Most Venerable Grandma- Happy 93rd Birthday!

First four and new house underway

Five and counting to eight kids


Four generations

Can we ever appreciate our grandparents enough? The most precious,loving,and constant person in my life was my grandmother. Grandma Rimpoche (Precious One:Tibetan) Decades before I became aquainted with the concepts of selfless giving and compassion of Buddhism, my Grandma demonstrated these innate qualities.



We moved from Ohio and moved several times again about every four years while I was in school. But going to spend a couple weeks in the summer with Grandma, was much anticipated. I would always get up earlier that the others so I could have my quiet time over oatmeal with Grandma and Grandma Cat.


75th Birthday Party


Second husband, Ray, made her feel like a Lady

It pains me to think that she will probably not meet her first great-great-grandson, Jake, (my grandson) because of the distances and expense of travel these days. I did manage to take the kids on a couple trips to see her, the last of which was 17 years ago. Just another indication of the demise of family and family values. The family core is melting along with the ice caps!


Train station in Albuquerque. She got a kick out of having the Honeymoon Suite in the hotel where I worked!



Last trip to Ohio in 2002 with Becky











Text and pictures © 2005 Mona E. Dunn

Relief in Pleasures Great and Small

Enduring two weeks of 100+ degrees of temperature, everything including us either began to wilt or turn crisp. With only a couple of fans to work with bodily sweat as a coolant in mid-day, the energy levels were sagging. Fortunately for Clark, the opportunity for his most pressing task, to bale the oats, still managed to present itself in the middle of the night when the temperature dipped down to near 60 dgrees; dewpoint not attained but cool enough to toughen the hay. Then home for breakfast and a siesta.


Last night we had a wonderful deluge as the thunderstorms in the north blew back on us with plenty of thunder and lightning and, after about an hour, ending in a fury of rain and wind which momentarily resembled tornado velosity. I had begun to think rains like that were fictional Hollywood special effects or fairytales the weathermen told about the fabled East or West Coasts. Well at least I won't have to spend 2-3 hours watering my poor tortured gardens today.

The greatest joy of the day is the new deck!







The original wooden deck was getting so rotten as to be a disaster area. Thanks to a generous offer from a revered benefactor, the task was completed when we could least afford it. Great pleasure can be derived from relaxing with a cup of coffee in the morning or a glass of wine in the evening, watching the passage of the sun, moon and stars and listening to the birds and creatures of the night. Looking over one's domain, can create a sense of belonging and oneness to a world weary mind.




Photos & Text © 2004 Mona E. Dunn

When it rains, it pours - not always water

The grueling hay season is underway for Clark and consequently,indirectly,for me.At an auction this spring, Clark bought a computer directed round baler, which can wrap with net or twine. I could only imagine the hardship of learning a new piece of machinary. So sometimes it works and sometimes we are stumped as to what sort of fickleness has interrupted production in the middle of the night. Timing is critical and with the extra moisture this year, Clark has extremely over extended in his capacity to cut, bale, irrigate, pick up and stack all the hay he has committed to produce from the four large properties he has contracted. If working properly, the round baler could really save some time and save wear and tear on the slipping clutch of the balewagon which picks up small square bales.



And so the saga (def.-any narrative of heroic exploits) unfolds.Clark had been working day and night for weeks with 2-3 hours of sleep when ever he can fit it in, eating breakfast if I can make it for him before he disappears for the rest of the day (or night). Friday I had spent a couple hours soaking my gardens so they would not shrivel in the heat of the day while I put in my marathon weekend schedule at the restaurant. Before finishing up I noticed the water pressure was low then diminished to a trickle. None of the faucets on the property ran water. After checking in the pump house I decided to go over to the Circle to fill some large containers with water so I could at least wash before going to work.

When I reached the Circle, Clark was there under his swather soaked in diesel. After filling up with 50 gallons for the evenings work, he discovered a clog the line. His friend, Dean had his finger on the hole until Clark could clean and replace the plug. Of course the finger had to come off to replace the plug! I barely had the heart to tell Clark about the problem at home.

When I arrived home from work, Clark was sleeping on the couch vaguely reeking of diesel.(he rinsed off with the cold hose) I thought it best to let him sleep not knowing what exactly his schedule was.

At about 3:30am I am awakened by three loud cracks of the shotgun. A racoon had rolled around an empty gallon jug that usually has cat food in it, down the steps on the porch, waking Clark up prematurely of his alarm. In my sleep I hear him make coffee, then later pull out with his tractor and round baler. Before long I hear him come back to the barn after baling two bales.



So the next morning someone from the dealership is adjusting things on the baler, the water well guys are in the well house, Clark has ordered water at the circle to be changed early, and I have to go to work. I decided to put extra straw on my plants just in case since most things had been soaked yesterday and picked a bunch of lettuce to give away in town and watered the animals.

Before leaving, I just had to know what we were in for so I approached the well house. At last, some good news! Only the pump need to be replaced, not the well. Three wells had gone dry in the neighborhood in recent years.Having been without electricity for a day last winter was a minor inconvenience, but to suddenly contemplate being without water for an indeterminent period of time was especially stressful.

All in a day of the life of a farmer.



Text and pictures © 2004 Mona E. Dunn

America the Beautiful - 4th of July 2005

I was going into town to see the fireworks tonight until I heard this part of a speech by Martin Luther King. It Is still timely almost thiry years after the Vietnam War. It would be well worth the time to read.

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."

"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

If we continue there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computer, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars need re-structuring.



A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: 'This is not just.' The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love."




"And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of [its] religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.

Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."





Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards , everyone.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers everyone.

When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?



Pray for peace and compassion throughout the world.

Submitted by Mona E. Dunn 2oo5