This little community of Oracle, AZ dates back to 1911. The famous playwright Edward Abbey got his mail from the Oracle post office. Buffalo Bill Cody actually lived there, and here’s his house, which may have been nicer when he lived there.

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The Kannally family were Midwesterners who bought ranching country in Oracle, Arizona

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Thunderheads are beautiful. It can be dry at your house and raining across the street. And it’s also true in Weird Arizona that we have ostrich races, mystery castles, Civil War Battle Reenactments and cars on sticks.

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Some say Kokopelli is an insect with dragonfly antennae. Some say he is priest of rain, a trickster, a fertility god. One story is that the first Kokopelli was actually a traveling salesman whose humpback was really a sack of wonderful goods, and that it was Kokopelli who came from Mexico and brought the Anasazi people the first seeds of corn

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Soon it was warm and dry again so that the sound of rushing water in our desert wash became a memory, and so that all that’s left for the javelina and quail and other desert animals to do is to wait for the next rain.

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Within a month, the team in Biosphere 2 was losing weight and feeling deprived of oxygen. They ate their three-month emergency food supply, and even birdseed and hummingbird nectar. As one member put it, “We were suffocating, starving and almost going mad.”

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While I always liked the kiddie party trick-or-treat spirit of Halloween, the grotesque images of the Day of the Dead used to creep me out. I mean, skeletons! Then a friend originally from Mexico took the time to explain Dia de Muertos to me.

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Clouds, rocks, mountains, lakes, and other natural things all have kachinas. To the Hopi, all are alive, spiritual and interconnected. The Hopi say all things have two forms: their visible form in the Upper World, and their kachina who lives in the lower world of the spiritual. Sometimes a kachina shows itself in this world. For example, if you see clouds form over a mountain — it is a rain kachina.

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To resuscitate your friend-lizard, you may need to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Yes, you will do this — this is a fellow creature who needs you. Albert Schweitzer practiced reverence for life for all creatures, and now is the time for you to practice it too.

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Yaqui Deer Dancer is so very beautiful with flowers on his antlers. On his legs he wears cocoons that were once home to beautiful butterflies who are still with him in spirit. Deer Dancer has a rattle and a belt with deer hooves and he makes beautiful sounds as he dances. The Yaqui drummer imitates the heartbeat of Saila Maaso and the sticks imitate his breathing. This ceremony like everything about the Yaqui beliefs is beautiful

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