SPONSORED GALS
There are so many hard-working women out there! We wish we could give pants away to all of you. But since we’re running a business, that unfortunately won’t keep the lights on in the shop…
However, if you are a working woman, or know a working woman that really needs these pants, please send us a brief (under one page) letter of why we should sponsor her. We choose one woman a quarter who has a great story and and give her a free pair of pants. We will post her story on social media in hopes that it helps inspire and encourage other hard-working gals.
The ANTecdote
This is the place to find our Tour de Pants dates and locations, check out great photos of our travels and new friends, and to learn more about Red Ants Pants and our amazing pants. So, we hope you visit often!
On Leadership and Murmurations
On Leadership and Murmurations In a recent conversation with a wise friend of mine, David James Duncan, he brought up murmurations. He and Barry Lopez, another phenomenal writer shared similar reflections about how humanity should perhaps take some pointers from sandpipers. Have you ever seen a murmuration of birds? Where hundreds, sometimes even thousands of birds are in flight, and they shift collectively in waves of black across the sky. It is one of life’s great amazements. The instantaneous communication, the seamless ease and flow as if one greater organism. I have seen this phenomenon up in the Bay of Fundy, eastern Canada. Where tens of thousands of semipalmated sandpipers migrate through and stop to feed on the mud flats before their four-day, nonstop flight to Argentina. It is usually a peregrine falcon that comes torpedoing through a resting flock on shore that sends it into a murmuration. It is truly something to behold. From Barry Lopez, “The flock is carving open space up into the most complex geometrical volumes, and you have to ask yourself, How do they do that? The answer is, No one’s giving anyone else instructions. You look to the four or five birds immediately around you. You coordinate with them. The intricacy of that lattice means that one of the birds you’re using as a guide for your own maneuverings is itself watching the birds around it to coordinate its movements. There’s no leader. David and Barry’s suggestion caught and challenged my thinking on leadership. At the Red Ants Pants Foundation, we spend a lot of time and effort programming around leadership, specifically for teenage girls. But if we don’t need one leader, what do we need? Instead of one leader, what if we all had leadership skills? Instead of following one we could work with our neighbors towards a common direction of good? How do that many birds stay in tune with each other determining their direction and movements so rapidly? They seem to know each other, predict each other’s movements, they communicate effectively. They know their roles and what needs to be done. At our Red Ants Pants Foundation Girls Leadership Program, we teach different mind styles, communication styles, and leadership styles. We can have loud leaders and quiet leaders. Calm leaders and exuberant leaders, analytical leaders and creative leaders. We learn about different identities and about our own limiting beliefs. We think about our own fundamental values and what we believe in; how these values affect our place in the world. By the end of the year, we have all learned a lot about each other, and even more importantly, about ourselves. What if we all were a little more self-aware? What if we all took a little more responsibility with our leadership? What if all our leaders led with a little more compassion and curiosity? And truly looked to our neighbors, to the birds flying to our left and to our right to see how they are doing? Who can we take a little lift from and help them carry the load? Who needs a quick turn of protection from a predator? And so, it does seem we could learn from the sandpipers. And we can also learn from one another. We will keep working towards more leadership skills for all, and especially for girls and women. Onward. Written for the Women’s Foundation of Montana blog by guest writer Sarah Calhoun, Executive Director of the Red Ants Pants Foundation.
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Hearts
Hearts Artichoke and palm Valentines made by hand Hand over my heart Same hand pulling on your heart strings Strings of hearts hanging from the kitchen beam Boxes for life-long love letters Heart beats thudding fast A hummingbird’s heart beats 1260 times a minute Cross my heart and hope to die The Queen of Hearts Let’s shoot the moon Baby And come down in the heartland No change of heart here Feels like home Home is where the heart is Here’s to keeping up the heart work For it is, as always, heartfelt
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Calhoun’s 2021 Festival Welcome
Well, hello there! It’s really wonderful to be able to welcome you back to our favorite cow pasture, in person, together at last. We gather here to enjoy the good company of our friends and neighbors, to celebrate that we made it through a very tough chapter of our lives, and to celebrate our 10th year anniversary of enjoying live music together. We have much to be thankful for. A friend recently posed this question: “How are you making time for things that matter?” I was on a Smith River trip thinking about this and had lots of time to gaze up at the canyon walls to contemplate the things that truly matter. Family, rivers, community, my dog, leaving this world a little better than we found it, and of course, music. Photo by Eric Heidle How can we describe the value of music in our lives? What is it about songs that can help us heal? Music allows us to access the emotional side of ourselves that we don’t often make time to let in. It lets us feel deeply and perhaps most importantly, reminds us that we are not alone. Hearing about someone else’s experiences of hardship or joy invites us to reflect on our relationship both with ourselves and with others. It invites us to think about our place and purpose in this world. I posed this same question to several friends: “What is the value of music?” One particularly insightful 10-year-old named Willa summed it up well, “Music makes everything better. Like when I fight with my brother, all we have to do is put on our favorite song, and bam…we love each other again.” Music reminds us to be joyful, to dance! It says things we don’t know how to put into words. It steadies our souls. Music is the story that captures what it means to be alive. So here we are, gathered together to hear the songs that move us. As day slips into dusk, and the big Montana sky envelops our collective experience with grace and so much beauty, please take a moment to look around at these smiling faces. Let’s embrace this, and each other. Let’s lead with all the love we can possibly muster. Let’s take care of one another the best we know how. For it is this, our collective human experience, that truly matters. With so much love and gratitude, Sarah
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On Giving
This past week, we spent time selecting gifts from our beautifully stocked Red Ants Pants shelves for some folks who need a little extra joy this holiday season. In November, we asked our customers for suggestions of people they knew who had an especially tough year. The responses came pouring in. And I assure you, there has not been a dry eye in the place. Some of you lost your homes and all your belongings in wildfires. We understand that nothing can replace a home, but perhaps a new pair of pants and a carpenter pencil will give you some strength to start rebuilding. There are stories of single moms losing their jobs, of husbands serving overseas, of isolated elderly neighbors. There is a mom who has to drive her 12-year-old son across state lines five times a week for cancer treatments. We can’t cure your son, but a hoodie and some strong coffee may bring some warmth to your early mornings. But, perhaps most remarkable, were the Red Ants Pants customers who responded to our query by sending additional support in the form of donations, their own gift contributions, and even by returning pants they outgrew to pass along to someone else who can use them. Giving is contagious. There is no doubt that people are hurting out there. But we’re seeing an awful lot of love, too. And kindness. And joy…even if we have to look a little harder for it this year. So, here’s to lifting each other up the very best we can. In love, kindness, and joy, Sarah
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America
Dear America, I’ve driven across you four times in the past few months. Makes me wonder what you are thinking. Our wide-open plains, Great Lakes, Northern woodlands and the wise old Appalachian Mountains. What are you thinking of us these days? You have seen a lot happen over the centuries. The Blackfeet, Lakota, and Mohawk. The fur trappers, wagon trains, Lewis and Clark. Bison herds come and gone, elk and grizzly once roaming the prairies and now populating the timbered high country. The songs I played on repeat while driving remind me of the tremendous work and toil that has gone into building this continent. The Edmund Fitzgerald and The Canadian Railroad Trilogy. My Dad and I wore out the record player listening to Gordon Lightfoot a few winters back. “Living on stew and drinking bad whiskey” about sums it up these days. But when driving along Lake Superior these plays are a must. Iron ore, railroad empires, and engineering feats like the Mackinaw Bridge. And as she always does, Dolly brings me home. Light of a Clear Blue Morning is my new anthem. Let’s show these lakes and woodlands that there is a hell of a lot of hope for humanity. We have strong backs, strong minds, and strong hearts. We know how to build community. We know how to take care of one another. In love and gratitude, Sarah
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Harvest
These past few weeks I have been thinking about the harvest, turning to our gardens, farms, and fields for some grounding. On recent visits with friends I have been sent away with ripened tomatoes, onions and potatoes just pulled from the ground, pumpkins still on the vine. I have been able to spread my modest bounty of plump plums and crisp pears from my backyard orchard (…and yes, I use that word ‘orchard’ very generously). And driving across our rural spaces it is always something to behold, the great swaths of wheat, lentils, alfalfa. Corn and soybeans stretch as far as I can see while I’m bucking the sun heading East. Hoop houses, grain trucks, and combines with headers wider than my house. The amber waves of grain. Truly, a beautiful thing. In downtown White Sulphur you can hear the cows bawling in the stockyards as their calves have been recently weaned off for shipping. 4-H steers, hogs, and meat birds have been well raised, sold to the highest bidder at the local fair, and sent off for processing. Bow hunters have enjoyed a good harvest, and upland bird hunters have been sending their dogs across coulees to flush the pheasants and grouse. It’s a good season all around. How lucky we are to live in places where we can access this bounty. Where we have public land, water, and resources to be self reliant in our food systems. A huge thank you to all the farmers, ranchers, and gardeners out there keeping us well nourished. In the week since I first drafted this, a foot and a half of snow and -10˚ below temps haven’t crept in but blasted forth. Reminding us that we are still in Montana. And we still can’t control the weather. And that is a good thing. Rifle opener for deer and elk was on Saturday and the tracks are fresh. We hope your firewood stacks are deep, your hunting rifles are sighted in, and your harvest has been rich.
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