too strong-minded for a woman and that he was unable to control her. The judge in the divorce case agreed with the husband, and Wangari was put in jail for speaking out against the judge.

Branching Out Roots for Balance

After finishing school in Kenya, Maathai traveled to the United States where she obtained a Master’s Degree in biology, before returning to Nairobi. There, she earned the first Ph.D. awarded to an Eastern African woman. Since that time, she has contributed immensely to environmental campaigns in Kenya. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots environmental non-governmental organization, which has now planted over 40 million trees across Kenya to prevent soil erosion. She later spearheaded the United Nations Billion Tree Campaign. She has come to be affectionately called “Tree Woman” or “The Tree Mother of Africa.”

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

In 1997, in Kenya’s second multi-party elections marred by ethnic violence, she ran for the country’s presidency. She was a minor candidate among several contenders. In 2002 Maathai was elected to parliament when the National Rainbow Coalition, which she represented, defeated the ruling party Kenya African National Union. She has been Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife since 2003, and in 2005, she was elected as the first president of the African Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council.

Reaching Fruition

In 2006, Maathai was one of the founders of The Nobel Women’s Initiative along with sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. These six women, representing North America and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, decided to bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. The goal of the Nobel Women’s Initiative is to help strengthen work being done in support of women’s rights around the world.

Leaving a Legacy

In a statement announcing her as the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, “Her unique forms of action have contributed to drawing attention to political oppression—nationally and internationally. She has served as inspiration for many in the fight for democratic rights and has especially encouraged women to better their situation.”

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”

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Home >> Legendary Mud Puds >> Unlikely Heroes >> Julia Butterfly Hill

Julia Butterfly Hill

Julia Butterfly Hill is an activist and environmentalist best known for living in a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, 600-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997 to December 18, 1999. Hill lived in the tree, affectionately known as “Luna,” to prevent loggers of the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting it down.

Being Beneath the Dirt

Hill suffered a severe brain injury in a car crash a year before her tree-sitting experience. She embarked on a spiritual quest afterwards and came away believing that human beings could transform themselves; this eventually led her to the environmental cause opposed to the destruction of the redwood forests in Humboldt County, California.

Branching Out Roots for Balance

Originally, Hill was not officially affiliated with any environmental organization, deciding by herself to undertake the act of civil disobedience. Soon, Hill was actively supported by Earth First!, among other organizations and volunteers. She and other activists founded the organization Circle of Life Foundation.

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

Midway through Julia’s tree sit, a benefit concert was played at the Mateel Community Center in Redway, California. Performing artists included Bob Weir and Mark Karan as an acoustic duet, the Steve Kimock Band, and the Mickey Hart Band. Julia also participated in the event, reading her poem “Luna” via telephone while the Mickey Hart Band performed.

Reaching Fruition

A resolution was reached in 1999 when the Pacific Lumber Company agreed to preserve Luna and all trees within a 3-acre (12,000 m2) buffer zone. In exchange, Hill agreed to vacate the tree. In addition, $50,000 that Hill and other activists raised during the cause was given to the logging company, as stipulated by the resolution. The $50,000 Earth First! paid to Pacific Lumber was then donated to a local university to do research about sustainable forestry.

Leaving a Legacy

Hill was the subject of the 2000 documentary film Butterfly, and she is featured in the documentary film Tree-Sit: The Art of Resistance, both chronicling her time in the redwood tree. A film about Hill called Luna is scheduled for release in 2009, directed by noted Indian director, Deepa Mehta.

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”

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Home >> Legendary Mud Puds >> Visionary Artists >> Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan’s most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest, and a number of his songs became anthems of the civil rights movements.

Being Beneath the Dirt

Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, grew up in a small, close-knit Jewish community in Minnesota. He spent much of his youth listening to the radio, first to blues and country stations and later to early rock and roll. He formed several bands in high school: the first, The Shadow Blasters, was short-lived; but his next band, The Golden Chords, lasted longer playing covers of popular songs.

Zimmerman enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1959, and dropped out of at the end of his freshman year. While attending school, he began introducing himself as “Bob Dylan,” performing in a coffee house near the college campus. He then worked the local folk music circuit and made short visits to Denver, Colorado; Madison, Wisconsin; and Chicago, Illinois. In 1961, he moved to New York City, hoping to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie.

Branching Out Roots for Balance

In New York, Dylan played at various clubs around Greenwich Village. Gaining public recognition his talents caught the attention of Columbia Records producer, John Hammond, who signed Dylan to record his self-titled first album, which consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with two original compositions. After his album’s release in 1962, Dylan made two important career moves: he officially changed his name to Robert Dylan, and he signed a management contract with Albert Grossman.

The rough edge of Dylan’s singing was unsettling to some early listeners but an attraction to others. His voice was described as raw, seemingly untrained, and nasally. Perhaps because of this, many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through more immediately palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan’s advocate, as well as his lover. Other recording artists who had hits with Dylan’s songs in the early and mid-1960s included The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, Manfred Mann, and The Turtles.

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

By the time Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was released in 1963, he had begun making a name for himself as both a singer and a lyricist. Many of the songs on this album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger’s passion for topical songs. “Oxford Town”, for example, was a sardonic account of James Meredith’s ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi. His most famous song of the time, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” questioned the social and political status quo, and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” was veiled with references to nuclear apocalypse. These songs marked an important new direction in modern songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with a traditional folk form.

In 1963, Dylan was prominent in the civil rights movement, singing at rallies including the March on Washington in August. Accordingly, Dylan’s third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, reflected a more politicized and cynical Dylan. The songs often took as their subject matter contemporaneous, real life stories, while Freewheelin’ was more eclectic, including his characteristic topical songs along with a mixture of love songs and humorous, surreal talking blues. Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in 1964, had a lighter mood than its predecessor.

Reaching Fruition

In the latter half of 1964 and 1965, Dylan’s appearance and musical style changed rapidly, as he made his move from acoustic music to a rock backing. Dylan’s cultural synthesis is exemplified by his mid-’60s trilogy of albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In the songs he created between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique, drawing on folk, blues, rock, country, R&B, beatnik poetry, and social commentary. His hit single, “Like a Rolling Stone,” peaked at #2 in the U.S. and at #4 in the UK charts.

In 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the recording studio after a 19-month break, and recorded John Wesley Harding, a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on both the American West and the Bible. It included “All Along the Watchtower,” with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). Dylan’s next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was virtually a mainstream country record featuring instrumental backing by Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single “Lay Lady Lay.”

Additional albums followed, with varying degrees of success, and the music and influence of Bob Dylan continued to evolve, devolve, impress and disappoint, depending on the audience. In recent times, 1997 saw the release of his highly acclaimed album, Time Out of Mind, which won Dylan his first “Album of the Year” Grammy. He and his touring band recorded and released “Love and Theft” in 2001, featuring an expanded musical palette that included rockabilly, swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads. Dylan 2006 album, Modern Times, entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan’s first album to reach that position since 1976′s Desire, 30 years prior.

Leaving a Legacy

While expanding and personalizing musical styles, he has explored many traditions of American song, from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock, jazz, and swing. Although his accomplishments as a performer and recording artist have been central to his career, his songwriting is generally regarded as his greatest contribution. Dylan’s early lyrics incorporated political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defying existing pop music conventions and appealing widely to the counterculture. His later lyrics continue to dazzle, with a shining talent for vividness, potency, and originality.

Regarding his talent as a song writer, one legacy of Dylan’s verbal sophistication was the increasing attention paid by literary scholars to his lyrics. Dylan has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 2008, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” Initially modeling his style on the songs of Woody Guthrie, and lessons learnt from the blues of Robert Johnson, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 60s, infusing it “with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry.”

Bob Dylan has been described as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, musically and culturally. He was included in the Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century where he was called “master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation.” In 2004, he was ranked number two in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “Greatest Artists of All Time.” Dylan biographer Howard Sounes placed him in even more exalted company when he said, “There are giant figures in art who are sublimely good—Mozart, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Shakespeare, Dickens. Dylan ranks alongside these artists.”

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”

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Home >> Legendary Mud Puds >> Visionary Artists >> Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee is widely regarded as the most influential martial artist of the twentieth century. He was the founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts system as well as a philosopher, instructor, filmmaker, and actor.

Being Beneath the Dirt

Lee was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hong Kong. Before reaching adulthood, he earned the titles of 1958 Boxing Champion and the Crown Colony Cha Cha Champion of Hong Kong. In his youth and throughout his lifetime, his martial arts prowess often made him the target of street thugs, stunt men, and other ruffians, all hoping to defeat the undefeated. At the age of 18, Bruce Lee got into trouble with the law after badly beating an opponent during a fight.

“If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”

Branching Out Roots for Balance

His parents, concerned about his safety, sent young Bruce to the United States to live with a friend of the family. He left for the United States with only $100 in his pocket. While in the U.S. from 1958-1964, Lee graduated high school and attended college, majoring in drama and philosophy. With his impressive martial arts talent, he earned acting roles in a handful of television shows. He was able only to find supporting roles in the U.S., but he aspired to lead.

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

Lee returned to Hong Kong, and the first film in which he starred proved to be an enormous box office success across Asia and catapulted him to stardom. In 1972, Lee’s success grew exponentially with the release of Fist of Fury, and Way of the Dragon, a film that he produced as the writer, director, and star. These films elevated the traditional Kung Fu film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, and sparked the first major surge of interest in the West. Lee became a cultural icon particularly to the Chinese as he portrayed Chinese national pride and Chinese nationalism in his movies.

Reaching Fruition

Bruce Lee instructed several World Karate Champions, including Chuck Norris, Joe Lewis, and Mike Stone. During their training with Lee, these three men won every Karate championship in the United States. Lee began teaching martial arts in the U.S. in 1959. In his philosophy, traditional martial arts techniques were too rigid and formalistic to be practical in scenarios of chaotic street fighting. So he developed a new system, called Jeet Kune Do, focusing on practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency. He emphasized what he called “the style of no style,” and his personal training regimen constantly adapted and improved, incorporating weight training, exercise, and stretching into his practice.

Leaving a Legacy

Many see Bruce Lee as a model blueprint for acquiring a strong and efficient body and the highest possible level of physical fitness, as well as developing a mastery of martial arts and hand-to-hand combat skills. He was also known for his philosophical assertions both inside and outside of martial arts circles. His influences include Taoism, Jiddo Krishnamurti, and Buddhism.

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”

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Home >> Legendary Mud Puds >> Unlikely Heroes >> Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi is a pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma. She is a noted prisoner of conscience and advocate of nonviolent resistance. She is currently under detention, with the Burmese junta repeatedly extending her detention. According to the results of the 1990 general election, Suu Kyi earned the right to be Prime Minister, as leader of the winning National League for Democracy party, but her detention by the military junta prevented her from assuming that role.

Being Beneath the Dirt

Aung San Suu Kyi grew up with her mother. Her father was a general in the Burmese army and negotiated Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947; he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. In her adulthood, lived abroad, married, and gave birth to two sons. Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother. By coincidence, in that year, the long-time leader of the socialist ruling party stepped down, leading to mass demonstrations for democratization. These demonstrations were violently suppressed. A new military junta took power.

Branching Out Roots for Balance

Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and by more specifically Buddhist concepts, she became involved with politics. In 1988, she helped found the National League for Democracy, working for democratization, and in 1990, the military junta called a general election. Suu Kyi represented the NLD as a candidate for Prime Minister, and her party won the election decisively. Under normal circumstances, she would have assumed the office of Prime Minister. Instead, the results were nullified, and the military refused to hand over power. This resulted in an international outcry, and Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at her home.

Since the time of her arrest, the junta has prevented Aung San Suu Kyi from meeting with her party supporters and international visitors, including her family. She was offered freedom only if she left the country. When she was released from house arrest in 1995, the junta made it clear that if she left the country to visit her family in the UK, she could not return to Burma. When her husband, a British citizen, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, the Burmese government denied him an entry visa. Aung San Suu Kyi remained in Burma, and never again saw her husband, who died in 1999. In 2000, the junta put her under house arrest again, where she remained separated from her children, who were living in the UK.

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

In 2002, following secret confidence-building negotiations led by the United Nations, the government released her, and Aung San Suu Kyi proclaimed “a new dawn for the country.” However, a year later, a government-sponsored mob attacked her caravan in the northern village of Depayin, murdering and wounding many of her supporters. Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene with the help of her driver, but was arrested upon reaching her destination. The government imprisoned her at Insein Prison in Yangon. In the following months, she underwent a hysterectomy, and the government again placed her under house arrest.

Enduring several periods of detention, she has spent 13 years under arrest, as of October, 2008. Suu Kyi’s house arrest term continues to be extended by the Burmese government, flouting direct appeals from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urging the Burmese government to release Aung San Suu Kyi. In the Spring of 2008, Myanmar extended Suu Kyi’s detention for another year – keeping her confined to her residence for a sixth straight year.

Reaching Fruition

In December 2007, the US Congress voted unanimously to award Aung San Suu Kyi the Congressional Gold Medal. She is the first recipient in American history to receive the prize while imprisoned. In the same year, she was given Honorary Canadian citizenship by the Government of Canada in 2007. She is only the fourth person in history to receive this honor. Suu Kyi won the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and in 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru peace prize by the Government of India for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a military dictatorship.

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The decision of the Nobel Committee notes: “Suu Kyi’s struggle is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades. She has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression…In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honor this woman for her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.” Her sons accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf, and Aung San Suu Kyi used prize money, valued at $1.3 million, to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people.

Leaving a Legacy

In 2008, 59 world leaders released a letter demanding Myanmar’s military government free Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. The signatories include three former US presidents: Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton; former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher; Nobel Peace laureates Lech Wa??sa and Kim Dae-jung and others. In the same year, nine Nobel Peace prize winners: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan, Rigoberta Menchú, Prof. Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams and Jody Williams; released a statement calling for the rulers of Burma to “create the necessary conditions for a genuine dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and all concerned parties and ethnic groups in order to achieve an inclusive national reconciliation with the direct support of the United Nations.”

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”

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Home >> Legendary Mud Puds >> Unlikely Heroes >> Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is a physicist, environmental activist and author. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, is author of over 300 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She is one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, (along with Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, Jeremy Rifkin, et al.), and a figure of the global solidarity movement known as the alter-globalization movement. She has argued for the wisdom of many traditional practices, as is evident from her interview in the book Vedic Ecology (by Ranchor Prime) that draws upon India’s Vedic heritage.

Being Beneath the Dirt

Shiva was born in the valley of Dehradun, to a father who was the conservator of forests and a farmer mother with a love for nature. Her intellectual prowess carried her through a Ph.D. in physics and beyond, as she went on to interdisciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy.

Branching Out Roots for Balance

Shiva participated in the nonviolent Chipko movement during the 1970s. The movement, whose main participants were women, adopted the tactic of hugging trees to prevent their felling.

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

She has fought for changes in the practice and paradigms of agriculture and food, contributing intellectually through her writing and also through activist campaigns. She has assisted grassroots organizations of the Green movement in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Ireland, Switzerland and Austria with campaigns against genetic engineering. She also founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in 1982, which led to the creation of Navdanya, an Indian-based non-governmental organization which promotes biodiversity conservation, organic farming, the rights of farmers, and the process of seed saving.

Reaching Fruition

Shiva has made important contributions not only to the ecologist movement, but also to the feminist movement, particularly in India. Her book, “Staying Alive” helped redefine perceptions of third world women. Shiva has served as an adviser to governments in India and abroad as well as non governmental organizations, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women’s Environment & Development Organization and the Third World Network.

Leaving a Legacy

She has earned worldwide applause for her outstanding services to conservation, ecology, and human rights. In 1993, Shiva received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) for “placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse.” The United Nations has recognized her with two awards, including the Global 500 Award of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 1993, and the Earth Day International Award of the United Nations (UN) for her dedicated commitment to the preservation of the planet as demonstrated by her actions, leadership and by setting an example for the rest of the world.

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”

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Home >> Emerging Mud Puds >> Joan Sheski

Joan Sheski

Once, upon time, I was caught in a web of mistrust, anger, blame, and other creepy attitudes. Annihilation by unchosen sacrifice was always imminent around me. Sometimes I even got deluded into believing it was all my fault. For awhile I used anger and mistrust to survive (my father’s teachings). My trust was betrayed very early and often by my mother. In this existence there were only two safe places: the imaginary worlds in books, and the woods where I played alone.

I began to experience a universe in which love creates everything around us – even the walls of our houses. I think it must be the condition of being inside the hearts of others, and them being inside my heart.

My whole universe is different now. At a turning point of readiness after years of trying to understand, fight back, or gain justice for myself, I realized that I could ask for help from the only trusted place I had: my imagination. Sure enough, it came. It came from grownups to the little girl inside me who couldn’t carry the burden of trying to heal so many ills by herself.

What a relief it was to give this burden to stronger and wiser beings! Letting go of all of this web of trouble opened up vast new spaces to me, not only in the imaginal world, but at the same time in the physical world. Loving, compassionate people welcomed me into a new reality. The light that I am, that was hidden in imagination, became visible to them. They nurtured me, and I could nurture them. I began to experience a universe in which love creates everything around us – even the walls of our houses. I think it must be the condition of being inside the hearts of others, and them being inside my heart.

Everything is very fluid and flexible in this universe. Instead of linear time, there are states of being, maybe cyclical, and instead of cause and effect, there are swirling and merging and dancing energy fields moving us among each other. I am new to this world; I am like a little child feeling my way. In the other universe I was alone, cut off from everything. I never felt like I belonged to anyone or anything or any place. In this one I know I am home.

I am still lonely a lot in this one though, and I don’t always see how the inner dimension relates with the outer one. This universe of love does though; it moves us around on the planet, it forms our homes around us, and dissolves them, it brings us what we need and what it wants us to help it with. The moments when I feel at one with another in this universe are joyful way way beyond description with mere words, and these moments seem to generate creative love energy of infinite magnitude.

Yes, sometimes there are shadows, or I come up against something solid, even threatening. But the new guides here have good advice: don’t react. don’t take sides. let go of logic, let go of fear, and allow the light of compassion to penetrate. Then act as you must, but without anger or vengeance. Your act will then contribute to harmonic energy fields, and make more love possible.

That is what they have told me. So here you have my story, which is old, and new, and metamorphesizing all the time. Love, Joan

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Home >> Emerging Mud Puds >> Cabe Lindsay

Cabe Lindsay

My name is Cabe, and I am happy, even if happiness comes to me in kind of a sad way. On occasional sunny days, I might start to think I’ve found everything I ever wanted in life, and then I realize that I have nothing. I might realize, watching the sunset over an ocean-side cliff, that I am nothing. On the flipside, perhaps during cold and cloudy days, I might feel an overwhelming loneliness, as if I was without a single friend in life. But then a stranger might smile at me, and I might smile back, and maybe I realize that I have everything that matters.

“I am vibrant and colorful man, showered with blessings, living richly, handsomely, courageously, creatively, intelligently devoting a healthy amount of free time into serious fun, relaxation, and fitness for the body, soul, and mind.” ~ Cabe Lindsay

Here I am in my late 20s, often depressed with the thought of being stuck in a chrysalis between caterpillarhood and butterflydom, recognizing that not all caterpillars survive the cocoon stage. But not all butterflies make it even to the larvae stage, for that matter, and far fewer make it to the butterfly stage. I try to be unattached to the goal of flying, in a figurative way, but I still daydream about it. I try to let go of the desires I’ve had in the past, trying to find contentment without a wife, no pets, no known children. I feel empty at times, and fulfilled at others, but I have to keep living in whatever stage I’m in. At this stage, I can say that I am happy, even if I still get sad sometimes.

It probably seems sad to some: my life. I sense that there are some people in my life who care about me, and I imagine they think of my situation as somewhat bleak, and pitiful. But if that’s true, then they are only aware of the external version of me – the one that is revealed on the surface for anyone to see. On the outside, they see fatigue in my face from the three years I suffered from chronic headaches. They see heaviness on my shoulders. They see red veins in my eyes from straining at the computer screen, working obsessive, long hours.

But if they look just a little closer, if they have the curiosity and the compassion enough to see who I really am, they would find that I am vibrant and colorful man, showered with blessings, living richly, handsomely, courageously, creatively, intelligently devoting a healthy amount of free time into serious fun, relaxation, and fitness for the body, soul, and mind. People are drawn to my inner joy, and I happily, freely, deeply connect.

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Home >> Emerging Mud Puds >> Robert Charginghawk

Robert Charginghawk

I grew up on the Wind River Reservation as a member of the Shoshone tribe. It was, and still is, a dangerous environment to live in. I kind of came from a dark place. I’m luckier than some, though. It’s like a beacon of light is always shining for me, guiding me to safety. I guess the source of that light is God, or the gods, or whatever you call that…presence. I carry this belief: Energy goes where it’s supposed to go. Energy knows where it’s supposed to be. My energy wants to follow that light.

Truth is, compared with a great deal of people in my extended family, my life has been filled with blessings. I served in two wars and committed no murder. I once managed to forgive a woman who stabbed me in the back with a broken liquor bottle. Two rattlesnake bites couldn’t take me down. Unlike two of my brothers that died in their childhood and another younger brother who passed as an adult, I am a survivor of a great many years. Nope, Here I am, well over 80, and death hasn’t grabbed a hold of me yet. Hell, I’m probably the only Indian my age able to use a computer. Even my own kids don’t know how to check their emails. Most of us still living on the Rez prefer the old-fashioned way, I guess. Suppose that makes me young-fashioned.

Nowadays, I enjoy writing and woodworking as hobbies, and I never pass up a chance to pound the drum at a circle gathering.

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Home >> Emerging Mud Puds >> Ashleigh Ann Barrett

Ashleigh Ann Barrett

My name is Ashleigh Ann Barrett and I am best known for my daredevil stunts, such as falling down a flight of stairs at a concert with 2 cups of red wine in my hands, nearly all of which landed on my white skirt. People remember me for the time at NASCAR when I tried to jump over a mud puddle and got a high heel stuck during my approach. Yeah, that stunt ended with mud caked on my face. “Why was I trying to hop a mud puddle?” you might ask. Well, I was trying to find the fastest route to my car, to smoke some pot. “What were you doing at NASCAR in the first place?” you are probably wondering. Yeah, even I can’t explain that. I think I was into baby-making with rednecks at the time. Not really, though.

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