Julie Hobert's Memorial Service Poem

It's taken me a while to post this. This is what I wrote for E's service:

When I first met her
she had this vision
about bats and bees
and native trees

this is what we must do
Elizabeth said
it starts right here.
With the water table
flowing beneath us,
the sum of our actions
seeps through the earth
she came to me with a plan
a five year plan
drawn up on paper in colored markers

This was urgent and important
she said
education, gardens, initiatives,
a path for the bees and butterflies
corner to corner
linking our community
it was to be called
the greening of northcenter
a blog, but really a community movement
We had just started
Northcenter Neighborhood Association
and I thought
Who were these crazy environmental ladies?
Pushing us down this path before we were ready
But Elizabeth could do html code
and with Lisa
she could raise bees,
write grants over vacation,
Give garden luncheons
with lovely china
She could do anything
this powerful woman
because she had
a vision
of the possibility
of what our community could do.

So we all held on,
because we believed in her.
she initiated us and inspired us
to bring boulders, gather plants
work the soil
connect our corners
grounded and inspired to be part
of this movement
this is the right thing to do,
this is the way.

But what else can we do?
Why not start a community garden!
Why not
Defy limitations of land cost,
water, permits, expertise
And this would not be an ordinary garden
It would be a magical garden
that would feed people.
not just people who bought the plots,
but people used to food in cans.

Bags of fresh vegetables
delivered to the food pantry
served for lunch,
hours from being picked
from this magical garden
Food justice as an action
not a concept.
So obstacles overcome,
the garden sprang up with
wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of earth,
volunteers following her like the pied piper,
music playing through it all
caccooning this garden of love
of the earth and our interconnectedness.

this is her vision, she has inspired us all
on the possibility
of what can be done together
as a community
with action and the earth under fingernails
the earth that is in her blood,
that is in all of us.
she got it
the oneness of us all

- Julie

Video from Solstice Gong Ceremony

Here is a Youtube link to a video from the gong ceremony:

Solstice gong ceremony for Elizabeth Wenscott

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE2VK6dmiyM

Solstice Gong Ceremony

We held a gong ceremony in honor of you, Elizabeth in our garden at Grace Street. 102 strikes, between the gong and the bell, each sounding individually, representing the yin and the yang, coming together for 36 strikes simultaneously, then each finishing with their separate sounds. It was based upon a Taoist ceremony for preparing the earth for ritual.

We will conduct this ceremony throughout the year on the solstice and equinoxes.

The act of gonging and chiming with the bell are both acts of the Asian art of "listening". The person striking the gong must listen to sway of the gong during repeated strikes and hit it at the angle that stops the gong in its sway to avoid tipping. The person chiming the bell must observe the gong in order to synchronize the bell with the gong AND still observe the sway of the bell to obtain an effective sound. The bell chimer is double listening.

It was a lovely ceremony, conducted for the solstice and the to open our yard to the garden walk. Of course we finished with the tai chi form.

- Lisa

Song Steve Frisbie sang at Memorial Service

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stXc0o_dcSo&feature=youtu.be&t=10s

Lisa's Memorial Service Speech

(Read by Jan Sugar) Lisa wanted to speak today but didn’t feel that she could get through her remarks so I am going to tell her stories for her. She’s going to be right here by me so that she can tell me I’m wrong and correct me as I go.

Before they met, Lisa and Elizabeth had heard of each other’s work and were encouraged to seek the other out. Lisa refused because she didn't want to study Tai Chi with a white girl practicing a Chinese martial art. Elizabeth didn't seek Lisa out either, as Lisa discovered later, that E didn’t want Japanese shiatsu from a white girl. So you see they were equally matched from the beginning, even in their mutual snobbery.

They were a match in so many ways. They came to each other with this goal already in place: to live authentically and by that I mean they wanted to walk lightly on the earth, live as cleanly as possible, and leave here clear as a bell, having made a footprint that had impact and value for the earth and for those who came after. It became the basis of their partnership. In that partnership they viewed everything in terms of how they could be of service, to each other, to their girls, to Mochi to the school, to Lisa’s clients, to their extended families, to the watershed, to neighborhood.

They both wanted to find the holes all over their lives, and fill them. They wanted to create, they wanted to build and they wanted to leave things better. They were even stewards to this 111-year-old building. Some of you may have entered here only to find E on one of her research jags. It could be that she had researched paint from the turn of the last century one day and would produce paint chips when Lisa arrived home from work from 1903 and the next day Lisa would come home to find her making her own brush she replicated from the same era to use with that paint. The results were always outstanding.

There are many aspects to Elizabeth as you all know, and here are just a few: naturalist, artist, student and teacher, and the proudest part of her life, being mother to these two beautiful, kind, smart girls. She was simply happy to be in their presence, even while she bitched at them, about homework, punctuality, cleaning the house or bigger life issues. At the end of the day, she would say to Lisa: THAT was really fucking hard but it went well didn’t it? She meant that because always, it meant time logged in with Emi and Chloe and while she might have lost 80 battles, she had won one and had laid the ground for the others she planned to win later. Her goal always was this: that they were educated, self sufficient and humane.

Always practical in her application of her interests and always, eventually, inclusive, some might say she made people jump through hoops to prove themselves worthy of inclusion.

As she worked on any of the projects in her life, it was not to the exclusion of others. Each informed the next and they became synergistic…her previous experience had to be represented. If she was vegetable gardening she, of course, had to make certain to include native and companion plants to attract the pollinators to pollinate the vegetables. Everything was a whole system rather than a piece.

Not many of you know this but Elizabeth went to tracking school. Of course we don’t know what tracking school is. It’s survival school, how to live outdoors starting with nothing, how would you find your own food, track animals, build your own shelter, create your own weapons and survive. Fast forward to bodyguard school where Elizabeth did a three-year certification in the art of personal protection. It was the same school that, in the mountains of Virginia, trained CIA and FBI agents. She learned how to T-bone a car, protect a celebrity, and assess a property’s resources so she could defend. She chose not to pursue that because she found it too disruptive to her family and her school. Instead, she became one of the instructors there, teaching both the martial arts and listening aspects of Tai Chi to budding FBI and CIA agents.

She wasn’t easy. She told Lisa when they met that she needed a girl with some meat on her bones, a girl she couldn't break. Part of the fun of her life was that she’d give a little push and dare a push back. Lisa learned to see the little sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes and she’d know that E was about to create trouble. When she received the push back, she’d break out into gleeful laughter.

She made everything a good time, even the path to Enlightenment. Where some take the most direct and serious path up the mountain to Enlightenment, E, forever, the ever practicing Taoist, meandered up the mountain while stopping for a beer, and having a really good time along the way.

At the end of this service, grab an orange and some barley tea as the service and look skyward to toast Elizabeth on the next part of her journey. Lisa, Emi, Chloe, Judy and Dean, and the Hish’s – too numerous to name – thank you for being here today.

Let’s continue after this day to tell the stories of Elizabeth’s life. She will be missed.

Don Tomei's Memorial Service Speech

First and foremost, Elizabeth Wenscott was a Tai Chi Master.

Of that, there is absolutely no doubt. This was not a title she bought for a couple hundred bucks and a two-year membership in a martial arts school. This is something she earned, from her teacher and our Grand Master Hsu Fun Yuen. And it’s a title she deserved.

E was a phenomenal Tai Chi practitioner.

She was supremely gifted… strong, athletic, agile.

And focused. She told us of sewing hundreds of steel nuts and washers on a jacket to give it weight. Then she wore that jacket through countless practices, to build her strength.

And she was wise. She was wise beyond her years. And frankly, I gotta say, she was much wiser than you’d expect for a chick that hot. But that was E: she loved being wise, and she loved being hot. You gotta love her for that.

Elizabeth always said that it took three things to be a Tai Chi master. First, you had to be a good student. Second, you had to develop a strong self-practice that you could sustain on your own. But finally, to be a true master, you HAD to teach.

You had to pass on what you know. And, through teaching, you could empty yourself, and thus be able to refill with new knowledge. And you wouldn’t stagnate.

So she did teach, and what a teacher she was. Gifted beyond all reason, and yet patient and gentle.

She taught us so many… SO many things. About balance. About rooting. About weight distribution and weight shifting. Lightness vs. heaviness.

And joint alignment. She could tweak your wrist a half an inch, and suddenly your power quotient on a scale of 1-10 would go from a weak 6 to something approaching infinity.

She taught us about breathing. Breath is key in Tai Chi. Breathe deep, breathe relaxed. And breathe silently. “If you can hear your breath,” she’d say, “you’re wasting energy.” That’s how subtle it was.

And above all, she taught us about softness. Because, you see, Tai Chi is counterintuitive. It relies on softness, listening and awareness to overcome strength, speed and aggression.

And Elizabeth was as soft as they came. You would push Elizabeth and she would turn to vapor in your hands. A second later, out of nowhere, a buffalo would push your off your feet. And that buffalo always looked just like Elizabeth. How did she do that? Soft as cotton. Strong as a bull.

But the real genius of her teaching was that she didn’t just teach you what SHE knew; she taught you what YOU needed to know. She SAW you, internally, and she saw what YOU needed. And that’s what she gave you. Even if it wasn’t what you wanted or THOUGHT you needed. WHAM, that’s what you got.

And then you were better at Tai Chi.

And Elizabeth LOVED strong students. She didn’t want followers. She wanted strong, independent Women and Men, who were capable of carrying on her Tai Chi tradition.

E wasn’t intimidated by strong students. She relished them, because she was fearless and she knew she could handle them.

And because she knew they could teach her as much as she could teach them.

That is true wisdom. True humility. True nobility. She had that.

Every 6 years the cells in our bodies are replaced, so for us, we ARE Tai Chi. We ARE Elizabeth. We are our own selves, make no mistake, but who we are is inextricably bound with Elizabeth.

She’s in our movements, in our breath, even in our thoughts. She is entwined in our hearts and in our relationships with each other.

She is the set of qualities that we will ever strive for.

Elizabeth Wenscott was our teacher. She was our mentor.

She was our inspiration. She was our laughing, mischievous friend.

But first and foremost, she was---and she always will be---Our Tai Chi Master.

Good-bye, Sifu.

Laurel Ross' Memorial Service Speech

Deep thanks to Lisa for allowing me a little time to say a few words this morning, and for much more of course. 

The last time I made a public appearance for Elizabeth I played the part of a Pig in the Tai Chi Center’s Chinese New Year puppet show. She coached me on how to snort and oink up to her high standards.
Elizabeth gave me the gorgeous jacket I am wearing as a gift a year and a half ago and I wear it in her honor this morning, but also to illustrate a little story. I thanked her profusely at the time, but since she had just given me a nice gift the week before, I told her I was confused about why I was getting another present. She looked me in the eye and said “I am buttering you up! I have big plans for you this year!” I am sure others here have similar stories. What she asked me to do was to work with her to realize the vision to make the Tai Chi Center a leader in environmental conservation and stewardship. This is the part of the school’s program called Sustainable Return. 

E and Lisa were very intentional about doing their part to save the world and were positioning our School to be a leader in making the world greener and healthier. It is a grand and beautiful vision. Check out the website if you aren’t familiar with it. She believed that Tai chi students needed to do this as part of our practice—to develop a spiritual connection to the earth based on real work. 
And it didn’t stop there. She also believed that our school could show other schools the way. She wanted to transform the way tai chi is taught by suffusing it with this important aspect of connecting to nature. 

And of course Elizabeth and Lisa looked beyond at engaging only tai chi students. They worked unbelievably hard on the Greening of the North Center Neighborhood through such projects as the Montrose Green Garden and the Parkway Corners project where neighbors take care of native plants so that pollinators would have sources of nectar in the chemical-saturated urban landscape between the forest preserves and Montrose Bird Sanctuary. 

And Elizabeth used her considerable talent for organizing people on larger scale projects like the amazing Bioneers Conference that she worked on two years in a row. She and Lisa have been key partners in the local organic food movement through their support of spectacularly successful Angelic Organics farm near Rockford. Many years ago before I knew either of them personally used to pick up my CSA box on that back porch. 

I don’t know about you, but I would not feel right about letting the school’s greening efforts fall by the wayside because Elizabeth isn’t here to butter us up and tell us what to do. So some of us need to figure out ways to carry out these big plans. One event that we planned last winter, before this nightmare began, is coming up in two weeks. On June 21—the Summer Solstice--students from the School will meet at 9 am at the Montrose Bird Sanctuary on the Lakefront and work with Leslie Borns the volunteer steward there to remove invasive weeds and do whatever other stewardship is needed. Leslie will give us a tour of the gorgeous site and tell us about its fascinating history. Then we will do tai chi together on the beach. Join us if you can. Afterwards we will bow to Elizabeth and remember her fabulous smile.