If you’ve ever had dreams of swinging high beneath the big top, or if
you’ve ever been bemused by circus-themed-historical-Americana,
look no further than our own backyard.
In 1884, five Ringling brothers launched their first circus in Baraboo,
Wisconsin. They traveled town to town, like many other small circuses,
using animal-drawn caravans. The circus grew, and shortly after their
debut, they were soon able to transport their circus by train, bringing
“oohs” and “ahhs” far and wide across the entire country.
The Ringling Bros. purchased the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show
on Earth in 1907 and operated the circuses separately until 1919.
Combined in the 1930s, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
became the largest and most renowned circus in the world.
The Ringling Estate in Sarasota is an homage to our American culture
— and to our adoration of thrill-seeking entertainment and amusement.
The property includes multiple sites of interest: The John and Mable
Ringling Museum of Art (the official state art museum of Florida),
Ringling’s mansion Ca’ d’Zan (Venetian for “House of John”), the
Circus Museum, the historic Asolo Theater, the Tibbals Learning
Center, the Ringling Art Library, Mable Ringling’s Rose Garden, the
Secret Garden, the Dwarf Garden, Bayfront Garden Tours, the FSU
Center for the Performing Arts, and the gravesites of John and Mable
Ringling.
The Ringling Estate encourages artists to use the grounds as an
inspirational space to make art, asking only that posted guidelines are
respected.
Just a hop, skip, and swing away from Parkland, you’ll be there in 3.25
hours.
While you’re visiting Sarasota, you may want to check out these other electrifying acts:
Take a class and fly trapeze at the school of circus arts, and/or see a
show. https://circusarts.org/flyingtrapeze/
Drive one hour north of Sarasota to Gibsonton to visit the community
of retired circus and carnival performers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibsonton,_Florida
When we think of meditation, we typically think of sitting still, perhaps in a candlelit space, with an abundance of silence, while quieting the mind. When we think of activities and sports that elicit a similar mental focus and meditative effect, we tend to think of more popular sports such as golfing or fishing, or even the more fashionable East Asian influences of t’ai chi and yoga.
Infrequently do we think about archery. Archery has a long history, practiced for thousands of years. We know that ancient Egyptians were among the first to regularly utilize archery in 3000 B.C.E. for hunting and warfare.
However, the oldest remnants of bone and stone arrowheads have been located in South Africa dating back 60,000-70,000 years. Originally devised across cultures as a tool for survival, upon the discovery of gunpowder in 9th-century China and the creation of fi rearms in 10th-century China, archery had become relatively dispensable and obsolete.
Luckily, by the late 18th-century, archery found an enthusiastic revival among the aristocracy and nobility as recreation and sport. In 1879, the National Archery Association of the United States was founded. Today we know this organization as USA Archery, and it is recognized by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
While archery has evolved and taken many forms throughout the centuries, with many varying intentions — we rarely think about archery as an art form — let alone a meditative practice.
However, dismissing archery as anything but, does a great disservice to this masterful skill, and to the archer, or the artist, herself. There is a great gift to be found in this centuries-old art form, and you may discover that gift within yourself.
My first experiences with archery began as a child with my father and brother. We would travel all over Northern New Jersey in search of outdoor wooded ranges, with our brown bag lunches and moderately-worn gear in tow.
I’ll never forget receiving my first bow (a Bear compound bow, which I still have), feverishly running down the street of my suburban hometown with the bow string drawn, perhaps alarming the neighborhood, thrilled to show my friends. I knew I loved archery from the very beginning.
But as the years went by, I had forgotten about my beloved pastime.
Much later, while in college studying for my philosophy degree, I stumbled upon “Zen in the Art of Archery,” by Eugen Herrigel, a German philosopher who traveled to Japan to study the art, and the practice, of attaining a state of zen through archery.
Much like the revitalization in the 18th-century, for me, archery was discovered once again. I had already been practicing meditation and yoga for years, and I found that my love of archery was still very ever-present.
This simple and profound text had suddenly awakened my spirit, reinvigorated my passion, and taught me valuable lessons about the significance of an awakened self, focused breathwork, achieving a meditative state where all else disappears, and performing complex movements with unconscious control from the mind.
Great archery masters know that where you place your feet, how you maintain your posture, where you hold the bow, and how you breathe when you release the arrow are all determining factors of your end result. The bow itself is a limb, an extension of the archer herself. The breathwork is the lifeforce behind each action.
Nowadays, when I feel particularly stressed, or otherwise not myself, I find myself at the range. Yes, I would say, on those days, I literally find myself there.
If you would like to learn more about attaining your state of zen through the art of archery, visit these websites for local information:
Fort Lauderdale Archers, a private membership club – BYOBow
https://www.fortlauderdalearchers.com/
Go Archery, mobile archery lessons – https://goarchery.net/
Markham Park, outdoor range – BYOBow https://www.broward.org/
Carly Fulgham is recognized for quite the impressive life and career. She is a mother, wife, and Vice President of Document Services Strategy for a major worldwide bank. She is also the first autistic President of the Board of Directors of the Autism Society of Ventura County, VP of the Autism Society of California, and is on the Board of The Art of Autism.
She was recently a guest on “Spectrumly Speaking,” A Different Brains® podcast, with hosts Haley Moss and Dr. Lori Butts. Carly explains that for the first twenty years of her life she didn’t realize that she had autism. She had been using workarounds until she experienced burnout and needed Social Security disability.
One day, she found an article about a boy with autism and suddenly her own
disability became clear. She was finally diagnosed at 28 years old. Becoming
involved in the Autism Society shortly thereafter was a no-brainer.
Navigating her disability on her own was one thing, but doing so with children
was another. She knew that she had a complicated medical history and that she (and her medical team) would need to be prepared for her specific needs, and communication was key.
Carly had prepared a very long birth plan, including a huge section about
her sensory issues, and how she might respond to pain and other experiences. She discusses how certain types of touch can trigger her issues, how variations of feather-light touches and knife-sharp pain may cause different reactions.
When she noticed that one nurse during her labor communicated differently than her, she politely requested a different nurse, and possible miscommunications were averted. She even prepared for the
sounds and the chaos in the operating room by wearing noise-canceling
headphones.
Carly stresses that many women don’t even fi nd out that they have autism
until their own children are diagnosed, meaning that maternity nurses have likely cared for plenty of undiagnosed autistic patients. She says the nurses are, “Used to all kinds of sensory things like, ‘I have to have low music playing,’ or ‘I have to have this lavender scent’ or ‘I have to have it scent-free.’”
Haley Moss adds that there already exists a bias in medicine for women,
and for autistic people in particular, where pain is often not taken seriously
or believed. She shares her own fears on becoming an autistic mother in the future, asking, “What if I’m in pain and someone doesn’t believe me because they think autism impairs my sense of judgment?”
Carly explains hospitals in general have a poor system for pain scales, replying
that often only a diagram with facial expressions and numbers is available to
measure pain. For the autistic patient, this vague representation may be difficult to understand. Someone’s level four pain may be someone else’s eight. Carly stresses that you have to be really descriptive, giving
examples like “It feels like someone’s stabbing me with a knife”, or “It feels like ants are crawling on me.”
Carly notes that through her non-profit work, her autism, and the awareness of
the developmental stages have helped her become a better mother.
She recounts a story about her son from before he could talk, where they were
sitting at the breakfast table and he started screaming. Carly says she took
a moment and thought, ‘Okay, there’s something that’s upsetting him’. So she
followed his eyeline and he was staring outside in the backyard at a blue ball.
She asked her son, “Do you want me to put the blue ball away?” and he nodded
his head in the middle of his wailing. So Carly went out, put the ball in the box it’s normally kept in, and he instantaneously stopped screaming.
For more of this conversation you can listen to the entire podcast, or read the transcript, here:
Bravery, brav·ery | \ ‘brav-re the quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty.
This year we celebrate the 75th anniversary of World War II’s ending (1939-1945). So, this Veteran’s Day, I wanted to share what bravery looks like to me by honoring the service of the everyday young women who enlisted.
These are the lesser known heroes of WWII. The thousands of spirited souls who signed up not knowing what role they would play in what would become the deadliest conflict in human history, a war that involved over 30 countries, with over 70 million fatalities.
Congress instituted the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in May of 1942, which would later become the Women’s Army Corps. These women were known as WACs and they worked in more than 200 non-combatant positions stateside.
It wasn’t until three years after the end of WWII that women became a permanent fixture of the United States military services when the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 law was passed.
Of the 350,000 women who served with the armed forces during World War II, it is estimated that only 14,500 of those women are still alive today. One of them turned ninety-nine years old this April during COVID-19, and I happen to love her immensely. She’s my grandmother.
Every so often my mind wanders to a place where Nana is grabbing my hand, swirling me around in the kitchen when I was still smaller than she, rousing her memory with wartime stories while humming The Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy [of Company B].”
She made wartime sound like the movies.
Over the years Doris “Nana” Clougher has relished in sharing countless stories about her life with me. During adolescence, she survived whooping cough, walking miles in brutal blizzards, the death of her father, and pencils in her Christmas stocking during The Great Depression.
When the war began in 1939 she was a small-town girl from Upstate New York who worked as an assistant clerk for the Massena Town Hall.
The United States entered the war after Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941.
Doris continued working for a time until she felt the need to make a difference. She was already receiving letters from her two younger brothers abroad (one a Navy pilot, the other a sailor.)
She enlisted in 1944. No one knew how long the war would last or whether we would win, but she was determined to join her brothers and make her contribution to the United States of America as a woman and a patriot. I grew up believing my grandmother was truly brave.
My grandmother remembers being frightened. She speaks of the fear she had leaving home for the first time. Basic training takes her to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia where she runs through tear-gas filled underground tunnels. The WACs were being prepared for the war to come to US soil.
When finished with basic training, Doris became a medical stenographer at Tilton General Hospital in Fort Dix, New Jersey. The hospital was administering rehabilitation and physiotherapy for injured and amputee soldiers. She made rounds with the doctors, recording what care the injured would need before returning home.
She met my grandfather, John Clougher, at Fort Dix, and they were married in the service before settling in New Jersey to raise their family.
After the war Doris was a loving and loved wife, a beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and collectively everyone’s “Nana.”
She was always well known for her Irish stew and cream puffs, but most of all for her perfect grandmotherliness.
Doris “Nana” Clougher
There aren’t enough words to describe how much my grandmother means to me. I learned almost everything I know in matters of heart, mind, and soul from her. I’m truly honored to share her humble story.
As much as she cherishes her family, she reveres her time in the service of her country as the most poignant of her life. I can just hear her saying proudly to me, “Aimo, I’m a WAC,” with a little salute.
She would have many personal triumphs and tribulations over the course of ninety-nine years, but no achievement or challenge as near and dear to her heart as her time with the United States Army.
The often marginalized, under-appreciated, and over- looked group of soldiers were no doubt the WACs of theWWII generation.
She was a small, blonde, blue-eyed farm girl from Upstate New York. She answered a call that inevitably changed her life.
So what does bravery look like to me? Bravery is stepping outside of your comfort zone and into a commitment and duty for the greater good. As did these often forgotten soldiers. As did Nana.
