The Safety Pin Cafe : August 2025

Monday, August 11, 2025

Ho’omanawanui

August on the Salish Sea where we live is hot! Our gardens are gigantic and the Mullein spears have topped off at 12 feet bending under her weight.

It is her awe inspiring beauty that is drawing a few adventurous souls to us; we are having kukakuka ( meaningful chats!)

The slow yet deeply positive intentions for The Safety Pin Cafe and the art I draw as Acoustic Tutu need to be clarified: I’m asking with Aunty Edith Kanakaole’s oli E Ho Mai. Thanks to Manu Meyer’s YouTube videos I learn the depth of meaning as I oli, and people come with their curiosity. Attraction rather than promotion.

Patience over time. Ho’omanawanui. I’m practicing.

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"we tell it slant"

We're not social realists, we're fantasists. We tell the truth, like poets, but we tell it slant -- we clothe it in symbol, archetype, and metaphor. But if we are to write or illustrate fantasy well we must do the work of understanding the classic tropes we use as best we can. Through reading. Through research. Through curiosity and sensitivity about lives and traditions far different than our own. Through building a relationship to the wild wherever we are. Know the place and the land on which you are rooted, and then move outward from there. - Terri Windling

THE SAFETY PIN CAFE'S MISSION

From the original medicine story The Safety Pin Cafe, its "Introduction" is the foundation upon which we offer what we know:

"We cross borders without regard, ignorant or arrogant of the protocol native to the transitional spaces that take us from this place to that place. Traditions remembered and practiced would maintain and pass along the right things to do, at the right time, and in the right frame of mind. Have we all become wanderers with passports un-stamped with the memory of teachings from the Ancestors and Nature? There are rituals to remember and common magic to induce respect and reverence for the beings and places that share this planet."

"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof. The process of applying the precautionary principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action." - Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, Jan. 1998

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Monday, August 11, 2025

Ho’omanawanui