The Idea Box Journal

Its been a challenging year for all of us. Challenges we share. Challenges all our own. The good days we appreciated. We lost those we love. What comes next looks hopeful. If not, we can handle it. Because no human being got here on their own. We survive together.

New painting, Hippocampus 🌊
Oil on wood, 16×12”

Scientific name for seahorses, as well as the similarly shaped portion of our brains involved with the limbic system, learning, and memory 🧠 🌟

Over the years quite a few people have gotten my paintings tattooed. I spoke with eight of them.

New painting in my Forest Spirit series
🌲🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳
Green Maiden of Bailieborough
Oil on wood with branches, 14.5×11” (33″ span)

Unrelated to art, I’ve had a significant life event occur recently. My dad died last week. He was such a powerfully positive presence in my life. I’m sharing some photos and the obituary I wrote because, well, he deserves everything I can do to honor him. We held a virtual memorial last night that was tremendously heart-warming. If you ever feel pessimistic about humanity, I assure you we have the potential for good. I know that because of my father. ❤️

Following a full life raising four healthy children into adulthood, being an inseparable companion to his wife, and treating his patients with attention and kindness, Dr James Doyle passed away in the early morning of December first. He died at home in his sleep at age seventy seven, following a challenging year claimed by dementia. Born in New Jersey in 1943, Jim met his wife of forty seven years, Pamela, in a spark-filled moment of love at first sight. Together they raised Adam, Vanessa, Hudson, and Nicholas at their welcoming hilltop home in Brookline, MA. After medical school Dr Doyle became one of the first practitioners of acupuncture in the area in the early 1970s. At his Newton office managed by Pamela, Dr Doyle saw thousands of patients, giving each his full attention. He listened to those under his care. He listened to passersby while on vacation. He listened to his friends and his kids whenever they needed him. Jim was committed to making things whole. He kept us healthy. He maintained his home with own two hands, while Pam provided food for everyone who walked through the door. Jim and Pam biked to work year round, rain or shine. In his free time he collected curb-side bike parts, rebuilt them, and gave a bike to whoever could use one. He loved birdsong, spending time near water, classic comedies, and his wife’s soul-nourishing cooking. Jim managed to overcome prostate cancer and a broken neck, eventually recovering from both with a smile. He was a man who knew that the beauty of life was its impermanence. Jim Doyle was a source of wisdom, well-being, acceptance, and humor. We are grateful for having been his family. 

While we can’t change the past, we can be champions for a future of cultural equality. I wanted to learn more about contemporary Native American heritage. I’d like to share two standouts

Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, graduating from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1889. A member of the Omaha tribe, she grew up on the Omaha Reservation in northeast Nebraska, where she once watched a native woman die because the local white doctor refused to give her care. Since that memory was what inspired her to become a physician, she eventually returned to Nebraska, where she established a private practice serving both Native American and white patients. Two years before her death from cancer in 1915, she achieved her life’s dream when she opened her own hospital on the Omaha Reservation—the first hospital built on Native American land without government assistance. Today, the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Memorial Hospital in Walthill, Nebraska, is home to a museum honoring her legacy. 🏥

When he was elected to serve Colorado in the U.S. Senate in 1992, Ben Nighthorse Campbell was the only Native American serving in Congress and the first Native American to serve in the Senate in more than 60 years. Descended from a Portuguese immigrant and a Northern Cheyenne Indian, he had many lives before he was a lawmaker. He was a Korean War veteran, an Olympic judo wrestler, and even a renowned jewelry artist. When he retired from the Senate in 2005, his major achievements included passing legislation to secure Native American water rights, protect wilderness areas, prevent fetal alcohol syndrome, create Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, and establish the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. 🎖

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones 🦃🌽🥧🍷

From BestLifeOnline: 13 Important Native Americans You Didn’t Learn About in School

Anatomy of Beyond the Nonsense

Green Lady of Donadea
Oil on wood, 14.5×11″
🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳🌲🌳🌲
Forest Spirit series

Green Man of Glaistig
New Forest Spirit series
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Oil on wood, 14.5×11”
Because folklore reminds us nature is great.

Available for purchase