We are moving to Anamaki Chronicles on Substack
Braiding the sweetgrass of "determined hope" together.
Spirit Buffalo in a Painted Sky
About Our Name: Anamaki
Anamaki - Shortly before her death in June of 2018 Alice Vartanian King came up with the name "Anamaki Chronicles" for a book subtitled "Stories that Need Tellin'" that she was planning to write.
At the time, Alice told me that the word was derived from an ancient word in both the Algonquin and Persian languages, roughly translated to "purposeful hope" or "determined hope.” A derivative of Algonquin, the ancient pre-colonial language of many Indian nations across what today we know as the US and Canada, including those of my father and grandfather. Surprisingly, it is also almost precisely a Persian/Armenian word describing “enduring hope.”
For going on 40 years I was her "boyfriend" and she “my girlfriend”. Though we had made it official after a whirlwind romance between the mountains and the seacoast shortly after we first met, “husband” and “wife” just felt too conventional and unadventurous. I have made it one of my goals to finish that book, among my many projects and dreams.
Why we are moving the email newsletter to Substack.
I don't know about you but I'm sick of having my creative work and opinions controlled and corrupted by the various algorithms of the Social Media sites. The beauty of Substack is that there is no algorithm controlling anything. I hope we will see various internal "communities of thought" arise from comments and conversations around my contributions and your reactions, thoughts and ideas. I suppose you could, ultimately, call this - by default - a "human algorithm" built around communities of thought; but I am excited by the possibility that we can find creative ways to use our agreements and disagreements to forge new ways of looking at vexing problems, drawing us together rather than dividing us.
By communities of thought, I want to be clear that I am not looking to encourage "silos of thought." That is what all those social media platforms create, gathering us into angry tribal groupings that tend to see one another as enemies or adversaries. Rather, I want to encourage broadly open dialog where, whether we agree or disagree, we see civil conversation, sharing, and respectful disagreement as the instrument of drawing our circles more broadly.
I am, first and foremost, an Iroquois/Abenaki boy (albeit an old one!) and a radical centrist. I'm looking to call on my native instincts to draw all of our "sacred circles" wider and wider as we engage in honest, heartfelt, and reasoned dialog braided together, like sweetgrass, with radical centrist beliefs eschewing the maudlin middle, seeking to engage in radical and open thinking to create new ground on which to stand in a radically open fashion. This radical thinking, outside of the obsolete, antiquated liberal/conservative, democrat/republican/libertarian silos is required to tackle the daunting and existential problems we face in America and worldwide.
I look at this as a journey to weave together the sacred, the beauty of art and poetry, the wonder of science, the love of landscape and place, bound together with "determined hope" - Anamaki - into our too-often mundane and unmoored lives. It's probably just this side of "unicorns and rainbows" - or "stars and jars" as she would often say - but perhaps that's what Alice meant by Anamaki.
Join us . . .
I'd love to have you join me on this journey. You previously subscribed to this list on MailChimp so I have transferred your subscription here but you can unsubscribe here as well if you find that the system is not to your liking. You can subscribe free of cost, but I will be forever grateful if you could see your way clear to becoming a paid subscriber to enable and encourage us to dedicate more and more attention to this worthwhile quest. I promise that I will make your investment in our journey worth it.
Thank you!
Created at Anamaki Studios
64 Monroe Road, Bath, NH 06740
603-530-4460
WayneDKing9278@gmail.com
www.Anamaki.com
This land lies in N’dakinna, the traditional ancestral homeland of the Abenaki, Sokoki, Koasek, Pemigewasset, Pennacook and Wabanaki Peoples past and present. We acknowledge and honor with gratitude those who have stewarded N’dakinna throughout the generations.