Tag Archive for 'The Bead People'

Weary . . . but smiling

Published by Jamie on July 7, 2008 in Bead people, On Becoming Human and Our Straw Bale Project. 0 Comments Tags: .

I am tired to the bone tonight but feeling like I really want to sort my thoughts and ideas about our recent weekend.  We set up a booth at the local Heritage Festival with The Bead People.  It was a long festival (4 days) but the weather was good and we had such a fun time.  Since this is our second summer, we had so many people come by and say hello-friends of The Bead People from last summer or from our school projects.  There really is a growing recognition of our little movement.  We figured out that over 2500 books and Bead People have gone out in the past year.  We began to imagine a day when that number would be 250,000 and that seeing a little Bead Person dangling on a chain, pinned to someone’s shirt, or hanging in their car would be not just “cute” but a symbol of the powerful desire we all share to have a more peaceful world and to find unity with one another.   

The booth next to ours was run by a few young people creating hemp jewelry.  They called their booth “The Inner Hippie” and naturally attracted many of today’s alternative young people.  Milt and I got to talking about those 60’s days in our own lives, and I realized that so much of the Sixties has been trivialized and passed off as if it was just about sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  I was still in high school and on the edge of the movement but was involved in my own small way.  We were so completely dedicated to making our voices heard-and it may be the only time in history that the young people stopped a war!

Over the four day festival, we got to know those young people in the booth next to us.  I think they are longing to feel as powerful and as much a force of change as we did in the sixties.  I don’t know that we can ever repeat that era-and certainly it is about more than tie dye and hemp-but I trust that these young people are trying.  I keep wondering how we can help them become more empowered. 

Milt and I laughed together when we realized that our little peace movement-The Bead People-is simply an extension of all that we have believed and acted on throughout our lives.  We want to spread the word-we can find unity and work together to build a creative and kind world.  And we are doing it one Bead Person at a time. 

If you haven’t checked out the website (www.thebeadpeople.org) please do.  Join our little movement and watch it become a big movement.  Send us your ideas-get your own friendly little Bead Person and help us spread the word. 

At the end of the festival, we were exhausted and tearing down our booth when this older couple stopped by and begged to be allowed to buy just a few more Bead People.  We dug into one of the containers and they chose some fellows to take home.  We were all talking and they were so excited-wondering how we could get this movement into the millions and talking about franchising, translating the book into other languages . . .   I love to see how people really “get” what this is about and want to get involved.  I welcome all who want to get involved to help us spread a simple message across the globe.  People who met us at the festival are already planning Bead People events for their 4-H groups, their church groups, their classrooms, and we even had a couple of inquiries about starting a Chapter of Friends of The Bead People.  So cool.

Tomorrow we load our van and head back up to northern Minnesota to check on our 24 blueberry plants and to begin construction on our small, strawbale summer cabin.  I feel like a kid and just want to go pick berries and play on the land.  We are thinking about next summer we will plan our next alternative “cabin” and invite all who can to come and join us in the construction and then we will end it with a two-day Bead People Festival.  Want to come?

One more thing before I close for the day.  Twenty-three years ago I was in a hospital giving birth to my son, Thomas.  This year I will be attending his wedding.  There is no way to describe the many ways you have enriched my life, Tom.  I wish you and Erica a long and fruitful life and Happy Birthday, son!

Jamie

 

God Night

Published by Jamie on June 24, 2008 in Bead people, Essays, On Becoming Human and Writings by J. Lee. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I feel like I am coming home to myself at last.  I needed a bit of summer to restore my spirit.  Today I went to the park and built Bead People underneath a tree.  It is so strange how those little characters can restore my equilibrium.  The project itself is beginning to grow outside of my own creations.  My daughter, Nichol, has started the first outside Chapter of Friends of The Bead People in Lincoln, NE.  And, in typical Nichol style, she has created a beautiful, enchanted booth that makes me want to go to Lincoln and build a few just to sit inside of it.  She called the other night and told me that she had three blind people building bead people in her tent.  It was such a lovely image I nearly got teary-eyed.

It is strange how engaging such a simple project can be.  It reminds me that beads have been a part of every single human culture since the beginning of time.  They have been created from mud and glass and seeds and shells.  They have been used to adorn, as money, and of course, as gifts.  It must be embedded into our collective souls-this love of beads. 

Sadly, her partner Lynette, who is 7 months pregnant, has been told she needs to be on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.  Although I’ve never met her, her energy and enthusiasm for the Bead People has reached me from 11 hours away.  We will hold her in our thoughts and prayers.  Nichol also told me that she sent her husband home with a list of necessary items she would need for her hospital stay-and top of the list were her Bead People supplies. 

We are now inviting others to get involved.  You can see details and meet Nicci and Lynette at www.thebeadpeople.org.  In recent weeks we have had money donations for printing, bead donations from as far away as Australia, and several requests to get involved.  Two women at our own Journey Museum fell madly in love with The Bead People and I spent over an hour with them as they handled each little person in order to pick the ones they wanted for the gift shop.  I loved watching them play.

That is what the project is about.  It is play-with a mission.  It gives us a way to sit around and get to know each other and to talk about life and how to create the world we all want, where “family” takes on a much bigger meaning.  I love the Lakota saying, Mitakeya Oyasin-We are all related.  I believe that in my heart.  Our humanness so outweighs the differences.

I am back at work on another novel.  While we were in D.C. recently, I had a note from my agent with her list of first submissions for my novel, One Drum.  Suddenly it struck me that my life-long goal of “being a writer” was at hand and I want to be ready if a publisher wants to see what else I have up my sleeve.  The novel I went back to work on is about a small and very wise lizard (yes, I said lizard), named Sulee who is sent to help a girl named Lela.  This little lizard is so engaging.  He is smart, funny, and very sincere.  It sounds like a children’s book but it is not.  It is in the same theme of what I’ve begun to think of as my “Earth Series”.  Sulee lives in a world where the animals, the stones, the trees are all awake and aware, tuned into the earth in a way that humans have forgotten.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll post the opening pages just to give you an idea of this wise-but young-little lizard.  Oh, the working title is “Sulee-A Lizard’s Tale”.

God night.  That was a typo but I rather like it.

Jamie

Just For Fun . . .

Published by Jamie on March 26, 2008 in Bead people, Essays, On Becoming Human and The Education Crises. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

The Bead PeopleDid you ever do something “just for fun” and then have it bloom around you like a pretty garden?  A couple of years ago I was making earrings and got bored with it, so “just for fun” I used the wire to create little people out of beads. 

Then a year ago I was scribbling away and wrote a little story about this big wind that comes and blows all the people of earth into one another until even their body parts get mixed up.  I liked the story and the message it carries-how about we should just get along and accept each others’ differences.  It is the same basic Second Bead Personstory First Man tells Albert in Albert’s Manuscript-minus the beads. Then, (oh, my relentless mind) I wanted pictures to go with the story but couldn’t find an illustrator (I can’t draw), so one night I was puttering around on Publisher and created a “mock up” of the story using geometric shapes and curves.  It was kind of cute so I printed a bunch and put them with The Bead People.  I ran out right away and so I then took the little book to the print shop and printed 1500 of them.

Now, one year later, the Bead People are on a walk-about around the world.  They’ve traveled to Finland, France, Germany and who knows where else.  Schools and organizations are calling me-we started taking trays of beads to festivals and school classrooms and letting children build their own Bead Person—just for fun.  The books are almost gone and I need to go back to the print shop because we have too many events scheduled for the next two months and not enough books.  So then we decided to build a website (http://www.thebeadpeople.org/) and start an international peace movement (getting a Bead Person automatically makes you a member J).  Milt even created a film of one of the festivals with a remake of the Beatles song, “All You Need are Beads” as the sound track.  

I think of all the many paths I’ve forged trying to make my way in the world and, suddenly, The Bead People come along to teach me that all I really need to do is something that expresses who I am and what I believe, and the path will unfold naturally.  They are such clever little beings, those Bead People.   Milt and I have been making up fun sayings like “Don’t Worry-Bead Happy” or “To Thine Ownself Bead True”.  We may put them on T-Shirts-just for fun.

I will never get wealthy from my little “just for fun” project, but acquiring wealth or stuff has never rung the bell for me.  I am, however, discovering a small side benefit.  Having schools call me is opening doors and allowing me to talk about the Natural Human Learning Process with teachers and administrators.  This process has transformed my own classroom and, I hope, will soon be transforming other classrooms.  (To see free videos of the process, visit the front page of http://www.manykites.org/ or to download free guidelines on how to use NHLP in your classroom visit Dr. Rita Smilkstein’s website at http://www.borntolearn.net/ ).

My bottom line.  Today I had the fine opportunity to watch two classrooms full of developmental English students wrap their minds around the structure of a sentence and really GET it for the first time.  I get to watch them as they realize their own potential to learn anything-given the right chance.  This is wealth beyond measure . . .

Good night and sleep well.

Jamie

The Bead Mandala

Published by Jamie on February 8, 2008 in Bead people, Essays and On Becoming Human. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Jamie with The Bead PeopleLast night I spent the night in a motel beside Piya Wiconi-the main OLC campus in Kyle. Since I teach in Pine Ridge on Thursdays, I decided to make that a part of my plan for days when we have meetings on Fridays. It gives me some alone time and time to write. Last night I didn’t write much but played with beads instead. For some reason, The Bead People are so friendly that I can’t resist building a few in my down time. In the past year I have probably created well over a thousand Bead People but it’s funny, whenever I count them I only have about 3-4 hundred. They keep going away. You’d think I would get tired of them, but I guess it is my “knitting.” It calms me and restores my spirit.

I was thinking about how beads have been a part of every culture I know of. Beads were cut, carved or molded from stones, shells, cones, wood, glass, gold, silver, and on and on. Beads were used to adorn clothing and household items and used as a means of exchange. It makes sense that The Bead People speak a common language.

Next week, Milt and I will be taking The Bead People to a first grade classroom here in Rapid City. We’ve done several so far and the children send me the most wonderful thank-you notes after I leave. I always tell them that I’m a writer and show them a couple of my books (beside the one that goes home with The Bead People). One little girl wrote to me after we were in her classroom and said that “All the books in my house were written by YOU!” I loved that! The students also make up stories about their little bead person or tell me how they shared the story with their families. It is a wonderful experience and I look forward to doing more.

Since I am into beads tonight, I’ll share a little writing ramble from a client session I did with a young girl in my office a few years ago. She turned me on to beading Christmas ornaments. (Yes, N.-you know who you are.) Think of it as my Valentine gift to you. And if you haven’t heard of The Bead People or their story, The Wind of a Thousand Years-you can visit http://www.thebeadpeople.org/ to find out more.

Jamie

A Mandala of Beads

Just before Christmas, a young client of mine came in for a session and brought me the gift of a beautiful beaded cap sitting on a glass Christmas tree ornament. She had made the gracious, pretty thing, and I was so excited about it she offered to show me how to make one. “I have the stuff in my car,” she said.

I had my own private stash of beads tucked unceremoniously away waiting for the time when I would take up what seemed like a frivolous hobby. (I love beads-and small stones-but was sure that all of my other work was too important and the time couldn’t possibly be spared for beading.)

That day, we spent her entire counseling session beading, our heads bent together and us talking about issues of the heart and soul. We worked like two prairie women-our fingers busily stabbing small glass beads with a thin needle . . .three white, one purple, three white, one purple… By the end of the session, I had a small beautiful Mandala of beads forming on the table before me. My client wished me a Merry Christmas and left, and I returned to my “real work”.

However, the beautiful white and purple circle stayed in my mind like an itch. I pictured the bright circle sitting alone on a wide expanse of cherry wood (my office table) like a distant star. Strange, how that circle beckoned like nothing has for a long time. Finally, just before bed, I crept back out to my office at midnight after two hours of writing and working on other more important matters. I simply could not go to bed without first revisiting that little beaded circle. I had to add one more ring to it and so I followed the pattern carefully around the outer circle . . . three white, one purple, three white . . . and, when the loop was done, I went to bed feeling oddly satisfied.

This morning when I went into my office, there it was again. I touched it, feeling the loose connectedness of the beads and thought, “What a beautiful pattern.” It reminded me of the rangoli, the sidewalk circle the yogis of India create at the entrance of a sacred place. They sift colored sand to create intricate images of the Gods knowing full well that the wind and rain will probably destroy it by dusk. And still, they create it anyway.

It was then that I understood my attraction to the shiny circle of glass beads. My work is always about finding patterns-but perhaps I put too much time and energy into finding the patterns of ugliness and despair. I work with individuals and organizations but, like so many others, tend to see them in terms of the problem patterns without searching out the patterns of order and ease. We get so attached to our descriptions of the problem pattern until soon that is all we see-and then we cannot tell another story.

The rangoli, the medicine wheel, and my little circle of beads looping into other beads remind me to look and find the patterns of beauty and connectedness as well-and to seek that greater order. I will remember.

And probably, I am totally hooked on beading again but can now see it as a way to remind myself to look for the links.