Category: In Remembrance

My Immortal Mother-in-Law by Elizabeth Cunningham

Elizabeth Cunningham headshot jpegBefore Olga Eunice Quintero Smyth died on December 4, 2014 at age 101 and 10 months, I was tempted to believe she was immortal, literally. I knew Olga for forty-five years (from age 16 to 61). For thirty-five of those years she was my mother-in-law. Our history began when I was kicked out of high school and went to work at her free-wheeling school, her utter lack of any interest in reforming me a blast of fresh air. It ended with me sitting beside her as she was dying, softly singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

Olga was named for a Russian princess her mother encountered when she was a babe in her arms en route to Trinidad from her native Venezuela. Olga took for granted her descent from Incan royalty as well. Her mother moved the family to New York when she was eleven. A few years later, she won a scholarship to Mount Holyoke College. She married a classmate’s brother, Julian Smyth, great grandson to Nathaniel Hawthorne. If that weren’t enough, Olga claimed for Julian’s line direct descent from the first century Celtic Queen Boadicea. As long as she could speak, she spun tales. “Where in Africa was she born?” one of her nurses asked me. “What kind of a dancer was she?” Continue reading “My Immortal Mother-in-Law by Elizabeth Cunningham”

In Memory of Margot Adler (1946-2014) Priestess, Journalist, Skeptic, Mystic by Elizabeth Cunningham

Elizabeth Cunningham headshot jpeg“Ritual has the power to end our alienation from the earth and from each other. It allows us to enter a world where we are at home with the trees and the stars and other beings, and even with the carefully hidden and protected parts of ourselves that we sometime contact in dreams or in art.” –Margot Adler

Margot Adler died of cancer on July 28, 2014. A Pagan priestess, she asked for memorial events to be held in the season of Samhain, also known as Halloween.  At this time of year, the rituals of many religious traditions remind us that we are all connected, the living, the dead, and those to come, one continuous communion.  In this spirit, I offer a tribute to the late Margot Adler.

Though I must have heard her distinctive voice on National Public Radio where she served as an innovative and eclectic journalist for thirty years, I encountered Margot Adler’s work more intimately by accident—or synchronicity—as countless others have.  I had recently found myself face to face with the goddess.  As if in answer to my question: “Who are you and what do you want from my life?” a hefty book literally fell off a shelf in a small-town bookstore: Margot Adler’s ovarian work Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and other Pagans. Writing as both observer and participant, Margot brought into fruitful union the spiritual seeker and the fact-finding reporter, the social activist and the ecstatic celebrant.  I had found a trustworthy guide for my own explorations. Continue reading “In Memory of Margot Adler (1946-2014) Priestess, Journalist, Skeptic, Mystic by Elizabeth Cunningham”